Why cars are greener than buses (maybe)
I am going to commit a green heresy.
What I am going to say will challenge everything you have heard about environmentally friendly lifestyles.
I am going to argue that cars can be greener than public transport.
But before I do, I should put my cards on the table. I'm a pretty ordinary bloke. I love driving and have been a car owner and driver ever since I passed my test. But I was forced to get rid of my car after I was press-ganged by the Newsnight editor into a year-long experiment in ethical living.
It was a sad moment as I stood with my family in 2006 and watched my precious Saab being winched away from outside my home.
You can see my humiliation for yourself here and judge for yourself whether you think my experiences have clouded my judgement on this issue.
In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.
Since that fateful day - and I've remained car-free all this time - I've been studying the carbon consequences of car ownership.
So let's look at the facts.
It is true that at first glance cars appear to compare very badly in terms of carbon dioxide emissions to other forms of transport.
The average car emits something like 180g per passenger kilometre.
You may be surprised to learn that, on that basis, taking the car is less environmentally friendly than taking a typical, well-filled short-haul plane, which emits 150g/km per passenger.
The figures show trains to be much greener, as you might expect. According to its publicity, one of Virgin's new Pendolino trains travelling half full up the West Coast main line clocks up just 27g per passenger kilometre.
But it is quite easy to tilt the statistics in favour of the automobile.
Cars appear very inefficient because, more often than not, just one person travels in a car. Pack in extra passengers and you quickly make the car a dramatically greener option.
The extra weight does increase fuel consumption - but only very marginally. Why? Because each additional passenger only weighs a tiny fraction of the weight of the car itself.
Think about it. The average car weighs in at over a tonne. Meanwhile the average passenger weighs around 70kg (the average British woman weighs 65kg and the average man something like 75kg).
That means each additional passenger adds just 7% of extra weight. Taking our average vehicle, that works out at just over 12g/km per extra passenger.
So, if I pack my family of five into a car, the average emissions per passenger falls to just 45g/km (and that's not taking into account the fact that most members of my family are very small).
But - I can hear the greens amongst you protesting - the train still wins out. Does it? Really?
Earlier this year, the Guardian and New Scientist writer Fred Pearce dug a bit deeper into the green claims made by train companies.
He found that most Virgin trains are nowhere near as clean as the Pendolinos. Virgin's most modern diesel train, the Voyager, emits 74g per passenger kilometre when travelling half-full. That's almost three times as much as the Pendolino, and half as much again as each member of my family travelling by car.
Travel on a Voyager when it is a quarter full and your emissions per kilometre travelled are about the same as sitting in a fullish plane. "More leg room", says Fred, "but no greener."
Catch a half-full sleeper up to Scotland and your carbon footprint is much worse. He calculates that with 12 people in a carriage you'd be lucky to emit less than 200g/km.
And the truth is, buses don't do much better. According to figures from the US Department of Energy, a bus with average occupancy (9 people) is more polluting than a car with average occupancy (1.57 people).
The figures are likely to be pretty similar in the UK. Some suburban bus routes in London are subsidised to the tune of £10 per passenger journey apparently (at least, that's what a mole inside the Mayor's office tells me). That suggests very low occupancy, and therefore a whopping carbon footprint.
But am I being fair comparing a car full of people with an empty bus or train?
It is true that full buses and trains are significantly less polluting per passenger than cars (even cars full of passengers). The problem is, for most of the day our buses and trains are far from full.
I couldn't find good occupancy figures for UK public transport systems - please help me if you can - but it seems most of our buses and trains are far from full most of the time.
That's because public transport systems are designed to meet peak demand.
Double-decker buses make a lot of sense in the rush hour but rumble around our cities almost empty in off-peak periods. Indeed, even at peak times every packed rush-hour bus is likely to make its return journey nearly empty.
And public transport has to offer a frequent service all day long. People won't use buses and trains unless they know they can get to where they want when they want.
We could run smaller buses in off-peak periods to cut emissions but think of the cost: bus companies would have to buy twice the number of vehicles. Read more about why public transport can be high-carbon here.
Should we conclude from this that the green choice is the car?
Here's where I get back on message. Even though travelling by car can be less polluting than public transport you should always take the public transport option.
That's because buses and trains are running anyway. They will be out there generating CO2 whether you ride them or not. So when you choose to take your car, the pollution you create will be on top of whatever the public transport option is producing.
The other key point is that my argument only really holds so long as you have other people in your car with you. Travel alone - the statistics show - and the car is, just as the greens claim, one of the most polluting forms of transport on earth.
So how have I got on without my Saab?
Well, despite my misgivings about getting rid of it, the truth is I found life without it much easier than I thought.
I recognise that giving up the car will not be so easy for most people. I live right in the heart of London, where public transport is almost always quicker and easier than taking the car.
But if you insist on continuing to use your car, you can get some tips on driving the low-carbon way in this video (made several months after I gave up the Saab). You can also see how a friend and I came up with a novel way of using my car to cut both our carbon footprints.
