Public Transportation part 1

So most of what I've been blogging about has been focused on private transportation - basically methods that you use for moving yourself, and maybe a few others around. While the future in that aspect is strictly limited by availability of new technologies, lack of infrastructure to support radical changes, and finances, public transportation is a slightly different thing.

Truth is, options for public transportation are out there but they vary from country to country, state to state, city to city. Overall though, the most common, and usually cheapest form of public transportation are buses, which by all intents and purposes are just oversized cars. Universities often give college students a free bus system - Texas A&M is no exception, with the Aggie Spirit system.



The Aggie Spirit system is an example of one of the better bus systems out there, but only if you look locally just in the immediate area most frequented by college students. If someone wants to venture outside of the high traffic areas in College Station, you are out of luck. City buses run into the same problem, especially in large expansive cities. You can't ever hope to have a network that will cover the entire city really well.

This is where public transportation hits its limits. While it is relatively cheap, or free on a per-ride basis, it can sometimes by inconvenient. Trains are even worse in the convenience factor, as they better serve intra-city travel rather than inter-city travel - making day to day trips to the supermarket or work very much impossible using this method unless you have to travel a large distance.

However, even with those convenience factors one must take into account that these services run no matter how many people ride on them. They run on schedules, running their routes constantly to serve the people who do use them. If utilized efficiently, then the net outcome is that overall people are saving gas and natural resources.

Sure that an individual bus or train will use WAY more power and/or gas than an average car, but it's not just carrying 1-5 people. It's carrying dozens of people, and cities are constantly trying to be more environmentally friendly by using gas-alternatives. So just take a minute and weigh the ups and downs of public transportation.

Next time, I'll go into the air travel industry.

New (err old?) Technologies

Fear not, there are some interesting, and entirely plausible technologies that are being developed that could in fact make the 200+ pounds of Carbon Dioxide emissions per fill up a thing of the past.

The first thing that comes to mind, is an all electric car. For years, it was completely cast aside because the technology was not there - there was simply no way engineers could get an electrical battery to produce the kind of power a combustion engine could. And then, once they could do that, it cost a fortune.

Now it's arguably gotten better, with the Chevrolet Volt on the horizon. Sure it's just one vehicle and it won't change the industry (even the Toyota Prius, the face of hybrids hasn't changed the entire auto industry) but it serves as a good example of what engineers are coming up with to simply use less gasoline.



The Chevy Volt is different than normal hybrids because it operates on the concept of series, rather than parallel. It has a battery which, under normal driving conditions, is supposed to power the car, without any use of gasoline, for up to 40 miles. From then on, the gasoline engine kicks in, keeping the car's batteries charged. And once you're home, the Volt then plugs in to an outlet and charges the batteries. All said, General Motors claims that the car will get 230 MPG.

Yes, I'll say it again. 230 miles per gallon. Personally, I'm a skeptic of this, because as we now know, driving habits will make things so much more different in the area of fuel economy, and plus, what is GM's definition of "average driving conditions"? Nevertheless, even if it's a more respectable 100+ miles per gallon, it could theoretically change the industry.

Note theoretically. You would think that people would flock the car, but they won't for one particular reason.

Cost.

It's the curse of every new technology. The Volt is said to be available as a 2011 model late next year, but at somewhere around $40,000. This places well above the mainstream consumer, which becomes a problem for anything to change an industry. More than likely, we will see these cars, and any other cars like it from its competitors, have a slow start and maybe after 5-10 years, will pick up.

New technologies are always an odd bet - by the time one technology matures and becomes mainstream, it almost always becomes obsolete by then. So we will see what happens.

Interesting Facts and Figures, part deux

That's part 2 for non-French speakers!!

So I promised in the last blog that I would tell you how much stuff, specifically, Carbon Dioxide is chugged out by burning gasoline. It just involves a little Chemistry and some background knowledge.

First you take one gallon of gasoline (which has a variable chemical formula based on the additives etc) which on average has about 2,421 grams of total Carbon. The oxidation factor for the burning of gasoline is 99% (meaning 99 percent of it reacts with oxygen in the reaction) and then the resulting number is multiplied by 44/12, which are the molecular weights of Carbon Dioxide and Carbon, respectively. The result is:

8,788 grams of Carbon Dioxide or 8.8 kilograms, or about 19.4 pounds.

It's shocking, isn't it? By burning one gallon of gasoline, you create almost 20 pounds of Carbon Dioxide, which is the leading greenhouse gas pollutant. I admit, I was astounded by this. It literally sounds just as bad as it is - meaning that even my car, which has about an 11 gallon tank, creates over 200 pounds of Carbon Dioxide per fill up, from empty of course.

Now whether or not global warming is a real phenomenom or not is outside the point of this blog, but you have to realize the sheer amounts of CO2 that is being chunked out of our tailpipes, considering there are about 600 million vehicles on the planet. I don't think anyone can really argue that it's a good thing.

Which is why we have quite a few things to look forward to, which hopefully if technology and luck is on our side, are just around the corner. Next time I'll post about upcoming cars and certain technologies that may change things in the area of efficiency.

Interesting Facts and Figures part 1

You can believe the figures here or not, but this is what I've been able to conjure up with a few Google searches regarding fuel economy numbers.
Average Fuel Economy in the US in 2006

17.2 miles per gallon

Average Fuel Economy for Passenger Cars in the US in 2006

22.4 miles per gallon

The entirety of the data can be found here and here.

There are two things possibly wrong in that data, not that I'm necessarily calling out the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. One, the EPA changed all the miles per gallon values in 2008. So you can call them out on that, as it skews every single value before 2008 on fuel economy numbers. Essentially what the EPA did was lower the values for every single car made before 2008, so all the numbers listed on the BTS are wrong by today's standards.

So it regretfully means...the national average is actually even lower. Yikes. But there's hope though. I'm sure you heard of the Cars for Clunkers program that ran this last summer?

That program will probably skew the numbers for 2009 (due to the large number of clunkers traded in for more fuel efficient cars) so things are looking better. However these numbers are to be expected.

For next time, look forward to knowing how much pollutants are created by burning gasoline. The numbers will be surprising.