NO TRAINS TO DEKALB. Not yet.

There have been rumors DeKalb may again provide rail transportation to Chicago since the DeKalb-to-Chicago train service ended in 1971.

"There has been talk of train service," said DeKalb City Engineer Joe Mauer.

"But not serious talk. Any plans would be long-term, not in the next three years. Maybe in the next six to 10, but probably later."

A funding issue faces the expansion of services from Metra’s West-Line ending point in Elburn to DeKalb.

"The first step to getting train service would be to create a mechanism to pay," said Metra Spokeswoman Meg Reile. "However, the special taxing district that helps pay for the service and construction extends only as far west as Kane County. DeKalb County would have to pass a county-wide referendum with tax increases to make the project possible."

Apparently the "mass transit is a conduit for urban lowlives" canard still has not gone away.

Other rumors say there’s been opposition to the direct train route from Chicago to DeKalb for safety issues, including fear of an increase of Chicago crime.

"In terms of public safety, we are able to import enough low-lives without a train," said Lt. Jim Kayes of the DeKalb Police Department. "That is not a reason there isn’t train service."

As if the bad guys are going to schlep the swag to the station and leave it in plain view on the luggage racks.

And Union Pacific will use the Metra extension as a reason to obtain additional capacity.

To extend passenger train service to DeKalb, a third line would have to be added to the existing train infrastructure. There are currently two freight lines, which can’t accommodate commuter service.

"Maple Park is testing the feasibility of bringing the line to the very edge of Kane County," Mauer said.

That would bring a passenger train within 10 miles of DeKalb, but any closer will take much more time.

That assertion about the third track is not strictly true, as Union Pacific continues to demonstrate a lack of discipline in pathing trains and keeping time, although, as a commenter notes on a related post, there is not much slack in the current rail network, and the provision of additional track capacity along with additional commuter and intercity trains is potentially more cost-effective than yet another widening of the tollway.

A SECOND GREAT LOCOMOTIVE CHASE. But the Andrews Raiders never had a Neubaustrecke to cut.

So today the municipal, state and business leaders of Atlanta and Chattanooga are taking a serious step toward pursuing the high-speed rail option. The Georgia Department of Transportation and Tennessee Department of Transportation are teaming up to prepare a Tier 1 Environmental Impact Statement for a proposed High Speed Ground Transportation corridor between Chattanooga and Atlanta.

Several corridors are being studied:

Two would attempt to follow I-75 to Atlanta, one in the median of the interstate, the other would be just outside the boundaries of the highway for increased speeds.

Two others are designed for maximum speed: One would go through Rome, GA., west of I-75, the other would parallel U.S. Highway 411 east of I-75.

Proponents are looking for the possibility of speeds reaching 200 to 300 mph.

The distance between the two cities is approximately 125 miles. A consultant to the project, Karl Schaarschmidt said that the route chosen for the rail will determine the length of time it will take to travel between Chattanooga and Atlanta. “I estimate 60 minutes with a route that has just one intermediate station (like Rome) versus 90 minutes for a route that goes through downtown Atlanta and stops four times before getting to the airport.”

The mayor of Chattanooga, Ron Littlefield, has long been a proponent of high-speed rail between the two cities. It has to become a reality, he said, “or Chattanoogans will choke (to a standstill) on the traffic.” He said that traffic on these highways is expected to triple even before the railway can be built.

The terrain between the two cities is not the most conducive to building such a railroad, although the Japanese Shinkansen and the aforementioned German line aren't exactly through the sand country of Wisconsin either.

The project, however, appears to be a case of chasing two hares. On one hand, everybody expects the existing roads to become even more choked with traffic, and the high speed train will beat drive times. (As a point of comparison, the Louisville and Nashville's Georgian used to make the run in just over three hours possibly with intermediate stops.) On the other, the project may be a way to ameliorate congestion and delays at Atlanta's airport.

The crowding at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport, one of the busiest in the world, is getting steadily worse, causing many delays and unhappy customers. For years, officials have believed that a new airport in Chattanooga would be the solution. But these days, they are hard-put to settle on building a new airport when the head of a major airline, Delta’s new CEO Richard Anderson, says it is a dumb idea.

The impracticality is obvious to aviation experts. As Anderson noted, 70 to 75 percent of Hartsfield-Jackson’s passengers are simply changing planes. An airport in Chattanooga would be so far away, a rail connection between the two airports would be a necessity. Imagine requiring passengers to ride a train to or from Chattanooga just to change planes!! said Anderson.