In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.
I'm Justin Rowlatt and I am the BBC's Ethical Man. My family and I spent a year trying to cut our carbon emissions and reporting on the exercise for 
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~49~RS~)
Comments
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Living over in Brussels with our extensive tram system, your argument about peak demand is particularly relevant. There are lots of almost empty trams at various times of the day yet at rush hours and for special occasions/events, they are absolutely full. In the 'green' spirit, many new tram tracks are now being laid down, often reducing the avaiable road width for cars. Are trams really that efficient? Seems logical but after reading your article, I'm not so sure.
Complain about this comment
So we've already made one unethical choice by forcing expensive and polluting mass transit systems on an apathetic public (at least here in America), and now we're supposed to compound the error by forcing another choice to use said mass transit systems "because they are already there"??
The misplaced logic is staggering.
Complain about this comment
Dear Justin,
It's good to know the background details and, yes, I can imagine that sometimes public transport is more polluting.
I also get by very comfortably without a car here in Cologne and would like to add one extra reason why public transport is better, even if at times a particular journey may be more polluting than with a car.
This reason is the 'chicken and egg' scenario of urban sprawl: Yes, if you own a car then you feel that you can buy a home either out of town or in a green suburb. You then find that public transport is not an option, that your spouse (and children) then also need cars and that at every turn (work, school, shopping) you need to use a car. If you hadn't had a car in the first place, you would have stayed either in the city or in a compact suburb where you could cover most of your needs on foot and on bicycle and then use public transport for longer journeys.
So for me the main comparison wouldn't be the CO2 per mile but rather what effects does car-ownership have on the transport requirements of a particular society? It acts as a 'centrifuge' which spins cities out into sprawling car-centric CO2-factories.
Complain about this comment
The idea that you can find a Virgin train that is only 25% full (or even 50%) is laughable. Every time I travel by Virgin it is more like 80%.
Complain about this comment
Probably also worth checking whether manufacturing/decommissioning and infrastructure CO2 are important factors. Also there is the congestion externality (extra cars cause more congestion and thus slower speeds and more co2 per km. CO2 is not the only pollutant - how about the costs of particulate pollution on health - not sure how this works for cars and public transport - buses seem to be much worse offenders in general
Finally what is the impact of increasing car efficiency and potential widespread use of electric vehicles?
Complain about this comment
If I understand you, you are arguing that we should continue to underuse buses, because underused buses are more polluting?
Complain about this comment
It's one thing to encourage people to use public transport when possible and another to tell people to use it because, well, we can't do anything about the waste created by public transport anyway.
Surely, having a public transport system that is more flexible and adapts to people's needs rather than having bus routes and train lines that are not being utilised fully. It's also alright for people living in and around London, as they have access to a public transport system that earns the name.
If you live in the countryside, for example, you're often lucky to get a (mini)bus passing through once a day these days. This also makes the car even more attractive as people cannot live their lives according to what the local council is prepared to subsidise (or not).
Not only that but since privatisation of most of the bus routes a lot of the buses used are old and polluting and do not inspire much confidence either.
The conclusion being, that firstly: the public transport network needs re-nationalising, to get a properly integrated bus and train system secondly: despite the car's environmental downsides it is not as polluting as some might make it out to be. The argumentation of the author of this piece being that public transport is the only solution, what he should be saying is that people should be trying to cut down the number of journeys they make and that if you drive somewhere, to try and organise as much car sharing as possible.
Complain about this comment
We seem to be being pushed quickly back towards cave dwelling technology in the name of what? Climate scientists now seem to be in agreement that manmade global warming is a fallacy and always has been. It has been proven that people like the author of "The Inconvenient Truth" didn't actually know what the definition of truth was.
Even if we want to lower our individual carbon footprint, for whatever reason, nobody is looking at the individual footprint as a whole. I see ads telling me I should drive 5 miles less a week. Why? When I only drive about 3,000 in a whole year. If we do need to go down the carbon reduction route then please allocate a personal budget so I can choose how I spend my carbon credits.
Complain about this comment
Cars greener than buses? - I would say 'sometimes' rather than 'maybe'
On my way to work early AM in a rural area I regularly find myself trapped behind a single deck bus with ONE teenage passenger. As you say figures are (suspiciously) difficult to come by but I have seen 9 litre (!) diesel engine doing 9 miles per gallon as a fair indication for buses.
Not that difficult for me, travelling alone, in my car to beat that figure for efficiency.
(No, I couldn't get on the bus and make it 2 passengers. It doesn't start where I live and it doesn't finish where I work - again a fairly common limitation for buses)
Complain about this comment
WRONG GREEN: There is much talk of emission levels here, but which emissions are the most harmful? I'm suggesting that there is a wrong green. Most cars in the UK run on petrol engines. Most commercial and public transport vehicles run on diesel. This includes buses and taxis. The impact of diesel fumes on air quality, and human respiratory problems, is far worse than that of petrol fumes, perhaps 25 times worse for each particle of carbon emitted. Saying that public transport is greener than using your car is an insult to the victims of these diesel emissions. (The high levels of asthma attacks can be blamed directly on diesel emissions.) The solution is a prompt ban on diesel vehicles in our city centres and a shift to alternative fuels for public transport. City vehicles are the best candidates for alternative fuels since they only make short journeys and can refuel easily. Until diesel fuel is replaced in city centres, nobody should be critised for using his/her petrol-fuelled car.
