Bikes vs Autos - Need Info
ant...@desire.wright.edu
regions of Michigan and Wisconsin. Normally these trips are done in two
large gas-guzzling vans. We are trying to prove how doing this trip on
bicycles makes more sense than using the vans.
What we are looking for is:
Any documentation of Bikes vs Autos. Papers, studies, articles etc.
Any documentation of Calorie consumption of automobiles as opposed to
bicycles (on average).
And of course, any tips, resources, or comments are greatly appreciated too.
Thanks
Bethany & Joe
Antioch College, Yellow Springs, OH
Carl Witthoft
>We are organizing a bicycle/camping trip in the Great Lakes Upper Peninsula
>regions of Michigan and Wisconsin. Normally these trips are done in two
>large gas-guzzling vans. We are trying to prove how doing this trip on
>bicycles makes more sense than using the vans.
>What we are looking for is:
>Any documentation of Bikes vs Autos. Papers, studies, articles etc.
As a practical standpoint: I'd suggest you consider how much gear
you want to bring, security issues (can't lock cash in a bike, although
a van ain't much better :=( ),
sensitivity to weather conditions, road safety, etc.
On a pure pollution and energy consumption basis, the bikes are
almost certain to win.
But, consider the stuff I listed, along w/ intangibles such as:
At the end of a long day's travel, are you more likely to have the
energy to make camp if you drove (and 6 of 7 people slept in the van)
or bicycled?
--
Bobby Newmark, aka Carl Witthoft @ Adaptive Optics Associates
aoa!ca...@bbn.com ca...@aoa.utc.com
54 CambridgePark Drive, Cambridge,MA 02140 617-864-0201
**Just say NO to HMOs**
Mike Smith
In article <1992May29.1...@aoa.aoa.utc.com> ca...@aoa.aoa.utc.com (Carl W
itthoft) writes:
>In article <1992May25....@desire.wright.edu> ant...@desire.wright.edu
writes:
>>We are organizing a bicycle/camping trip in the Great Lakes Upper Peninsula
>>regions of Michigan and Wisconsin. Normally these trips are done in two
>>large gas-guzzling vans. We are trying to prove how doing this trip on
>>bicycles makes more sense than using the vans.
>As a practical standpoint: I'd suggest you consider how much gear
>you want to bring, security issues (can't lock cash in a bike, although
>a van ain't much better :=( ),
>sensitivity to weather conditions, road safety, etc.
>On a pure pollution and energy consumption basis, the bikes are
>almost certain to win.
Not necessarily so... if cost is any indicator of embeded energy
consumption (the premise is that energy consumed in the creation
of 'stuff' shows up as a major cost component and corelates with
total polution production) then a first approximation of relative
'fuel cycle' pollution could be made by comparing the costs of the
gasoline vs the costs of the people food.
I usually hog down about $5-$10/day of food. More if I'm on the road
on a bike. Given my range on a bike, I get about $.25 to $1 per mile.
I don't usually spend more than $.10 per mile on gasoline...
Of course, if you get more miles/day on a bike than I do, and if you
eat steamed rice rather than freeze dried hiker meals you can change
this ratio dramatically. I can't, won't, and don't ...
That food you're eating was fertilized with something, processed
through something, packaged in something, and all of that 'stuff'
was hauled around in something. All those somethings involve energy
consumption and, thus, pollution. And, of course, you WILL be packing
out all your 'poo' for proper disposal somewhere of YOUR pollution?
My guess is that you would be better off with the proverbial 'Geo Metro'
and a small cartop carrier of camping gear... if you can't fit it all
in the 'trunk' ...
--
E. Michael Smith ...!sun!apple!ems
'If you can dream it, you can do it' Walt Disney
This is the obligatory disclaimer of everything. (Including but
not limited to: typos, spelling, diction, logic, and nuclear war)
Shawn Honess
>>On a pure pollution and energy consumption basis, the bikes are
>>almost certain to win.
>
>Not necessarily so... if cost is any indicator of embeded energy
>consumption (the premise is that energy consumed in the creation
>of 'stuff' shows up as a major cost component and corelates with
>total polution production) then a first approximation of relative
>'fuel cycle' pollution could be made by comparing the costs of the
>gasoline vs the costs of the people food.
>
>I usually hog down about $5-$10/day of food. More if I'm on the road
>on a bike. Given my range on a bike, I get about $.25 to $1 per mile.
>I don't usually spend more than $.10 per mile on gasoline...
I guess I don't understand the last paragraph?
Whether you drive or bike you have to eat. The cost of gasoline is just
an addition to your transportation cost. Think of it as: $zero gas + food
for a bike trip, and $XXX gas + food for a car. We also know that it costs
more to operate a car than just gas money (repairs, insurance, registration,
etc.) There are also other minor costs for things like savings in health
costs, taxes for road repairs and noise abatements, oil drilling, etc.
I don't have any data, but my sense is that I use more of MY OWN energy
when I bike, but less TOTAL energy. This translates into a huge savings
in net pollution.
The only two reasons I can think of for driving are: saving time and not
getting wet. (I live in Oregon. :-)
-Shawn
Another thought: Use gasoline and it's gone. Food energy is essentially solar.
Moss Drake
is the dumbest in the world!!
You have to eat anyway!
What you eat doesn't necessarily have to be packaged,
processed, fertilized, shipped or prepared.
Your human wasted is washed into the earth to become
food for bacteria and worms (which is what happens in
most sewers anyway, you just don't see it).
Make getting there part of the trip, so it's not a chore,
and it's not something to be debated.
If you don't have time, drive the car. If you have time,
ride yr bike.
moss@agora
Kenneth James Clark
Some interesting information (propaganda?) from the bike to work day
literature:
Calories needed to travel ten miles:
by bike: 350
by car: 18,600
by foot: 1,000
by bus: 9,200
by rail: 8,850
I once heard that Einstein was quoted as saying "The bicycle is the most
efficient form of transportation known to man." Don't know if he really
said this or not. I asked about the above, the car figure is for one
getting 20mi/gal.
Your mileage may vary :-).
Ken
Don Gillies
if you divide the caloric figures and assume the car gets 20mpg, then
these figures are roughly correct.
Don Gillies - gil...@cs.uiuc.edu - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
--
Chris Kostanick 806 1044
way to spread many diseases and parasites. They don't add the chlorine
or ozone at waste treatment plants just for fun. Remember, too natural
a life style can involve cholera, typhoid and dysentery.
Chris Kostanick
"Give me safe drinking water or you'll give me death"
Chris O'Neill
James Clark ) writes:
>In article <1992Jun9.2...@agora.uucp> mo...@agora.uucp (Moss Drake)
writes:
>> The argument of the cost of food & packing out people pollution
>> is the dumbest in the world!!
>Some interesting information (propaganda?) from the bike to work day
>literature:
>
>Calories needed to travel ten miles:
>
>by bike: 350
>by car: 18,600
>by foot: 1,000
>by bus: 9,200
>by rail: 8,850
I read somewhere, maybe this newsgroup, that the production of 1 calorie of
food energy in Western economies required the consumption of about 1 calorie of
fossil fuel energy. If this is the case then we can see that travel by bike
causes far less consumption of fossil fuel energy than travel by car, even in
the worst case.
Chris O'Neill
Jym Dyer
> good way to spread many diseases and parasites. They don't
> add the chlorine or ozone at waste treatment plants just for
> fun. Remember, too natural a life style can involve cholera,
> typhoid and dysentery.
=\= There are alternatives that avoid these problems. Septic
tanks are one; composting toilets are another.
=\= I grant that these aren't the same as leaving the waste
untreated, but they are "natural," and don't involve chlorine
and such.
<_Jym_>
Chris O'Neill
James Clark ) writes:
>In article <1992Jun9.2...@agora.uucp> mo...@agora.uucp (Moss Drake)
writes:
>> The argument of the cost of food & packing out people pollution
>> is the dumbest in the world!!
>Some interesting information (propaganda?) from the bike to work day
>literature:
>
>Calories needed to travel ten miles:
>
>by bike: 350
>by car: 18,600
>by foot: 1,000
>by bus: 9,200
>by rail: 8,850
The car had a fuel economy of 20 miles per gallon. This implies that one
person travelling in a car getting 42 miles per gallon causes the same energy
consumption per person per mile as travelling by rail.
I am inclined to think that the main reason why public transport saves energy
is that it puts people off travelling and reduces the demand for travel. Any
improvement in energy efficiency is a secondary reason.
Chris O'Neill
Mike Smith
> is the dumbest in the world!!
Only to those who like their answers uncluttered by the need to think
critically or examine unpleasant facts.
> You have to eat anyway!
At full rest, I consume about 1100 C./day (documented in a NASA study in
which I participated for 105 days in a sealed environment).
At 'normal' activity levels, I consume about 2500 C./day (based on my
typical food intake).
At high activity levels, such as bike riding, I consume about 4000 C./day.
Take a look at what a serious bike racer eats. It can go up to 8000 C./day!
You have to eat anyway, but the quantity varies dramatically with work output.
One might HOPE that this was met by loss of excess body fat, buy HOPE isn't
FACT.
The dollar cost of food tends to represent the embodied energy, much of
which comes from oil. The raw calories don't directly compare. Ergo,
that 2KC/day extra (which costs about $5-$10) compares more directly
with an equivalent DOLLAR cost of gasoline, or about 5 gallons of gas.
That 5 gallons in a Geo Metro is good for about 200 miles. Me? I'm
not able to do a double century on 4KC/day ... every day ...
> What you eat doesn't necessarily have to be packaged,
> processed, fertilized, shipped or prepared.
Which I noted in my original posting. However, most bikers/hikers I've
seen on the trail are eating freeze dried wonder meals, NOT raw brown rice
or raw wild plants gathered on the trail. Are you suggesting that bikers
grow their own rice? Wheat? Oats?
> Your human wasted is washed into the earth to become
> food for bacteria and worms (which is what happens in
> most sewers anyway, you just don't see it).
Right. We should all Crap along the roadside. Ever hear of public health
law? How about {cholera, influenza, ghiardia, ...}. That is what sewage
treatment plants are all about. Please don't crap in MY parks!
> If you don't have time, drive the car. If you have time,
> ride yr bike.
IF you WANT to, but not due to some unproven appeal to 'reduced pollution'
that hasn't been proven one way or the other! I don't know which pollutes
less, the car or the person, but neither do you. You are speaking from
presumption, not established fact.
--
E. Michael Smith e...@apple.COM
"Nothing can keep an argument going like two persons who aren't
sure what they're arguing about." O.A.Battista
Kenneth James Clark
>
>At full rest, I consume about 1100 C./day (documented in a NASA study in
>which I participated for 105 days in a sealed environment).
>
>At 'normal' activity levels, I consume about 2500 C./day (based on my
>typical food intake).
>
>At high activity levels, such as bike riding, I consume about 4000 C./day.
>Take a look at what a serious bike racer eats. It can go up to 8000 C./day!
>
If I weren't riding my bike to work, I would go to the local gym and
row and lift for an hour a day. Ie., this analysis is very nice, but
for an equivalent scenario, I would have to both ride and work out
every day, which I do not. If you are suggesting that it is more
efficient to be as close to a vegetable as possible all day and drive a
metro to and from work, the American Heart and Lung Associations would
probably not be happy.
>The dollar cost of food tends to represent the embodied energy, much of
>which comes from oil. The raw calories don't directly compare. Ergo,
>that 2KC/day extra (which costs about $5-$10) compares more directly
>with an equivalent DOLLAR cost of gasoline, or about 5 gallons of gas.
>That 5 gallons in a Geo Metro is good for about 200 miles. Me? I'm
>not able to do a double century on 4KC/day ... every day ...
Assuming no hidden societal costs. Bad assumption. Also assuming
no human being operating the Geo (who would be simultaneously
burning calories).
>
>Which I noted in my original posting. However, most bikers/hikers I've
>seen on the trail are eating freeze dried wonder meals, NOT raw brown rice
>or raw wild plants gathered on the trail. Are you suggesting that bikers
>grow their own rice? Wheat? Oats?
Are you talking about backpacking? I thought we were talking about
bikes as utility/commuting vehicles. If you're talking off road, your
Geo becomes a Jeep with a 4.6 litre engine (that's how they spell it :-) )
>> If you don't have time, drive the car. If you have time,
>> ride yr bike.
>
>IF you WANT to, but not due to some unproven appeal to 'reduced pollution'
>that hasn't been proven one way or the other! I don't know which pollutes
>less, the car or the person, but neither do you. You are speaking from
>presumption, not established fact.
Of course, nothing can really be proven. Measuring tailpipe emissions
or gas burned is meaningless, maybe there is a little troll in the tank
drinking the gas and farting. Since these are natural bodily functions,
this is fine, and the car is pollution free. Remember, nothing has been
proven, and all measurements are statistically insignificant. Science
is a sham performed by magicians... :-) ;-)
Ken
mike
a calorie is the amount of energy to raise one pound of H2O one degree
Fahrenheit. So fat is actually 9000 calories/gram. Perhaps you should
re-examine the case being made.
Mike Ross
--
*********************************mi...@drseus.jsc.nasa.gov******
* Michael L. Ross * Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Co. *
* Standard Disclaimer regarding entities above................*
********************************************************(*)-(*)
Steve Chapin
}}
}} As I understand it, a food 'calorie' is actually a kilocalorie, where
}} a calorie is the amount of energy to raise one pound of H2O one degree
}} Fahrenheit. So fat is actually 9000 calories/gram. Perhaps you should
}} re-examine the case being made.
You are correct in your understanding about the relation of calories
to Kcal, but all "calories" mentioned in both articles were Kcal.
Usually these are distinguished by capitalizing the C in Calorie for a
Kcal.
For the record, a calorie is the amount of heat required to raise one
cc of pure water 1 degree C (at a specific starting temp, which I
forget).
If we accept Mike Smith's original numbers of 4000 Cal for a "highly
active" lifestyle, it is a difference of 1500 Cal from his resting
requirements, not 2000 Cal. That makes the extra food requirements
smaller (.166 kg fat, .375 kg protein/carbo), and the $5-10 claim even
less believable.
}} Mike Ross
s...@cs.purdue.edu Steve Chapin Today's Grammar Lesson:
"If you loose your arrow, you're likely to lose it in the weeds,"
was often heard in days of yore.
Beef: Real food for a dead planet.
Giles Morris
>> If you don't have time, drive the car. If you have time,
>> ride yr bike.
>IF you WANT to, but not due to some unproven appeal to 'reduced pollution'
>that hasn't been proven one way or the other! I don't know which pollutes
>less, the car or the person, but neither do you. You are speaking from
>presumption, not established fact.
Boy, I've followed some strange arguments, but this one is one of the best.
I suggest that you go out and stand in traffic for a while if you _really_
want to know whether cars or bicycles pollute more.
Do you ever wonder whether gravity still works on weekends?
We now return you to the Comedy Channel.
Giles Morris ...uunet!viusys!gilesm
Patrick K. Ferrick
>>IF you WANT to, but not due to some unproven appeal to 'reduced pollution'
>>that hasn't been proven one way or the other! I don't know which pollutes
>>less, the car or the person, but neither do you. You are speaking from
>>presumption, not established fact.
>Boy, I've followed some strange arguments, but this one is one of the best.
>I suggest that you go out and stand in traffic for a while if you _really_
>want to know whether cars or bicycles pollute more.
Seems to me that this discussion centers around an attempt to compare _total_
emissions, which are clearly almost impossible to pin down when you consider
all the steps needed to build, transport, and operate either cars or bicycles.