I put a harder question to the airlines: if so much of the traffic at a hub airport is people changing planes, why not design an airport explicitly as a hub airport with little in the way of passenger parking, car rental facilities, and all the other attendant clutter, and locate it somewhere other than a destination in its own right? On the other hand, the way connection delays sometimes cascade at the major hub airports, two hours gate-to-gate, with one hour on a train (particularly if equipped with a bar car) can be no worse than two hours schlepping through one airport and making do with the airport bar or the chain-store food services. Put that way, the Rio-Atlanta-Chattanooga-San Francisco connection doesn't look so silly. But, again, there's no real reason to have a hub airport in a major city (hence the continued interest in Peotone) if most of the passengers are simply changing planes. So why mix transferring passengers with originating and terminating passengers, as is the case with O'Hare and Hartsfield and the Cities and to a lesser extent Detroit and Denver? Then there's that whole matter of Delta. Why should the taxpayers of Atlanta or Chattanooga or Georgia or Tennessee spend public moneys on an airport project that makes Delta's connectivity a bit less painful? Let Mr Anderson build his own hub airport.

ELBERT GARY CONNECTS THE GRAND TRUNK TO THE SOO LINE. Welcome to the brave new world of railroading, in which the old Canadian National (does the company still go by that name or only as its initials?) will be able to connect its eastern, southern, and granger properties by way of Joliet.

Canadian National said it plans to invest about $100 million for integration, new connections, and infrastructure improvements to add capacity on the EJ&E line and allow network synergies to be realized over time.

"Network synergies." I think that used to be called "making connections." Or perhaps, "sharp dispatching."

IT'S AMATEUR SPORT. Madison Mayor Emeritus Paul Soglin.

Probably the saddest note is this. Of the over 80,000 fans in attendance, less than 15,000 were UW undergraduates. This year's first year students were never given a chance to purchase tickets.

It has nothing to do with the money.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SPECIAL TEAMS. The cable and internet connections are not yet in at the new place, but there was plenty of football to do home improvement by. (Purchase a new house and you get LOTS of bare walls all of which offer opportunities to hang shades, towel racks, shower curtains, and pictures.) Northern Illinois took a 35-7 lead on the Idaho Vandals (there's something charming about a team that plays in a large basketball arena and warms up to Carmina Burana) after a punt block, then failed to cover another on-side kick at 42-35 and less than a minute remaining, but this time didn't give away the late touchdown. Later that evening, Wisconsin (this is repeating history) became the worst 1-0 four times over team in the country, taking advantage of an Iowa softened up by Northern Illinois. This afternoon, the Packers obtained a quality victory. And all the blinds are up in the sunroom, and the towel racks up in the hall bath.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE LOCALS ALSO SEE IT? Milwaukee baseball fans have long viewed Cub supporters as drunken yobs. What, then, to make of an observation by WGN's Nick Digilio, a self-confessed Cub fan, that riding the Northwestern L at the same time the game ends is not a pleasant experience. I actually did hear a Chicagoan grousing, on the radio, about getting drunk simply from inhaling on the train, and suggesting that riders boarding at other stops head as far toward the front of the platform as possible, because the fans tend to cluster near the steps from street level.

TROT OUT THOSE TRANSLOGS. The empirical case for deregulating the railroads received support in Caves, Christensen and Swanson, "Productivity Growth, Scale Economies, and Capacity Utilization in U.S. Railroads, 1955-1974," and in Caves and Christensen, "The Relative Efficiency of Public and Private Firms in a Competitive Environment: The Case of Canadian Railroads." Some of that team will take the field again with an opportunity to extend the research.

The Surface Transportation Board (STB) announced last week that it has awarded a contract to Christensen Associates (Christensen), headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin, to conduct an independent study that will assess the current state of competition in the freight railroad industry in the United States.

The study will cost approximately $1 million and will be completed and made public in the Fall of 2008, the STB said

Christensen, an economic and engineering consulting firm “…with extensive experience analyzing the transportation sector and other markets,” will conduct the independent study entitled Report to the U.S. STB on Competition and Related Issues in the U.S. Freight Railroad Industry. The study will focus on providing a comprehensive analysis of a wide range of issues including competition, capacity, and the interplay between the two. The study will also include an examination of various regulatory policy alternatives.

In October 2006, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) expressed concerns over competition and shipper captivity in the rail industry.

The GAO recommended that “the Surface Transportation Board conduct a rigorous analysis of competition in the industry and consider actions to address problems associated with abuses of market power.”

