Automobiles

Boston's Accidental Stumbling Towards Environmentally Friendy Transportation

mikethemadbiologist — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:00:36 +0000

Boston's Accidental Stumbling Towards Environmentally Friendy Transportation

Monday, The NY Times had an interesting story about Zurich, Switzerland's intentional policy of making car-based transportation utterly miserable--and thereby convincing people to use other transit options:

While American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow and offering apps to help drivers find parking, many European cities are doing the opposite: creating environments openly hostile to cars. The methods vary, but the mission is clear -- to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation.

Cities including Vienna to Munich and Copenhagen have closed vast swaths of streets to car traffic. Barcelona and Paris have had car lanes eroded by popular bike-sharing programs. Drivers in London and Stockholm pay hefty congestion charges just for entering the heart of the city. And over the past two years, dozens of German cities have joined a national network of "environmental zones" where only cars with low carbon dioxide emissions may enter.

Likeminded cities welcome new shopping malls and apartment buildings but severely restrict the allowable number of parking spaces. On-street parking is vanishing. In recent years, even former car capitals like Munich have evolved into "walkers' paradises," said Lee Schipper, a senior research engineer at Stanford University who specializes in sustainable transportation....
To that end, the municipal Traffic Planning Department here in Zurich has been working overtime in recent years to torment drivers. Closely spaced red lights have been added on roads into town, causing delays and angst for commuters. Pedestrian underpasses that once allowed traffic to flow freely across major intersections have been removed. Operators in the city's ever expanding tram system can turn traffic lights in their favor as they approach, forcing cars to halt.

Around LÃ¶wenplatz, one of Zurich's busiest squares, cars are now banned on many blocks. Where permitted, their speed is limited to a snail's pace so that crosswalks and crossing signs can be removed entirely, giving people on foot the right to cross anywhere they like at any time.

As he stood watching a few cars inch through a mass of bicycles and pedestrians, the city's chief traffic planner, Andy Fellmann, smiled. "Driving is a stop-and-go experience," he said. "That's what we like! Our goal is to reconquer public space for pedestrians, not to make it easy for drivers."

While Boston hasn't adopted a policy of "working overtime in recent years to torment drivers", things seem to work out that way nonetheless. And there have been minor efforts to make things more pedestrian and bicycle friendly; where implemented, they have made driving worse (and the bicycle-oriented projects create more jobs than the typical transit project). Of course, the Boston Parking Authority also works hard to make parking in Boston a miserable experience too. Granted, the public transportation options, while extensive, are...creaky and distinguished, but you can use them successfully (I personally don't own a car, and get about just fine), so there are non-car alternatives.

From an environmental perspective, serendipity can be a good thing....

mikethemadbiologist Wed, 06/29/2011 - 04:00

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How High Gas Prices Are an Income Transfer to the Very Rich From the Rest of Us

mikethemadbiologist — Mon, 02 May 2011 09:55:52 +0000

How High Gas Prices Are an Income Transfer to the Very Rich From the Rest of Us

Dan Froomkin has a great article about the role that financial speculation plays in driving up gasoline prices*. Keep in mind that even Goldman Sachs, the largest oil trader, admits that speculation drives up oil prices. But what really disgusting is how this speculation-based rise in prices serves as a wealth transfer from, well, just about everybody to oil company executives (italics mine):

By and large, the oil companies' profits are not finding their way back into the communities from which they came; are not being used to create more jobs; and are not being invested in new equipment and exploration.

Some of that money is going back out the door in the form of larger dividends to stockholders. But in the case of two of the big five in particular -- Exxon and ConocoPhillips -- more than half of their total profits are being used to buy back their own stock.

Fully $5.7 billion of Exxon's haul went to buy back its own stock -- and the company announced that it expects to buy back yet another $5 billion's worth in the second quarter of the year. Conoco earned $3 billion in the first three months of 2011 -- and spent $1.6 billion of that to buy back 21 million of its own shares.

Buying back stock is not an uncommon tactic among publicly held companies, particularly when they experience a sudden and possibly temporary uptick in revenue. Buybacks are almost guaranteed to send stock prices up, by boosting earnings per outstanding share, increasing the demand for the stock and sending a signal that the company thinks its stock is undervalued.
But from the viewpoint of a company's CEO, other top brass and its board of directors, stock buybacks have all sorts of particular advantages, as well.

Top executives, after all, often get significant stock options. If stock prices don't go up, such options are worthless. By contrast, the higher the stock price goes, the more valuable the option. (Exxon's stock is up 32 percent from six months ago.)

Companies that buy back their stock can either retire it or simply keep it themselves, under the control of the board of directors, to reissue later or award as bonuses.

Dividends, by contrast, are not nearly as good a deal for company executives. For one thing, they are taxed as income. An increase in the stock price is not taxed as income; it's not taxed at all until the stock is sold -- and only then at the capital gains tax rate, which is limited to 15 percent. (Fifteen percent would be a lot for the median American family, which pays less than 5 percent of its income in federal taxes. But it's a huge break to those paying income tax at the highest marginal rate of 35 percent.)

"Buying back shares benefits existing shareholders, no one else. And more than anyone else, it benefits existing management," says Henry Banta, an energy industry analyst and partner in the Washington D.C. law firm of Lobel, Novins & Lamont.

"They're basically enriching themselves," says Daniel J. Weiss, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. "With this windfall, they enrich the board of directors, senior managers, and shareholders."

They're not creating jobs with this money, but simply engorging themselves further. The other thing to remember is that, while higher gas prices do lower consumption (a good thing), as Lance Mannion noted a while ago, people's ability to alter their gasoline use is limited:

Now, again like me, you may think things need to change. But you're not going to persuade people who are counting the bills in their wallet before deciding how much gas to pump that they should be more like Europeans and be glad to pay more for gas by telling them to stop whining about how much gas is costing them at the moment....

The problem isn't the price of gas at the moment. That's a Republican demagogic distraction. The problem is that the price of gas is relative...

Over the last month or so the price of gas has risen almost a dollar a gallon and for a lot of Americans that means that over the last month they've paid a hundred dollars or so more to get themselves to and from work, to and from the grocery store, to and from their kids' concerts and games and lessons.

And over the last month, how many Americans do you think got a hundred dollar raise?

As Mannion notes, "This is a result of our having left it up to the rich to handle everything, and, here's a shocker. The rich have handled it in ways that benefit them."

Instead of a gas tax increase, how about a financial transaction tax first?

mikethemadbiologist Mon, 05/02/2011 - 05:55

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Thanks for the stock tips, Exxon and ConnocoPhillips. I see my pension fund is heavily invested in big oil. I can't wait until I retire from the state. Tired of "working". Bored mostly. Clients complaining and telling me how I've got it made helps me feel better though.

Similarly, mandatory retirement savings that are invested in stock are a transfer from the workers to the execs. Pst crash, the stock that you were counting on for your retirement will be worthless, and the execs will have pocketfuls of cash.

Funny how Ola will, however, still want the state to police his area and protect him from bad people (tm) and even ensure that his investment company pay up when they said they would.

Cars, Freedom and the Environmental Challenge of the Suburbs

mikethemadbiologist — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 08:32:06 +0000

Cars, Freedom and the Environmental Challenge of the Suburbs

One of the biggest environmental challenges we face is trying to make the outer suburbs and exurbs more energy efficient. The basic problem is that suburbia requires a car. That is a huge energy consumer and CO₂ producer. Lance Mannion describes the problem very clearly:

To the degree that going green sounds like a plan to make us move into cities and give up our cars for bikes and buses Americans will resist and resent conservation efforts, and I suppose that's how it might begin to sound as soon as the discussion switches from solar panels and fluorescent light bulbs and paper or plastic to mass transit and multiple-use zoning.

