Quote:Public transportation is not the solution. What difference does it make if a bus takes me to work the 25 miles, or my car does?
Did you seriously just ask this question?
Okay, well, the bus uses twice as much gas as your car, but can hold 40-50 people instead of four or five, and most often, one. You do the math.
Cycloptichorn
McG, Straigten out that hat on your head.
Cycloptichorn wrote:Quote:Public transportation is not the solution. What difference does it make if a bus takes me to work the 25 miles, or my car does?
Did you seriously just ask this question?
Okay, well, the bus uses twice as much gas as your car, but can hold 40-50 people instead of four or five, and most often, one. You do the math.
Cycloptichorn
You're kidding right? The bus would have to travel well over 250 miles each way to get a load of 40-50 people to go to my office. I am the only person in my village which works at my facility which is also outside of any city.
Do the math...
oil
there are plenty of "alternative" fuels at competitive prices , ethenol is just one of them .
in brazil about 50 % of the cars are now being produced with "flex-engines" ; they can use gasoline , ethanol and anything in between . surely , if brazil can come up with a solution , the united states and canada (and other western countries) should have the smarts to come up with a workable solution . a/c to an article in a recent issue of "the economist" , brazil has been prevented from marketing the "flex-engines" in the united states ?
let's be honest with ourselves , gasoline is still pretty cheap in north-america when compared to most other countries in the world . i don't think we'll get serious about alternetive fuels and engines that are more frugal unless we are really hurting in the pocket-book . all the information being published shows that our energy consumption is still increasing ; so i think we'll continue doing what we are doing - consume more energy at higher prices - untill it really hurts . hbg
(it's like telling a drunk to stop drinking and at the same time offering him another bottle)
McGentrix wrote:
Do the math...
You don't have much knowledge about public transportation, it's costs etc, right?
Quote:You're kidding right? The bus would have to travel well over 250 miles each way to get a load of 40-50 people to go to my office. I am the only person in my village which works at my facility which is also outside of any city.
Do the math
Jeez, you're being dense today.
The
City has different busses, which travel to different
villages, pick up a full busload each, who then leave the bus station in the city and travel to their own respective offices each. No bus uses more gas than one round trip to and from the city.
I really must assume at this point that you are just pulling my leg. Otherwise you really are having an off day.
Cycloptichorn
I betcha dollars to donut McG has never been to Tokyo or London during commute hours on the subway system.
I live in a small town (c.i. knows it): we have 4 town bus routes and about 20 for the more rural districts plus the railway.
When a new industrial estate is planned, of course the bus company managers are involved in this as are the town's traffic managers: either a new bus route is created or a bus line changes the routs or ...
From what I gather McG is, of course, the ONLY person in his village who could use the bus. All those others must farm. I can't figure out how the 25 miles gets to be 250 miles but maybe the bus driver gets lost everyday.
Back here in reality, we have people who live as far away as the border areas on Pennsylvania who ride a bus everyday into beautiful downtown New York City. And there are those who live in the far flung regions of Long Island who come in by train and bus. It's a win-win situation for both them and the city, they save wear and tear on themselves, not to mention a little cash, and the city gets 2,000,000 fewer cars on it's streets.
That's everyday.
I bet you think that number is an exaggeration.
Joe(More people in my neighborhood than in all of Wyoming)Nation
Quote:I can't figure out how the 25 miles gets to be 250 miles but maybe the bus driver gets lost everyday.
That's easy enough. He was assuming that the bus was going to pick up everyone who worked in
his office. Which would then have to drive to several other small towns to get the other people who work there. Thus the extra mileage.
Because, of course, this is the most efficient way to do things
Cycloptichorn
Cycloptichorn wrote:Quote:I can't figure out how the 25 miles gets to be 250 miles but maybe the bus driver gets lost everyday.
That's easy enough. He was assuming that the bus was going to pick up everyone who worked in
his office. Which would then have to drive to several other small towns to get the other people who work there. Thus the extra mileage.