Complain about this comment
You make cars sound greener by comparing a full car with a half empty train or bus. But don't you have to compare like with like? The fact is that when most people do their travelling - in rush hour - most cars are carring one person and most public transport is very full. Which kind of blows a hole in your argument.
Complain about this comment
As a former insider in London's public transport, I recall that average ridership was about 14.7 persons per bus. There are approximately 8 million single bus trips per day in London.
Other points:
- Public transport has to run, whether it has an economic number of passengers or not - most private car journeys are because they are (perceived as being) necessary.
- Cars spend most of their time standing idle, but the problem with car club-type solutions is that they can't cater for all needs (do you want to borrow a car that someone has used to take his garden waste to the tip?)
- Public transport is (generally) fine for single person trips in urban areas but try taking your weekly groceries home on a bus - or better - try taking your recycling on a bus ...
- The cost of fares is a significant factor - and how much energy do you use earning your wages in order to pay the fares?
The most ethical question is not related to mode of transport but rather whether your journey is really necessary at all.
Complain about this comment
I would love to use public transport for more things, but (and I have done the maths on this) it is actually cheaper to travel by car for the majority of the journeys I make where I cannot walk it, even for one person. If two people travel from where I study to back home then it's around £15 in an average car, compared with £40 for the train, not to mention that I can do it in half the time.
Cities need something which is like the car (it goes where you want, when you want it) but which behaves from an environmental perspective like mass transit. PRT systems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit) look like they might have the idea, but are massively expensive to install and rely on unproven technology.
Intercity transport simply needs better planning and timetabling, as well as looking at capacity issues. I've been on several completely empty two-carriage trains for one half of a journey then standing in the middle of a single packed carriage for the second half. Perhaps something like a national, publicly owned railway company...
Complain about this comment
Lol, what Justin and some of the posters have conveniently ignored is that as suitable alternatives to car ownership arise - via clean, convenient and sensibly priced public transport - and car journeys fall the alternative becomes more environmentally sound. The carbon footprint of any 'full' public transport is considerable less than the single passenger in the car option.
Try getting on a train during peak, often they are cramped. So the real issue here is not about the carbon footprint of public transport per se' but the allocation and time tabling of that transport.
Any talk about public transport without mentioning its social role is disingenuous at best. Public transport timetables are there because many people that do not own cars and find using taxis too expensive still need to be able to get from A to B.
Complain about this comment
I don't think this article invalidates the general rule that cars are less efficient than public transport.
If everyone only used their cars when they contained at least two people, and used public transport the rest of the time, this would improve the average occupancy of both cars and public transport and hence the fuel efficiency of both.
Complain about this comment
Based on your calculations about public transport, if I have to stand on a bus or sit on the floor of a train because there are no seats, do I have a negative carbon footprint?
Also I challenge you to simulate my lifestyle by living in the midlands and working in London during the week, and taking public transport - you would SO wish for your car back !
Complain about this comment
Dear Justin,
Firstly, thank you for posting a factual and interesting blog item. Our puritan UK society seems to have reached the conclusion that whatever we do, if it isn't uncomfortable or unpleasant, we're ruining the climate.
Interestingly, at this point in time your comments are correct, but that's assuming that busses and trains continue to run directly on diesel or electricity based on fossil fuels. So as a snap shot your stats are correct.
However, what is clear is that we have abundant sources of none CO2 energy potential, some of it is consistent - always on - such as geothermal or nuclear energy, and other sources are not so reliable, such as wind/wave and solar energy. That said the key here then is storage and transportability of this energy, and there I believe we are on the edge of that revolution with new technologies: lithium air batteries, ultra capacitors, fuel cells to name a few. Only one of these technologies, or a combination there of, needs to advance a little to really change our dependence on the easily convertible dense energy sources that are combustible fossil fuels.
Batteries and electrical storage technologies only need to get two or three times better, in terms of energy density and recharge times, to make off grid storage of energy viable, providing a buffer for our inconsistent energy sources. Given that those energy storage media could be installed in trains cars and busses, all our transport needs could be made to run with a zero carbon footprint easily once the technology is in place.
A good example I read about recently was a Chinese bus service. The buses are electric, the pick up a charge on an array of Maxwell super capacitors, at each stop (in a number of seconds), and in this way they are able to complete their route without the need for diesel or heavy batteries. These capacitors can be ordered off the shelf today, but they just don’t quite make the grade in energy density.
In short, we shouldn't discount science and innovation in our need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Remember two years ago, plasma screens where being criticised as too energy hungry, we can now only buy LCD and LED LCD screens that consume less and less energy.