The object is to reduce the number of cars driving into and our of cities. This is good for the environment, a boost to our national security as it reduces our dependence on foreign oil, and good for the people who live in and around cities generally. It's also good for smaller, local businesses.

It's also a good idea for suburbs to reduce the number of cars on their roads by reducing the need for residents to get in the car and drive. The model should be the inner suburban towns around Boston and Chicago and not the sprawling developments surrounding Los Angeles and Dallas. Again, good for the environment, a boost to national security, good for people who live in these towns, and good for local businesses.

But basically everybody who doesn't live in a city or the exurbs is excluded from this discussion.

That's a lot of people.

And I'm one of them.

If I want to take the train into New York City I have to drive 45 minutes to the nearest station and hope that I don't have to spend another 15 nosing around the parking lot vulturing for a parking space to open up. In 45 minutes I can be in New Jersey on the Pallisades Parkway. In 60 minutes I can see the top of the George Washington Bridge over the trees.

It would be nice if a train still ran from here to the City. I would probably make more trips into Manhattan if one did. But it wouldn't change the fact that I have to drive 24 miles round trip to work, 24 miles round trip to the doctor's, 24 miles round trip to the grocery store, 24 miles round trip to Barnes and Noble, 24 miles round trip to church, 24 miles round trip to see a movie---you get the point, and, yes, all those scattered places are 12 miles from our driveway.

Lance's take on the freedom--or the illusion of freedom--that the car provides is very interesting (italics mine):

The question is, how truly free are we?
Cars free us up in many ways but [they] free us up to live lives that are dependent on having a car.

Theoretically, cars and good highways give us the freedom to live anywhere we want in relation to our jobs, as long as the distance can be covered within a reasonable amount of time, a reasonable amount of time being a subjective and idiosyncratic judgment. And maybe once upon a time they did give a goodly number of people that freedom.

But nowdays, people live where they can find a place they can afford and, if they have kids, that's near or near-ish to a halfway decent school and accept whatever amount of driving living there forces upon them

.

Under those circumstances, a car isn't a means to freedom, it's a necessary tool of your trade, whatever your trade is, and a necessary living expense. You can't live where you live without a job, you can't have the job without the car. Filling the tank and paying for repairs and insurance are as liberating as paying the electric bill and property taxes.

I suspect few people do the calculations and tally up just how much owning a car costs them or if they do they don't let themselves take in the costs.

It's hardly liberating to know that you're shelling out thousands of dollars a year mainly to help keep yourself tied down by your house and your job.

Loving your car for the freedom it promises is like loving your hot water heater for the freedom it promises.

What Lance is creeping up on is what I think might be the greatest--and most politically difficult--challenge facing the environmental movement which how do we reduce the costs from car use. And it's not just using the car, it's all the hidden, externalized costs that go into detached housing/automobile based living: everything from the energy and pollution costs of building and maintaining roads, to the amount of land converted to asphalt on the off chance someone might park on it.

So how do we go about fixing this in the long-term? I think we have to think long-term, since we are basically talking about a population shift not seen since the end of WWII. While work patterns have to shift, that, to me, is the easy part--economic incentives can convince many businesses to relocate. The hard part is schooling--and Lance is dead on about the importance of this.

It's not as simple as saying "fix urban schools." If they were easy to fix, they would have been fixed by now. It has a lot to do with zoning laws outside of the cities. Thanks to zoning laws, urban areas have turned into warehouses for the poor*. And most people don't want to send their kids to schools that perform poorly--that is, have lots of poor children**. While this might seem, at first glance, many steps removed from the car problem, unless we make urban areas places people want to live--safe*** with good schools--car culture is here to stay.

Note: Any time I write about suburban areas, some people shut their brains off and enter a full-blown berserker rage, and make blanket, uninformed statements about how horrible cities are. Don't feed the trolls.

*Along with our rural areas, but that's a very different matter.

**The tragedy is that many urban systems do better than would be expected, and this includes educating poor children. The problem is that you can't beat demography: a school system with forty percent of its students in poverty will never perform as well as one with a two percent poverty rate, yet this is seen as a failure of the school system and not our anti-poverty policies.

***While several decades ago, cities were in decline, in many cities, crime is typically confined to a limited portion of the city. I've never had to dodge gun fire walking across the Boston Common.

mikethemadbiologist Sun, 07/11/2010 - 04:32

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Automobiles

education

environment

I'm out in the country, more or less, seven miles one way or the other to a grocery store. I have 2.3 acres and folks around me have that much or more, so it is pretty much country living. Just down the road is a 2000 house development with 1/3 acre lots. Why would someone want to live on a 1/3 acre lot seven miles from the grocery store?

My sons are very much enjoying urban living. Everything is close and they spend their time doing stuff instead of traveling to do stuff.

Disentangling US culture from the assumption that one MUST own a car will be like picking a complicated lock.

I've had exactly the same response as you every time I try to bring this up. And a lot of it comes from the same people who won't buy a tomato from 20 miles beyond their home, and who want to have all of the BP executives prosecuted. And that's fine--I'm all for both. But let's not pretend that our own car usage isn't contributing to the problems.

Unless the local zoning authority blocks it a development that big should draw a local store, its to good a deal to pass up. If it blocks the development its because the developer and or the residents don't want that type of thing nearby.
Much of the undertone of this kind of posting assumes that everyone is an extravert and wants to live near a bunch of people. There is a class of people that would like to be near hermits, not hear sirens all hours of the night, not live cheek by jowl with the neighbors so that you can hear their loud music etc.
In particular in the midwest where a lot of infrastructure exists from when the small towns were bigger. There was a posting today elsewhere about outsourcing to rural Ar. Cost of living is 25% cheaper. (Also a lot less stress, in a small town a dwi makes the newspaper)

"Safe with good schools" isn't enough. Without an adquate supply of decent and affordable housing stock (and not everyone is willing to live in a high-rise) and amenities, even urban dwellers aren't going to abandon their autos. Good mass transit only goes so far.

I haven't had a car for 13 years, and I've walked to work for 15. In exchange for this relative convenience plus a location where the cats can go outside, I'm going to be renting for the rest of my life (currently to the tune of $1000 a month for 650 pretty crappy square feet) unless I get out of the city.

Morever, the President's neighborhood has very little going for it. Twenty-four miles round trip to the doctor? Mon Dieu! I have the same trip to the dentist. In the very best case, on mass transit it takes an hour in each direction and costs $8, as does nearly everything else of interest, with the caveat that the option isn't available whenever one pleases. The grocery choices are limited enough that I have them trucked in from 50 miles away every two weeks for a minimum premium of $27, and at that interval, naturally a lot of the food is frozen or shelf-stable crap in any event.

And so forth. Frankly, I'm about ready to start looking for another car. Lord knows the burghers taking advantage of the good schools don't appear to have cut back.

"The model should be the inner suburban towns around Boston"

Many of the inner suburbs and semiurbs of this area were developed in the days when people still went around with horse and buggy, and then trolleys that went everywhere. So there were already well established "downtown" business districts before the great post-WWII suburban boom. In other words, before it was assumed everyone would just drive everywhere.

