The Impact of IMPACT

The Impact of IMPACT

Brown Bill to Help Manufacturers Retool for Energy Industry

Brown More Open Minded Now about Nuclear Power

by John Michael Spinelli

June 16, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: Junior Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown announced Wednesday that he and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, (D-Michigan) will introduce a bill to help auto suppliers and other manufactures retool for the arrival of the energy industry, as prospects dim for Ohio manufacturers in response to the shifting sands of the U.S. auto industry.

Slightly off topic for today's agenda, Brown responded to a reporter's question about his position on nuclear power, with the announcement to day by Gov. Ted Strickland that a new nuclear power plant will be built in southern Ohio at the former nuclear material processing facility in Piketon, south of Columbus, the capital.

Brown said he has come a long way from how he thought of nuclear plants decades ago, and says he is now open minded about it. Supporters of the nuclear power plant, the first to be developed since the near meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, say its power, because it doesn't release emissions long attributed to causing global warming, is in today's parlance, "Green."

What Brown didn't say but what this reporter thinks will bode more confidence in everyone that it will be built correctly, was the announcement that one parter in the project will be Areva, a French energy company. Franc's nuclear energy industry is state owned and standardized and has a long history of producing save, reliable and affordable energy for the nation.

What does IMPACT, or Investment for Manufacturing Progress in Clean Technology Act, mean to Brown, who has added today's announcement to a list of others on energy he has made recently that include the announced release of $3.2 million to support clean energy research and development projects in Akron and Canton, a visit to a solid waste authority in Central Ohio as a backdrop to discuss his proposal to expand the use of municipal solid waste as a source of clean energy and his role in the release of a Pew Charitable Trust report on "repowering jobs, businesses and investment across America," a study he referenced again today.

Speaking on a conference call with reporters, Brown said he expects his bill to be included in congressional legislation on climate change, and that enabling small- to medium-sized manufacturers to transition to become more energy efficient or retool to manufacture parts for wind, solar or bio-fuels or for other industries is also a good public policy goal.

He noted that manufacturing auto components is the largest single category of manufacturers in the nation, employing over 680,000 workers, so any help that can be directed toward this sector to keep them going, if not in the same line of work but in a different one like energy, is good.

Wendy Patton of Policy Matters Ohio joined Brown by supplying research information her non-profit, non-partisan group compiles, showing on a county-by-county basis the possible potential of Ohio businesses that would be eligible to participate in a program to be administered and run by states that meet certain national criteria, including having produced their own plans for addressing high-unemployment areas and assistance directed at building manufacturing supply chains.

Patton said PMO's report identified 3,000 Ohio manufacturers, employing 250,000 workers, that could benefit from Brown's proposed federal initiative.

In prepared remarks, Brown said the backdrop to his initiative is that as Congress is weighing sweeping energy and climate change legislation, but the more immediate immediate challenges faced by auto suppliers and the manufacturing industry, which means federal help is needed to support the development of domestic clean energy manufacturing and production.

Supported by leaders in the business, environmental, and labor communities, Brown said his bill, capitalized by $30 billion in treasury funds, would convert to a revolving loan fund after two years. If passed, the bill will become a new funding source designed to help auto suppliers and other manufacturers retool for the clean energy industry. Over time, Brown said his initiative would lead to the creation of 180,000 direct jobs and three-times as many in indirect jobs.

To accomplish these goals, Brown's bill would improve manufacturers’ access to capital and invest in energy-efficient technologies, which he said would create new jobs and increase the competitiveness of domestic manufacturing.

In questions from reporters, Brown said that not only would wind, solar and other energy-related sectors be welcome, but he said any transportation technology that is clean and energy-efficient would also be a good fit for his bill.

For states, who Brown said will process applications, they will need to show proof of their plans for high-unemployment areas, the development of manufacturing supply chains and increasing steel production, which has plummeted of late, among other national criteria his bill sets out.

Brown is right to be energized to by stopping the abuse the country's economic woes have visited on manufacturers, Buckeye or otherwise. The state's largest paper by circulation, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, ran a story of two reports out today [MSNBC and Brookings] that showed Ohio will again lag behind other states in recovering from the Great Recession, which next to Pennsylvania has hurt Ohio the most.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. Spinelli on Assignment is syndicated by Newstex.com, can be followed on Twitter at OhioNewsBureau and available for subscription to Kindle owners. To send a news tip or make comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com
The Impact of IMPACT

American Idol for Train Transportation Needed in Ohio

American Idol for Train Transportation Needed in Ohio

Strickland Increases Cost, Time for 3-C Rail Plan

Texas TV Covers "Big Dig" for TR Technology Prototype

by John Michael Spinelli

June 10, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: In Washington Tuesday with other state officials like Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan who hope to snag a share of federal stimulus dollars to spend to launch a comeback for passenger rail service, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and Jolene Molitoris, the state director for transportation, have revised the cost upward and pushed back the time to connect Cincinnati to Cleveland by rail, according to one published report.