So how about this argument: the more bicycles are used, for whatever
purpose, the more people will start to wonder what else can be done to
lessen the adverse effects we have on the ecosystem.
Of course, riding is a heck of a lot of fun and good excercise as well...
pat
Brian Gregory
(Kenneth James Clark ) wrote in response to
<1992Jun9.2...@agora.uucp> mo...@agora.uucp (Moss Drake) writes:
>> [much deleted].
>> If you don't have time, drive the car. If you have time,
>> ride yr bike.
>> moss@agora
>Calories needed to travel ten miles:
>by bike: 350
>by car: 18,600
>by foot: 1,000
>by bus: 9,200
>by rail: 8,850
>I once heard that Einstein was quoted as saying "The bicycle is the most
>efficient form of transportation known to man." Don't know if he really
>said this or not. I asked about the above, the car figure is for one
>getting 20mi/gal.
>Ken
My brother read an article in a cycling magazine written by a prominent
physicist who proved it: By comparing the caloric needs of certain
transportation costs vs. the work done = force (which incl. weight) * dist.
bicycles are "the most efficient form of transportation." Sorry, don't
have the #'s handy. Jeez, I think I burn more than 350 calories when I
ride 10 miles, but I guess that doesn't count the mountains we have here,
eh?
c.on...@trl.oz.au (Chris O'Neill) adds:
}The car had a fuel economy of 20 miles per gallon. This implies that one
}person travelling in a car getting 42 miles per gallon causes the same energy
}consumption per person per mile as travelling by rail.
Which is extremely unlikely for commuting (way over half of the miles driven
by private autos in the US).
}I am inclined to think that the main reason why public transport saves energy
}is that it puts people off travelling and reduces the demand for travel. Any
}improvement in energy efficiency is a secondary reason.
}Chris O'Neill
Actually, I believe the helpful effects of public transport are that
people must walk a bit further to and from home/work to access public
transport -- an added benefit, if you ask me! Private car transport almost
always relies on "curb-to-curb" service!
--
***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---***---
Brian Gregory ||"I only went out for a walk,
I-net: GREG...@CUBLDR.COLORADO.EDU || and finally concluded to stay till
ECE Graduate Student || sundown, for going out, I found,
Univ. of Colorado @ Boulder || was really going in." -- John Muir
Dean Economou
1. When your fitness increases and your muscles stop putting
on weight, you will obtain much more energy from each calorie of
food (your metabolic efficienct increases). I think the figures
go from something like 20% to about 55%.
2. The cost of the food is not all energy. Most is handling. I'd
use the cost on food which is handled least. Even something like pasta
which makes good bicycling fuel, costs about $1.20 for half a kilo (1 and
a bit pounds). That's a lot of pasta, and not all of it is energy
cost. Does anyone have figures on energy used to produce foods so
we can do some real comparisons here?
Cheers,
Dean
(use de...@qpsx.oz.au, not reply)
Chris O'Neill
>The dollar cost of food tends to represent the embodied energy, much of
>which comes from oil.
I understand your point but it's not very convincing.
> The raw calories don't directly compare.
This may be true comparing petrol and food but the implication of your
hypothesis is that the cost of calories does not vary much between different
types of food. This is definitely not true. Calories in sugar and bread are
much cheaper than calories in foods like meat.
Chris O'Neill
Chris O'Neill
greg...@cubldr.colorado.edu (Brian Gregory) writes:
>In article <9H+-Q#_@engin.umich.edu>, bla...@caen.engin.umich.edu
>(Kenneth James Clark ) wrote in response to
>
> <1992Jun9.2...@agora.uucp> mo...@agora.uucp (Moss Drake) writes:
>>> [much deleted].
>>> If you don't have time, drive the car. If you have time,
>>> ride yr bike.
>>> moss@agora
>
>>Calories needed to travel ten miles:
>
>>by bike: 350
>>by car: 18,600
>>by foot: 1,000
>>by bus: 9,200
>>by rail: 8,850
>
>
>}The car had a fuel economy of 20 miles per gallon. This implies that one
>}person travelling in a car getting 42 miles per gallon causes the same energy
>}consumption per person per mile as travelling by rail.
>
>Which is extremely unlikely for commuting (way over half of the miles driven
>by private autos in the US).
It's true that the average fuel economy for commuting is less than 42 miles per
gallon but there is nothing stopping our societies from achieving this figure
if we think this is the right thing to do. This is an energy saving
alternative to rail travel that doesn't get promoted the way rail travel does
(by Government subsidies).
>}I am inclined to think that the main reason why public transport saves energy
>}is that it puts people off travelling and reduces the demand for travel. Any
>}improvement in energy efficiency is a secondary reason.
>
>Actually, I believe the helpful effects of public transport are that
>people must walk a bit further to and from home/work to access public
>transport -- an added benefit, if you ask me! Private car transport almost
>always relies on "curb-to-curb" service!
We live in free countries, we can exercise however we want to.
Chris O'Neill
Jym Dyer
> than 42 miles per gallon but there is nothing stopping our
> societies from achieving this figure if we think this is the
> right thing to do. This is an energy saving alternative to
> rail travel that doesn't get promoted the way rail travel does
> (by Government subsidies).
=o= The cost of subsidizing rail travel pales next to the costs
of auto travel, once you take certain real costs into account:
damage to the environment and to people's health foremost
amongst them. That these costs are difficult to account for
and are routinely ignored makes them no less real.
<_Jym_>
Jym Dyer
> that when tested the compost had scary levels of parasites.
=o= My understanding is that all composting toilets are not
equal. There is one in particular, designed by a Swede, that
is said to be the best in the world.
<_Jym_>
Jym Dyer
ems> (based on my typical food intake). At high activity
ems> levels, such as bike riding, I consume about 4000 C./day.
ems> [Figures for "serious bike racer" omitted due to their
ems> irrelevance.] . . . You have to eat anyway, but the
ems> quantity varies dramatically with work output.
=o= You left out a few variables. Foremost is that not all
foods are the same. By focusing only on "quantity" you could
quite literally end up comparing apples with oranges.
=o= The best (i.e., most efficiently metabolized) food for
aerobic activities like bicycling are those high in carbo-
hydrates. Not too surprisingly, engaging in such activities
tends to yield cravings for such foods.
=o= High-carbohydrate foods are bulky. Thus it's unlikely
that somebody will eat them and then sit down to have a big
typical American low-carbohydrate meal. The more likely
scenario is that the high-carbohydrate foods will supplant
the low-carbohydrate foods as the centerpiece of the meal.
=o= Conveniently enough, high-carbohydrate foods are much,
much better for the environment than low-carbohydrate foods.
dean> When your fitness increases and your muscles stop putting
dean> on weight, you will obtain much more energy from each
dean> calorie of food (your metabolic efficienct increases). I
dean> think the figures go from something like 20% to about 55%.
=o= This is true, but I wish I knew more about how much cycling
it takes for the body to get into this condition. It's been
mentioned in another newsgroup (either talk.environment or my
local ca.environment) that the average work commute is 6 miles.
Is a 12-mile/day round trip sufficient for this change?
=o= (Of course, since most commutes are so short, it follows
that this spectre of massive increased calorie consumption is
mostly irrelevant anyhow.)
<_Jym_>
Chris O'Neill
What would these costs be if commuting cars achieved 42 miles per gallon and
all generated the minimum pollution possible. This is the scenario I was
suggesting promoting, not the way things are now.
Chris O'Neill
Mike Smith
>In article <9H+-Q#_@engin.umich.edu> bla...@caen.engin.umich.edu (Kenneth
>James Clark ) writes:
>>Some interesting information (propaganda?) from the bike to work day
>>literature:
>>
>>Calories needed to travel ten miles:
>>
>>by bike: 350
>>by car: 18,600
>>by foot: 1,000
>>by bus: 9,200
>>by rail: 8,850
>
>The car had a fuel economy of 20 miles per gallon. This implies that one
>person travelling in a car getting 42 miles per gallon causes the same energy
>consumption per person per mile as travelling by rail.
The 2x18,600 Calories/gallon of gasoline doesn't sound right to me,
but I'm used to thinking of 120,000 BTU/gallon for gasoline... Anyone
happen to know what the BTU/Calorie is?
The biker would have to consume .83333 cans of Chef Boyardee Ravioli
or 3.5 Tablespoons of Mayonnaise to get that 350 Calories. (The only
two foods I happen to have handy at my desk right now...) This tends
to illustrate the point I've been trying to make:
The embodied energy used depends a whole bunch on what food that biker eats.
If they go for the Mayo, they have lots of Calories at little environmental
cost (soybean oil is 'cheap' in dollars and in embodied energy). If they
go for the Ravioli in a can (at what, $.75/can? $1/can?) you have similar
cost as the equivalent gasoline and, presumably, similar embodied energy.
(about $1.05 to $1.35 vs. about $.60 for 1/2 gallon of gasoline)
The food production has to be cleaner than the gasoline production by
some ammount in order for the net environmental damage to be 'better'.
IFF you can show that the biker would have eaten that extra food anyway
and/or show that the biker is eating 'cheap' (i.e. rice & beans... and
not freeze dried backpacking wonder meals on this camping trip) can you
dodge the question of: Is dollar cost indicative of embodied polution
production due to embodied energy.
Mike Smith
>>>IF you WANT to, but not due to some unproven appeal to 'reduced pollution'
>>>that hasn't been proven one way or the other! I don't know which pollutes
>>>less, the car or the person, but neither do you. You are speaking from
>>>presumption, not established fact.
>
>>Boy, I've followed some strange arguments, but this one is one of the best.
>>I suggest that you go out and stand in traffic for a while if you _really_
>>want to know whether cars or bicycles pollute more.
>
>Seems to me that this discussion centers around an attempt to compare _total_
>emissions, which are clearly almost impossible to pin down when you consider
>all the steps needed to build, transport, and operate either cars or bicycles.
I was only thinking about the total emmissions from the 'fuel cycle' for
bikes vs cars. Extending it to the 'life cycle pollution' would be an
interesting examination ... but you are probably right that it is
almost impossible to pin down. Maybe a 'good enough' estimate could
be made to show the most sensitive factor? (like beef vs beans?).
> So how about this argument: the more bicycles are used, for whatever
> purpose, the more people will start to wonder what else can be done to
> lessen the adverse effects we have on the ecosystem.
This is something I would agree with. I've sometimes thought it
would be interesting to compare the relative pollution from a bike
driven by a person vs driven by a diesel engine running on Soybean oil...
This pits the two (human vs engine) against each other with the
energy embodied in the fuel production factored out (both on soy oil).
The question would be just efficiency vs efficiency and type of pollution
from a person (poo and pee) vs from an engine (nitrates in gas form ...).
>Of course, riding is a heck of a lot of fun and good excercise as well...
Yes it is. I have very fond memories of my days at UC Davis riding a
bike everywhere ... I've tried it here in Silicon Gulch and found
the experience most UN-rewarding ... too much smog ... 1/2 ;-)
Mike Smith
>In article <27...@goofy.Apple.COM> e...@Apple.COM (Mike Smith) writes:
>>The dollar cost of food tends to represent the embodied energy, much of
>>which comes from oil. The raw calories don't directly compare. Ergo,
>>that 2KC/day extra (which costs about $5-$10) compares more directly
>Let's see.....
>How much food does 2000 C represent??
>If I remember right, fat is about 9 cal/g, and protein and carbos are each
>about 4 cal/g. So, 2000 calories is
> 2000/9 = .222 kg -> about 1/2 lb
> 2000/4 = .500 kg -> about 1 lb
>If it costs you $7.50 per day (the middle of what you said), then you
>claim you spend between $7.50 and $15.00 per pound of food.
This is bogus in that you are presuming all food has nothing in it
but dry fat, protein & carbs. I've gone out of my way to point out
that eating dry rice or beans would be 'better' than eating higher on
the food (processing) chain. I've also repeatedly pointed out that
the scenario was a 'camping trip' by bike where freeze dried camping
meals are a likely food source.
Yes, freeze dried camping meals can EASILY cost $7.50 to $15 / pound.
(and no, I don't claim that *I* spend this, only that the cost can
exists and has implications.)
But, one thinks, what about non-freeze dried meals? My Ravioli can
states that it has 420 Calories per 15 oz. That is 448 Calories/lb.
That would take 4.46 POUNDS of canned Ravioli to get 2000 Calories.
(I've made an earlier posting about Ravioli ... the first time I
used 210 Calories/can when it was 210 Calories/ 1/2 can serving.
I've, hopefully, got the article 'fixed' before it got sent on
and re-posted a version with right numbers in it ... but if the
prior article doesn't agree with this one on Calories/can then
please don't bother flaming me about it, I'll just have to repost
the corrected version...)
We're not talking gourmet food here. This is modest stuff. And it
still comes out to about $4/2KC ... and about $1/lb. Take a look
in your grocery store and see how much food has a similar or higher
price per lb and price per Calorie. The conclusion is simple to
reach: IF you make your bike trip on freeze dried camping food
or fresh meat, you will be spending more money and, presumably,
consuming more embodied energy than if you used gas in a Geo Metro.
If you eat soybean oil, dry beans & rice; you will be consuming less.
Now, if you want to eat those dry beans and brown rice, be my guest...
but be sure to include the cost of the fuel used to heat/cook them...
>Where do you shop???
Lucky's for the Ravioli, REI Co-op for the freeze dried camping meals,
COSTCO for the dry beans & rice, Reed's Sporting Goods for bikes and
guns & ammo, ARCO and BEACON for gasoline, Home Depot for building
materials, ...
Why do you ask?
Mike Smith
>In article <27...@goofy.Apple.COM> e...@Apple.COM (Mike Smith) writes:
>>The dollar cost of food tends to represent the embodied energy, much of
^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>which comes from oil.
...
>> The raw calories don't directly compare.
>
>This may be true comparing petrol and food but the implication of your
>hypothesis is that the cost of calories does not vary much between different
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>types of food. This is definitely not true. Calories in sugar and bread are
>much cheaper than calories in foods like meat.
I think you didn't catch my point exactly. I didn't say 'all calories
are the same cost', I said more closely 'the different cost of different
calories in food represents different embodied energies'.
This is saying that the differnt foods may have the same calories
available as foodstuffs, but have consumed different quantities of
oil in their production and this should correlate with their costs.
I then went on to ask at what point did the total pollution produced
in the consumption of this embodied energy exceed that from a small
fuel efficient auto? I then got jumped on for asking a question...
I think that Chris has hit on the right answer... That it all depends
on what the biker eats...
Mike Smith
In my original posting I got some numbers munged 'cause the can
of ravioli was 15 oz but the chart of calories had a serving size
of 1/2 can ... it should have read:
>The biker would have to consume .83333 cans of Chef Boyardee Ravioli
>or 3.5 Tablespoons of Mayonnaise to get that 350 Calories. (The only
>two foods I happen to have handy at my desk right now...) This tends
>to illustrate the point I've been trying to make:
>
>The embodied energy used depends a whole bunch on what food that biker eats.
>If they go for the Mayo, they have lots of Calories at little environmental
>cost (soybean oil is 'cheap' in dollars and in embodied energy). If they
>go for the Ravioli in a can (at what, $.75/can? $1/can?) you have similar
>cost as the equivalent gasoline and, presumably, similar embodied energy.
>(about $.62 to $.83 vs. about $.60 for 1/2 gallon of gasoline)
>
>The food production has to be cleaner than the gasoline production by
>some ammount in order for the net environmental damage to be 'better'.
Sorry for the munged posting ...