It's true--not everyone is going to be able to find affordable, decent housing near the city centers. I feel pretty lucky to have a nice affordable house in Cambridge, in a relatively quiet location. My wife walks to work, I ride my bike. Most of what we need can be gotten to without the car. We pay more for housing but very little for transport. But Cambridge is not a very big city. It can only hold so much.

But the exurbs, as contructed, are probably just not viable in the long term if they depend on oil-powered cars. Which means a few different things--exurbs that become more like small cities, with centralized business services, and that people live closer to, and that the centers of these cities are connected by better mass transit options. In other words, it'll be like it was 100 years ago. Heck, in some places, the old trolley track is still there under the pavement.

I don't expect this to actually happen. What I expect to happen is that people will continue to insist on using their gas-burning cars to get everywhere until the day they go to the pump and there isn't any. And then complain that no one provided an alternative.

@4,

I'm very introverted (not particularly shy, but introverted). Living in a city is great for introverts---people leave you the hell alone. In small towns, everyone's all in your business, want to talk to you on the street, etc. In the city, people have constructed norms that allow you to regulate the place and time of socializing. (To be fair, I did grow up in a rural area, and still like to spend my vacations there).

I'm not sure the cost of living is directly comparable between urban and non-urban places. Some things are dramatically more expensive (square footage of living area), some things are cheaper (transportation), and some things are just different: I can walk to the museums and the library, several kinds of bars (including gay ones if I wished), all things that would have been difficult or impossible to get to in my old home.

Housing costs are the main barrier to urban living if you don't want to raise a family in an apartment. I own a home in Seattle. I paid $67,000 for it. It's now worth ten times that much and sits on 1/8 of an acre.

And when you look at a breakdown of all sources of GHG in the U.S. you find that cars are a smaller piece of the pie than you might think (about ten percent).

Biodiversivist

I think one of the potential solutions to the car issue is less about how we design our facilities than how we think about cars. During the 2008 oil price spike, there were lots of stories about people moving out of the suburbs to be closer to work. There weren't a lot of news stories (and I track them) about people doing the obvious thing - carpooling. Most suburban and rural dwellers live in places where everything is in one or two directions - it is not difficult to establish carpools. But we are very comfortable in our personal car-pods and most people are extremely reluctant to give up that total control "but what if I want to stop on the way home." The difficulties are hardly insurmountable, but there's very little incentive to surmount them.

I don't find most forms of suburbia or country living to have insurmountable transportation issues - and I live in a rural area. We are car dependent, but we manage with one small car, my husband carpools to work, and we plan our trips so we use less than 50 gallons of gas per person per year. Living in the outer suburbs of Boston as a teenager, my family did not own a vehicle, and my father commuted from one suburb to another. This would not be doable in every community, but it would not be difficult for most people to reduce their driving by half with almost no investment of time or resource - but a considerable investment in attitude shift.

And that depends on whether there's a compelling enough incentive. Where I think I would differ with Mike is in the idea that we're going to have a very long time to shift the social patterns - I think energy price volatility is likely to do some of that shifting for us.

Sharon

I live in a small town in New Hampshire and I walk to work. The price I pay for that combination is that I have to have more house than I need, condos being unavailable in this town. I can do everyday shopping (grocery store, drug store, and a few others) without a car, but I need one often enough that it makes sense for me to keep my long-paid-off car.

As Snarkyxanf @7 says, if you want to live in total anonymity you definitely want to be in a big city so that you have a crowd to blend into. Every small town has its busybodies who will want to know what everybody in the neighborhood is up to, and while your quirkiness may be tolerated, it will be duly noted.

Russ @8: It isn't just the driving that makes exurbia eco-unfriendly. Many such areas, especially the ones built in the last 20 years, feature houses that in most circumstances would be considered absurdly large. At the time my house was built (early 1960s), it was definitely upscale, but by the time I bought it several decades later, it was considered a mere starter home, too small for at least one set of potential rival bidders. Total living space (including a room added circa 1987): about 1800 square feet. Many newer houses have twice or more that square footage (which itself is double the typical size of Levittown-era houses). Depending on location and quality of construction, heating and/or cooling such castles can get very expensive and make large contributions to GHG output.

One important point, which Jim @1 alludes to, is that many of these newer suburban/exurban developments combine the worst of both worlds: high density living far from any amenities. Lyle @4 may be right that whatever passes for a local planning board out Jim's way may be thinking of attracting a small local store, but the economics aren't there for only 2000 households, especially in the current economic climate.

Over the past few years, I've discussed with many people the major reason persons living just a few blocks from a good bus stop own a car, even in Boston/Cambridge/Arlington.

Fear, Doubt and Uncertainty on the part of the mass/public/shared transit user and provider. There is so much friction in that interaction I could write a book on the subject... or at least a long blog post. People own a car because then they have no fear about the availability of the vehicle to start the journey and they 'feel' that they control the transportation process. They don't - traffic, construction, accidents, all play a major role. It's unsafe, expensive, inefficient, a poor use of time and skills and energy, rough on the nerves - but they feel they do. It does get them from door to door, so that's a plus.

There are many ways the public/shared transportation system needs to change before it can compete with cars, emotionally. It needs to run _all the time._ You need to know how much it will cost, that you will get to your destination on time - before you start the trip. It wouldn't hurt to have the cost sunk beforehand, to overcome the emotions of spending money, and to do it in an obtuse fashion so that nobody really knows how much it costs, but feels that the trip is nearly free, as they do with cars... but maybe that bug/feature should be left out of any new system.

For the provider, you should know that the customer is really there, that they will really pay, and what they expect in the way of service. You should also know if you can increase your profits - by having multiple passengers, for example - without offending.

Anyway, the revolution away from cars is achievable and worthwhile, but somebody has to sit down and actually build and operate the information management piece to make it happen. They will make tons of money, but entrepreneurship is hard and many people are personally invested in making this not work (tragedy of incentives).

For those of you in the Boston area (and that seems to be most of us) I've been attending talks at Livable Streets. There was one I attended some time ago that I thought was great--the founder of ZipCar had moved on to found a social networking car share system called GoLoco. If I add too many links I'm sure to wind up in the filer, but you can look for it in my report of that at DailyKos for details on GoLoco and Livable Streets: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/6/6/343822/-25-people-per-car.Or….

The 2000 house development has an elementary school, and perhaps a small shopping center. I haven't gone over to see. In a way, I am analogous to the poor urbanite who has easy access only to a convenience store. There is one @ 1.3 miles down the road. A six pack of beer is a dollar more there than at the grocery store 7 miles away. So it is a little cheaper for me to buy beer there than make a beer run to the grocery store. Of course, efficient shopping is the answer, but I am out of beer as I type :-(

"There is a class of people that would like to be near hermits, not hear sirens all hours of the night, not live cheek by jowl with the neighbors so that you can hear their loud music etc."

Well, sure, and this class of people lives in the cities too. I've lived in several dense urban neighborhoods that were also quiet, because that's what all the people there valued. (I've lived in places where my building was quiet and the neighborhood wasn't -- that is a problem -- and I've also had terrible noise problems in a rural area, between a gravel mine and explosives-heavy local entertainment.)

There is a class of people that would like to be near hermits, not hear sirens all hours of the night, not live cheek by jowl with the neighbors so that you can hear their loud music etc.

I'm one of them, but I've long since learned that I can't have everything I want. Unless you're truly filthy, stinking rich (and I'm certainly not), life is a series of compromises and trade-offs. I'll gladly take the downsides of city life in return for its many compensations.