The progress is being made, but sadly it’s not going on in the UK and I’m afraid that in ten years we’ll be buying our solutions from the Chinese.
Complain about this comment
You know what I do? I take public transport if I have to travel alone and it suits my schedule, allows me to work during longer journeys or it is nearly impossible to park.
At all other times, car it is.
When exactly did we stop using common-sense?
Complain about this comment
Another factor is the value of time - from where I live I can be in central London in just over half an hour by train, one hour by car and over two hours by bus - so the train wins, despite its cost. However, to go to the local computer store would take half an hour by car or half a day by public transport (literally).
Horses for courses.
Complain about this comment
Where on Earth does Annsome get the idea that "Climate scientists now seem to be in agreement that manmade global warming is a fallacy and always has been"
There are many, many people who question man-made global warming, and I am not necessarily saying they are wrong to do so, but as a group, climate scientists are not among them. I can't say I have read a single report by reputable climate scientists, other than those funded by oil companies perhaps, that would support Annsome's claim.
Complain about this comment
Smoke(carbon)and mirrors aka miss-direction. Per person, per kilometre estimations are false because they make too many assumptions and exclude to many inconvenient factors - such as the CO2 emissions required to move personnel into position in order to operate a train service.
Proper comparison of emissions between two modes of transport must include the total minimum amount of CO2 emitted, when travelling empty (except for driver) during a set period - say 24 hours - by each mode to make a particular journey possible.
A ton of CO2 placed in the atmosphere is still a ton of CO2 no matter how many people put it there. And it is incredible to insist a train causes less CO2 emissions over a set distance than a car, a fraction of its mass.
Suppose London to York by car verses train. A number of trains will travel London/Edinburgh/London a number of times per 24 hours; The car need only make a single journey London/York to provide the journey possible.
The CO2 emissions to make the London/York journey possible is the total emitted by the train service and the total emitted by the car. The car wins. Even if we just consider moving the train once from London to York - car still wins.
Similar miss-leading claims are made for low energy light bulbs. Again the whole is not considered. It is assumed and stated as fact that the notional CO2 saved by the reduced consumption of a low energy bulb results in the same reduction in CO2 emitted by generation. In fact if the demand decreases on the grid, generators are still kept turning because the base load must be maintained, and some generators are kept running and disconnected from the grid because to ensure a stable tension at all times their output must be available at very short notice. Thus CO2 is still emitted but it is not being used to produce any electricity.
The amount of CO2 "saved" is thus considerably less than claimed. And, Human nature being what it is, because low energy bulbs are dim and "cheap" to run, most people use more of them and are less scrupulous in switching them off when not needed.
Notional and estimation can be whatever someone wants them to be to support their view or fantasy World. In the real World things are what they are and have an annoying habit of not being what we think they should be.
Complain about this comment
Interesting. You talk a lot about the "cost" in terms of g of CO2, but don't mention much about the underlying financial cost of the transport choices. By underlying, I mean the costs without the distortion of the taxation or subsidies.
I think this is important for two reasons.
1) I believe that the true financial cost of a choice, in a competetive market, is often a good initial proxy for the energy costs. The cost of any good or service is fundamentally just the energy cost + the labour cost, and much of each labour cost is ultimately an energy cost when you think about it.
2) A choice that reduces the CO2 output of a journey but increases its overall financial cost must tend to have the effect of reducing the economic output per unit of CO2 produced. A reduction in the efficiency of resource use (CO2 in this case) - I'm not sure that's the hoped for outcome.
Now, assuming that our aim is to increase energy efficiency - of transport in this case - then ignoring the financial or economic costs and benefits of the choices you make prevents any opportunity to understand the consequence choice in a fuller context.
So, what would be useful would be an analysis of your comparative costs, including the subsidy you contribute via taxes, for the choices you made, and an extension of that to estimate the costs to those not living in cities of making the same choices. I strongly suspect that the result, if properly done, would tell us that the private car is extremely efficient (economically and in terms of CO2) in many situations. I suspect this, because we can, and do, impose massive taxes on the cost of private motoring and supply large subsidies to public transport and yet private motoring is still very popular.
Ultimately, would it not be "unethical" to make a transport choice that reduced the overall efficiency with which energy is used and hence increased the amount of CO2 emmitted for the benefit obtained?
Complain about this comment
Public Transport is all very well if you live in a City in the UK where it is hardly economical to have a car anyway.
But, move out by a few miles (I'm still within the M25) 2 buses to get to my local 'big' town taking at least 40 minutes (when it is 10 minutes in the car). So when you consider that one of these bus routes runs a 2 hour schedule between 8am and 4 pm and the other a 1 hour schedule between 10am and 3 pm, you can see that not using a car is nigh on impossible.
If the Government wishes us to get out of our cars to 'Save the Planet', I would suggest they wait until they can offer a viable, relaible alternative before I myself consider it
Complain about this comment
I'm fairly sceptical about CO2 causing global warming. What I'm not sceptical about is the effect of small particles of unburnt diesel and other products of combustion directly affecting our health. How many people have sat in traffic behind a bus choking on a cloud of black smoke?