Mike Smith
>In article <27...@goofy.Apple.COM> e...@Apple.COM (Mike Smith) writes:
>>At high activity levels, such as bike riding, I consume about 4000 C./day.
>>Take a look at what a serious bike racer eats. It can go up to 8000 C./day!
>If I weren't riding my bike to work, I would go to the local gym and
>row and lift for an hour a day. Ie., this analysis is very nice, but
>for an equivalent scenario, I would have to both ride and work out
>every day, which I do not.
The original poster was talking about a 'special event' outside the
usual range of activity for them. They were going on a vacation bike
ride and not talking about day to day regular activities. These were
portrayed as extra calories.
>If you are suggesting that it is more
>efficient to be as close to a vegetable as possible all day and drive a
>metro to and from work, the American Heart and Lung Associations would
>probably not be happy.
No, I'm not. I'm suggesting that if you want to exercise for your
heart and lungs, do so. Me? I do Karate 2xweek or more. A bike
ride doesn't build the skills I want... I'm also suggesting that
a blanket claim that riding bikes instead of driving cars polutes
less isn't well examined and needs more 'looking at' to prove the
claim.
(I've tried to avoid taking a posture on the expected outcome of
the question, but it is hard to do since all the replies have been
of the form 'you are wrong, bikes polute less' rather than of the
form 'you have asked an interesting question: which polute less under
which assumptions'.... I really am trying to just pose a question
and not take a stand on if there is or isn't more net environmental
damage from biker food or gasoline. It's bad science technique to
presume the answer to the question before doing the research ...)
In the process of 'looking at it' that has come from my asking the
question, it is starting to look (to me at least) that the conclusion
depends heavily on _what foods the biker eats_. To that extent,
I guess I'm suggesting that it is more efficient to EAT as close to
a vegetable as possible all day and drive a bike OR to eat as close
to a cow as possible and drive a Metro to and from work; but not
eat meat and ride a bike to reduce polution (though you may need to
do it to prevent the diseases that a high fat diet causes ...)
>>The dollar cost of food tends to represent the embodied energy, much of
>>which comes from oil. The raw calories don't directly compare. Ergo,
>>that 2KC/day extra (which costs about $5-$10) compares more directly
>>with an equivalent DOLLAR cost of gasoline, or about 5 gallons of gas.
>>That 5 gallons in a Geo Metro is good for about 200 miles. Me? I'm
>>not able to do a double century on 4KC/day ... every day ...
>Assuming no hidden societal costs. Bad assumption. Also assuming
>no human being operating the Geo (who would be simultaneously
>burning calories).
Um, I don't see this at all. I'm presuming EQUIVALENT hidden
societal costs for oil used in gasoline burning cars and oil used
in {tractors, Diesel Trucks, food processing plants, fertilizer plants,etc.}
Reasonable assumption. Not ideal, but reasonable. Good grounds for
further analysis, but reasonable.
I'm also presuming that it takes fewer food calories to operate a GeoMetro
for a given number of miles than to ride a bike with full camping gear on
it for the same miles. Reasonable assumption.
>>However, most bikers/hikers I've
>>seen on the trail are eating freeze dried wonder meals, NOT raw brown rice
>>or raw wild plants gathered on the trail. Are you suggesting that bikers
>>grow their own rice? Wheat? Oats?
>
>Are you talking about backpacking? I thought we were talking about
>bikes as utility/commuting vehicles.
Yes, the original poster posited a camping trip by bike for a vacation.
Not day to day commuting to work.
>If you're talking off road, your
>Geo becomes a Jeep with a 4.6 litre engine (that's how they spell it :-) )
No, not off road. Most parks have roads into them that don't need Jeeps
and are suitable for bikes as well.
>>> If you don't have time, drive the car. If you have time,
>>> ride yr bike.
>>
>>IF you WANT to, but not due to some unproven appeal to 'reduced pollution'
>>that hasn't been proven one way or the other! I don't know which pollutes
>>less, the car or the person, but neither do you. You are speaking from
>>presumption, not established fact.
>Of course, nothing can really be proven. Measuring tailpipe emissions
>or gas burned is meaningless, maybe there is a little troll in the tank
>drinking the gas and farting. Since these are natural bodily functions,
>this is fine, and the car is pollution free. Remember, nothing has been
>proven, and all measurements are statistically insignificant. Science
>is a sham performed by magicians... :-) ;-)
I hope that the smily refers to the whole paragraph, since it is
fallacious ... Things CAN be proven, but only if you ASK A QUESTION
first with an OPEN MIND and then LOOK AT UNBIASED DATA. The car is
hardly pollution free, but the bike(r) entails a long logistical
tail of embodied energy in food production which isn't pollution free
either. Real Science (TM) is a a difficult art since it requires that
something not be accepted un-examined no matter how much you would like
to think that it is true. Jumping to conclusions is allowed, but only
so long as you go back and prove that your conclusion is sound.
This thread seems to be leading to the conclusion that biking while
eating high on the food chain has more embodied energy (and MAY have
more implied polution due to that) than driving a car; while eating
low on the food chain has less embodied energy (and MAY have less
implied polution do to that) than driving a car.
I'd be interested in knowing what the overall environmental damage
was from a meat eater vs a vegetarian and how that damage correlates
with marginal work output for each. I'd like to know how they
measure up against a very fuel efficient auto (overall environmental
damage, not just tail pipe).
Refusing to ask the question, though, won't lead to the answers.
Presuming you already have the answer without need of proof won't cut it.
If noone else wants to examine the question, I'll stop asking it.
I'm not interested in defending cars as less polluting. I am interested
in asking which pollutes more and under what conditions.
Mike Smith
>e...@Apple.COM (Mike Smith) writes:
>
>>> If you don't have time, drive the car. If you have time,
>>> ride yr bike.
>
>>IF you WANT to, but not due to some unproven appeal to 'reduced pollution'
>>that hasn't been proven one way or the other! I don't know which pollutes
>>less, the car or the person, but neither do you. You are speaking from
>>presumption, not established fact.
>
>Boy, I've followed some strange arguments, but this one is one of the best.
>I suggest that you go out and stand in traffic for a while if you _really_
>want to know whether cars or bicycles pollute more.
That only exposed you to the LOCAL pollution. I'd suggest that you
go suck a tractor exhaust pipe or soak in a fertilizer tank and then
ask the same question...
The issue is one of total pollution produce in providing food based
transportation vs gasoline based transportation. A Simple Mind will
look at the end point pollution only and jump to a conclusion...
I grew up in farm country and can assure you that a pound of beef
entails one heck of alot of pollution production ...
>Do you ever wonder whether gravity still works on weekends?
No, though I presume from your lack of a smiley face that you do? 1/2 ;-)
>We now return you to the Comedy Channel.
Please do return to the Comedy Channel, it looks like you have lots
of experience in watching it ...
Russ Brown
>>>>IF you WANT to, but not due to some unproven appeal to 'reduced pollution'
>>>>that hasn't been proven one way or the other! I don't know which pollutes
>>>>less, the car or the person, but neither do you. You are speaking from
>>>>presumption, not established fact.
>>
At great risk of being very late in this discussion, i.e., bike vs auto
pollution, consider the relative amount of work that must be done to:
* move a unit-person and a 25-lb bicycle a unit-distance
or
* move a unit person and a 2500-lb automobile a unit distance.
Bicycles are not a practical substitute for the automobile for the full
range of transportation needs and over the full span of seasons, but
they would seem to be an efficient mode of moving one's body when
appropriate. The exercise has value, too. Even when I don't commute, I
take a noon-time ride . . . and burn up energy that I might have saved
by staying in my office.
Chris Malcolm
consumed begs an awful lot of questions. A much more direct method is
to consider it in terms of oxygen consumed. How much oxygen does a a
bike rider take to do, say, one urban mile, compared to a car?
I can't remember the calculations, but I recall that a local school
gave this as a science project question, and decided that the correct
answer was that the car used somewhere between 50 and 200 times the
oxygen per urban mile. The method was to compute the car's
consumption from its mpg, and to compute the cyclist's consumption by
measuring breathing rate, divided by %age of oxygen consumed in a
breath at this rate, and then subtracting from this the cyclist's
resting consumption ((i.e. the car driver's breathing consumption).
Once one has this basic energy ratio established, the consumable
(tyres etc) and capital (cost/life-mileage) costs can be factored in.
Anyone got the info handy to do the calculations?
--
Chris Malcolm c...@uk.ac.ed.aifh +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK DoD #205
Paul Houtz
First, 42 mpg isn't very good. Even if every car in America got this
kind of gas mileage, we would still be heavily dependent upon fossil
fuels for our energy and tranportation needs, and this is dangerous.
Also, 42 mpg is still creating an enourmous amount of CO2 and even with
the best pollution controls, a an enourmous amount of particulate and
hydrocarbon pollution. Light rail and mass transit can EASILY beat this
by a factor of from 10 to 100, if people have ACCESS to it so they can
ride it.
Finally, the reality is that even if every new car sold in america were
able to get 42 mpg with minimal pollution, cars age. Just yesterday
I saw a honda civic with a set of warn rings. The pollution coming
from that car was probably 100,000 times what comes out of a new Honda
Civic. That means that car was doubling the pollution for 100,000 other
cars on the road. If you want to eliminate this, the cost of administering
and enforcing such a system of laws would pay for all the mass-transit
this country can use. And it WOULDN'T eliminate autlos that pollute
excessively.
Mass Transit, responsible development, electric vehicles where appropriate,
and less dependence on non-renewable resources are the only hope for the
future.
We can begin by simply eliminating the subsidies for the Petroleum Industry.
Make them build their own exploration roads. CHARGE them for every drop
of oil they take out of public lands. Make them pay for the mainteance
of harbors and aids to navigation. Then, americans will get that money
back in taxes, and they can DECIDE how to use it, rather than having the
government give it to the oil companies forcing people to buy gasoline
just to get their money's worth.
John De Armond
>c.on...@trl.oz.au (Chris O'Neill) writes:
>>What would these costs be if commuting cars achieved 42 miles per gallon and
>>all generated the minimum pollution possible. This is the scenario I was
>>suggesting promoting, not the way things are now.
> First, 42 mpg isn't very good. Even if every car in America got this
> kind of gas mileage, we would still be heavily dependent upon fossil
> fuels for our energy and tranportation needs, and this is dangerous.
We've already established previously that a 40-ish mpg car is more
overall energy efficient than your electric barge. Energy efficiency
is not really an issue since only a little bit of sanity on the supply
side will make the transport mechanism irrelevant.
> Also, 42 mpg is still creating an enourmous amount of CO2 and even with
> the best pollution controls, a an enourmous amount of particulate and
> hydrocarbon pollution. Light rail and mass transit can EASILY beat this
> by a factor of from 10 to 100, if people have ACCESS to it so they can
> ride it.
*Sigh* Like shooting fish in a barrel. Let's look at some real numbers.
From the April issue of SAE's Automotive Engineering Magazine.
Emission standards - Grams per mile From an article titled "The Future
of Catalytic Systems."
year HC CO NOx
---------------------------
1965CA 11.0 NR 4.4 (for reference, the first year of controls)
1990US 0.41 3.4 1.0 * not available.
1994US 0.25* 3.4 0.4
1993CA 0.25 3.4 0.4
1994TLEV 0.125 3.4 0.4
1997LEV 0.075 3.4 0.4
2000ULEV 0.040 1.7 0.2
* Non-methane HC
You'll note that HC emissions will be cut by over a factor of 10 by 2000,
CO by over a factor of 2 and NOx by over a factor of 5. This will be
done with pretty conventional technology such as electrically heated
catalysts - necessary because something like 90% of the emission budget
today is used during the first few minutes after cranking when the
catalyst is cold - and closed loop catalytic control - involving
a closed loop control system that controls catalyst conditions independent
of the engine control system. An organ called the Auto/Oil Air Quality
Improvement Research Program, composed of reps from the big three, some
14 petroleum companies and several cat manufacturers has been set up
standardize solutions to these and to flexfuel vehicle problems.
Funny thing, every time the fleet emission limit is halved, your
darling mass transit - with perhaps the exception of Ca, none of which
have to meet emission standards - looks worse and worse even without
looking at the convenience factor.
For example, you've claimed that mass transit will beat the private
auto on emissions by a factor of 100 or better. Assuming for the moment
that a bus does not pollute any more than did a 1965 California car -
a very risky assumption, today's car emits 26 times less HC than
the bus and 2000's car will emit 275 times less. Average ridership for
MARTA here in Atlanta is around 10 people. That dirty old bus looks
pretty bad, huh? Worse, diesels emit much more HC than gas engines
and gobs more NOx. Worse than that, since diesels always run lean of
stochiometric, catalysts won't work for NOX. Massive research is in
the works on non-stochiometric catalysts but nothing yet. Those
damn buses ought to be banned from the cities, would not you agree?
And we haven't even considered differences in driving cycles. Emission
limits are based on grams per mile but actual emissions on uncontrolled
engines such as bus motors are proportional to the air/fuel consumed
per mile. Since a bus idles a lot and spends a whole lot of its time
accelerating or running slow but at high engine RPM, the situation is much
worse than our example would indicate.
> Finally, the reality is that even if every new car sold in america were
> able to get 42 mpg with minimal pollution, cars age. Just yesterday
> I saw a honda civic with a set of warn rings. The pollution coming
> from that car was probably 100,000 times what comes out of a new Honda
> Civic.
Actually the CO emission was probably about the same, NOX lower and HC
perhaps 100X stock, depending on how it was measured. Depending on
how it is measured because that evil blue smoke that you can actually
SEE and thus must be bad actually settles out rather fast and contributes
little to the emission problem. If the standard EPA bag sampling
technique is used, much of this would settle out before analysis.
BTW, my educated guess is based on published numbers for "gross polluters".
Bet it hurts when you pull your numbers out of your ass, huh? While
we're talking about that, why don't you dissertate a bit on how much that
individual vehicle really contributed to the emission situation in your
area.
> Mass Transit, responsible development, electric vehicles where appropriate,
> and less dependence on non-renewable resources are the only hope for the
> future.
What's good for the goose... Somewhere in your previous dissertation on
personal transportation, I missed where mass transit figures into your
plan. You either freeload on the public and create road hazards by riding
your bicycle on public roads or you drive a very inefficient electric
vehicle or you drive a decrepit old Volvo. Tell us how meticulous you
are to care for any emission equipment that may exist on that car.
Then what if anything you've done to retrofit emission equipment to your
vehicle to bring it in compliance with modern standards. Inexpensive
retrofit kits are available that will make most any car meet modern
standards subject to longer startup delays. I've posted about those
kits long ago in this forum. Surely you've had enough time to
buy one and have it installed.
Until you get YOUR house in order, try not to tell us what's good for
the rest of us.
> We can begin by simply eliminating the subsidies for the Petroleum Industry.
> Make them build their own exploration roads.
Like we'll elmimiate outright subsidy for alternative sources? Or are
you advocating robbing the Highway Trust Fund, a fund fed by a
tax designated specifically for highway transportation needs.
>CHARGE them for every drop
> of oil they take out of public lands. Make them pay for the mainteance
> of harbors and aids to navigation. Then, americans will get that money
> back in taxes, and they can DECIDE how to use it, rather than having the
> government give it to the oil companies forcing people to buy gasoline
> just to get their money's worth.