The question about that class of people who want to be near-hermits should be subsidized by the rest of us. On average, gasoline taxes may pay for roads; that doesn't mean that a good, paved road used only by the few near-hermit families is paid for by those who use it. It's subsidized by the people driving in denser places (including suburbanites driving to work every day). And that's even apart from the larger question of externalities.

I agree with the person who notes that a more reliable and predictable mass transit system would help a lot. When I'm visiting my girlfriend, we cannot use the MBTA website to check bus times to South Station for my trip home, because while the 77 bus runs on Sundays, the website thinks it doesn't. To some extent, this affects other trips we might make: we know we can't rely on that website to tell us about buses she isn't already familiar with, because it lies about at least one of the ones she does know. (Running more buses or running them later costs money; a correct website shouldn't cost more than an incorrect one.)

i'm lucky enough to live within a half-mile of my workplace. one to two miles gets me to several grocery stores and the local downtown area; weather permitting i can ride my bike anywhere i need to go, on anything like a regular basis.

but then in winter, the ice weasels come.

city living is intensely dependent on good infrastructure maintenance, and that's dependent on the local economy. my town has trouble enough clearing snow off the roads, the sidewalks are noticeably further down their priority list. mass transit here exists, but is so bad as to be near-useless. without a car, i could not survive a winter in my town. without other people's pick-up trucks and plows, i'd be breaking my back just clearing out my sixty-foot driveway!

good, reliable, frequent bus service (with some more covered stops, please?) would do wonders. so would sidewalks everywhere there currently aren't, provided they could be kept snow-free. but i'm not going to get those things, or i would have several years ago already. i'll have to keep my car --- and the next car i buy will likely have four-wheel-drive and more cargo space, as well as being larger and heavier. since i mainly use cars in winter, might as well get one that'll be handy and manageable in wintertime conditions.

Flying Cars Are Good, but Where's My Jetcar?

mikethemadbiologist — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 10:15:06 +0000

Flying Cars Are Good, but Where's My Jetcar?

(from here)

Well, it's not a jet car, but Terrafugia has made a flying car:

The Terrafugia, a small airplane that can drive on roads and has been billed as the first "flying car," is now one step closer to becoming street- and sky-legal.

The vehicle has cleared a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulatory hurdle for craft classification by weight. A full-fledged production prototype might be just around the corner, according to multiple reports.

At issue was Mass.-based company Terrafugia wanting its Transition vehicle to be classified as a "Light Sport Aircraft" by the FAA so people eager to fly it would need only 20 hours of flying time.

One hopes this won't become the new 'light sport utility vehicle.' Here are some basic specs:

The Terrafugia completed its maiden voyage last March in upstate New York. According to its maker, the Terrafugia can transform from a roadable vehicle that can hit a highway speed of 65 mph to a winged aircraft in 30 seconds.

The plane version can cruise at about 115 mph (185 kph) and cover about 400 miles (644 kilometers) worth of turf before needing a refill of regular unleaded gas.

The price of a Terrafugia is expected to be around $200,000 and deliveries could start next year, assuming the vehicle passes crash tests.

Crash tests? Sounds dangerous, if kinda fun.

Personally, I'm looking forward to worrying about fucking morons landing on me. Anyway, here's some video:

mikethemadbiologist Wed, 07/07/2010 - 06:15

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Automobiles

they want a single vehicle capable of meeting the weight limits of a light sport aircraft, and the crash test criteria for roadworthiness? i'm betting money they'll need exemptions from some part of one or the other.

(LSA's are a neat category for people who want to get into flying cheaply and quickly... but they do that by cutting corners like no production automobile could ever get away with cutting. they're made "safe" by stringent FAA restrictions on how, where, when, and who can fly them, basically a giant "at your own risk, and you better not risk anybody else" clause.)

Flying cars are for either fun or keep them into the Museum. The World always expecting some revolutionary cars. Those cars should fulfill the fuel alternation and have to be built upon to reduce the increasing traffic density. What can people do with the flying cars? Nothing. It would be the head-ache to everyone those who will owning the flying car, due to the high possibility of accidents, less space to land and take off the cars, high fuel necessity and taking high risks. Better the genies may try to spent time for invent the car which runs in the fuel alternation, economy and have to reduce the traffic density.

I want one, I want one, I want one!!!

Hey, I like the idea. There have always been people who balked at unusual ideas like this. Look at manned spaceflight. All that money spent to put man on the moon and what did we get out of it? Cryogenics, microchips for your cheap cell phones, satellite tv in every home, and don't forget Tang :) It's projects like this that create solutions to seemingly unrelated problems that spin off entire industries. Even if it never flies again.

P.S. Why doesn't Elroy have his seatbelt on?

There have been several previous flying cars which both flew through the air and drove down the road. They had little impact except for interesting articles in airplane magazines.

True flying cars - ones that can take off vertically from anywhere - will require automated operation for urban areas. Under automated operation, there is no reason to expect a high accident rate: the rate might even be lower than it is today with manual operation of ground vehicles.

Fuel cost is lower for long distances with an efficient aircraft. On the other hand, there is a-lot of promise with regard to electric engines for flying vehicles - even electric turbine engines. Solar energy is an inexhaustible supply of electricity, and so there is no reason to assume that in the future we will not have the energy to power flying vehicles even for local travel.

I've had the engine specs for a flying car engine since 1983.. A liquid electricity emitter, "the plazma engine"... I require a lab to build it, but all I ever get is corporate and government "brain-suckers" desperately trying to rob data from my mind, day and night.. which causes me migraines.. I attack them mindless mind-robber brain-suckers on approach with nasty sorcery, which I suppose marks them for recyclement...

The liquid electricity emitter makes its own electricity... I predict speeds up to 1200 mph with four tiny engines, each 14-inches long by 4-inches diameter...

I suppose I don't generate interest for funding, because I'm not a people person, I'm uneducated, and I'm poor... It's your loss...

Deal is: Humanity provides me with a small safe lab, in the fresh granite mountains near Calgary Alberta Canada, and two Hummers, a cabin near a clean creek, and a credit car.. In turn I will build the plazma engine... It needs the fresh granite mountains as a blast shield, in the accidental event of antimatter detonations...

No lab, no cabin, no hummers, no creek, no funding = no flying cars in your life-times... It's this way, or it's no way...

You are cordially invited to see my StrongMobile Flying Car Project at http://www.strongware.com/dragon. You can view a 2-minute video of my full-size mockup model and consider the part about "Busting the Myths".
I would greatly appreciate any opinions or recommendations you may care to offer.

Rich Strong (Major,USAF,Retired)

Embrace Life

grrlscientist — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 04:59:03 +0000

Embrace Life

tags: public service announcement, Sussex Safer Roads Partnership, seatbelts, automobiles, vehicles, safety, safer roads, Embrace Life, streaming video

This is a very touching public service announcement (PSA) by the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership, asking people to always wear their seatbelts when in a moving vehicle. Is there an Academy Award for PSAs? If so, this one deserves to be nominated!

grrlscientist Thu, 03/18/2010 - 00:59

Tags

public service announcement

Sussex Safer Roads Partnership

That was beautiful.

It is touching. What really strikes me though is how original it is. One might think we've run out of ways to say, "Hey, wear your seatbelt," but this is fresh and captivating. I like it. Thanks for sharing.