My city has a few ethanol powered buses and many cities have some electric buses but the majority of UK buses are diesel powered and often not in great automotive condition. In contrast there are many new cars such as the Prius which switches to electric power when in traffic or the new Audis or Fiat 500 that turn their engines off when stationary.
Another thing to consider is that I have a 6 mile drive to work which takes about 20 minutes door to door (Counting parking time) but drive directly from A to B. The only way I could do it by bus is to take a bus into the city centre then another bus out again to work. It would be over 10 miles and take an hour. THAT must affect the relative carbon footprint of the two journeys too.
Complain about this comment
Much of the problem is related to lifestyles.
When I was a child, most people lived within walking or easy bussing distance of their place of work. Children went to their local school and many walked.
We now have a situation where many people commute (often in their cars) up to fifty and more miles to work. Children (because of freedom of parental choice) attend schools at the other end on town. Many are driven to school, by their parents, often in 4x4s.
I am not saying that we should return to how things were in the past; but when I read the writings of environmentalists I have never seen reference
to the above factors.
It is also not surprising that people prefer car to train travel. Travelling by car is a fraction of the cost of most "walk-on" rail fares.
You can only get reasonable cost rail fares by either booking far in advance or travelling at inconvenient times.
Complain about this comment
Justin, you say:
Even though travelling by car can be less polluting than public transport you should always take the public transport option.
That's because buses and trains are running anyway. They will be out there generating CO2 whether you ride them or not. So when you choose to take your car, the pollution you create will be on top of whatever the public transport option is producing.
But they won't be running anyway if we don't use them enough. Many services are far from frequent in the evenings, in rural areas, etc.
Thanks for keeping a tab on the spin and keeping us informed of the data - much appreciated.
Complain about this comment
I think this article may need some follow up with some real world numbers (I think they are available: search a bit more Justin!), all it says now is that a badly managed and underused transport system pollutes, which does sound like kind of obvious. (Furthermore: it ducks the question why our livestyles have changed to use more transport: regardless of mode of transport living 5 km from your work is much better than living 50 km away).
Complain about this comment
And there is of course the very BIG difference in that if you have a car just sitting outside ready to go with a turn of the key then you are much, much more likely to hop in it (on your own) to make a journey that you could have taken by foot, cycle or bus.
I got rid of my car in 2003 and walk and cycle almost everywhere in town, rain or shine. At one of the local weekly meetings which I attend there are about four of us that cycle and about half that arrive individually each week at our meetings in the middle of town by car - because they can, or it's a bit chilly, or it is raining or might do. This underlines one of the main problems with cars in that people simply use them all the time for journeys that could be mad in a much environmentally friendly way, but the sheer convenience and warmth and personal space and music on the CD trumps all those other concerns almost every single time. And of course when you've already paid for the insurance, the road tax and the servicing and the tank's nearly full of fuel, you are likely to ask "What's the point if I don't use it?"
You don't just take a train on a whim although a bus journey may be spontaneous.
Perhaps one of the other reasons that buses and trains are less well used is because all those people than might be using in them are out there clogging up the roads in their cars instead. Just a thought.
And finally, 'annsome' - you say "Climate scientists now seem to be in agreement that manmade global warming is a fallacy and always has been." Nothing I have seen on any climate science web site or pronouncement from the IPCC supports such a statement! Could you please provide your source for that assertion? You may want to have a look here (just as a start, there are many others): http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/quick
Complain about this comment
This is a multi-faceted arguement.
More cars means more spend on roads and infrastructure, which is the wrong place to be spending transport monies. Best to use what we have most effectively. More people in a car may well be just as good as more people on a bus. We should inform commuinities of the alternatives and allow them to make up their own minds.
I enjoy driving and my car etc but am aware that lot of those who question public transport have not been on a bus since they were kids!
Worth trying.. a lot of bus services have moved on since the 70s & 80s.
It may even surprise everyone to know that the choices are not binary..you are allowed to do both!
Complain about this comment
Evidently the write of this article hasn't travelled on many virgin trains! Half full? Every time I have used their trains there has been approx 1.5 people per seat. The statistic he uses is far from representative of reality, and undermines the whole argument.
Complain about this comment
I read somewhere that a fully loaded Jumbo jet uses less fuel and produces less emissions per passenger mile than your average family car over the same distance.
Complain about this comment
This reflects an interesting issue about transport in rural areas where there are few people doing the same journey at the same time. For these types of journeys buses are necessary for those without access to cars, but they are certainly less environmentally efficient: sometimes empty, often with only one or two passengers (why not use small MPVs for some of these routes?). In town it's a different matter. This suggests policy should reflect the most effective form of transport for the purpose, not dogmas based on a lack of research. And of course increase the efficiency of all vehicles: there's no reason why the average car shouldn't be sub-140g/km, and falling.
Complain about this comment
I also live in Brussels and should say that the Belgian transport system is not bad.