You really are an idiot, aren't you? You seem to think the
government and the evil oil companies can create money out of
thin air. Here's what may be a stark revelation. Corps don't
pay taxes and they don't pay expenses. YOU and I and every
other customer and stockholder pay the "corporate" taxes and
expenses. Only the grossly naive believe that oil companies
will absorb additional taxes disguised as excise fees or
whatnot. Meanwhile I'm still looking in vain in the
Constitution for where the government gets the authority to own
real estate. Looks to me like the founding fathers illustrated
what they expected the government to own when they explicitly
provided for DC.
John
--
John De Armond, WD4OQC |Interested in high performance mobility?
Rapid Deployment System, Inc. |Interested in high technology and computers?
Marietta, Ga |Write me about "Performance Engineering" (TM)
j...@dixie.com |Magazine.
Need Usenet public Access in Atlanta? Write Me for info on Dixie.com.
Kenneth James Clark
>societal costs for oil used in gasoline burning cars and oil used
>in {tractors, Diesel Trucks, food processing plants, fertilizer plants,etc.}
>Reasonable assumption. Not ideal, but reasonable. Good grounds for
>further analysis, but reasonable.
Yes, and you're ignoring societal costs for automobile production, materials,
production and transportation of automotive fuels, environmental damage
from leaks of same fuels, air pollution (non-CO2), etc. Unreasonable
assumption.
>I'm also presuming that it takes fewer food calories to operate a GeoMetro
>for a given number of miles than to ride a bike with full camping gear on
>it for the same miles. Reasonable assumption.
Figures demonstrating that this is reasonable please.
>>Of course, nothing can really be proven. Measuring tailpipe emissions
>>or gas burned is meaningless, maybe there is a little troll in the tank
>>drinking the gas and farting. Since these are natural bodily functions,
>>this is fine, and the car is pollution free. Remember, nothing has been
>>proven, and all measurements are statistically insignificant. Science
>>is a sham performed by magicians... :-) ;-)
>
>I hope that the smily refers to the whole paragraph, since it is
>fallacious ... Things CAN be proven, but only if you ASK A QUESTION
>first with an OPEN MIND and then LOOK AT UNBIASED DATA. The car is
>hardly pollution free, but the bike(r) entails a long logistical
>tail of embodied energy in food production which isn't pollution free
>either. Real Science (TM) is a a difficult art since it requires that
>something not be accepted un-examined no matter how much you would like
>to think that it is true. Jumping to conclusions is allowed, but only
>so long as you go back and prove that your conclusion is sound.
Yes, for the sarcasm impaired, that was dripping with sarcasm.
>I'd be interested in knowing what the overall environmental damage
>was from a meat eater vs a vegetarian and how that damage correlates
>with marginal work output for each. I'd like to know how they
>measure up against a very fuel efficient auto (overall environmental
>damage, not just tail pipe).
>
>I'm not interested in defending cars as less polluting. I am interested
>in asking which pollutes more and under what conditions.
Then perhaps you should take an inclusive view of the inputs to both
systems, rather than only one of them.
Ken
Charles Scripter
question about fuel cells.
I heard a rumor (report?) that Argonne labs has developed a fuel cell
capable of converting petroleum fuels. Has anyone heard about this? If
so, can you give some brief specs? (cost, efficiency, weight/HP or
something similar). This could be an interesting way to "go electric".
(if I had to guess, I'd guess that it's more efficient with light
hydrocarbons).
--Charles Scripter
dmitry pruss
>>Let's see.....
>>How much food does 2000 C represent??
>>If I remember right, fat is about 9 cal/g, and protein and carbos are each
>>about 4 cal/g. So, 2000 calories is
>> 2000/9 = .222 kg -> about 1/2 lb
>> 2000/4 = .500 kg -> about 1 lb
>>If it costs you $7.50 per day (the middle of what you said), then you
>>claim you spend between $7.50 and $15.00 per pound of food.
>
>This is bogus in that you are presuming all food has nothing in it
>but dry fat, protein & carbs.
>
>states that it has 420 Calories per 15 oz. That is 448 Calories/lb.
>That would take 4.46 POUNDS of canned Ravioli to get 2000 Calories.
>
>still comes out to about $4/2KC
Well, don't you think that a human being's gasmileage is not fairly
constant?
With carburetor producing too rich mixture and the engine revolving too
slow...
Sorry :) I should probably use more biological terms.
And for biological systems, their efficiency of energy consumption varies
very much.
Pregnant women can get 70% more energy from the same amount of food.
East Asia peasants eat a bit but work like horses.
Go to mountain trail for 2 weeks and see how much feces do you produce;
than come home, eat that Ravioli and see again.
So, I point out that commuting by bike just makes your enrgy conversion
more effective. A bike ride should be really long to make you to spend more
on food.
D
PS: A discussion of car vs. bike just went on at rec.bicycles. One article
suggested a following writing for a cyclist's T-shirt:
My health club
pays me 25c/mile
David M. Schiff
>[stuff deleted]
>
>So, I point out that commuting by bike just makes your enrgy conversion
>more effective. A bike ride should be really long to make you to spend more
>on food.
>
> D
>
>PS: A discussion of car vs. bike just went on at rec.bicycles. One article
I don't know if this was mentioned in that discussion, but biking
can also suppress appetite.
E. Michael Smith
>You seem to think the
>government and the evil oil companies can create money out of
>thin air.
Actually, they can! But that is a discussion for rec.economy.world.d
;-)
The gov't has the express duty to create money. Unfortunately,
they don't use as much care as the duty demands, and we all get
hit with the side effects ... Corporations can create money too,
but that gets into some interesting things called 'multipliers'
and a long boring discussion of banking theory...
>Here's what may be a stark revelation. Corps don't
>pay taxes and they don't pay expenses. YOU and I and every
>other customer and stockholder pay the "corporate" taxes and
>expenses.
Not necessarily so...
Take the example of a silver mining company. They CANNOT raise
the world price for silver. Any additional tax WILL NOT be met
by the customers (since the world price is beyond the influence
of the company).
This increase in taxes may be met by a reduction in stockholder
equity, a reduction in stockholder dividends, a reduction in the
prices the corporation will pay for something (the goods it consumes
or the royalty it will pay to the landholder, for example), or by
an increase in the productivity of the company (many companies have
found that, when faced with the need to improve or die, they can
improve their efficiency beyond what they thought was impossible).
It is possible that the company could mine more of the easier ores
and less of the hard ores to keep the profit margin up. This is
common in gold mines in South Africa. 'Poor' deposits are only
mined when prices are especially high.
It is also possible that the company will simply stop mining and
go out of business ... depending on how many companies did this
there MIGHT be some minor impact on world prices, but I doubt it.
Much silver is a byproduct of copper and zinc production and is
produced reguardless of world silver prices.
>Only the grossly naive believe that oil companies
>will absorb additional taxes disguised as excise fees or
>whatnot.
It is also grossly naive to belive that the oil companies only
have a choice of passing the bill to the customers or the
stockholders...
If domestic production is taxed, there will be a near zero impact
on world oil prices. This implies a near zero impact on fuel prices,
if companies (like, say, BP) can import oil to the US ... If all
oil is taxed, it implies a shift of BOTH supply and demand curves
and an indeterminate outcome that depends on both long term elasticity
of supply and demand. Note that the present real cost of gasoline
is quite low. The actions of OPEC are rather like those of a tax
and have had the long term effect of driving up efficiency enough
to reach equilibrium pricing again ... with lower production.
(But I'm starting to sound like an economist and boring folks to
tears, I'm sure ...)
>Meanwhile I'm still looking in vain in the
>Constitution for where the government gets the authority to own
>real estate.
Interesting point ... Gosh, were DOES the gov't get the authority
ot own the oil, gas, coal, & uranium lands?...
>Looks to me like the founding fathers illustrated
>what they expected the government to own when they explicitly
>provided for DC.
Hmmm... and all things not enumerated are reserved to the states???
--
E. Michael Smith e...@apple.COM
'Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has
genius, power and magic in it.' - Goethe
I am not responsible nor is anyone else. Everything is disclaimed.
Thad Beier
turns out that cars need much less space than bikes to transport
the same amount of people. Buses even more so, of course, but
the fact that a car goes so much faster than a bike makes it use
space more efficiently (at least moving at highway speeds.) In
cities, when cars move slowly, they are more space-inefficient.
--
Thad Beier..Silicon Graphics..415)390-1028..thad@sgi.com..C-172A N7770T.....FLY!
R. Cage
>I heard a rumor (report?) that Argonne labs has developed a fuel cell
>capable of converting petroleum fuels. Has anyone heard about this? If
>so, can you give some brief specs?
This was reported in several publications about 5 years ago.
Specs from memory:
Current density: 2A/cm^2
Operating temperature: circa 1000 C.
Thermal efficiency: 60%
Materials cost: $2.50 per KW output.
Fuel: any hydrocarbon. (I'd wager alcohols would do just fine too.)
No precious metals are required. The cell operates as
an oxygen concentration cell; the fuel exists only to
consume the oxygen after it goes through the electrolyte
and maintain the concentration gradient which creates
the voltage. This is why the fuel is so flexible.
The original fuel cell looked like corrugated cardboard.
Apparently, this was not easily manufacturable. I have
seen tubular configurations in the pages of Popular
Science, under investigation by Westinghouse, I think.
No word on when they will be available, or if they will
be rugged enough for vehicular use.
--
Russ Cage wr...@fmsrl7.srl.ford.com russ%r...@sharkey.cc.umich.edu
* When Ford pays me for my opinions, THEN they can call them theirs. *
_Bad_ cop. No donut.
John Sims
Assuming, of course, that _every_ car _always_ carries the maximum
passengers it is capable of. How many fully loaded cars do you see
going down the freeways in the Bay Area, hmm??? Maybe there its
different, but in LA and here in Denver, from my experience, I would
guess that more than 90% of the cars have precisely _one_ person in
them. Doesn't sound too fuel or space efficient to me....
John
--
John Sims si...@pogo.den.mmc.com
Chris Malcolm
>Speaking of the need for highways for cars, and not for bikes, it
>turns out that cars need much less space than bikes to transport
>the same amount of people. Buses even more so, of course, but
>the fact that a car goes so much faster than a bike makes it use
>space more efficiently (at least moving at highway speeds.) In
>cities, when cars move slowly, they are more space-inefficient.
Can we have the sums justifying this? On the face of it, since the
spacing between vehicles is dominated by the square of the speed
factor (braking distance) at higher speeds, it would seem that
although journey times will be shorter ay high speeds, the actual
throughput of the road in terms of people/hour will be less at high
speeds. In which case bikes win all the time. Or have I got it wrong?
Kershner Wyatt
> Finally, the reality is that even if every new car sold in america were
> able to get 42 mpg with minimal pollution, cars age. Just yesterday
> I saw a honda civic with a set of warn rings. The pollution coming
> from that car was probably 100,000 times what comes out of a new Honda
> Civic. That means that car was doubling the pollution for 100,000 other
> cars on the road. If you want to eliminate this, the cost of administering
> and enforcing such a system of laws would pay for all the mass-transit
> this country can use. And it WOULDN'T eliminate autlos that pollute
> excessively.
>
> Mass Transit, responsible development, electric vehicles where appropriate,
> and less dependence on non-renewable resources are the only hope for the
> future.
The Honda with worn rings and probably many other things wrong with it is just
a symptom of the problems with our thinking. I drive two diesels with high
mileage, well at least one is: (190,000 miles, and 92,000 miles). I maintain
both fastidiously, result they smoke very little compared to what they could
do. Likewise, I change the oil, and filters regularily, and the injectors
get rebuilt so that they are working correctly. They also don't need any
oil added between changes. So it doesn't cost me much in the long run.
Now, here is the problem. At what point do I rebuild the engine? Mileage?
oil consumption? Smoke? When is it worth $2000 to go through and do it right?
Probably not for a long, long time... BTW, I agree with you on the Honda --
no doubt it is billowing out the blue smoke. I see a lot of cars that are
singlehandedly controlling the mosquito population and you think to yourself,
why the heck don't they rebuild that thing? Why indeed -- it still runs, so
I go down and I buy the no-brand oil at 63 cents/quart, Don't need to change
the oil anymore, it's burning it off as fast as I put it in. When it
quits, I'll junk it. At least I assume that's the argument. I think it's
a crime.
There is no incentive for anyone to put the money out to fix these buggies up.
Police will look at the car (doubtful maybe), then at the owner (soulful),and
figure the poor bastard can't afford the ticket, let alone the cost of repair.
Every once in a while some person will get motivated to clean up the air and
offer so much just to get some cars off the road. But those folks are few
and far between.
Now, the most idiotic, stupid, incredible thing I see is the use of 6 cylinder
gas engines in the little postal jeeps. What a prime candidate for electric
vehicles. What do they do 90% of the time? Idle. What do they do that
electric motors are the best at? Overcoming inertia (high torque at start-up).
Why not regenerative braking? Start/stop, start/stop. Probably some of the
few vehicles that can use current technology effectively. What do they claim
as justification for the cost of a letter being so high? Fuel costs are a
significant part of it.
I yield my soapbox to the next outspoken critic.
Kershner Wyatt
kwy...@ccscola.Columbia.SC.ncr.com
My opinions are probably not the same as my employer's. Enter favorite
disclaimer here.
electric motors do better than anything else? SWhat do they need high
p...@bellcore.com
> In article <n0g...@fido.asd.sgi.com> th...@sgi.com writes:
> >turns out that cars need much less space than bikes to transport
> >the same amount of people. Buses even more so, of course, but
> What is the average number of people per car on city streets? And on
> highways?
for my own amusement i did a small informal survey of the traffic that
passed my bike on the way home a while ago. (i stopped after the first
500 vehicles: got tired of watching).
500 vehicles carried exactly 560 people - 1.12 persons/vehicle. this
was between 15:00 and 17:00, and i surveyed everything that passed me.
autos, trucks, buses, mini-vans etc.
the number would have been even lower, had not there been a large number
of mothers picking up kids after school.
pretty depressing numbers, particularly when added to those indicating
that there is *less* carpooling going on now than there was in 1980.
peter clitherow <p...@bellcore.com> (201) 829-5162, DQID: H07692
bellcore, 445 south street, room 2f-085, morristown, nj 07962
Mike Smith
>In article <69...@apple.Apple.COM> e...@Apple.COM (Mike Smith) writes:
>>
>>Um, I don't see this at all. I'm presuming EQUIVALENT hidden
>>societal costs for oil used in gasoline burning cars and oil used
>>in {tractors, Diesel Trucks, food processing plants, fertilizer plants,etc.}
>>Reasonable assumption. Not ideal, but reasonable. Good grounds for
>>further analysis, but reasonable.
>
>Yes, and you're ignoring societal costs for automobile production, materials,
>production and transportation of automotive fuels, environmental damage
>from leaks of same fuels, air pollution (non-CO2), etc. Unreasonable
>assumption.
AND the societal cost of tractor production, truck production, fertilizer
and other materials production and transportation of farm fuels,
environmental damage from leaks of same fuels, air pollution (non-CO2), etc.
A reasonable assumption that they would be similar for farms and non-farm
uses for a similar embodied energy. Again, not ideal, but a good
starting point.
The basic point is that motor fuel contains alot of direct energy and
not very much embodied energy from manufacture (and has a cost).
Food contains some to a little direct energy and has alot of embodied
energy from it's growing and processing (and has a cost).
The premise I've put forward is that the two costs are
likely to have strongly similar total energies for a given cost.
That is, the sum of direct and embodied energy is likely to be
strongly correlated with cost. This premise is not proven, but
neither is it shown to be false. It would be a likely grounds to
attack, though.
