Poll: How do TOD readers transport themselves?
Posted by Yankee on May 15, 2006 - 11:21am
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: automobile, bicycling, hybrids, poll, suv, transportation, trucks, walking [list all tags]
Over time, I think we've gotten a sense of how TOD readers feel about various transportation issues. Now I've put together a poll to find out what the reality is: how prevalent is driving (and how many miles a day do people drive)? How many people have a hybrid? How many people use a bike as their predominant form of transportation? What about subways, light rails, or even walking?
Update [2006-5-15 16:25:5 by Yankee]: I usually read Treehugger everyday, but I must have missed their post from the other day called "Have You Reduced Your Dependence on Cars?" 90 Treehuggers left comments, and a lot of their sentiments seem pretty similar to the ones seen here.
Here are some guidelines for the poll:
- Pick the single best answer for a typical day. A typical day probably means going to work, running errands, visiting friends, etc. Whatever is typical for you, pool together your activities in a day when answering the poll.
- If more than one of these applies to you (e.g. you drive your car to the train station), please pick the mode of transportation that is used to go the furthest distance.
i think my trip allocation might average 50% car, 40% bike, 10% feet, but i'm semi-retired which makes all that a lot easier. feet/bike take time.
WalMart pioneered the big box store, cross palleting etc. The food and goods sold in that WalMart undoubtedly come from out of state if not outside the US of A. Any big food or hard goods retailer is little different.
When we had a petrol strike here (blockade of fuel depots) in the UK, the food stores were empty within 3 days. A measure of how little inventory is actually left within the system.
All of these goods burn up a lot of energy getting to us.
(on the plus side, i understand that a lot of cast-offs do get used in africa & etc. ... if people take them to good will and not the landfill ... of course the landfill is carbon incarceration ... environmental accounting is sooo difficult.)
I drive a diesel but work from home and drive much less than 10 miles/day on average. I have also very recently found a local co-operative which supplies biodiesel.
Moreover, Peak Oil is not an energy crisis, it is a cultural crisis: yes we could, technically speaking, live with somewhat less fuel, but we've built an economy that collapses if it cannot grow.
That said, my personal transport is arranged on a daily basis, as conditions require. I think we'll need to be flexible as energy gets scarce. Often I carpool, sometimes ride an electrically-assisted bike (18 non-flat miles roundtrip to work), sometimes drive on my own, rarely ride a bus or ride a regular bicycle. No biking in the winter here!
Speaking of which, that starts in about 6 - 8 weeks time.
I love riding bikes. I hate cars.
One of my big questions about the peak oil debate is, how many doomers and POs are sick of cars, like I am? How much is our willingness to pay attention to this problem connected to our wish that cars would go away?
it's funny, i can walk 2 miles to the store and pick out 2 or 3 of the cars i see as cool, and worthy of being on the road ;-), snob that i am, i only want to get rid of the rest ...
I'll have to move closer to work to use a bike to get there. Otherwise, it's driving as the best if most expensive and wasteful way to get there.
So I can't help welcoming each rise in gas prices which brings us a little closer to the day when fringe eccentrics like me are promoted to mainstream, respectable-citizen status. Unfortunately, petroleum scarcity will bring many other effects than just a reduction in the dominance of the automobile. Most of these effects will be bad.
we could all move to Davis, California, i guess. i remember reading that they became the first US city to score "platinum-level" endorsement (link)
"Davis flood hazards generally consist of shallow sheet flooding from surface water runoff in large rainstorms."
http://www.city.davis.ca.us/aboutdavis/cityprofile/index.cfm?topic=location
This certainly is a bike-friendly town (I've ridden mine to work at the university for many years now). It helps that this is a fairly small, and very flat, university town. The large number of students on bikes helps our numbers enormously, although a recent survey of bicycling in Davis showed that bike ridership among students is down somewhat compared to the students of yesteryear.
The town has grown a lot in recent years and has become more of a bedroom community for people who work elsewhere. Not too much daily biking among this crowd. The university is the largest employer, but real estate prices in Davis are so stratospheric that only a minority of university staff can afford to live in the town that they work in.
www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/
I also ran across a new electric scooter
www.vectrixusa.com/index2.html
A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting. Henry Thoreau.