Because, of course, this is the most efficient way to do things
Cycloptichorn
I knew we were doing it wrong.
Joe(You mean we'd have to ride with strangers, stranger?)Nation
Actually, similar is done in some very small municipalties around here (and on weekends on my town as well): small busses driven by volunteers and taxi busses.
Those small busses just run on request (you phone them half an hour before scheduled time) on a fixed (circular) route.
Taxi-busses run more or less in the main bus routes at times, when busses wouldn't get enough passengers, you can get in at extra "taxi-bus stops", but leave at home. (Pay for that a bit more than for a normal bus ticket.)
I guess McG can't imagine what the City of New York would look like with millions of people driving their cars into Manhattan.
Actually I now see that McG stated that his facility is also 'outside the city.'
This doesn't diminish the bus idea in the slightest. Why would it? All it takes is planning and infastructure. Village - City - Bus to your facility. You actually may have to take a transfer.
The problem is, that certain people (I have a suspicion, but not am not certain, that McG would be one) would rather cut their throats before they used public transportation to get around.
Cycloptichorn
Joe
It is hard being from NY to fathom that in the area north of 57th st there are more people than in my current state of residence, beautiful and enchanting New Mexico.
There are apprx. 1.2 million.
McG and many people out this way can't imagine what it's like to take your Chock Full O'Nuts and the Daily News Sports page and sit on your duffel for 40 minutes and leave the driving to someone else. It was part of what made NY bearable.
Cavolina(who rides his horse to the market, sometimes!)
Yeah yeah yeah I know.
The oil companies and the auto companies, to get back to the subject, of this country(USA) have done more to kill mass transit than any other factor, economic, political or social. Following them have been the city planners of the nineteen sixties who were following their lead. If cooler heads hadn't prevailed, we would have had a eight-lane highway running through the middle of lower Manhattan right now, probably with 2,000,000 cars all proceeding at the speed of grass-growing.
This country and the world have a larger problem. Oil production has peaked in most of the world. Exploration is finding limited new sources. Go ahead and drill in the ANWAR, it will produce enough oil to supply Japan for about a year, there is no pipeline to bring it's oil to the USA or didn't they mention that?
The largest unknown area for exploration is Western Iraq.
Luckily, Exxon-Mobil and Haliburton are in the area.
Joe(We can get 1.2 million in Central Park for a Boss concert. Two million if it doesn't rain.)Nation
Joe
As usual you are on target. It seems that the oil companies are stocking up for when the wells go dry. It is unfortunate that, if they have their way, they will leave us without any energy to fuel a world clamoring for food.
The history of oil is written in blood. It is sad that the history of this country since the 1890's has been joined at the hip with oil.
OMFG
I work in
Wampsville, NY. Most of the people that live in my town work in Syracuse, NY 30 miles west of where I live.
Having mass transit is not feasible despite what you think. It doesn't work here, that why everyone drives cars.
As far as the personal commentary, kiss my ass.
How about a serious analysis of mass transit, namely buses? Most of the time I see them wandering the streets, they have maybe 2 or 3 passengers. Is there some data out there for certain cites showing average number of passengers per mile of travel, then we could do the math, perhaps whatever a bus gets in mileage, what 2 to 5 mpg or something vs. 30 for an economical car? I am genuinely curious because I have long suspicioned that mass transit is perhaps a total waste for some cities, perhaps not others.
For example, if its 5 mpg vs 30, the bus would need at least 6 passengers average all the time. Of course, there is wasted mileage because passengers probably ride way out of their way to get where they are going in some cases, so factor that in, so perhaps ridership climbs from 6 to 8 to even break even. Lets do the math. I am curious.
It's up to the management of the transit company to schedule routes in the most efficient and cost effective way. They don't need to run busses or trains at the same quantity at midnight as they do during commute hours. There are good and bad managed transit systems like in every other enterprise.