A corrolary to this would be that the pollution in the production
of that total energy is likely to be strongly correlated as well,
and can be set aside for future proof. This is also a likely area
to attack. Remember, though, that farm equipment isn't as smog
regulated as cars (has anyone seen a tractor with a cat. converter?)
It may well be that the variance in those two factors is totally swamped
by the .gt. order of magnitude varience in embodied energy in soy oil
vs beef.
>>I'm also presuming that it takes fewer food calories to operate a GeoMetro
>>for a given number of miles than to ride a bike with full camping gear on
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>it for the same miles. Reasonable assumption.
>
>Figures demonstrating that this is reasonable please.
I sweat strongly when riding a bike. I don't sweat when driving my car.
QED.
(My respirations are also dramatically lower. And I've done a month
of driving on a food budget of 1400 C./day. This was about 1973 or
so (detail if needed) and was a 13,000 mile trip to the east coast
and back on $260. That $260 bought all the gas for the VW AND all
the food for 2 (!) people. We ate alot of soup ... Now, I'd like
to see you ride a bike 8 hours a day on 1400 C./day ... note that
that is only 200 C./day above what is defined as 'starvation' and
only 300 C./day above what was documented for me as my consumption in
the NASA social isolation study I was in. The trip immediately followed
the study. No, I didn't keep exact records of my food consumption on
the trip and cannot give a day by day diet. I DID 'count calories'
on sample days to see how much my food consumption had gone up and
I DID note that the gross volume of food and type of food hadn't
changed that much, other than more watered down soup ... and less
fats/meat. So, can you do 13,000 miles on 3.2 C./mile on a bike?)
...
>>I'd be interested in knowing what the overall environmental damage
>>was from a meat eater vs a vegetarian and how that damage correlates
>>with marginal work output for each. I'd like to know how they
>>measure up against a very fuel efficient auto (overall environmental
>>damage, not just tail pipe).
>>
>>I'm not interested in defending cars as less polluting. I am interested
>>in asking which pollutes more and under what conditions.
>
>Then perhaps you should take an inclusive view of the inputs to both
>systems, rather than only one of them.
I'd love to, but it would get rather tedious in a hurry. I'd expect
it to be more 'profitable' to look at just one factor at a time.
I started with embodied energy in the fuel (with, I think, resonable
expectations that embodied energy correlates with embodied pollution).
It would be valuable to explore the strength of the correlation,
though.
I'm not real interested in exploring the total embodied pollution of
the entire life cycle of bike vs. car for two reasons. 1) It looks
to me like a 'no brainer' since the car contains so much more stuff
and both cars and bikes are manufactured with similar technologies;
(though the embodied pollution/mile might be interesting since cars
can go for so many more miles in a year ...) and 2) The original
question was about a one time vacation trip which implies that the
car and bike both already exist and were purchased for other reasons,
i.e. their life cycles are dis-joint with the issue of the added
pollution in this one particular trip since they are 'sunk cost' at
this point.
I know, it's rather pedantic of me to stay stuck in the world defined
by the original poster and the original quesiton, but that's the
way I tend to look at problems. I think it is 'no fair' to
change the premises of the problem to fit the desired answer ...
"Given these conclusions, what assumptions can we draw?" is not my style...
--
E. Michael Smith e...@apple.COM
"Nothing can keep an argument going like two persons who aren't
sure what they're arguing about." O.A.Battista
Clifford Whitcomb
Research Corporation of Danbury, CT. It is an internally reforming
cell which uses air or oxygen to oxidize the fuel, which is currently
methanol. Pacific Gas & Electric Company in Santa Clara, CA recently
(June 1991) tested a 20 KW unit which measured 3 ft by 3 ft by 4 ft.
As far as I know, the tests were successful. Plans are in the works
to develop a 2 MW power plant in Santa Clara for operation in 1993.
ERC is continuing development of the fuel cell to include using sulfur
free diesel fuel as the fuel source. Sulfur contents greater than 1
ppm poison the cell. Estimated reactant (fuel) consumption rate at 60% overall
efficiency is 0.140 KG/KWH with oxygen consumption at 0.485 KG/KWH.
You could probably get more specific info from the company. Good luck!
Gary Coffman
>In article <n0g...@fido.asd.sgi.com> th...@sgi.com writes:
>
>>Speaking of the need for highways for cars, and not for bikes, it
>>turns out that cars need much less space than bikes to transport
>>the same amount of people. Buses even more so, of course, but
>>the fact that a car goes so much faster than a bike makes it use
>>space more efficiently (at least moving at highway speeds.) In
>>cities, when cars move slowly, they are more space-inefficient.
>
>Can we have the sums justifying this? On the face of it, since the
>spacing between vehicles is dominated by the square of the speed
>factor (braking distance) at higher speeds, it would seem that
>although journey times will be shorter ay high speeds, the actual
>throughput of the road in terms of people/hour will be less at high
>speeds. In which case bikes win all the time. Or have I got it wrong?
Only in drivers ed courses do following distances equal braking distance.
In the real world of expressways the following distance is usually equal
to or slightly less than the reaction time of the drivers. In Atlanta that
translates to three car lengths at 60 MPH. If you lag by more than that,
someone will cut in front of you. This is actually quite reasonable under
most conditions. Since the vehicle in front of you can likely not stop
any faster than you can, maintaining a full braking distance interval
is wasteful.
With this in mind, you wind up with a vehicle capacity of about 3600
vehicles per lane per hour past any given point. Looking at it another
way, the eight lane I-85 moves 1,728,000 person/miles an hour assuming
single occupancy vehicles. Now bicyclists can fit about 8 times as many
vehicles in the space occupied by the auto, side by side and 1/4 the
following distance. But they are only going 15-25 MPH, so the person/miles
per hour works out to 4,608,000, about 2.5 times that of single occupant
autos. Of course the travel time of any given individual is 4 times as
long. If cars averaged an occupancy level of 2.5, the person/miles per
hour would be equal to the bikes while travel time remains 1/4 that
of the bicycle commuter. Full buses would do even better, but as I've
posted previously, buses don't travel full except at certain hours and
often don't travel the most direct route for a given passenger's journey.
An economy car with four occupants beats the bus' economy during the
full 24 hour period. In most cities, and all suburban areas, car pooling
is much more energy efficient than mass transit. Unfortunately, few people
actually car pool.
Gary
Conrad Leviston
:
: With this in mind, you wind up with a vehicle capacity of about 3600
: vehicles per lane per hour past any given point. Looking at it another
: way, the eight lane I-85 moves 1,728,000 person/miles an hour assuming
: single occupancy vehicles. Now bicyclists can fit about 8 times as many
: vehicles in the space occupied by the auto, side by side and 1/4 the
: following distance. But they are only going 15-25 MPH, so the person/miles
: per hour works out to 4,608,000, about 2.5 times that of single occupant
: autos. Of course the travel time of any given individual is 4 times as
: long. If cars averaged an occupancy level of 2.5, the person/miles per
: hour would be equal to the bikes while travel time remains 1/4 that
: of the bicycle commuter. Full buses would do even better, but as I've
: posted previously, buses don't travel full except at certain hours and
: often don't travel the most direct route for a given passenger's journey.
: An economy car with four occupants beats the bus' economy during the
: full 24 hour period. In most cities, and all suburban areas, car pooling
: is much more energy efficient than mass transit. Unfortunately, few people
: actually car pool.
:
: Gary
estimates (was that an oxymoron) say about 1.4. I don't know about the
U.S. but I imagine it would be much the same.
--
Conrad Leviston | Got to find a brightness in the soul,
mongoose@yoyo. | Not look outside to find out where we are,
cc.monash.edu.au | Otherwise you won't be satisfied,
Save the gherkin | 'Til you've made posession of the stars. (K.Wallinger)
John McCarthy
In California, the left lane on a freeway at certain hours is reserved
for car pools - at least two persons in a car. Yesterday I was giving someone
a ride to a meeting in San Jose and was therefore eligible. The
cars were backed up in the other lanes for much of the 15 mile journey,
and the left lane was free all the time.
We Californians are law-abiding but refuse to be herded into car
pools.
Sorry about that, social engineers.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Keith Mancus
>>> [long message deleted]
In article <1992Jul15.1...@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au> mong...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Conrad Leviston) writes:
>> The estimate of 2.5 people per car is high. In Australia reliable
>> estimates (was that an oxymoron) say about 1.4. I don't know about the
>> U.S. but I imagine it would be much the same.
I would guess even lower.
In article <JMC.92Ju...@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>, j...@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) writes:
> In California, the left lane on a freeway at certain hours is reserved
> for car pools - at least two persons in a car. Yesterday I was giving someone
> a ride to a meeting in San Jose and was therefore eligible. The
> cars were backed up in the other lanes for much of the 15 mile journey,
> and the left lane was free all the time.
>
> We Californians are law-abiding but refuse to be herded into car
^^^^^^^^^^^^
> pools.
>
> Sorry about that, social engineers.
Make that "We Americans" and I think you'll be closer.
Feel free to change to "We humans" if you think this is universal.
Folks, you just can't get people to car pool. 20th century Westerners,
at least, are just too independent. I think you will see increasingly
efficient cars, smaller cars, alternate fuel cars, and other variations,
but (1) most Americans, at least, hate mass transit; (2) people use cars
because they are *individual* transportation. I go where I want when
I want.
Getting back to the physics: what is needed is maximum "people flux"
between arbitrary points. Note that we cannot just say "between two points"
because people don't move from "Houston" to "Galveston"; they go from
"1250 Vine St, Philadelphia" to "RD6 Box 35, Greenwich, NJ". This is
especially noticeable inside a city. It is not possible to have efficient
mass transportation in this situation!
When computing the efficiency of car pools, does anyone take
into account the extra miles required for the driver to pick up the other
people?
One possible solution is to go to higher dimensions, i.e. fly.
Then you have to work out some kind of traffic control system to separate
traffic moving in arbitrary directions between arbitrary points at a
variety of altitudes. Fun, fun, fun.
The simpler solution is to just keep shrinking the cars. This
not only makes them more fuel efficient, it also reduces the amount
of road required. Has anyone formally documented the decrease in length
of the "car length" over the past 20 years?
-Keith <man...@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov>
Greg F Walz Chojnacki
>
> In California, the left lane on a freeway at certain hours is reserved
> for car pools - at least two persons in a car. Yesterday I was giving someone
> a ride to a meeting in San Jose and was therefore eligible. The
> cars were backed up in the other lanes for much of the 15 mile journey,
> and the left lane was free all the time.
>
> We Californians are law-abiding but refuse to be herded into car
> pools.
>
Greg
Rodger Madison
> for car pools - at least two persons in a car. Yesterday I was giving someone
.
.
>
> We Californians are law-abiding but refuse to be herded into car
> pools.
>
> Sorry about that, social engineers.
Just so nobody gets the wrong idea, the last time I went to Orange County
(south of LA) I took the 405 freeway which also has a carpool lane. I was
driving alone and stuck in very slow traffic. To relieve the boredom I
counted the number of cars passing in the carpool lane with only one
driver. A rough estimate was that well over 1/2 had no passenger.
In the late '70s a lane in the eastbound Santa Monica Fwy from the coast to
downtown LA was designated a diamond lane and reserved for cars with 2 or
more occupants. It was quite closely policed. Several drivers were
ticketed while driving in the lane carrying dummy passengers. The diamond
lane was removed after several weeks. I'm not sure what the real reason
was but at least on person sued Caltrans claiming the since their tax
dollars paid for highway maintenance, they were being denied equal
protection under the law by not being able to drive in the carpool lane.
The suit was sucessfull in a lower court but was under appeal when the
diamond lane removal rendered it moot.
Rodger
Don Roberts
man...@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov (Keith Mancus) writes:
> The simpler solution is to just keep shrinking the cars. This
>not only makes them more fuel efficient, it also reduces the amount
>of road required.
>
> -Keith <man...@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov>
This also has the beauty of increasing the driver's likelihood of being
killed in an accident, thereby further reducing road congestion (after
a brief transient).
--
Don Roberts
d...@llnl.gov
John McCarthy
social engineers will hate, because they like engineering people. Namely,
computer controlled cars will permit safe travel at 80 miles per hour,
bumper to bumper, and with 6 foot lanes instead of 12 feet.
The present roads and freeways will than be adequate.
Daniel Bowen
> Getting back to the physics: what is needed is maximum "people flux"
>between arbitrary points. Note that we cannot just say "between two points"
>because people don't move from "Houston" to "Galveston"; they go from
>"1250 Vine St, Philadelphia" to "RD6 Box 35, Greenwich, NJ". This is
>especially noticeable inside a city. It is not possible to have efficient
>mass transportation in this situation!
Try telling that to the approxiamately 300 people that were on my train
this morning. (Not a peak hour one, either). The key to mass transit is
having services which:
- go where, or close to where people want to go
- go when people want to go (ie frequently)
- go fast enough to make driving there unneccesary
- are cheaper than paying for petrol, maintenance, etc etc for a car
And it is possible. Once that sort of service is achieved, people will
use it. Why wouldn't they? Why not throw away the stress, costs, and
pollution of driving?
I'm off to the city centre now. The station is about five minutes walk
away. I won't hurry; if I miss the next train, there's another one in
ten minutes.
Get the picture?
Daniel Bowen
--
Daniel Bowen, Monash University |
Melbourne Australia | POPE GETS GRIT IN MOUTH!
dan...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au |
TCWF: tc...@gnu.ai.mit.edu | [TCWF]
Chris Malcolm
>I think you will see increasingly
>efficient cars, smaller cars, alternate fuel cars, and other variations,
>but (1) most Americans, at least, hate mass transit; (2) people use cars
>because they are *individual* transportation. I go where I want when
>I want.
In congested urban streets, the very interesting question is why so
many people still detrminedly cling to this notion of the personal
freedom of travelling in their car, even when it takes longer than any
of the alternatives. For example, in the West End of London, at any
time of day, it is now quicker to _walk_ a few miles than take a car,
let alone use the underground, or a two-wheeled vehicle.
Twenty years ago in London a friend of mine who lived twice as far
away from work, in the same direction, offered to pick me up every
morning in his shiny new sports car. I took three lifts from him, and
then refused, pointing out that wonderful as his car was, it took ten
minutes _longer_ than using the underground, despite the long walk at
one end. In his case, he could have saved twenty minutes twice a day
using public transport, not to mention money, but he _preferred_ to
drive in. We did a survey in our local office, and discovered that of
about 50 people, 10 of them were using cars to commute when public
transport would have saved them more than ten minutes a day. Most of
them said they used their cars 'cos it was quicker, were very
surprised when it was pointed out that it wasn't, and continued to use
their cars anyway. Obviously shortened journey time was just a
rationalisation.
We suggested doing some research round the firm on this, and
publishing it in the firm's house magazine, but encountered strong
resistance from the management; we worked for the Automobile
Association...
The mother of a friend of mine drove _everywhere_, even fifty yards to
the end of the street to post a letter. When she was 65, and had to
move her bed downstairs because she couldn't manage the stairs any
longer, her doctor told her she _had_ to start walking places, or her
legs were going to give out on her through simple disuse. She refused,
and two years later was in a motorised wheel-chair.
Clearly, even at the individual level, there is something very
important at issue here, something far more important than utility or
efficiency.