However, as someone who tries to tie together the various 'green aspects' of - in this case - the car I think things are not really as clean cut and easy. My family and I combine public transport, a bike whenever possible (often), and a car. The car is used often in conjunction with moving 'large loads' which can be my work material, lots of people etc, and of course the famous big shop as already mentioned. However, as someone who often works at night, I notice immediately the problems of transport between towns (there is hardly any). Of course when one works late in Brussels taxis are very useful and weekends provide night buses.
But all these things really only cover local needs and Justin's experiences without a car are all much fun until he and his family start to confront other long distance problems. Trains can be used for such as holidays, visiting family and friends and the like, but in my experience can become very expensive and often don't even get you to your final destination - you may need a taxi, car, or bus still. In my experience we really need to solve more long distant travel solutions for people, or return to a more local existence, or many people will not give up cars and the like. We should remember that we are now creating economies that rely on tourism - and it's their only income in some cases. People could travel just as much IF much more public (long distance) transport such as trains, buses etc were more frequent and much, much more cheeper. Otherwise long distance travel will be only for the rich and that I suspect is a step in the wrong direction.
Finally the idea of getting rid of the car seems only one point in a long list. After all Justin mentioned the supermarket trip which most of us all know. It seems obvious that until governments start to boost local economies such as small shops, post offices etc, we will have a hard time deciding on what transport system to use. For all of those living in the countryside the lack of good schools, bakeries, post offices, small (but not very expensive) shops such as grocers etc will have to be encouraged back into the community. Other things such as entertainment, theaters and concerts in local pubs/cafés will also help cut down on mass migrations into large cities, shopping malls and may even convince some people to move back to the countryside?
Anyhow the list and the debate could (and will) go on. Who's next?
Complain about this comment
Its strange how no body mentions motorcycles in the green transport debate, I've been using one to get to work for the last 18 years, a small one is very fuel efficent and you don't waste fuel stuck in traffic
Complain about this comment
Motorbikes are clearly the way forward!
They start from your doorstep, and finish at your destination - giving the convenience of a car. They generally have much smaller engines than cars - which, with their smaller mass, gives the potential for far better fuel economy - think around 90-100mpg for a 125cc, while even a respectable 500cc can manage 60-70mpg with care. Pollution from manufacture is a fraction of that produced in making a car. And, to top it all,they take up far less space on the road, which = less congestion.
Just have to wrap up warm through the winter!
Complain about this comment
A friend of mine once pointed out that in general, public transport is a means of getting from where you are not, to where you don't want to go, at a time you do not wish to travel, in the company of people you would normally cross the street to avoid.
When it is much cheaper, much quicker, on average more comfortable and much more convenient to get on a motorcycle in Carmarthen (a town 250 miles from London with a mainline railway station) and ride up to the smoke than it is to get on an 'express' to London, I'd say that public transport has demonstrably failed to compete. The cost of coercive measures to force people onto unpleasant, slow, inflexible and expensive or even unavailable modes of transport will be seen in economic stagnation. And subsequently, electoral anihalation for whichever politician tries to impose such a thing.
If I could get on a train in Carmarthen and arrive in London less than 2 hours later, a la TGV, then people might consider that the advantages of the train outweighed the many other disadvantages, and the M4 would be less clogged as a result. But then the problem would be paying for the high speed lines...
Complain about this comment
I have a another question I have never been able to find an answer to. Train Rails need to be relaid every few years. Is the CO2 generated by the steel refineries included in the per passenger figure for trains? If not, why not?
Complain about this comment
As a follow-up I have just checked on the alternative public transport offerings that would get me from Hinckley to Staines on a Sunday evening and back again on a friday evening (both after 1900).
Out: Hinckley > Tamworth > Birmingham > Reading > Staines = 4hrs 12mins, Cost = £48
Back: Staines > Reading > Birmingham > Hinckley = 3hrs 47mins, Cost £48
Now add the fact that I live 2 miles from the station at Hinckley and that's a taxi ride each way @ £20 and 10mins.
So that's £136 and 8 hrs and 19 mins travel time per week.
(and I've cheated with the outward travel as there is no train from Hinckley AFTER 1900)
And with a car? £19 fuel, £11 costs (tax/ins etc) and 5 hrs 30 mins. And I get to have a sunday evening.
The car wins hands down - sorry!
Complain about this comment
Maybe a web-based solution could be helpful for the problem of undersubscibed public transport. You tell the transport company well in advance when and where you wish to go so that they can use their resources most effectively. The benefit of doing this is a lower rate with a guaranteed place on the transport. People who haven't pre-booked pay a higher rate and may find that there is no space.
When writing this (with buses in mind) I realized that this is pretty much what happens anyway for trains - having an idea of how many people are going to be on a train helps the company decide how many carriages it needs. Maybe a more modular "carriage" system would be feasible for buses?
Complain about this comment
You can debate the greenest form of transport ad infinitum.
The fact is moving things around needs a lot of energy.
The solution is not to move around more than necessary. Consumption is the issue, not efficiency!