I love your blog (and that gorgeous bird that lives on your home page!). I'm a social sciences person (a sociologist with a Women's Studies concentration), but the last few years, I have become more interested in science, and especially anything to do with birds and flowers. I appreciate the education - and the lovely photographs!

aww, thanks NOLA radfem. i started taking photographs of flowers after a reader bought a camera for me .. flowers moved more slowly than birds, so I started using the macro lens to see just how good the camera is .. it rarely disappoints.

as far as birds go, well, i think that everything we know about people and their behavior is because (i think) birds are our teachers .. by watching birds, us humans are learning how to see better.

Thanks for sharing this video. It's a beautiful ad with a beautiful message. Not only is it about wearing seatbelts, it's also about remembering our loved ones and how much they love us. Embrace life for them as they do for ours.

Zipcar Pulls Toyota Matrix from Its Fleets

mikethemadbiologist — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 09:07:35 +0000

Zipcar Pulls Toyota Matrix from Its Fleets

If you live in a city, you're probably familiar with Zipcar. It's the car rental service that let's you rent by the half-hour, which is very useful if you don't own a car, and need one to run the occasional errand. Guess what comprises five percent of Zipcar's fleet:

Hello [Mike the Mad Biologist],

You may have seen it on the news already, but just in case, we wanted to let you know that Toyota has announced a recall on several of their vehicles due to an accelerator malfunction.

The 2009 and 2010 Toyota Matrix is the only vehicle in the Zipcar fleet affected by this recall, and makes up approximately 5% of our fleet.
The safety of our Zipsters is our top priority, so we're taking the following steps:

â¢Affected vehicles will not be available for reservation until the situation has been resolved.
â¢If you have an upcoming reservation for an impacted Toyota Matrix model, we will work to move you to a different Zipcar (and you will be compensated for any difference in rate).
â¢If you would prefer to cancel your reservation, all fees will be waived.

If you have questions about your upcoming reservation, please contact Member Services at 866.4ZIPCAR (866.494.7227) or email info@zipcar.com.

Thanks and sorry for any inconvenience the Toyota recall may have caused.

The team at Zipcar

I appreciate this, but I am not a fucking 'Zipster.' That would be like naming a $500 computer after feminine hygiene products. But nobody would be that stupid.

On a slightly more serious note, what are other car rental companies going to do? They won't be able to sell the used cars, that's for certain.

mikethemadbiologist Sun, 01/31/2010 - 04:07

Tags

Automobiles

Avis has also pulled Toyotas from its fleet. I got that email a couple of days ago.

That cannot be guessed better give an approximate number.

Sen. Gregg: A Case Study in Why Obama's Approach to Governing Stinks

mikethemadbiologist — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 09:23:05 +0000

Sen. Gregg: A Case Study in Why Obama's Approach to Governing Stinks

Add this to the list of symptoms of post-partisanship depression. Do you remember Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), who was originally nominated by Obama as Secretary of Commerce because he was viewed as a moderate? Well, 'moderate' Gregg (did I mention that he almost joined the Obama Administration were it not for opposition from we Dirty Fucking Hippies?) has this to say about recent legislation:

American government changed last night. "We are now functioning under a parliamentary form of government," says Sen. Judd Gregg (R., N.H.) in a conversation with NRO. "An ideological supermajority in Congress, along with a government run by community organizers, has taken over."

"They've taken over the student-loan program, they've taken over the automobile system, and now they're taking over the health-care system. There is no limit to their belief that people should be controlled by smart bureaucrats in Washington," says Gregg. "They're putting our country on a path that will reduce the quality of life for the next generation, undermine our nation's wonderful exceptionalism, and Europeanize our economy to curb its growth."

First, I would be thrilled if Gregg were right about the takeover of an ideological supermajority (and, for argument's sake, if an ideology is adhered to by a supermajority, then shouldn't this supermajority, in a democratic system, barring violations of the Bill of Rights, be able to enact the policies they desire?).

Second, the auto bailout? That started under Bush.

Third, the student loan changes will save about $9 billion every year.

Gregg is a solid, card-carrying member of the Uruk-Hai wing of the Republican Party (which is its dominant wing). He is delusional (see his comment about Bush's auto bailout). Unlike former Republican congressman and current Transportation Secretary LaHood, who actually holds Democratic views on transportation, Gregg opposes the signature items of this administration*.

And the fucking rocket scientists in the Obama Adminstration wanted him in the Cabinet (and technically, in the presidential line of succession). Stupid Unpragmatic Dirty Fucking Hippies.

*For all I know, LaHood might too, but he has the sense to keep his mouth shut.

mikethemadbiologist Thu, 12/31/2009 - 04:23

Tags

Gregg is just pissed because his type of fascist, fundagelical bullshit was replace by a representative, democratic government.

Even liberals like you should be unhappy at the way Senator Nelson's vote was purchased, by exempting his state of Nebraska from having to pay for its own Medicaid expansion.

That's not "post-partisanship" or "changing the tone in Washington." It's plain, old-fashioned, bribery with pork, of the sort that Lyndon Johnson used to do in the 1960s.

Unless you're gleeful that the ends justify the means. In which case, all that brave talk about openness and post-partisanship and changing the tone was a lie. Just like that other lie about putting the deliberations in C-SPAN, rather than having them in camera as Obama did with the pharma companies.

And lies have a way of catching up with you. By next November, I'd say.

That's not "post-partisanship" or "changing the tone in Washington." It's plain, old-fashioned, bribery with pork, of the sort that Lyndon Johnson used to do in the 1960s.

And a de facto filibuster on everything that is proposed by the majority is?

Funny how all the reich-wingers are such staunch advocates of the rights of the minority party these days. Back when they had 51% you never heard them being concerned about the rights of ANY minority.

As for the government takeover, we'll remember it was caused by the nearly complete deregulation of the banking system, which led to its breakdown, which led to the banks themselves crying to the government to keep them afloat with taxpayer money.

By the way, those same banking executives, who, under Bush, destroyed the banking system, are now the ones who, under Obama, designed the "government takeover" in such a way as to guarantee that the problems that caused the banking crisis (and which, by the way, conveniently enriched themselves in the process) will NOT be fixed by the government.

$768 Billion vaporized, the public has no new jobs, the banks are not lending, 25% of mortgages are underwater (45% in Florida), and the bankers are happily reporting that they are on track to resume paying out big executive bonuses again this year.

What stinks about the Obama system of governing is the two-facedness: we're told to "hope" for "change", but key policy areas remain exactly the same as under the Bush administration.

Obama is turning out to be a mirror image of Bush, and the people who bankrolled his campaign knew this from the beginning.

That's my problem with Obama: anyone who takes off the multicultural-tinted rose glasses they hand out to us, can see that the real issue is he is too much like Bush.

Bush was, let's face it, a lousy stooge. He was kind of stupid, couldn't talk properly, and was funny looking. Obama is eloquent, intelligent, and good-lookimg. Unfortunately, he's still turning out to be a stooge. That's why his approval ratings are dropping.

Mike, I'm going to need some clarity on the Uruk-Hai comparison. Are you saying he belongs to a stronger, smarter wing of the Republicans that can stand up to sunlight vs. the Mordor/Moria wing who are overall smaller, weaker and wimpier?

Back when they had 51% you never heard them being concerned about the rights of ANY minority.

It's also funny how they managed to get so much rammed down our throats without the "filibuster proof" majority, huh?

