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114 comments on An immodest proposal about fuel efficiency
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114 comments on An immodest proposal about fuel efficiency
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Kiashu,
I think you overestimate how much public transport exists in the US. I am thinking of midwestern/great lakes area states with cities around 20-40,000 people. These places do not have viable public transit. The best most of them have is Dial-A-Ride (on-request, mini busses) which is so inconvenient as to be useless in my city. It doesn't start running early enough or stay running late enough to get you both to work and back home. You have to schedule your pick up several hours in advance, which effectively means the night before. They will not guarantee a pick up time within an hour and cannot guarantee a destination time. The only purpose of the Dial-A-Ride system is to provide disabled people a way to get around so they don't have to move into assisted living.
Because any real social change must be effective for everyone except the true outliers. It isn't good enough to have a system that works for 50% of the people, you have to have a system that works for at least 90% of the people, preferable closer to 97%. This is why bicycling doesn't work as a solution. I'm not going to ride my bike to work when it's 10F or when there's 5" of snow on the ground. And there is a large segment of the population that can't. It's not a majority, but it is too many.
A final thought. Telling someone to move is easy, and is in fact the best overall solution. However, finding a place to live that is: close to work, schools, and stores; Large enough for a family; and affordable isn't nearly as easy as we'd like it to be. Moving is expensive. I can buy a lot of $5 gas for the cost of moving, not even counting the higher mortgage and insurance payments.
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JimFive
Not at all. Firstly, I was responding to someone talking about Australia, not the US - I am not an American. As for the US and public transport, I realise it's mostly shit. But lots of parts aren't.
My point is that many options already exist, but because people reflexively jump in their cars, they don't consider those options. My immodest proposal is that people make themselves aware of how much they use their car, and how often they're ignoring other options.
For some people, this will lead to no change at all; for most, some change.
In this case I'm not talking about social change. I'm talking about how you can save fuel. And for the vast majority of people, how much they drive is far more variable and easy to change and will have a greater effect on fuel consumption than messing about with accelerators and tyre pressure.