Complain about this comment
PS: Those who suggest that in order to reduce the need for cars, everybody should reorganise their lives to live and work in the same postcode, in order to fit into a future where personal transport has been banned by some "Green" Dictatorship, are being... somewhat unrealistic. Just think that through for a moment...
Complain about this comment
The author appears to critique the public transit system by saying "public transport systems are designed to meet peak demand." However, in this regard automobiles are certainly no better which require well over 1000 kg of energy- and resource-intensive steel and plastic to transport barely over 100 kg of flesh and blood (given average occupancy of 1.6 people). Worse yet, the occupancy rate is further reduced to 1.1 persons per vehicle during commute times. This is utter madness! Not to mention that automobiles sit around unused for roughly 90% of the time collecting dust and losing value.
Regarding issues of soot emissions by buses, most new diesel buses come with filters which reduce particulate emissions by 85% and more. Retrofits are also possible, and in some cities mandatory in order to reduce the negative health effects of public transit.
Complain about this comment
I have raised the argument myself in the past that public transport will always be green as they will be running if you catch them or not too. And true the point is. However, being a bit of a leftie, I think we could go further with that in respect to prices, and therefore make it easier for people to make the decision to ditch the car.
If a train will be running from London to say Manchester every hour every day weather it has passengers or not, then why should the ticket cost different prices for different distances? For example why not make it a fiver where ever you want to go? It doesnt cost the train company any more money if you get on it or not as it's already going there. I respect things are perhaps not as simple as that, but generally people like convenience, but a massively cheaper option would easily sway a huge amount of people.
An ad-hoc visit to London from the north of England could easily hit over £100 for a round trip, when you could jump in the car for less than £80 (I'm adding the cost of a parking ticket too here to make it more comparable!!) Truth is I still can't believe that public transport is value for money, and until it is, people wont like it.
Complain about this comment
Another thing: A car takes you directly where you want to go, which often requires less total distance than making the same trip by mass transit -- especially if the mass transit trip requires making a transfer. If for example getting from point A to point B takes 4 kilometers by car but 6 kilometers by mass transit, then you really must adjust the mass transit's pollution figures upward by 50% to compare them fairly.
Sometimes a trip by mass transit does require less in-vehicle distance than driving, but only because it doesn't take you the whole way. First you have to walk to the station, then at the other end you have to walk from the station to your actual destination. That's really a point in favor of driving though (pollution aside).
In mass transit's favor, it does eliminate the need to drive around looking for a place to park and the extra pollution this entails.
Complain about this comment
The passenger emissions/km figures that you use can perhaps be viewed from a different angle.
It is not fair to calculate public transport on the basis of only the passengers that were on board, what about the potential passengers who might have waiting at the next stop, or otherwise had an interest in the bus/train being there.
I did not use the late night bus home last night, but on some occasions I do, thus I have an interest in that bus being there, whether I was on board on not.
Perhaps we could say that half or less of the emissions are attributed to the passengers on board, the rest should be shared between all the potential passengers, that is pretty much every UK citizen.
A significant part of public transport emissions should be treated as essential UK infrastructure, and attributed to us all equally, whether we are on board or not.
That would shift the emphasis of your calculations rather.
Complain about this comment
Some interesting logic but not really adding anything to the green debate. People might start to listen to the powers that be about green matters when they do something about it themselves rather than telling us to cut our emissions by driving electric cars, etc. As usual the government offers no incentives but instead taxes to death the non-compliant.
How about making the entire train and bus network electric before enforcing us to drive electric cars that barely last the rush hour queue before running out of charge? Buses only make short journeys so they are ideal for electrification, and in any case there is more space in buses for larger batteries than in cars.
Might encourage the government to install some electricity points, too, rather than leaving the public to recharge at home (which isn't practical when you need to travel a distance of more than about 2 hours and can't get back without running out of charge).
When they go green, I'll go green.
Complain about this comment
The idea that everyone should live within a few miles of their work is lovely.
Sadly in the real world what happens is this: I bought a house 20 mins walk from work. My boss then quit and took up a better post elsewhere. I then get made redundant and have to take up a job 12 miles away which I hated and forced me to buy my first car. 18 months later I managed to escape & got a new job 6 miles away which has no direct bus links.
With house prices and mortgage availability what they are we live where we can afford to live and most of us need two incomes to pay the mortgage so BOTH partners will need to find 'local' jobs. Thats simply not possible.
#35. I'd question whether 'small local shops' are greener than supermarkets. Supermarkets have centralised distribution systems and get their deliveries in bulk. Contrary to popular myth their wastage levels are incredibly small (less than 2%... and before you start condemning this remember that the vast majority of items sold by supermarkets are tinned or packet dry goods). A small number of very large trucks will be preferable to many smaller ones. There are a couple of supermarkets within a couple of miles of my house whereas being a mostly residential area (and mostly victorian housing stock before you blame modern planning) there are remarkably few local shops beyond corner newsagents nor anywhere to build a 'local' shopping street.