Canada is a much smaller country with two truly transcontinental railroad systems, and yet the early evidence suggested a competitive duopoly. The updated research might contain some surprises.

Read the full Destination:Freedom report and enjoy the crying by the highway lobby.

The [Houston] Port Authority said in a statement that studies sponsored by the Texas legislature recently authorized the creation of the Gulf Coast Freight Rail District to address mobility issues caused by the proliferation of rails in the region, Railway Age reported.

I was under the impression that Houston is the point of origin for Union Pacific service meltdowns thanks to insufficient capacity and some latent power struggles between the Octopus (the old Southern Pacific way) and Omaha. Proliferation of rails? Try proliferation of grade crossings, and 53 foot trailers on the roads.

PETE GOGOLAK, REDUX. Once upon a time, soccer players had to retool for the high school football team. That led to no end of snarking about "I keeck touchdown!" Not any more.

Milwaukee Hamilton's Jason Baker is one of those soccer studs with a mega-leg who is helping out the football team while being a key cog for the soccer team during the same time of the school year.

A junior captain on the soccer team, Baker is a sweeper. His name was suggested by coach Dave Shadlen when football coach Jeff Wallack came to him in need of a leg. The sharing worked last year as soccer player Serboljub Vujanic was an all-conference punter / kicker for the Hamilton football team.

Although the article goes on to note that some such crossover players have expanded options for athletic scholarships, even at onetime football power Milwaukee Hamilton, these days stronger on the pitch, what goes on in the chemistry lab and in advanced algebra also ought to matter.

THEY MAY NEED A STRONGER CASE. Chris Lawrence links to additional Daily Egyptian coverage of Southern Illinois president Glenn Poshard's plagiarism.

The situation was complicated further by a Chronicle of Higher Education article Monday reporting Poshard's 1975 master's thesis about drug abuse by rural high school students also includes questionable passages.

The Chronicle stated in the article it obtained a copy of Poshard's thesis from outside SIU and found "cut-and-paste methodology" similar to that in his dissertation. The problems with the thesis seemed less egregious than those in the dissertation, the publication reported.

In one instance, in which the Chronicle referenced, the first two sentences of the thesis corresponds with the first two sentences of a 1969 U.S. government report entitled "Why are drugs being abused these days?"

From Poshard's thesis:

"Drug abuse is not a new phenomenon in America. Various forms of drug abuse have existed for years in the United States and other countries."

From the U.S. government report:

"Drug abuse is not a new phenomenon. Varying forms of drug abuse have been present for years in the United States and other countries."

The Chronicle reported Poshard did not use any quotation marks or citations in those two sentences.

If that government report had appeared in the bibliography, there's a case for use-without-attribution, otherwise known as plagiarism. But how many different ways can one note, as the government and the student did, that there's nothing new about drug use, including widespread and debilitating drug use?

Actually, there is one exception to the rule: "Common Knowledge." If the fact or idea you are using is common knowledge, you don't have to have a source for it. But what is considered common knowledge?

I'm sure there are some other guidelines for discerning whether or not something can be considered common knowledge, but one of the easiest ones I was taught is the following:

If the idea or fact (a) appears in a general source, like an encyclopedia or dictionary, (b) is repeated by over three different sources, or (c) is claimed to be "common knowledge" by more than one author who is in the field and knowledgeable, it can be considered common knowledge. Still, if you have any doubt, go ahead and cite where it was mentioned. It's best to err on the side of citing too much than not enough.

Bias your loss function in favor of excessively citing, in other words. The Northern Illinois University Statement on Plagiarism offers the same advice.

Nor does this mean that every single fact that you learn from some outside source must be documented. Material which is general knowledge or generally available from many sources (such as dictionary definitions, familiar historical facts, and the like) need not be identified; a reader assumes that you got the information somewhere. In most courses, facts drawn from the textbook in that course (but not the author's judgments or conclusions) are fair game. But it is always better to err in the direction of over-acknowledgment: when in doubt, identify your source. Better yet, unless the assignment requires research, rely on your own knowledge, ideas and words.

Otherwise, it's possible to go too far. Consider "The Common-Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule," in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. The first footnote is to the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of "the."

Test yourself: there are several different forms of attribution as well as the non-attribution we call plagiarism.