"If we don't do this we will be left behind," Strickland told Ohio reporters at the state's Washington office before his meetings with the federal officials," as reported by The Columbus Dispatch. "Ohio will be an island in the middle of this nation without passenger rail service -- we will not be appropriately connected to a system that will be broad-based, and it would be intolerable for us."

The Washington bureau chief for "Ohio's Greatest Newspaper" reported that Strickland, who knows his Republican challenger for re-election in 2010 is John Kasich, and Molitoris , whose confirmation to her post will be considered this week by the Republican-led Ohio Senate, are still tap dancing around the cost and time-frame to return passenger rail service to Ohio via the existing network of freight tracks that cannot handle high-speed trains. Jonathan Riskind of The Columbus Dispatch reported the duo saying the cost to launch their runaway train to the past has escalated from $250 million to $400, while pushing its launch date back another six months to the first quarter of 2011. Strickland said the costs could be less, depending on findings from a passenger rail study to be finished this year by Amtrak. He didn't say and no reporter asked if they might also be more.

3-C CORRIDOR PLAN NOW MORE COSTLY, LATER TO ARRIVE

Hedging on the costs of an idea that has turned into a runaway policy train Strickland, Molitoris and supporters of the slow train to the past are stuck on, the governor told Riskind that "it wouldn't require too much in the way of state funding for annual operation costs - in the neighborhood of $10 million or less."

Keep in mind that Strickland and House Democrats who support the so-called 3-C Corridor rail plan are engaged in a battle royal with Senate Republicans over Ohio's worsening budget picture, which some sources say could require a $2-billion patch job just for the current fiscal year that expires at the end of June. Combining this sour situation with the growth in Ohio's jobless benefits and a shrinking state GDP, why are Gov. Strickland and Director Molitoris so headstrong about a rail plan that doesn't deliver speed but will still cost a lot and may not be fully functional, if ever, for decades to come?

Draconian cuts wait in the wings for various state programs and agencies. Eschewing a public subsidy as far as the eye can see for a train system that few will ride even though all tax payers will be tapped to pay for it appears both tone deaf to economic reality and blind to the dangers of politics, especially if Kasich and Republicans decide to make the 3-C rail plan a campaign issue that shows just how far out of touch the good governor and his eminence gries are with newer, faster, greener train technologies.

Molitoris, appointed by President Clinton in 1993 to be the first woman Administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, has been the Casey Jones of Ohio's ill-conceived passenger rail plan, high-balling a likely $1 billion investment plan down a freight track that will never accommodate truly high speed trains that need separate, purpose-driven tracks on which to attain truly high speeds as Euro-style trains do.

In a separate story this week showing the advantage of a grade-separated system like Tubular Rail offers over the surface-based system state officials want to push, a tractor-trailor ran into a CSX train in Worthington, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. Such a collision is impossible with TR technology.

AMERICAN IDOL FOR OHIO TRANSPORTATION

Ohio should do for train transportation what American Idol does for singers who think they have talent, namely, sponsor and conduct an audition for any train or transport technology that thinks it has a smarter, faster, greener, emission free, affordable and less disruptive idea to current infrastructure when compared to current technology to come forward and audition for state leaders and their technology advisers, who would give them fair and balanced consideration and select those they want to "pass through to Hollywood" for further R&D funding or even outright investment in, so Ohio could enter the future confident that they had found a future-ready train system it would use to create jobs and spur economic development.

At a meeting recently between officials of Tubular Rail, a Texas-based company who holds patents for its "trackless train" technology, and top officials for the Ohio Department of Development, the idea to use ODOT's pavilion at the Ohio State Exposition and Fair to showcase advanced transportation technologies -- like Tubular Rail, Monomobile, MegaRail, Personal Rapid Transit or other innovative systems -- was well received by Mark Barbash, ODOD's interim director at the time. Barbash no longer is heading ODOD due to IRS tax problems that arose after Tubular Rail met with him on the 6th of May.

DC CONSIDERS GAS TAX, VMT OPTION

Lurking on the periphery of this discussion, as The Hill reports, is the notion favored by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) that an expanded federal transportation bill should be funded by a boost in the gas tax or a "vehicle miles traveled" tax, two ideas that while they may be needed to replenish an otherwise depleted Highway Trust Fund, Republicans will hang Democrats with it if they actually become part of the bill.