GM, in Another Stunning Automotive Success, Kills Off Saab

mikethemadbiologist — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 09:18:51 +0000

GM, in Another Stunning Automotive Success, Kills Off Saab

With some sadness, we read that GM is killing off Saab, although spare parts will still be made. The BBC's Jorn Madslien explains how a well-engineered car line died (italics mine):

When its owner GM bought Saab, it was seen as a brand that could become the US automotive group's European luxury brand.

But the quirky cars did not attract a broad enough following, so it failed to make money.
GM's solution was to cut costs by sharing ever more parts with Opel while, at the same time, toning down their design.

Such moves alienated traditional Saab customers without gaining new ones. New product development ground to a halt and in the end, there was simply not enough left of Saab to make it worth preserving.

Once again, U.S. car executives screw up something that works. My family owns a 1987 Saab that still runs well. I have driven many different four-door cars, and I have never driven a car that comes close in handling--these were cars built for drivers who like and know how to drive. In some ways, they were engineered far better than Mercedes. It's no accident (pun intended) that once GM took complete control of Saab in 2000, everything ground to a halt.

Saabs were never 'luxury' cars, but cars for people who wanted affordable quality (combined with a distinctive look)--GM never bothered to understand the brand.

More added economic value from U.S. boardrooms [/snark].

mikethemadbiologist Sat, 12/19/2009 - 04:18

Tags

In Germany, we were all so happy that GM wanted to sell Opel to Magna, but those cheating fuckers turned on us. In Some years, they will have killed Opel too.

the decision to buy Saab ( and ruin) was made by the same brain trust that bankrupted GM while pocketing millions in executive compensation.

Spare parts will still be made? That's the most ironic part! The first way they alienated existing customers when they bought Saab was to destroy all of the spare parts for all models produced before the takeover, buy back any and all retrievable previous-model parts on the market to be destroyed, and to destroy all tooling necessary to make parts for those preceding models. Which left every Saab owner on the planet with an unmaintainable (regular maintenance parts were destroyed, too) car.

Anyone who owned a Saab learned a hard, expensive lesson from GM. No kidding they walked away and never came back.

Suuuuure spare parts will still be made. GM promised that when they bought Daewoo (which had only been selling cars in the US for a couple of years) back in 2001 (or 2002?). As the owner of one of those Daewoos I can tell you it was a total lie. They pulled all existing parts off the market and never started making new ones. On the plus side, my inexpensive little car still runs great and has never needed serious work. On the other hand, entropy will win in the end.

Is Expanding Bicycle Use in Boston a Good Thing...

mikethemadbiologist — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:49:55 +0000

Is Expanding Bicycle Use in Boston a Good Thing...

...for pedestrians? The Boston Globe reports that Boston is trying to implement a citywide bike sharing program:

They intend to roll out what would be the nation's first citywide bike-sharing system next spring, making hundreds of bicycles at dozens of stations across Boston available to anyone who can swipe a credit card.
If all goes as planned, Bostonians and visitors will ride these bikes to run errands, reach their workplaces, travel from tourist site to tourist site and from meeting to meeting. All of this, officials say, will make drivers and bikers more respectful of each other, and possibly take some cars off the city's road ways.

Over the next few weeks, officials expect to name the company with which they would negotiate a contract on how to run the system. They hope the program will lead to tens of thousands of people saddling up in Boston daily.

As someone who isn't a cyclist, but doesn't drive regularly (I don't own a car, and very occasionally use ZipCar to get out of town), I'm worried about this. I've nearly been hit by a car once, but cyclists are a menace. Weekly, on Newbury Street, there's a pedestrian-cyclist collision. Granted, the effects are far less severe than getting hit by a car, but too many cyclists are a fucking menace. They don't follow the rules of the road--blowing through red lights, ignoring crosswalks, and going the wrong way down streets. These behaviors mean pedestrians don't think to look for them--and I'm not the kind of person who crosses intersections without paying attention.

Also, where is Boston going to put bike lanes? What makes the city work is that roads aren't wide. Lanes are narrow, and there aren't many of them. Is the city going remove car lanes? I'm fine with that, but drivers will have a fit. Without lanes, this won't work. As a bike store owner--someone who would want people to get in the biking habit--notes:

Nearby, Rich Coombs, whose family owns Community Bicycle, a bike sales and service shop in the South End, expressed doubt that bike sharing would work in Boston.

"There are tight roads to begin with - roads dating back hundreds of years, little cow paths,'' he said. "There's barely enough room to squeeze by with narrow handlebars.''

And Mike Mennonno remarks:

Bike stations 300 or 400 yards apart? Unlimited rides of less than 30 minutes? I guess it makes sense when you think how long it takes to ride 300 yards.

I would say the city should confine its ambitions to tourist areas for the time being, but most of those are not navigable by bike. The idea of plowing ahead with a full-blown bike-sharing program when the infrastructure can't handle cyclists period, much less more cyclists, is counterproductive. (If you think a traffic jam in your car is bad, you have obviously never experienced bicycle rush hour in Boston.)

The idea seems to be that more cyclists on the road will in and of itself make Boston safer for cycling. "As people see more cyclists in the streets of our city they'll be more aware of the issues of safety,'' Menino has said. If nothing else, that's a cost-effective way to approach the issue. Don't bother fixing the roads, just get more bikes on 'em. Safety will follow.

I'll have whatever he's smoking.

Getting people out of cars is a good thing: this city is designed for pedestrians. But there are ways to get people out of cars; this isn't a good one.

mikethemadbiologist Thu, 07/30/2009 - 10:49

Tags

Automobiles

Boston

urban planning

Wow! So much venom for cyclists!

I agree, many, myself included, can misbehave. Any transportation system has downsides. But how often are you put "at risk?"

Furthermore, aren't bikes better than more buses, cars and taxis? Less noise, lower pollution and a fitter public seem good to me.

What other ways do you suggest getting people out of cars?

In 40 years of fanatical all-weather cycling, I've never so much as brushed against a pedestrian. But in that time I've learned; pedestrians are a menace to cyclists. If the pedestrian hears you coming, a certain percentage of them will turn around and step directly into your path in an effort to "get out of the way".

We won't hit you if we can possibly avoid it. We will go around you, even the crazy cyclists will go around you if they can. If there is a collision, the cyclist will usually be hurt worse.

Cyclists who blow red lights in traffic are a menace. If they blow a red light when the street is deserted, there's no safety issue. I always stop and wait just because I don't enjoy having conversations with cops regardless of the outcome.

Note: I am also a pedestrian.

I've nearly been hit by a car once, but cyclists are a menace.

Generalize much?

They don't follow the rules of the road--blowing through red lights, ignoring crosswalks, and going the wrong way down streets.

This sounds like a law enforcement issue to me. In the cyclists' defense though, traffic rules are designed strictly for motor vehicles. Some of them make little sense for bicycles. For example, the idea behind most urban one-way roads is that the roads are too narrow for two cars to fit. This is not an issue for bicycles. Granted, if bicycles are going to share the roads then they need to obey the rules of the roads. The big problem (in my opinion) is that most road planners don't take anything but automobiles into account in their plans. Groups like the LAB are working to chamge that.

Also, where is Boston going to put bike lanes?

Well, where bike lanes don't fit, the cars will just have to share the road. Maybe I'm being a bit naive not being from Boston, but I've always found bicycling culture to be very adaptive. And ironically, to effect the changes needed to make Boston more bike-friendly, one must first get more bikes on the road--or it will never happen.

There's a lot of work on this topic, but here's a start:
http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/06/05/safety-in-numbers-its-happening-i…

More riders mean both drivers and pedestrians tend to look out for them more and the raw number of accidents goes down. While not Boston, NYC also has it's share of narrow streets.