CAMP RANDALL IS FOR IMPRISONING REBELS. Cadets at The Citadel might have fired the opening shots of the Southern Rebellion, but their successors discovered that in football, bombs can be intercepted. The rebels, making good use of the foot cavalry, held their own in 1861 and 1862 before being overwhelmed in 1863. Despite some spite scores in 1864, the 1865 surrender was followed with Varsity and the Bud Song. On Sunday the Iron Brigade showed the Yankee Volunteers how to win. That's two straight weeks going 1-0 for the Packers. There's also a pennant race in progress.

BACK TO COLLEGE: 4. I'm often skeptical of the observations at Rate Your Students, as the anonymous whinging about others unnamed offers much potential for abuse, including the possibility that a comment represented as originating with a student might be a faculty member lamenting his colleagues' linguini spines.

As an undergrad, I want to know that I'm not the only one fed up with my peers. They can be stupid, slothful, selfish bastards. What is tenure for, if not to call these kids out on their b.s.? These "future leaders" couldn't put together a cogent thought if you held a gun to their head, and everyone is supposed to pat them on the back as long as Mom and Dad's tuition check clears the bank? You have a Ph.D., for chrissakes, so throw it around like it means something.

There is the possibility that tenure induces self-selection by milquetoasts (hence my constant advocacy for more Non-Quiche-Eating Real Guys Who Can Manage Power Tools and Soldering Torches in the academy) who are in it for the job security and seek to avoid any conflicts, including those called Being the Adult.

I lose a lot of respect for professors who don't stand up for themselves. Make these morons get their feet off the desk, put away the iPod, bring paper and pencil to class, eat their three-course meal before coming to class, crack the book every other day, and pay ******* attention -- or get out of the room. I'm tired of taking dumbed-down tests or having to listen to the same lecture about how to write a thesis statement or use citation styles.

Might be the words of a student, might be the words of a faculty member fed up with access-assessment-remediation-retention.

Or with the individuals who abuse those noble intentions.

Tell them that it's not your problem they've made life choices (children, mortgage payments, etc.) that hamper their ability to complete assignments. Remind them of other students who've made different choices (like jumping into the deep end of student loans and Ramen noodles) to be here and aren't asking for favors, so maybe we should all be adults and suck it up.

This site makes me feel like I'm not the only one -- but if I am, I need to reserve my padded room now.

No, anonymous poster, you're not the only one, but it's your responsibility to note the facts and name names.

BACK TO COLLEGE: 3. Ms. Snark offers some hints on the proper use of a course outline. (Yes, she insists on using the wrong word to describe the working timetable, but the advice is sound.)

Actually, it is in your best interest to read all your [course outlines] with a discerning eye; make sure you understand every due and test date and every assignment direction, and if something is not clear, ask questions. If you feel intimidated, e-mail your prof (in a respectful, formal manner, of course).

That means proper spelling and capitalization, u gt my drft? (Railroad telegraphers anticipated all the text-message shortcuts about 100 years ago.)

BACK TO COLLEGE: 2. The Phantom Professor offers her 17 Secrets for College Success, which apparently was offered to Southwest Airlines passengers at one time.

Secret 2 is of particular value to new students. At many of the larger universities, most of the people you'll meet will probably not have heard of your high school. That's a feature, not a bug.

The intensely cliquish culture of high school hallways is largely irrelevant on a university campus populated by students and faculty from diverse backgrounds and with wildly eclectic interests. Don’t self-segregate into the same small pod of likeminded types you hung with back home. Branch out. Be friendly. Be interested in your courses, fellow students, instructors, your campus, your new neighborhood. Being interested leads to being interesting.

I'd add to that: evaluate the Greek system carefully, as the risk of being drawn back into such a pod is great.

Secret 5 implies an economy of scope: prepare to face classes with almost the care you'd devote to facing the chance of a hook-up. Really.

Clean clothes, clean hair, clean nails, clean feet. Sure, it's still flip-flop season now, but nobody likes looking at dirty hooves. Never wear anything in public that could be confused with sleepwear. Remove caps, hats, visors and sunglasses in the classroom. Cover your tramp-stamp tattoos and keep cleavage to a minimum. Hike up your low-riders.

If memory serves, the Phantom is a theater critic with occasional adjuncting gigs, but all but the most hard-core lefties on campus are at least moderately bourgeois in their style.

Secret 7 is the logic behind Rule 33 of Charlie Sykes's 50 Rules.

To avoid getting lost in the crowd, sit up front and ask good questions so the professors will know you by name and face. (Don't laugh at the nerds in the first row. In four years, you'll hear their names followed by the phrase "...got an offer for how much?") Try to get acquainted with at least two classmates in every course. You never know when you’ll need their help. Trade contact info with a couple of students who look reliable. You can find yourself a study-partner or note-sharer that way. And when the day comes that you really do have the flu and can't get out of bed, you'll have a buddy who'll feed you the info you missed—a much better move than moseying up to the prof and asking, “Did I miss anything important?”