Trond Andresen
|> In article <1992Jul15....@aio.jsc.nasa.gov> man...@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov (Keith Mancus) writes:
|>
|> In congested urban streets, the very interesting question is why so
|> many people still detrminedly cling to this notion of the personal
|> freedom of travelling in their car, even when it takes longer than any
|> of the alternatives. For example, in the West End of London, at any
|> time of day, it is now quicker to _walk_ a few miles than take a car,
|> let alone use the underground, or a two-wheeled vehicle.
|>
|> Twenty years ago in London a friend of mine who lived twice as far
|> away from work, in the same direction, offered to pick me up every
|> morning in his shiny new sports car. I took three lifts from him, and
|> then refused, pointing out that wonderful as his car was, it took ten
|> minutes _longer_ than using the underground, despite the long walk at
|> one end. In his case, he could have saved twenty minutes twice a day
|> using public transport, not to mention money, but he _preferred_ to
|> drive in. We did a survey in our local office, and discovered that of
|> about 50 people, 10 of them were using cars to commute when public
|> transport would have saved them more than ten minutes a day. Most of
|> them said they used their cars 'cos it was quicker, were very
|> surprised when it was pointed out that it wasn't, and continued to use
|> their cars anyway. Obviously shortened journey time was just a
|> rationalisation.
|>
Exactly. It is impossible to get most car drivers to
leave the car at home and use public transport, *even in the cases
when it is cheaper and faster*. You therefore have to put restrictions
on car driving in congested areas. I have earlier in sci.econ
and sci.environment told about the new road-pricing technology implemented
in Trondheim where I live. The problem is that the antenna system today
is installed in a ring around the city, and the revenue is used to
finance increased motorway capacity ( => more cars) in and around the city.
An identified car (done by a unique chip glued to the windscreen) pays 7 kr.
( = 1.2 $)for passing the ring.
The point is, the technology is available today, but may be used in a more
environmentally sane way:
- chips mandatory for ALL motor vehicles (electronic number plate)
- not a ring, but a network of antenna stations, denser and denser
spaced towards the city centre. This implies
- a small amount deducted for each passing, but you will pass a lot more
stations during one city trip.
- revenue from the system not to road building, but to investment and
ticket subsidies for modern and comprehensive public transport systems.
- an upper limit for the number of passings per year for a given car driver.
This is in reality a rationing of the right to drive for a given person
in congested areas. This will teach people to use their cars more
sparingly.
I know that some readers will find these ideas contrary to what they see
as the fundamental human right to "drive my car where I want and when I want".
No problem, we just disagree. My prediction is that my type of proposals
will gain ground in the years to come, while the "freedom-of-the-roaders"
will become a minority. This minority will be longer-lived and
fight back more aggresively in the USA than in Europe. But they will lose
out in the long run. This will be good for human health and the environment.
Trond Andresen
aggressive
It is also socially
Trond Andresen
In article <23...@castle.ed.ac.uk>, c...@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
|>
|> In congested urban streets, the very interesting question is why so
|> many people still detrminedly cling to this notion of the personal
|> freedom of travelling in their car, even when ........
Trond Andresen
Mike Beede
>social engineers will hate, because they like engineering people. Namely,
>computer controlled cars will permit safe travel at 80 miles per hour,
>bumper to bumper, and with 6 foot lanes instead of 12 feet.
>The present roads and freeways will than be adequate.
There are a few interesting problems that come to mind with this:
1. You'd have to switch over at some point. Who will pay for the
zammo-car until they can use it during rush hour? Who will convert
their freeway to a zammo-way (even during rush hour) until there are
enough vehicles so it doesn't look like a joke to J. Q. Taxpayer?
Something like the problem with switching to an incompatible
television format.
2. How much does it cost to produce vehicles to the standards
necessary? It costs $100,000 to buy a small plane (including the
costs of product liability insurance, of course).
3. How do we get people to maintain the vehicles adequately after
purchase? People are notoriously unreliable when it comes to things
like this, and mandating it and checking it is going to cost _plenty_.
4. What are the failure modes?
5. Will anyone be able to bring themselves to ride in the things? I
suppose after they work reliably for a while (say a year) I'd feel
more comfortable, but till then you have another hump to get over
(similar to 1, but psychological).
6. Is this technically possible in the near future? I was under the
impression that computer-controlled driving exceeded by far the
current state of the art. I'd believe you could do a pretty dumb
automated throttle/brake minder that would keep a uniform small
distance from the similarly augmented vehicle in front. Haven't
they tried a number of autonomous vehicles that were pretty much
failures?
7. What happens with any large automated system? Someone hacks it.
As our chief scientist puts it: ``this introduces some interesting
variations on the old `potato-up-the-exhaust-pipe' trick.'' In the
simple case, what happens if you put gum over the sensors? In the
more complex case, what if Capt. Crunch whistles into Hal while he's
driving LA? Or, we could envision a real-life version of the gag
where Bugs Bunny repaints the median strip into a big rock wall and
everyone follows it.
On the up side, you can probably tolerate a much higher fatality rate
than, e.g., the airlines, since each accident is much less
spectacular, and people are pretty used to car accidents already.
--
Mike Beede Secure Computing
be...@sctc.com 1210 W. County Rd E, Suite 100
------------------ Arden Hills, MN 55112
(612) 482-7420
David M.V. Utidjian
car after they have been shown that commuting by mass transit is quicker
cheaper, and less hassle are quite interesting.
As a note on this subject....
In the San Francisco/Bay Area immediately after the big quake of 1989
people could not drive over the Bay Bridge to get to work in SF for
about a month. BART, (our local underground system) had its hours of
service extended to aroud the clock instead of about 5am til midnight.
Naturally the number of riders, especially during commute hours, went up.
What is interesting is that the number of rider is still a great deal
higher than pre-quake numbers even years after the bridge was repaired.
Another cost of commuting into the center of a city is parking. In SF
this can cost more than the cost of the actual commute (fuel, insurance,
maintenance, cost of vehicle amortized over its usefull life, etc...),
Taking the tube or bus is significantly cheaper.
David Utidjian
Mark Flanagan
>In <1992Jul15....@aio.jsc.nasa.gov> man...@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov (Keith Mancus) writes:
>>especially noticeable inside a city. It is not possible to have efficient
>>mass transportation in this situation!
>
>Try telling that to the approxiamately 300 people that were on my train
>this morning. (Not a peak hour one, either). The key to mass transit is
>having services which:
>
>- go where, or close to where people want to go
>- go when people want to go (ie frequently)
>- go fast enough to make driving there unneccesary
>- are cheaper than paying for petrol, maintenance, etc etc for a car
>
>And it is possible. Once that sort of service is achieved, people will
>use it. Why wouldn't they? Why not throw away the stress, costs, and
>pollution of driving?
>
>I'm off to the city centre now. The station is about five minutes walk
>away. I won't hurry; if I miss the next train, there's another one in
>ten minutes.
>
>Get the picture?
>
>
>Daniel Bowen
This assumes that there is one place in particular that people are interested in
going e.g. a 'city centre'. In some areas, there is no such central location,
possibly due to poor city planning, and a mass transit system can not work. Mass
transit only works if 'massive' numbers of people wish to go to approximately the
same place at approximately the same time. A case in point: Hampton Roads, Virginia.
(population approx. 1.2 million) HOV-3 lanes were attempted here a couple of years
ago, but were eliminated because nobody was using them. People have suggested a light
rail system, but that has gotten nowhere, as no one can agree on the routes, the only
'downtown' is in Norfolk, but there are also 4 major military installations, and
many large companies spread all over the countryside. Mass transit *can* work - but
not in all situations
Mark Flanagan
--
_______________________________________________________________________________
Mark Flanagan Unsteady Aerodynamics Branch
ma...@uab15.larc.nasa.gov NASA Langley Research Center
DISCLAIMER: The ideas and opinions are mine - only the machine is Uncle Sam's
John McCarthy
that will greatly increase the capacity of the highway system are some
scientific discoveries and much engineering away. I have an answer to
only two of his problems.
To be fully useful, a computer controlled car must work in an unmodified
environment, i.e. it must be able to use existing roads and driveways.
It must be able to transport a non-driver. It almost certainly must
use vision. This solves the problem of introduction. It will be
useful even if the owner is the only person who has one, just provided
its use is legal. It will become especially desirable when legislatures
are sufficiently convinced of its safety to allow such cars higher
speed limits. Whenever two computer controlled cars are in sequence,
the spacing between them can be reduced with safety, because they can
effectively have millisecond reaction time. Some reduction might be
possible when a computer controlled car is following a human controlled
car but tail-gating would make the human ahead nervous.
John McCarthy
1. They will need automatic checkout facilities, that will inform the
user when they need service and refuse to drive unsafely. Present
BMWs inform the user when they need service. Sabotage of other people's
cars will be no more of a problem in the future than it is now.
2. All this will take quite a bit of time, but I'll bet we will see
technological solutions before the social engineers succeed in
herding us into mass transit.
R. Cage
>>The actual solution to the traffic problem is technological - which the
>>social engineers will hate, because they like engineering people. Namely,
>>computer controlled cars will permit safe travel at 80 miles per hour,
>>bumper to bumper, and with 6 foot lanes instead of 12 feet.
>>The present roads and freeways will than be adequate.
>
>There are a few interesting problems that come to mind with this:
>
>1. You'd have to switch over at some point. Who will pay for the
>zammo-car until they can use it during rush hour? Who will convert
Look, we've been through this before.
Who paid for cars which burned only unleaded gas before there
were no-lead gas stations? Who paid to put in tanks and pumps
for unleaded gas before there were cars which burned it? We
solved the chicken/egg problem 15 years ago. We can do it again.
Specially equipped buses could use the IVHS lanes as soon as they
are ready. Since the highway is a public investment, there is no
reason that public vehicles shouldn't be equipped and become some
of the first users.
>2. How much does it cost to produce vehicles to the standards
>necessary? It costs $100,000 to buy a small plane (including the
>costs of product liability insurance, of course).
IVHS systems will be made in greater volume. Sensors need only
have a range of a few feet (or inches, to detect "lane markings"
embedded in the pavement). This all adds up to less unit cost.
>3. How do we get people to maintain the vehicles adequately after
>purchase? People are notoriously unreliable when it comes to things
>like this, and mandating it and checking it is going to cost _plenty_.
It checks itself, and if it isn't working properly it refuses to
operate in automatic mode. You're going to see something much
like this in 1995 engine-control computers, when the OBD II mandates
go into effect. An OBD II engine will monitor itself and will
shut down a misfiring cylinder rather than emit unburned fuel.
The driver will be notified of the malfunction immediately.
>4. What are the failure modes?
Depends a lot on the system architecture, no?
>5. Will anyone be able to bring themselves to ride in the things? I
>suppose after they work reliably for a while (say a year) I'd feel
>more comfortable, but till then you have another hump to get over
>(similar to 1, but psychological).
I'd feel safer riding in an automatically controlled car in
a 6-foot lane with crash barriers on either side than I would
in a manually-controlled car in a 12-foot lane. For one thing,
I know that the computers in other people's cars haven't been
drinking, and lack of sleep or senility won't affect them. If
the only failure modes are to plow into me from behind, or stop
in the road (which my own radar and auto-brakes can detect and
protect me against), I'm reasonably safe.
>6. Is this technically possible in the near future? I was under the
>impression that computer-controlled driving exceeded by far the
>current state of the art.
It depends what you want. If you want a car which can drive
down a 1992 highway among other cars, yes, it's a tall order.
If you "cheat" and give it magnetic lane-position and location
cues in the roadway, radar transponders on other vehicles and
for traffic information, and otherwise create a highly structured
enviroment tailored for ease of control, you eliminate all the
computer vision systems and other problem areas and the job
becomes much more tractable.
>7. What happens with any large automated system? Someone hacks it.
>As our chief scientist puts it: ``this introduces some interesting
>variations on the old `potato-up-the-exhaust-pipe' trick.'' In the
>simple case, what happens if you put gum over the sensors?
You're assuming the sensors are optical. Magnetic coils work
pretty well even covered with gunk; that's why we use them
inside engines and transmissions. Radars see through grime and fog.
>In the
>more complex case, what if Capt. Crunch whistles into Hal while he's
>driving LA?
There is no system that is 100% hack-proof. We can probably limit
the damage a hacker can cause with careful design.
>Or, we could envision a real-life version of the gag
>where Bugs Bunny repaints the median strip into a big rock wall and
>everyone follows it.
If the lane marker is a pattern of iron and aluminum conducting
loops embedded in the pavement several inches down, that's *tough*.
>On the up side, you can probably tolerate a much higher fatality rate
>than, e.g., the airlines, since each accident is much less
>spectacular, and people are pretty used to car accidents already.
Not necessarily. Any failure of the system gives the victim
someone to sue. However, as a public health matter, if the
IVHS is safer than manual driving it is an improvement.
(IVHS: Intelligent Vehicle Highway System. OBD II: On-Board
Diagnostics II.)
Keith Mancus
>>The actual solution to the traffic problem is technological - which the
>>social engineers will hate, because they like engineering people. Namely,
>>computer controlled cars will permit safe travel at 80 miles per hour,
>>bumper to bumper, and with 6 foot lanes instead of 12 feet.
>>The present roads and freeways will than be adequate.
> There are a few interesting problems that come to mind with this:
> 1. You'd have to switch over at some point. Who will pay for the
> zammo-car until they can use it during rush hour? Who will convert
> their freeway to a zammo-way (even during rush hour) until there are
> enough vehicles so it doesn't look like a joke to J. Q. Taxpayer?
> Something like the problem with switching to an incompatible
> television format.
Two answers: (1) You could convert just the HOV lane at first. Or,
better, (2) the automatic car requires no modification to the road.
See below.
> 2. How much does it cost to produce vehicles to the standards
> necessary? It costs $100,000 to buy a small plane (including the
> costs of product liability insurance, of course).
Nonsense. That $100K price is purely artificial. Believe me, I know;
I've been following light aviation closely since 1973. I'm a pilot and
an aerospace engineer who once upon a time wanted to work for a General
Aviation company. That industry has folded for political reasons.
Liability insurance is the biggest problem, and unreasonable FAA regs
regarding certification costs et al have also contributed. Furthermore,
there have never been enough airplanes built to get the full benefit
of mass-production techniques.
By comparison, you can build a nice kitbuilt at home for about $20K,
or less if you want a small "sportplane" rather than a two-place "practical"
bird. And after looking at a LOT of homebuilt airplanes, I feel safe in
saying that the average quality is very high, probably higher than
that of certified aircraft. (Which is to be expected; you can take more
time to make your pet perfect than a manufacturer can.)
> 3. How do we get people to maintain the vehicles adequately after
> purchase? People are notoriously unreliable when it comes to things
> like this, and mandating it and checking it is going to cost _plenty_.
You would probably have to have something like annual inspections
(or more frequent), along with tell-me-three-times cross-checking and
self-diagnostics. There is no technical reason why maintaining it should
cost very much; we're probably talking about swapping out boards that
have died and self-diagnosed. The boards would be mass-produced and
therefore cheap.
> 5. Will anyone be able to bring themselves to ride in the things? I
> suppose after they work reliably for a while (say a year) I'd feel
> more comfortable, but till then you have another hump to get over
> (similar to 1, but psychological).
There will always be people willing to try something new. I grant
you that the cultural penetration time for this technology is fairly high.
> 6. Is this technically possible in the near future? I was under the
> impression that computer-controlled driving exceeded by far the
> current state of the art. I'd believe you could do a pretty dumb
> automated throttle/brake minder that would keep a uniform small
> distance from the similarly augmented vehicle in front. Haven't
> they tried a number of autonomous vehicles that were pretty much
> failures?