I can write more, but I'll wait to see what others contribute.

I thought Boston was built for horses (with riders or in carriages), not pedestrians.

Portland Oregon did this some time back

http://c2.com/ybp/story.html

It seemed like a good idea to me, but Portland is a very bicycle centric city.

Boston maneuvering has always been a problem. If I need to go to a Red Sox game or other events, I often park at Alewife or Harvard Square or even Billerica or other places and take the train.

They should convert car lanes and find a way to reduce cars, buses and taxis. I think bicycles can help un-congest the city.

PS: lately I don't feel so much like attending the Red Sox :(

I want the parking lanes. What a giant waste of surface.

Actually, the best system I saw was in Copenhagen. They have a curbed bike lane (so cars don't get in to it) and they have a separate sidewalk for walkers.

The cyclists had to obey the traffic signals.

It was all so civilized and effective. It can be done. It can't be done with Boston the way it is--I completely agree.

I was on the Somerville bike path a couple of years ago and one of the dogwalkers was swearing at the bikers. Unless everyone gets a spot there will always be tension....

I interviewed for a job today where my office would be exactly 1.1 miles from my home. Doesn't make sense to drive there, walking takes about 16 or 17 minutes. A bike would get me there in about 5 minutes.

So you can see where I'm going here. I'll probably bike to work during the nicer months. Public transit gets me near there and I'd only have to walk 3 tenths of a mile.

I may have to go out to offices in the courthouses but I can drop by Enterprise and for under $50 grab a fully insured vehicle for the day.

First time I went to Amsterdam, a biking city, I mentally resigned myself to getting hit as a pedestrian due to my lack of practice with the system. I made it through OK, however.

holy cow. what's up with the hysteria? they're just bikes, not flying saucers or zombies or something.

you've got a lot of hate for cyclists who break unfair laws, but have no hate for the law-breaking psychopath drivers of Boston -- you know, the ones who are actually dangerous. hmmm...

Honest question: How frequently have bicycles killed pedestrians? Can anybody point me toward statistics?

The guys who do stupid shit like blow through red lights are typically the asshole bike messenger wannabes. (Damned kids with their spandex and skinny jeans...) They're not going to be the folks using the bike shares. The bigger problem would be newbie bikers scared to be in the street and trying to ride on the sidewalks instead. That's easy enough to fix just with copious reminders to stay off the sidewalk when checking out your bike.

I do agree, though, that the money would be well spent fixing the roads instead. There are so many stretches of road on my commute that are just awful. You can't tell where one pothole ends and the next begins, because they all just run together in one, big, tire-destroying mess...

Joshua@13:

Those are actually pot holes?

I thought they were tunnels and I always wondered why no one collected the tolls.

I could not easily locate statistics for pedestrians killed by cyclists in the US, but I did find recent numbers for UK pedestrian casualties. In 2007, pedestrians in the UK were about 1000 times as likely to be injured or killed by cars than cyclists.

So, it isn't common for pedestrians to be injured by cyclists, perhaps because there are a lot fewer bicycles on the roads than cars, or perhaps for other reasons. At first glance, however, it would appear that pedestrians would be safer if some of those cars were replaced by bicycles.

It might be interesting to compare accident statistics among countries with various cyclist populations. A project for another day.

Sadly in our community, a child was killed last week playing chicken on his bicycle with a semi in a congested area. Witnesses said there was nothing the semi driver could have done. Kids need to be taught that while bicycles are fun, the situation is real and you can die. And often have trouble thinking thinking of bicycles as serious transportation. A big reason for that is low-quality bicycles assembled by unqualified store clerks. Typical dimestore bike goes about 75 miles from Wal-Mart to landfill - a poor use of $100. No wonder adults think of bicycles as just crappy little dangerous toys.

Washington DC actually already has the nation's first bike share program. smartbikedc.com

There are idiot drivers, idiot cyclists and idiot pedestrians. I'll take the idiot in a pair of loafers or the idiot on a 20lb bike over the idiot manuevering two tons of steel.

too many cyclists are a fucking menace. They don't follow the rules of the road

people using the roads while not obeying the rules of the road are fucking menaces no matter what their means of transport. my own pet peeve are the bleedin' idjit cage drivers around my town who, whenever i do my damnedest to ride my bike as though it were a car, nevertheless insist on treating me as though i were a pedestrian. it snarls up traffic, slows everything down, aggravates other drivers (and me!), and occasionally puts me at risk because of conflicting assumptions of what i'm supposed to do next. i wish they'd stop already.

First time I went to Amsterdam, a biking city, I mentally resigned myself to getting hit as a pedestrian due to my lack of practice with the system. I made it through OK, however.

The Mad Biologist's Gas Tax Plan

mikethemadbiologist — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 09:04:04 +0000

The Mad Biologist's Gas Tax Plan

We should make gas taxes part of a car's purchase price. It would certainly beat Transportation Secretary LaHood's proposal of a vehicle mileage tax (and is there any stupid idea that Republicans won't embrace?):

Some surprising news out of the Department of Transportation today as Ray LaHood suggests that the Obama administration is considering taxing people based on how many miles they drive. A vehicle miles traveled tax, as the proposal is often called, has been under consideration in states like Rhode Island and Idaho and has, not surprisingly, proven pretty unpopular. First, it's a tax. Second, it requires the installation of a GPS chip to record miles driven and beam the information to centralized computers. Sorry, did that sound Orwellian? I meant a small transponder that informs the government of your driving habits.
Crap. This is hard to sell.

In the interview with the Associated Press, LaHood set the vmt in opposition to a gasoline tax, which he "firmly opposes," at least during the current recession.

Ezra Klein thinks this might be better than the gasoline tax, however:

There's some logic to that. Gasoline is a very visible, and very unpredictable, cost. Every summer, particularly in recent years, the price of fuel becomes a tier one political issue, in large part because it rises so much from the winter. It's hard to imagine a gasoline tax being sustained. Vehicle miles traveled, by contrast, is both steadier and less visible.

But the best way to get people to buy more gas-efficient cars--which, along with raising revenue, is the point of the exercise--would be to impose a tax at the time of purchase based on gas mileage. It might go something like this:

Assume that a car will be driven 120,000 miles.
Calculate how many gallons of gas at the city mileage rate would be used.
Impose a gas tax (at whatever amount per gallon is deemed appropriate at the time of purchase.

Under this system, if we were to impose a dollar per gallon tax, a gas guzzling SUV that gets 12 mpg would have a tax of $10,000, while a zippy little hybrid that got 40 mpg would have a tax of $3,000. This would influence consumer decisions far more than that day's price at the pump.

Added note: Late Friday, the Obama administration came to its senses and scrapped LaHood's plan.

mikethemadbiologist Sat, 02/21/2009 - 04:04

Tags

Automobiles

environment

taxes

I don't get it. Why not just tax the petrolium? Countries in EU are doing that, and it's working here, gasoline conpsumption is usualy important when somebody buys a new car even if that somebody couldn't care less about the enviroment.
This is because gasoline costs here between 2x and 4x the price in the US.

The price of the unleaded is $1,41/Liter (US$ 5,336/Gallon) in France. Summer 2008 = $1,92/Liter !

Perhaps we should keep the gas tax, but earmark it for only subsidies for non-fossil-carbon-burning vehicle miles traveled. That way the only people who would have to worry about having their mileage tracked would be those who wanted subsidies. Also, it would provide an incentive for new non-fossil-carbon-burning technology development.