Molitoris oversaw an Ohio committee that looked into the future of state transportation planning and saw a need for increasing the state gas tax as a reliable, sustainable means to fund a so-called seamless inter-modal transportation committee. A couple hours after she made the major finding of her committee public, Strickland, a gun-rights supporter, shot it down like a low flying duck at close range. The Governor took apart in a few minutes what the committee had spent months devising as their big idea for funding Ohio's transportation future.

TUBULAR RAIL IN TEXAS

Meanwhile in Pecos, Texas, Tubular Rail inventor and founder Robert Pulliam caught the attention recently of two mainstream media stations who assigned TV crews to cover the digging of a hole that the Mayor of Pecos, Richard Alligood, said could turn the small West Texas town into a "center of transportation," if Tubular Rail is on the winning end of a $20 million federal Department of Energy grant it applied for two weeks ago.

In a letter dated early June to Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn about Tubular Rail's plans to build its prototype in Pecos, Robert M. Tobias, Jr., Executive Director of the Pecos Economic Development Corporation, says his group is working in partnership with the Governor’s Office, Texas A&M, Texas Transportation Institute, TXDOT and other state and regional partners "to bring these types of projects to fruition." News reports said 150 jobs could come to Pecos if TR technology takes off. In a related story, ODOD told TR officials it is ready to help the company build a supply chain of Ohio manufacturers, who stand to benefit should the DOE grant for energy projects that "disrupt the status quo" find its funding footing.

Tobias correctly notes that having the research funds to test this technology "is an integral component of moving this opportunity forward." Continuing, he says the recent announcement by President Obama on making funds available to transportation projects of this type "could serve as the impetus" to TR technology rising from the scrub brush landscape of the test-track facility located close by. "Therefore, your support and assistance in connecting this transportation project to research funding is greatly appreciated," Tobias told a staffer in Sen. Cornyn's office.

Watch the reports here:
CBS 7 West Texas, Midland-Odessa
http://www.cbs7.com/news/details.asp?ID=12513

NBC 9 West Texas, MIdland-Odessa
http://www.kwes.com/global/category.asp?c=163304&clipId=&topVideoCatNo=121765&topVideoCatNoB=83259&topVideoCatNoC=83262&topVideoCatNoD=138849&topVideoCatNoE=124443&clipId=3824569&topVideoCatNo=121765&autoStart=true

As Ohio's political range war rages over whether Strickland let Dayton-based National Cash Register be lured to Georgia or whether the company's move was already a done deal, Ohio officials know that companies, by and large, are not beating a path to their door despite Strickland's cryptic comments today about landing one that will bring jobs here. Accordingly, state officials ought to consider all comers, like Tubular Rail, and consider what its advanced train technology can do for the state's future, instead of being stuck in the past of status quo technology that will only lead us back to the past even as we move forward in time.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Tubular Rail, the Valley of Death and Helping a Hurt Ohio

Tubular Rail, the Valley of Death and Helping a Hurt Ohio

"Trackless Train" Company Wins State Support for Ohio Supply Chain in Bid for DOE Energy Funds

TR technology as Cool as "Making a Rock Float."

by John Michael Spinelli

June 2, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: Officials from Tubular Rail, the "trackless train" company from Texas, had reason to smile last week. After eights months of seeking an audience with Gov. Ted Strickland's development staff to introduce them to the company's patented technology that reorganizes the essential elements of conventional railroads by eliminating the need for tracks or bridges, a letter of general support from Ohio was issued that signaled state officials are ready to help the company build an Ohio supply chain for both its transformational prototype and for the next generation of trains it believes will become the fourth transportation industry, after trains, cars and planes, that promises to become a new standard for America and the world.

With the understanding that "a significant portion of the components for both the demonstration and commercial system can be sourced in Ohio," StevenSchoeny, Director, Strategic Business Investment Division, affixed his name to a letter than informed company officials that "the Ohio Department of Development is prepared to work with Tubular Rail and your suppliers in Ohio to take advantage of Ohio's economic development programs to build your supply chain capacity."

The announcement Monday by General Motors that it was entering bankruptcy court where it will reinvent itself in a final turnaround effort to remain a viable auto-manufacturer in the U.S, makes the hunt for new jobs that much more compelling. Ohio has everything to gain and nothing to lose from taking an interest in the birth and development of a new industry, as Tubular Rail thinks of itself.

Combining GM's announcement yesterday that its future reorganization plans will cost Ohio another 1,000 jobs with Tuesday's announcement by NCR that it will relocate its headquarters from Dayton to Georgia, taking about 1,300 jobs with it, and adding it to the dour backdrop that more than 300,000 jobs have been lost on the watch of Gov. Ted Strickland, elected in 2006 on the campaign promise to turnaround Ohio, solidifies the expectation that the state's unemployment, now above 10 percent, will continue to tick upwards.