Nope, wrong. See if you can get any information on Carnegie Mellon's
Robotics Institute. They have built two self-driving vehicles called
NavLab I and NavLab II. NavLab II is a van that can drive itself
down an Interstate at 55 mph, using cameras and image enhancement techniques
to watch the edge of the road, and laser rangefinders to watch for obstacles.
If an object appears ahead of the van, it puts on the brakes. NavLab II
can also drive over rough terrain, heading for a point defined by latitude
and longitude. (It has a GPS receiver.) It can even drive through
intersections at slow speed by "feeling its way" until it picks up the
lines marking the edge of the road. The algorithm is even smart enough
to pick out a road edge that lacks the traditional white line.
The automatic car is near future technology!
> 7. What happens with any large automated system? Someone hacks it.
> As our chief scientist puts it: ``this introduces some interesting
> variations on the old `potato-up-the-exhaust-pipe' trick.'' In the
> simple case, what happens if you put gum over the sensors?
I would hope the sensors would "realize" that they're plugged when
they get no inputs.
> In the more complex case, what if Capt. Crunch whistles into Hal while
> he's driving LA? Or, we could envision a real-life version of the gag
> where Bugs Bunny repaints the median strip into a big rock wall and
> everyone follows it.
This could cause massive confusion, but not accidents, if the system
is properly designed. You need sensors to detect objects anyway in case
something is out in the road, or an accident plugs it, etc. If you
point the car at a rock wall, it will stop before it gets there.
I'm not denying there are problems, but it is practical.
-Keith Mancus <man...@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov>
Sherwood Botsford
> Feel free to change to "We humans" if you think this is universal.
> Folks, you just can't get people to car pool. 20th century Westerners,
> at least, are just too independent. I think you will see increasingly
> efficient cars, smaller cars, alternate fuel cars, and other variations,
> but (1) most Americans, at least, hate mass transit; (2) people use cars
> because they are *individual* transportation. I go where I want when
> I want.
Mostly this is because mass transit takes so much time. I have a 45 Km commute
that takes me 35 minutes. The nearest bus service is 10 Km from my house,
stops 10 Km short of where I work, (I can take a city bus from where it stops),
and takes a total of 90 minutes. I would accept a small penalty in time to
have the freedom to read on the bus, but at nearly 3:1, No way. It would also
cost me over twice what I'm paying for fuel for my truck to do the same job.
Part of this is a life style choice. I live in a semi rural area, so expecting
door to door bus service is not reasonable.
There are three reasons to use mass transit:
1. If it's faster
2. If it's cheaper
3. Not having to drive.
Locally, we only get 1 out of 3.
One of the things the local transit network is considering is bike lockups.
E.g. Fast, no stop busses connecting shopping centres, with locations at
centers where you can leave your bike/park your car. (Most shopping centres
are underutilized during week days.) Various combinations of
walking/bicycling/driving now can co-exist with mass transit giving a mixed
benefit.
E. Michael Smith
>The points brought up by other posters about people still commuting by
>car after they have been shown that commuting by mass transit is quicker
>cheaper, and less hassle are quite interesting.
Though mass transit is not more private, quieter, more comfortable, more
reliable, more flexible, or anywhere near as easy to carry stuff, or ...
and I, for one, would argue that it is FAR MORE HASSLE, not less.
Also, for every costing I've done in San Jose it is far slower and more
costly to get to work (or most anywhere else).
I do agree that in London it is nearly impossible to get somewhere by
car in even double the time it takes by Tube, and that it costs more
to park in London for a day than to go anywhere by Tube/bus. But when
I was there they had a Train Drivers strike (or some such) and the
whole system shut down for a day or two. What a mess.
The thing I learned in London, and to some extent in San Francisco, is
that mass transit ONLY WORKS WELL IN CASES OF EXTRAORDINARY CROWDING.
Only when the population density is so large that the dis-economies of
scale of the car exceed the economies of scale of mass transit does a
mass transit system work well.
In a place like San Jose where the city is suburban sprawl (or in a place
where most people are coming from such an area and have already gotten
into their cars for the start of the trip) mass transit sytems fail.
My solution is simple. After the Quake, I didn't go to San Francisco.
I didn't go that often before, but now I just don't go. I'm not fond
of the Urban Jungle anyway.
Anywhere that uses (the oxymoron) Social Engineering to try to force me
onto mass transit is a place I will simply avoid. This will make both
the planner happy (by reducing trafic) and me happy (by living my life
my way in my space).
I've visited London, and will again. The first time, I rented a car
at the airport the first day. Took it back the next, since it was
nearly useless. The next time I visit, I'll use the Tube. But the
next time will be a LONG time away.
I've visited S.F., and will again. When practical, I take BART. Mostly
I just try to avoid the city at all times. When forced to go to the city
for something that only it has, 90% of the time it will be by private car.
This is mostly due to the bagage I have to carry (2 kids, diaper bag,
stroller, 'quake emergency kit, lunch box/cooler, ...) and the fact that
we have to get in the car in San Jose anyway ...
For daily travel in San Jose, mass transit is useless to me. The trains
don't go anywhere I'm interested in. The busses run on a rather sparse
schedule with prices that change by {day of week, time of day, route, phase
of moon, ...} and require exact change. I've spent hours sitting by the
side of the road in scorching heat/sun only to find that the bus didn't
use the same schedule on THAT day as the one in the last schedule I'd gotten.
No, San Jose can't fix this. The reasons are structual. Homes and work
are scattered over a wide diverse area. Trains are effective in a dense
organized corrador. Busses require a high rider density to be cost
effective (one that doesn't exist in sprawl) and work better with fewer
needs for transfers (which is opposite what happens in sprawl). The
result is that busses cannot have enough frequency at a low enough cost
going where people want to go in this low a density area.
That is why we have empty commuter lanes, empty sparse (subsidized)
busses, and a light rail system that goes from nowhere to nowhere.
That is why I (happily) ride my car and avoid place with (mandated or
forced or promoted or...) mass transit systems. I don't like the
density of the places where it works, and don't like using it where
it isn't effective.
>In the San Francisco/Bay Area immediately after the big quake of 1989
>people could not drive over the Bay Bridge to get to work in SF for
>about a month. BART, (our local underground system) had its hours of
>service extended to aroud the clock instead of about 5am til midnight.
>Naturally the number of riders, especially during commute hours, went up.
This also illustrates a major problem with mass transit. It doesn't
care about customer desires nearly as much as it cares about efficiency.
WHY does it shut down at midnight. What happens to me if my 11:30
concert runs over to 12:01? I'm HOSED, that's what.
Why is there even a question of 'Should BART go all the way into the
SF airport or just go sort of near it?'? Because COST is being valued
higher than CUSTOMER SATISFACTION. BART ought to go right into the
heart of the SFO Airport (like the excellent airport in Frankfurt).
I bet it ends up going 'close' and forcing people to change from
the train to a bus to get to the station.
I,for one, will NOT change horses that many times! (car,bart,
bus,airplane,bus,bart,car...). I might do: car,bart,plane,bart,car ...
>Another cost of commuting into the center of a city is parking. In SF
>this can cost more than the cost of the actual commute (fuel, insurance,
>maintenance, cost of vehicle amortized over its usefull life, etc...),
Yet another reason to avoid such places. Yet, what do they do at many
mass transit stations? Charge you to park your car! Keep the parking
free at the stations an more people will use the system...
>Taking the tube or bus is significantly cheaper.
Only in SOME cases. It would cost me about $2 to take the bus to work
and it would take me about 2 hours. The bus line goes 2 blocks from
my house (a not too dificult walk). I can take my car in 30-45 minutes
(with NO TRANSFERS), carry a couple of bags in the car, listen to my
stereo (and not the other guys), not be asked for spare change, and it
costs me about $1 (marginal costs. This car was amortized 100000 miles
ago...). Even at a full loading for vehicle price, it comes to $1.50.
(30 miles at $0.05/mile which is a reasonable costing for a 12 year old
econobox ...)
--
E. Michael Smith e...@apple.COM
'Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has
genius, power and magic in it.' - Goethe
I am not responsible nor is anyone else. Everything is disclaimed.
John De Armond
>The actual solution to the traffic problem is technological - which the
>social engineers will hate, because they like engineering people. Namely,
>computer controlled cars will permit safe travel at 80 miles per hour,
>bumper to bumper, and with 6 foot lanes instead of 12 feet.
>The present roads and freeways will than be adequate.
You have, of course, hit the nail on the head. Purely a statist issue.
Witness the response from the heavy control types, normally identified
as Econazis, to my proposal for "car caterpiller" concept that is
quite similar to yours. Mine involves the use of light rail (rolling
resistance of steel on steel is much less than rubber on pavement),
cars mounting smart "caterpillar segments" when entering the thoroughfair,
and clusters of segments grouping together to form caterpillers propelled
by electricity and only from the rear-most unit. The intelligence is
there to break the caterpillers up, eject a car at its exit and then recluster.
This scheme brings the best of all worlds to the table. It uses nuclear
generated electricity for zero environmental impact, uses rail for its
efficiency and density and maintains or even enhances personal mobility.
And it requires no new technology. All of this is, of course, the antithesis
of what the statists masquerading as environmentalists want. Check
sci.energy archives for the complete proposal.
John
--
John De Armond, WD4OQC |Interested in high performance mobility?
Rapid Deployment System, Inc. |Interested in high technology and computers?
Marietta, Ga |Write me about "Performance Engineering" (TM)
j...@dixie.com |Magazine.
Need Usenet public Access in Atlanta? Write Me for info on Dixie.com.
John De Armond
>Try telling that to the approxiamately 300 people that were on my train
>this morning. (Not a peak hour one, either). The key to mass transit is
>having services which:
>- go where, or close to where people want to go
>- go when people want to go (ie frequently)
>- go fast enough to make driving there unneccesary
>- are cheaper than paying for petrol, maintenance, etc etc for a car
>And it is possible. Once that sort of service is achieved, people will
>use it. Why wouldn't they? Why not throw away the stress, costs, and
>pollution of driving?
>I'm off to the city centre now. The station is about five minutes walk
>away. I won't hurry; if I miss the next train, there's another one in
>ten minutes.
>Get the picture?
No, I don't. A 5 minute walk is more than I'm willing to make, as is
a 10 minute wait. I rarely travel more than 15 minutes from my house.
While you're waiting and walking, I'm already where I want to go.
I've not had to stand, I've not had to be placed in close proximity to
people who may stink (either body odor or excessive perfume), I've
not been forced in close proximity to people I probably don't want
to BE in close proximity to, I have all the accessories I'm normally used to
while driving (radio, car phone, etc.)
I will personally NEVER give up my personal mobility. If that mobility
comes someday in the form of some gadget that runs on matter-anti-matter
generated farts, so be it. But it WILL be personal mobility.
Greg Titus
>
>> ... In Atlanta [expressway braking distances are about] three car
>>lengths at 60 MPH. ... This is actually quite reasonable under
>>most conditions. Since the vehicle in front of you can likely not stop
>>any faster than you can, maintaining a full braking distance interval
>>is wasteful.
>
>else's all you need in enough space to cover your reaction time.
Assume car B is following car A, A and B are traveling at the same
speed, and have the same deceleration under braking. A's brakes are
applied, and after a certain reaction time, B's are applied as well.
Both cars come to a stop. Between the time A's brakes are applied
and B comes to a stop, B must be traveling faster than A. So, in
order to avoid hitting the car in front of you, you need room both
for your reaction time and to allow for the fact that as long as you
have not yet decelerated to the speed of the car in front of you,
you will be catching up to it.
You can't always brake harder than the car in front of you in order
to avoid this problem.
greg
--
--------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Titus (g...@zia.cray.com) Compiler Group (Ada)
Cray Research, Inc. Santa Fe, NM
Opinions expressed herein (such as they are) are purely my own.
SCOTT I CHASE
not related to breaking. For example, if the car in front of you hits a tree,
or another oncoming car, it will surely deccelerate faster than you can break!
I know someone who's engine fell out (!) while driving on a freeway. The
engine block dragged on the ground, bringing the car to a stop so fast that
the driver almost flew out through the front window. The fault was an
auto mechanic who forgot to put back some bolts after repairing the engine.
There certainly must be other occurrences (even common ones) which cause
sudden braking. What about a blowout, for example?
-Scott
--------------------
Scott I. Chase "The question seems to be of such a character
SIC...@CSA2.LBL.GOV that if I should come to life after my death
and some mathematician were to tell me that it
had been definitely settled, I think I would
immediately drop dead again." - Vandiver
Greg Hennessy
#It uses nuclear
#generated electricity for zero environmental impact,
Anyone who makes this bogus claim should not be suprised when the
proposal is not taken seriously.
--
-Greg Hennessy, University of Virginia
USPS Mail: Astronomy Department, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475 USA
Internet: gs...@virginia.edu
UUCP: ...!uunet!virginia!gsh7w
John McCarthy
is not as convenient as driving into San Jose. Ah, if only the San
Francisco Opera would move to San Jose.
Mark A Biggar
>this morning. (Not a peak hour one, either). The key to mass transit is
>having services which:
>- go where, or close to where people want to go
>- go when people want to go (ie frequently)
>- go fast enough to make driving there unneccesary
>- are cheaper than paying for petrol, maintenance, etc etc for a car
Not to mention the most important feature:
Lets you listen to the music you want to without desturbing anyone else :-)
--
Mark Biggar
m...@wdl1.wdl.loral.com
Rodger Madison
> j...@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) writes:
>
> This scheme brings the best of all worlds to the table. It uses nuclear
> generated electricity for zero environmental impact, uses rail for its
> efficiency and density and maintains or even enhances personal mobility.
> And it requires no new technology. All of this is, of course, the antithesis
> of what the statists masquerading as environmentalists want. Check
> sci.energy archives for the complete proposal.
>
> John
Have you ever heard the term "vaporware"? The McCarthy/DeArmond proposal
for self driving cars is vaporware at it most absurd level. The
technology does not exist and even if it were to be developed the thought
of maintaining such a system should convince any objective person that it
is sheer lunacy.
As for environmentalists as statists, who do you think would build and be
responsible for this super car/freeway system? Do you think users would
escape without having additional licensing requirements that would
increase government knowledge of and control over their lives?
I think what will have to evolve is a combination of mass transit and
more efficient automobiles. Downtown areas should be declared off limits
to all but mass transit vehicles. Travel in suburban and rural areas will
be similar to how it is now, some buses for those without access to or
inclination to drive a car, and small private vehicles.
Rodger
Gary Coffman
> The estimate of 2.5 people per car is high. In Australia reliable
>estimates (was that an oxymoron) say about 1.4. I don't know about the
>U.S. but I imagine it would be much the same.
Yes, I made an error in the original packing density of bicycles. I forgot
to allow for reaction time spacing. The corrected result agrees with yours.
Gary
Gary Coffman
>drivers over here don't have the keen reactions of you Atlanta
>motorists.
We have the chain reaction accidents too. As you noted, all it takes is
one inattentive driver and there always is one. That hasn't stopped the
close following though. Fortunately, the relative velocity in these
chain reaction accidents is small and damage and injuries are usually
slight.
Gary
Small Systems Solutions
>I consider driving into San Francisco entirely feasible, although it
>is not as convenient as driving into San Jose. Ah, if only the San
>Francisco Opera would move to San Jose.
Wasn't there a ballot initiative in San Jose to build a new Opera House,
and a bid to get the SFOpera to move there? What? The Giants? Nevermind...
--
Small Systems Solutions 1563 Solano Avenue, Suite 123
s...@netcom.com Berkeley, CA 94707-2116
The above-expressed opinions aren't necessarily
Steve Cumming
>>social engineers will hate, because they like engineering people. Namely,
>>computer controlled cars will permit safe travel at 80 miles per hour,
>>bumper to bumper, and with 6 foot lanes instead of 12 feet.