It would make sense to apply taxes on the basis of gallons instead of purchase price, so that price fluctuations would be revenue-neutral. But it should be done at the pump. Applying it at the showroom would cause people to put off new car purchases. It would be (short-term) cheaper for them to keep driving their polluting gas hogs.

Fuel economy should also be calculated based on gallons per mile (or hundred miles) instead of miles per gallon. That would help people get a more realistic view.

But a gas tax at the pump is superior to a tax at purchase because it taxes people's actual driving habits and environmental impact.

For instance, I have an SUV (or, for my purposes, a Greyhound-Pack-Transportation-Vehicle), but I burn less/i> gas than many hybrid owners, simply because I drive maybe 2-3 miles a week (I walk or take the bus in to lab). Why should I be penalized for other people's driving habits, when I've adapted mine to minimize my impact?

I agree that the only fair way to tax automobile use is a gasoline tax. It doesn't do much damage to drive a car; the damage is done by burning gasoline. Ergo, we should tax the consumption of gasoline. Moreover, this is by far the easiest tax to apply. I would, however, suggest a slight modification to the gasoline tax structure: make it fluctuate inversely with prices so as to maintain a constant, guaranteed upward price expectation. Here's how it works:

Congress passes a law declaring the net cost of gasoline (price plus tax) for each of the next ten years. That net cost will show a steady increase of, say, $0.25 per year. So if the price today is $2.00 per gallon, it is guaranteed to be at least $3.00 per gallon four years from now and $4.00 per gallon eight years from now.

This doesn't mean that all prices will be the same everywhere. Instead, the government calculates the average price of gasoline all over the country for year X and uses that figure to calculate the tax on gasoline for year X+1. Gasoline sellers are still free to compete on price. But the public gets the economic signal that the price will steadily increase.

It is possible that the tax might go to zero if the average price of gasoline exceeds the projected net price. If that happens, the government loses tax revenue but the consumer is given some relief if gasoline prices suddenly spurt up.

The net effect is to give people clear pricing signals so that they can make rational choices in purchasing new automobiles.

Erasmussimo, Um, no, that would be a very very bad idea. Since the consumer would end up paying it anyways, suppliers would be given an incentive to push prices right up to the government mandated cost. If you want to raise the cost of gasoline across the board (which has good and bad features) just increase the per gallon tax. Changing the tax if gas prices go up removes the entire purpose of the tax. It reduces government income, it creates a much harder to understand cost, and it screws the supply demand curves to hell.

Robert, I think you misunderstand my proposal. This method preserves price competition. Competition would be no different than it is now. Let's walk through the numbers.

Suppose that last year's average price of gasoline (before taxes) is $2.17 per gallon, and the Congressional mandated minimum price is $3.00 per gallon. The gasoline tax would therefore be $0.83 per gallon, and this would be charged to all gasoline retailers. If two gasoline stations across the street from each other both pay $1.85 per gallon, then they would both be required to charge a minimum of $2.68 just to break even. However, they have to make a living, and so each marks up his price. Joe's Gas might charge $3.00, but Jack's Gas might want to undercut Joe and sell his for $2.95, hoping to make up in volume what he loses in profits. So the same competitive forces are at work in this scheme that are at work today.

People who like the idea of using GPS to measure motion clearly don't understand how GPS works. If the receiver is at rest in an area of poor reception -- say under trees -- the measurement error may grow large, into hundreds of meters, so that the position is seen to dance around the error range, giving the impression that the receiver has more motion than it does. While a vehicle is parked overnight on a treelined street, the recorder could rack up thousands of miles of accumulated travel.

(A handheld Garmin Etrex once clocked me at 127 km/hr while I was walking downtown.)

If the recorder measures motion only when the ignition is on, the noise problem is still there, and it will be especially apparent in the concrete canyons of bit cities where the L-band downlinks will be subjected to multipathing, causing ghosts, which can really gum up the works.

It's controlling, we-know-better-than-you, micromanagement stuff like this that makes me seriously start to think about voting Republican. sheesh. Stop the socian engineering already.

Jay, tax policy isn't a Democratic monopoly; the Republicans have tax policy, too. They prefer lower taxes than Democrats, but they're not opposed to taxes in principle, or to the idea of assigning specific taxes to specific activities. So, however you approach it, everybody uses taxes for "social engineering".

But if I know this years gas average+next years tax= $3.00
I can just sell at a shade under $3.00 to station owners, give them incentives to stay with me, and still make more then I would keeping the price down and having the government raise the prices back up to $3.00 . It's actively providing incentives to price fix today at tomorrows set price. Hell, throw in a way to give free gas that doesn't trigger the averages, or equiv giveaways, and I could even make an end buyer happy while making more money, and screwing you (the govt) out of a needed revenue stream. A flat tax with well hidden (but predictable) variables going into its non periodic creation makes gaming the system much, much harder.

Robert, I don't quite understand what you are proposing (the details are thin), but what you call "gaming the system" I think the Feds would call "collusion".

In April, 1998, 50 liters = 0,1 $ (50 Dinars) in Bagdad.
Say I by how much was multiplied the price of the barrel in 11 years ?

A much better idea then a gas tax is a tax on engine displacement. This could be collected by the states at vehicle registration time. Since engine displacement has the biggest single effect on fuel efficiency, this would provide a direct incentive to purchase fuel efficient cars, in addition to favoring hybrids which have smaller gasoline engines then equivalent non-hybrid vehicles. The tax could be escalating, with, for example, a 4 liter vehicle taxed at 4 times the rate as a 2 liter vehicle.

SLC, the problem with an engine displacement tax is that it does not take into account how much driving the owner actually does. A person owning a car with a big engine displacement, BUT who drives it rarely, pays a higher tax than a person with a small engine displacement, but drives it a lot. What's our goal here: to get people to buy small cars or to reduce dependence upon fossil fuels? If our only goal is to get people to buy small cars, and we don't care about CO2 emissions or dependence upon fossil fuels, then the engine displacement tax is the best way to go. If our goal is to reduce CO2 emissions and dependence upon fossil fuels, then the gasoline tax is the best way to go.

Re Eramussimo

The problem with the gas tax is that it is a flat tax that penalizes both high efficiency vehicles and low efficiency vehicles the by the simple fraction of the amount of fuel they consume. On the other hand, the displacement tax can be escalated so as to penalize the low efficiency vehicle much more (in my example, the penalty was a factor of 4).

However if Mr. Eramussimo is concerned about what I would consider a pathological case, then impose both a displacement tax and a gasoline tax.

Let's approach this in terms of economic signals sent to consumers. The engine displacement tax sends this message:

"Drive as much as you want, but do it in a vehicle with small engine displacement."

While the gasoline tax sends this message:

"Minimize your use of gasoline."

Which message do we want to send to consumers? I admit that this is an entirely subjective question. I prefer the latter, but I can't prove that it is superior to the former.

Re Eramssimo

Then impose both a displacement tax and a gas tax. That sends the message drive less with a more fuel efficient vehicle.

By the way, fuel efficient doesn't necessarily meant small. I drive a 2004 Honda Civic EX which tips the scale at some 2600 pounds and gets over 30 mpg in suburban driving and over 40 mpg on the highway. Todays' vehicles with quad multi-port fuel injected engines put out twice the power that vehicles of the same displacement did 30 years ago.

But a gas tax at the pump is superior to a tax at purchase because it taxes people's actual driving habits and environmental impact.