I've been commuting by foot for the past maybe 6 years. The bike will just let me run errands faster and save some time.
I've been seeing a lot more bikes on the street lately - I live out in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon. First time I saw gas over $3.00 out here was just today, #3.09. We're having very warm weather too, so that probably helps to bring the bikes out. But in the ten years I've lived here, I don't think I've ever seen so many bikes on the street - people looking like they have someplace to go. We do get a lot of pleasure riders too, folks all dolled up in lycra on %4000 bikes.
...mind you my partner comutes to work an hour away... at least her car does 50mpg though.
That has always struck me as the hardest part of living sustainably; when you are in a family that is supporting more than one career.
I mean, that's just not sustainable, is it?
This is what it looks like when Hummers go green ...
Total waste.
I have worked from home, I have ridden a bike to work, now I'm in the joe-average worst case, and I don't like it.
I have a job which I'm resonably confident to be able to keep even when many others lose theirs. Nevertheless, right now, a long commute is a luxury I can afford. And when TSHTF, there are buses anyway. (For a while.)
a bike, and get into the habit of riding. Many insist that they
will just take public transit when things go sour. The problem
with that idea is that public transit capacity isn't designed
to handle a large percentage of the population. When things go
bad everyone is going to try the same thing: ride the bus,
train, subway, etc. Good luck. Even those riding public trans
now will suffer the same fate.
Get a bike and get used to riding it to work, school, stores, etc.
You need time to adjust to the way bicycles work in the city
on streets with backpacks, panniers, etc. Most people will not
be able to just get any old bike and make the transition without
taking the time to learn how to make a go of it.
Think about the seasons, and the weather. Are you equipped
to ride year round? Do you know what to wear, etc?
Are you really prepared, or are you just complaining here on TOD?
Complaining?
I can't realistically bike 100 kilometers per day and still expect to get any work done. Hence the car (today the fuel cost is lower than the bus fare), and when the opposite is true, I'll get on the bus instead. When more people ride the bus, the bus company will be able to afford more buses.
When not commuting, I walk to get around. When walking is really too far >10 kilometers or if I'm in a hurry, I bike. Only when I need to haul large stuff somewhere, I use the car. My vacations are spent walking in the mountains. I get to the mountains by train.
Where do you see me complaining?
What's wrong with Pace?
- long waits
- rude drivers (making Ralph Cramdon look like Dale Carnagie)
- Poor climate control on the buses
- Uncomfortable seats (where you bounce around like you're riding in a storm chasing plane in Katrina)
- too few seats
- buses so drafty you'd think they bought them at WalMart.
Pace, in short, makes the CTA look like a class act! Now, THAT'S a dubious accomplishment!Shops, food, libraries, etc. are all within biking distance.
My drive is a 2001 toyota echo, rated at 34/41 city/hwy mpg but I do better than that with it because I drive like a granny, mostly coasting and well below the speed limit. My goal this year is on keeping the car miles below 1000 for this year.It was about as uncar a car as I could get. I really hate cars inversely proportional to their efficiency and proportional to their emissions but more especially, I suppose, the drivers who drive them!
I stay home and manage the small B&B we are renting. We buy organic milk from a farm 2kms down the road, organic coffee (grown at a farm about 10kms from us but sold in town), and organic eggs from another 200m towards town. Most of our produce as well as trout and talapia is produced locally.
Organic farming is still new here because certification is an expensive process. A lot of farmers use organic methods but don't advertise it as such.
I walk or take the bus everywhere, except sometimes if I have a major load of groceries I will take a cab home. Grocery store is a bit more than 1km from here. Looking to purchase a bicycle with a cart in the next month or two.
Business is slow, so I have lots of time to read and study TOD.
I work in MD but spend weekends in PA. There is no train service, and the bus route goes so far out of the way that it takes 14 hours, so on weekends I drive about 120 miles between cities. Rather than driving slow on the highways, I recently used mapquest to find a more direct route on smaller roads. It takes about a half-hour longer, but keeps me at 45 to 55 mph the whole way. It's a more interesting drive, and the gas is cheaper, too.
BTW, the mapquest 'no highways-shortest distance' route can get ridiculous, taking you up and down curvy, unmarked mountain roads with names like T1006. The 'no highways-shortest time' route is a bit easier to follow.