>>The present roads and freeways will than be adequate.
The truly amusing thing about this little fantasy is that its
author fails to comprehend that constructing such a system amounts
to an enormous and coercive piece of social engineering.
I don't like your idea of turning my planet into a video arcade game.
John McCarthy
indeed doesn't exist yet and may take a long time. But then minor
patches on our present freeway system will last for a long time.
My reason for mentioning the futuristic technology is to fight off
proposals like Rodger Madison's to forbid access to downtown by
personal cars. All that is needed downtown is more underground
parking. The Paris system of putting parking garages under the
streets will do for quite a long time.
I'll still be that we'll get the technology, towards which I do
some work, before the social engineers succeed in driving us into
car pools.
John McCarthy
It's hard to respond to this grumble without a few more details of the
grumble. However, I'll repeat a few details about my idea to show
that it is not coercive. The technical objective is to produce a
robot chauffeur, i.e. a computer system that can drive a car in
traffic consisting of present cars with non-driver passengers. When
there are enough of them, they will reduce congestion by driving
closer together.
What is coercive about that, and what's social engineering about it? -
unless you are trying to muddle things by saying that all engineering
is social engineering.
Sudha Neelakantan
real.. by John De Arm...@dixie.com
> generated electricity for zero environmental impact, uses rail for its
> efficiency and density and maintains or even enhances personal mobility.
Thats definitely a mistaken claim. No one can ignore the nuclear waste
byproducts that persist for generations. I guess that you chose to make
the value judgement that as long as getting rid of nuclear waste is not
a problem that you have to face -- let the future take care of our
radioactive dumps -- the pollution is irrelevant.
Sudha
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<*>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sudha K. Neelakantan < Clouds come floating into my life,
The Heinz School of \ no longer to carry rain or usher storm
Public Policy and Management \ but to add color to my sunset sky.
Carnegie Mellon > - Rabindranath Tagore -
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<*>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
John De Armond
>In article <7z-...@dixie.com> j...@dixie.com (John De Armond) writes:
>#It uses nuclear
>#generated electricity for zero environmental impact,
>Anyone who makes this bogus claim should not be suprised when the
>proposal is not taken seriously.
Hmm, First you should establish your qualification to comment in order
that me might take you half way seriously. From your .sig line, I'd suspect
you have none. Me, I'm a nuke who spent his first career making those
evil assault nuclear plants the safe and efficient things they are today.
Perhaps you're like the fellow who sent me mail pointing out all the
environmental damage done at TMI. I asked him to tell me where all
the damage happened, as I noticed none in my 3 years' working there.
His reply was, and I quote, "Oops."
Is this an Oops, Greg?
Chris Malcolm
True, but it is also true (in the UK) that the most incredible
carnage, with dozens killed in one accident, sometimes happens in
these serial accidents. Once one crash has happened, more and more
stuff keeps piling in, sooner or later spilt petrol ignites, and the
carnage only stops multiplying when the police set up warnings well
before the scene.
A frightening feature of many UK motorway accidents is the frequency
with which pedestrians are mown down, i.e., after a minor shunt the
two drivers leave their cars to exchange insurance notes, and are run
down and killed.
These horrors usually happens in conditions of reduced visibility,
such as fog or rain. There is a large minority of drivers who react to
poor conditions by speeding up. "Hey, it's starting to rain, better
step on the gas and get home quick before some idiot runs into us!"
--
Chris Malcolm c...@uk.ac.ed.aifh +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK DoD #205
Chris Malcolm
>The actual solution to the traffic problem is technological - which the
>social engineers will hate, because they like engineering people. Namely,
>computer controlled cars will permit safe travel at 80 miles per hour,
>bumper to bumper, and with 6 foot lanes instead of 12 feet.
>The present roads and freeways will than be adequate.
That's only a third of the solution -- the technology providing the
option. Another third is social engineering -- persuading people to
use it. A great deal of those who prefer to drive to work despite the
existence of cheaper or faster alternatives a) _like_ driving, b)
_don't_ like someone else driving them. How are you going to persuade
someone who doesn't like another human being driving them to let a
_computer_ drive them, and, what is more, at speeds and distances that
would be dangerous lunacy for a human driver?
Would your wife be willing to let a computer drive her to work? Faster
and closer than she'd ever dare to drive herself?
[And the other third? Ask the lawyers....]
System Janitor
*In article <7z-...@dixie.com> j...@dixie.com (John De Armond) writes:
*#It uses nuclear
*#generated electricity for zero environmental impact,
*Anyone who makes this bogus claim should not be suprised when the
*proposal is not taken seriously.
*-Greg Hennessy, University of Virginia
*USPS Mail: Astronomy Department, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475 USA
It would seem to me that someone who lives in such a beautiful part of the
country, which has been thrashed by the coal-power industry *and* who would
probably like to have the air be at least somewhat transparent would love
the (OK, almost zero) environmental impact of nukes.
-Mike
Chris Malcolm
>A 5 minute walk is more than I'm willing to make,
This kind of attitude is quite startling to Europeans! No doubt this
is the reason why at this university, sited in a hilly city with
plenty of staircases as well as streets, the staircases are sometimes
called "American filters". When a bunch of students arrive at the
bottom of a long staircase, they spread out as they ascend. When the
first students arrive at the top of the staircase, that bunch of
students struggling flat-footedly upwards less than half-way up are
the American motorists. You can recognise them easily on the flat too,
because their rather awkward and inefficient gait reveals them as
people who have never learnt to walk properly.
R. Cage
>Excerpts from netnews.sci.environment: 16-Jul-92 Re: Is car pooling for
>real.. by John De Arm...@dixie.com
>> This scheme brings the best of all worlds to the table. It uses nuclear
>> generated electricity for zero environmental impact, uses rail for its
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>byproducts that persist for generations.
But you seem to be able to ignore that the fuel isotopes
are RADIOACTIVE (the main gripe you seem to have with the
products), have been for billions of years, and will continue
to be for billions more, unless they are used to make energy.
Then they are only radioactive for a few tens or hundreds
of years.
Are you one of these Chicken Littles who frets about the
nuclear plant in the next state but hasn't checked your
basement for radon levels yet, because the radon is "natural"?
Richard Clark
>>>social engineers will hate, because they like engineering people. Namely,
>>>computer controlled cars will permit safe travel at 80 miles per hour,
>>>bumper to bumper, and with 6 foot lanes instead of 12 feet.
>>>The present roads and freeways will than be adequate.
>
>author fails to comprehend that constructing such a system amounts
>to an enormous and coercive piece of social engineering.
>I don't like your idea of turning my planet into a video arcade game.
>
True, that it would be a nightmare to create a computer-controlled vehicle
that could read and follow road signs and such... But creating a system
which can follow tracking, information and identification signals placed
in the roadway is vastly easier. And they need not be complex. Perhaps
just a simple magnetic bar with encoded data, to be scanned as the vehicle
passes over it. And current camera auto-focus and fuzzy logic technology
may lead into providing a very cheap collision avoidance system.
I'm of the opinion that the technology already exists. It may just
be that the desire and/or need for its implementation doesn't.
And what social engineering? Just hop in your car, enter the
desired destination, pull the shades, and wrestle in the back seat with
your girlfriend/wife while your'e waiting to arrive! No problem. ;)
-----------------------Relativity Schmelativity-----------------------------
Richard H. Clark My opinions are my own, and
LUNATIK - watch for me on the road... ought to be yours, but under
;) no circumstances are they
rcl...@tis.com those of my company...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Hennessy
#>#It uses nuclear
#>#generated electricity for zero environmental impact,
Me:
#>Anyone who makes this bogus claim should not be suprised when the
#>proposal is not taken seriously.
#Hmm, First you should establish your qualification to comment in order
#that me might take you half way seriously. From your .sig line, I'd suspect
#you have none.
I see you have no compulsion to establishing your qualifications
before spouting off. Why should I then?
Guessing people's qualifications from their .signature file is snobbish
at best. Moronic at worst.
#Is this an Oops, Greg?
Nope. I just realize (as you probably do when you don't get caught up
in your right wing ideology) that the number of things that humans do
that have ZERO enviromental impact can be counted on the thumbs of my
left foot.
Now if you want to make the claim that nuclear power has LESS
environmental impact than, for example, a coal burning power plant,
that is one thing, but to to argue that nuclear power has ZERO
environmental impact is just an idiotic statement.
When the regulations are properly followed, nuclear power is
reasonable safe. When regulations are properly followed, medical waste
is reasonable safe.
However, in order to save a buck, some people dump medical waste into
the Atlantic ocean, and then waste ends up on the coastline of New
Jersey.
When will happen WHEN someone shady operator dumps radioactive waste
somewhere? It has happened before (Brazil) and will happen again.
What happens when people DON'T follow regulations has to be considered
in any environmental impact.
Greg Hennessy
hub...@hubcap.clemson.edu (System Janitor) writes:
#It would seem to me that someone who lives in such a beautiful part of the
#country, which has been thrashed by the coal-power industry *and* who would
#probably like to have the air be at least somewhat transparent would love
#the (OK, almost zero) environmental impact of nukes.
I am, in general, supportive of nuclear power, even while realising
that the location of some current nuclear power plants verges on
stupidity.
The point I was making, was that claiming that nuclear power has ZERO
enviromental impact is a stupid claim to make.
And John De Armond, while I disagree with just about every political
view he has, is not stupid. He just made a stupid claim.
--
-Greg Hennessy, University of Virginia
USPS Mail: Astronomy Department, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475 USA
Internet: gs...@virginia.edu
UUCP: ...!uunet!virginia!gsh7w
Steve Austin
->> We Californians are law-abiding but refuse to be herded into car
->> pools.
->> Sorry about that, social engineers.
-> Make that "We Americans" and I think you'll be closer.
->Feel free to change to "We humans" if you think this is universal.
->Folks, you just can't get people to car pool. 20th century Westerners,
->at least, are just too independent. ...
With a decent (or even half-decent) public transportation you can get
people to do more than car-pool. In New York and London (UK) I feel
quite OK with being herded into busses and trains. I think the
same thing works in Tokyo and large European cities. In Boston
(with 1/4-decent public transport system) people can get along fine
without a car if they are near a T line. If not, they need a car.
Steve Austin
Dave Scidmore
>In article <1992Jul16.1...@sctc.com> be...@sctc.com (Mike Beede) writes:
>>suppose after they work reliably for a while (say a year) I'd feel
>>more comfortable, but till then you have another hump to get over
>>(similar to 1, but psychological).
>I'd feel safer riding in an automatically controlled car in
>a 6-foot lane with crash barriers on either side than I would
>in a manually-controlled car in a 12-foot lane.
Cars already have a number of computer controlled systems and the number
and extent of those controls is increasing every year. The latest gizmo
is anti-lock brakes where a computer monitors the revolution of the tires
and prevents them from slipping. Only a handful of people have expressed
concern over the drivers loss of control and I doubt that many people
will feel uncomfortable riding in a car with ABS installed. My point
is that in most cases people focus more on what the car can do than
on the technology required to get the car to do what it does. Car companies
capatalize on this by not selling ABS as a computer doing your braking
for you. They sell the feature not the technology.
Given the rate at which automation is being incorporated into current
cars auto-pilot cars may be more evolutionary than revolutionary. Either
way when the technology is here you can bet car dealers will be
selling transportation without the hastle and risk of driving rather
than selling a computer that drives for you.
--
Dave Scidmore, Heurikon Corp.
dave.s...@heurikon.com
John De Armond
>> This scheme brings the best of all worlds to the table. It uses nuclear
>> generated electricity for zero environmental impact, uses rail for its
>> efficiency and density and maintains or even enhances personal mobility.
>> And it requires no new technology. All of this is, of course, the antithesis
>> of what the statists masquerading as environmentalists want. Check
>> sci.energy archives for the complete proposal.
>>
>> John
>Have you ever heard the term "vaporware"? The McCarthy/DeArmond proposal
>for self driving cars is vaporware at it most absurd level. The
>technology does not exist and even if it were to be developed the thought
>of maintaining such a system should convince any objective person that it
>is sheer lunacy.
Of course it's vaporware. Only an idiot would think otherwise. Oh.
Seeing your organization, I understand why you'd bellow so. It is
much less vaporware than any of the smart highway proposals. NO new
technology needs to be developed. Only application engineering would
need to be done. That would mean, of course, that those jucy pie-in-the-
sky research grants would not materialize which makes the whole proposal
unacceptable to the establishment. It would help, btw, to actually
read my proposal before commenting.
>I think what will have to evolve is a combination of mass transit and
>more efficient automobiles. Downtown areas should be declared off limits
>to all but mass transit vehicles. Travel in suburban and rural areas will
>be similar to how it is now, some buses for those without access to or
>inclination to drive a car, and small private vehicles.
Excellent plan. A blueprint to accelerate flight to the 'burbs to hyperspeed.
I like it. If cars were outlaws in Atlanta, for instance, the few
companies I still deal with down there would move off to the 'burbs
and I'd never have to go there again. The big question. Will they
put up the barbed wire fences around each city. "To keep the cars out",
of course.
Carl J Lydick
>When the regulations are properly followed, nuclear power is
>reasonable safe. When regulations are properly followed, medical waste
>is reasonable safe.
>
>However, in order to save a buck, some people dump medical waste into
>the Atlantic ocean, and then waste ends up on the coastline of New
>Jersey.
>
>When will happen WHEN someone shady operator dumps radioactive waste
>somewhere? It has happened before (Brazil) and will happen again.
Of course, the case in Brazil was medical nuclear material (not waste), and
medical nuclear material is fairly loosely regulated.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carl J Lydick | INTERnet: CA...@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU | NSI/HEPnet: SOL1::CARL
Disclaimer: Hey, I understand VAXen and VMS. That's what I get paid for. My
understanding of astronomy is purely at the amateur level (or below). So
unless what I'm saying is directly related to VAX/VMS, don't hold me or my
organization responsible for it. If it IS related to VAX/VMS, you can try to
hold me responsible for it, but my organization had nothing to do with it.
Carl J Lydick
>With a decent (or even half-decent) public transportation you can get
>people to do more than car-pool.
Given, of course, that population density is high enough.
>In New York and London (UK) I feel quite OK with being herded into busses and
>trains.
As it is, e.g., in New York and London.
>I think the same thing works in Tokyo and large European cities.
ditto
>In Boston (with 1/4-decent public transport system) people can get along fine
>without a car if they are near a T line. If not, they need a car.
But, of course, if the population density is somewhat lower, mass transit
doesn't work nearly as well.
E. Michael Smith
>
>>The thing I learned in London, and to some extent in San Francisco, is
>>that mass transit ONLY WORKS WELL IN CASES OF EXTRAORDINARY CROWDING.
>
>Very good, that's an excellent start! Now consider all those American
>universities with split campuses and student accomodation, closely
>sited multiple universities, etc., which run campus buses. And from
>the private sector, what about all those hotels which run free
>courtesy buses to and from the local airport?
I can think of few living arrangements more crowded than Dorms on
campus and hotels. I've lived in both of them for large parts of
my life (2.5 years as a consultant 'on the road') and spent as
much time living that way as any sane human could stand. Yes, I
think you've illustrated my point quite nicely...
--
E. Michael Smith e...@apple.COM
'Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has
genius, power and magic in it.' - Goethe
I am not responsible nor is anyone else. Everything is disclaimed.