And now that John Kasich, a former Ohio Congressman and investment banker, has declared he will challenge Strickland in 2010 and whose campaign slogan is "A New Way, A New Day," the race is on to see which man can best restore jobs and prosperity to a once mighty industrial state bobbing in a sea of red ink.

GM's bitter-sweet news makes Ohio's rough road to recover even rougher. The Hobson's Choice now, exacerbated by an imploding economy that has triggered a range war in Columbus over how to balance the budget by the next fiscal year, which starts June 11, pits Democrats, who want to fill a current and growing budget gap with billions in one-time stimulus funds, and Senate Republicans, who are ready to wield a big ax and lop off even more state-funded programs, better syncing future state expenditures with expected shrinking revenues.

Amid this economic turmoil in Ohio, Tubular Rail has submitted an application to the federal Dept. of Energy, Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy, which is offering up to $20 million per project for new energy ideas that are so "transformational" they will "disrupt the status quo" so much that a new industry standard will emerge.

From the DOE grant guidelines: "Often, a technology is considered transformational when it so outperforms current approaches that it causes an industry to shift its technology base to the new technology. The Nation needs transformational energy-related technologies to overcome the threats posed by climate change and energy security, arising from its reliance on traditional uses of fossil fuels and the dominant use of oil in transportation."

With their Ohio letter in hand, company officials added the Buckeye State to the list of team members located in Texas and Ohio that it hopes will catch the eye of DOE grant staff.
If Tubular Rail is passed through to the next round of the , when a full 150-page application will be completed,

"This project effectively creates a 'fourth form' of transportation, one that will have the impact today that the locomotive, Model T and Kitty Hawk had in their day," according to Robert Pulliam, inventor of TR technology and president of the company.

Pulliam, born and raised in Detroit but now residing in Houston, Texas, said the two mile prototype system will be proof-positive that a new "Green" industry addressing Green House Gas emissions, oil imports, infrastructure costs and job creation is upon us.

Tubular Rail's goal, according to Pulliam, is to build a transportation system that reduces the cost of installation and the affect of infrastructure impact, yet achieves the energy efficiencies inherent in steel railway systems.

Pulliam said the "Pecos Project" will be a full-scale operating system to test and prove all components, reconfiguring the essential functional elements of the rail-bed and train. It reverses orientation of steel rail and steel wheel by ingeniously putting the rails on the car and propulsion on the supports or O-Ring stanchions.

The stated goal of the program is to take an "immature technology that promises to make a large impact on the ARPA-E Mission areas...and develop it beyond the 'valley of death' that prevents many transformational new technologies from becoming a market reality."

As stated in its grant guidelines, DOE's goal is to provide funding such that a company like Tubular Rail, which already has preliminary engineering and patents in hand, can overcome the later phase of the "valley of death" by funding the technology (component, system, hardware, software, or other) that must be matured to the point that it can transition into industrial development and deployment.

The Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College, which performed work for Tubular Rail, contrasted and compared TR technology with current convention railroad technology. "We strongly believe in the spirit of Tubular Rail and would like to see the project receive funding soon," theThayer report concluded. It added, "An improvement upon conventional technology is necessary because existing technologies for high-speed and urban transit are expensive, difficult to build through populated areas, and more environmentally unfriendly. In summary the basic advantages of Tubular are an initial investment 54 percent less than the competition,operations 450 percent more efficient than conventional technology and emits 35 percent less CO2 than other forms of transportation." Simply put,Thayer said "Tubular Rail is a viable option for the future of the rail industry".

What does all this mean for Ohio? Jobs, jobs, jobs. Ohio, by agreeing to have its name added to TR's list of potential partners, puts itself in a prime position to seize the day on the birth and development of a new transportation industry. Although TR's prototype will be built in Texas, Ohio can still be home to another Wright Brother's Kitty Hawk moment, TR's 1st commercial passenger.

With daily announcements of job losses battering the spirit of state leaders, workers, their family and friends and the communities they live in, any lift Tubular Rail can give to the Birthplace of Aviation should befacilitated no matter the cost. But helping TR out means state leaders and the citizenry at large need to re-think how they think about rail. Locomotive engines guided by tracks in the ground have been around for a long time. But the new paradigm, as invented by Mr. Pulliam, takes those relationships apart and puts them back together differently, but uses readily available technologies.

Frank Sonzala, a TR board member from San Antonio who is also a proven entrepreneur and patent holder, says the simple concept behind the company's game-changing technology is tantamount to "making a rock float." With Ohio sinking like a rock, it's letter of support is one small step for a state sinking beneath the waves of the Great Recession, but one giant step for Tubular Rail.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com