An Alternative To The Small Car Concept
In my last post I highlighted some of the flaws in the latest push by Governments to produce small fuel efficient hybrid vehicles. Let me recap some of the problems:
- Increased congestion in our major cities
- Decreased use of public transport
- Increase in waste, eg, tires
- Increase in petrochemicals to produce components
Of course this is all based on an assumption that people will buy more vehicles more often due to their reduced costs. Some households will go from a single car household to a two or perhaps three car household – our young will be able to afford cars a lot sooner.
So what are the solutions? Public transport is one solution, however here in Australia no government appears willing to bite the bullet and push for a decent public transport system. They all pay lip service whilst running the services down.
Public transport needs to be viable and cost effective. You can only reduce prices so far so the answer has to be to make the alternatives so much more expensive. If city parking cost $40-$50 per day together with congestion taxes for our busiest cities, $10-$15 per day becomes the cheaper option.
Couple this with free, “safe” and well lit parking facilities in the outer suburbs and commuters would have the best of both worlds – using their car and public transport.
When it comes to cars themselves, rather than producing small fuel efficient vehicles, it is time that smaller 6, 7 and 8 seater vehicles were produced. I am sure that one full 8 seater is far cheaper to run than four 2 seater concept cars.
Of course there is one aspect to this whole argument that most people seem to forget – cars only produce 15% of all carbon emission. Power generation is by far the biggest producer of carbon – it’s ironic, one solution is to produce electric cars. What do they need? A power supply at every parking meter. Using the biggest source of carbon emissions to resolve the smallest source of carbon emissions!
That’s life I guess.
Well, I use the train every day and I love it. So much calmer. No stress and always able to read a book or newspaper. That for me is heaven.
I think the increased use of public transportation is a very important aspect of reducing energy consumption and helping the environment. I live in the States and back when the gas prices were really high, my city actually saw public transport usage grow for the first time ever.
Unfortunately, people have short memories and as soon as the gas prices dropped, the number of riders dropped as well.
I think you also bring up a very important point about the production of carbon in power generation versus automobiles…
I really wish the US would come up with a bullet train cross country. It would be so much easier than driving, and hopefully less of a pain than flying. Not to mention reducing our reliance on fossil fuels by other countries.
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
You are right about the necessity of a more efficient public transportation. But there are places where is difficult to have a fast train track service. I live in central Italy where there are a lot of mountains and to make a single gallery will take an awful amount of time and lots of money, so trains are not a viable way. More efficient vehicles that uses both electricity and gas will do better in this case.