That last being a good way to risk self-identifying as Not With The Program. Assume that there's something important each day, possibly each minute. Assume that it's all examinable. (It is.)

The short form of Secret 9 is READ AND UNDERSTAND.

[Course outlines] can be many pages long, spelling out every requirement of the course. Typically they include an assignment and test schedule, reading list, absence and grading policies, and specifics about how professors prefer papers to be handed in (some will let you submit by email, others forbid it). If the [course outline] says “No eating, drinking or knuckle-cracking in class,” take it seriously. Profs can be very finicky about classroom behavior. And they do remember who breaks their rules.

And individuals who demonstrate that they have not taken the time to read the rules are self-identifying as Not With The Program.

Go read the rest.

An aside: some year, I will persuade the rest of higher education to recall that the syllabus is the paragraph or two in the college catalog that identifies the principal focus of the course. It's probably a bit much to ask that the academy refer to the course outline as the working timetable, which is the way I view it.

WE WANT A PITCHER, NOT A BELLY-ITCHER. You just got a time out.

In their ongoing war on “fun,” the nannies who run Little League in Cincinnati have decided to ban chatter on the diamond.

Hmm, maybe that explains the Reds' troubles.

It gets better.

Childhood – or at least the fun part – is falling victim to a potent stew of psychobabble, litigation and over-wrought over protectiveness.

In North Carolina (and I’m not making this up), principals in at least eight schools worried about how schoolchildren will cope with scorching summer heat, want to raise thousands of dollars to erect large canopies and shelters over playgrounds.”

Obviously, we can’t allow kids to actually play outside in the sun, because that would be too much like what we’ve been doing for several thousand years now. And hasn’t anybody there ever heard of trees?

Or perhaps starting the school year after Labor Day?

LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE MID-AMERICAN. I've always enjoyed the football Bottom Ten. The collegiate version for week 2 is a Mid-American trifecta with the local powerhouse becoming a member.

"Welcome to the Party": I-AA Southern Illinois delivered the invitation for the Huskies -- and the Bottom 10 gladly accepted.

BACK TO COLLEGE: 1. If you can find it, I can find it. Aspiring Glenn Poshards: Go. Ahead. Make. My. Day.

CALL 'EM OUT. For some time I have posted the Northern Illinois University Speech Code Rating in my sidebar. I've been informed by the good folks at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education that my doing so inspired them to set up a script for calling attention to violations of free speech rights at other universities. It's now at work in my sidebar.

GEORGE STEINBRENNER, BILLY MARTIN? Does higher education get the symbolism?

Amidst new plagiarism accusations leveled against President Glenn Poshard on Monday, Southern Illinois University Board of Trustees Chairman Roger Tedrick said the board has given Poshard its full support.

"Dr. Poshard was selected by this board two years ago to head the second largest public university in this state. He has met and exceeded our every expectation and has this board's full confidence," Tedrick said in a written statement issued Monday shortly after an hour-long closed executive committee meeting at the Stone Center.

QUOTE OF THE DAY. King Banaian.

What may be overwhelmed, dear editorialist, is your moral compass.

Read and understand.

WHY IT MATTERS. University Diaries.

There are reasons the world envies America's public and private universities. The crucial reason is one of legitimacy: To an amazing degree, by global standards, we maintain a reality-based higher education establishment, in which the quality and substance of scholarship and teaching undergoes authentic and frequent scrutiny.

This scrutiny is both external, in the form of things like the US News and World Report rankings and Rate My Professors, and internal, as in tenure review. Some of it's sort of internal/external, as in our remarkably free market of professors, a market whose operations make administrators aware of their best faculty, since they're the ones who can move somewhere else.

Even in advanced European countries, and certainly in many other countries, as UD has chronicled at length on this blog, nepotism, abuse of power, meager admissions standards, illegitimate procedures in faculty hiring and retention, laziness or corruption in research activity, extensive government control, and restrictions on free speech are common. The core problem in many of these countries is the politicization of higher education, its primary use as a patronage machine, or as a place to stash unemployed young people for awhile.

Many weak American universities look a bit like European universities. They're run by people like [Southern Illinois's Glenn] Poshard, political hacks without intellectuality -- without, really, a grasp of what a university is.

Amen.

(Quote of the Day material, should the day be other than September 11.)