Complain about this comment
Some interesting comments. But the argument that the buses and trains are running anyway so we might as well use them instead of our car cuts both ways. Since a Boeing is going between London and New York anyway, I can fly transatlantic with a clear conscience, knowing that I'm not contributing any more carbon. If my weight is trivial compared to the weight of my car, how much more trivial is it compared to the weight of a 747?
Complain about this comment
It's good to see someone looking at actual data on this subject. Perhaps a few other important factors could be considered next time, too?
For one thing, comparing emissions in terms of g/km ignores the fact that a car journey is typically door-to-door, or fairly close to it. Journeys by bus or train could easily travel twice as far, or more, to get from the same starting point to the same destination, because they go by indirect routes.
It's also all very well claiming that public transport is near full at busy times, and of course mass transportation is more efficient on busy routes at busy times, where there are plenty of people making similar journeys. But then to be realistic, you have to divide that passenger level by two for many public transport routes, because at times when things are packed in one direction, there is often hardly anyone going the other way.
Finally, the focus in this article is very much on CO2. Of course, that is an important pollutant to consider, but so are nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides, particulates (PM10s)... These other emissions cause or aggravate a variety of health problems, some of them very serious, and the big diesel engines in buses are much, much worse at generating them than a typical petrol car engine.
Complain about this comment
Compare horses with horses. You are comparing a full car with an empty train, but nearly all cars have one person in them. If you are using an empty train to comparee with you need to use an empty car also.
Complain about this comment
Being BBC employe's you will presumably have completed an up to-date Health and Safety course so there will be no need to remind you that it is illegal and extremely dangerous to have an unrestrained shoulder mounted camera on a camera persons shoulder whilst in a moving car. If the majority of camera persons sensibly abide by these rules then I see no reason why a self shooting BBC staff producer should be allowed by management to abide by a different set of rules. Try explaining your actions to the contributors family after the unrestrained camera fly,s forward and smashes him in the back of the head during an accident.
Irresponsible, illegal, dangerous and plain stupid.
Complain about this comment
Maybe just maybe someone should study why we're all moving so much creating congestion etc, rather focusing on moving the problem around from planes to trains, to cars and buses!
Maybe a tax on businesses for employing outside of a local area would be a good idea? More perks for people that walk/cycle to work?
Complain about this comment
Mass transit is all very well but we must consider the costs, financial and otherwise, associated with the complete journey.
Take my trip to see my parents, as an example. I can get in my car and drive the 80-odd miles. If I can avoid peak traffic it normally takes me about an hour and a half, from my front door to theirs.
If I take the train it takes me 10 minutes to walk to the station, then 10 minutes to travel to the interchange, then usually 75 minutes to get to the destination station. But that's still 15 miles away with only one bus every two hours, so a car is still needed for the last 15 miles. And, allowing time to buy a ticket and take into account the vagaries of train times (time to cross stations, and allow waiting times between one train arriving and the next leaving) we're looking at 2 hours or more, plus the time to get from the final station to the final destination.
Any journey that involves crossing London is even worse. So, for instance, if I wanted to go from Southampton to Edinburgh I could struggle on the train, or I could argue that the plane is going to fly even if I'm not on it, so by being on it I can save myself a lot of time, a lot of money, and for no less inconvenience than taking the train.
Complain about this comment
Perhaps now would be a good time to consider a new generation transport system (PRT - Personal Rapid Transit) by people and leaders who are concerned about the environment and the well-being of citizens in general. It seems that everything we are doing at present is not making things better, so perhaps it's time for a radical change? One system in particular, called MISTER (Metropolitan Individual System of Transportation on an Elevated Rail) ticks all the right boxes. It is a cross between a taxi and a metro and can solve all city transport problems. Including goods delivery and refuse removal.
There are several of these PRT systems around the world currently in development, including ULTRA at Heathrow and another system in Masdar, UAE, but if comparing their parameters and functionality to MISTERs', they are a long way off. If anyone is interested, more info can be found at http://www.mist-er.eu/home-page.html
MISTER fan
Complain about this comment
Surely you need to consider the time of day here. Yes, public transport is not so green during off peak times, but during rush hour in most (if not all) UK cities buses/trains are full to the brim. What are the average figures? I'm sure on average, public transport is greener. And most people won't take all 5 members of their family in the car with them when they travel to work.
As you said, you can change statisitcs to show anyway, with a few 'ifs' and 'buts'
Complain about this comment
The problem with public transport is its very nature.
People want personal transport, to go where they want and when they want without having to work around scheduled timetables and journey plans.
Cars must be made more fuel efficient and the only way to force that change is by raising fuel duty to put the price of a litre of UNL/Derv up to 1.60 or 1.70
Scrappage schemes should only provide subsidies to the most fuel efficient replacements.
This would also push long distance freight off the roads and back onto the railways where it belongs.
Complain about this comment
#45. On small flaw in your plan. The train only runs at all because the train company has a small number of people paying £100+ to travel between London and Manchester. If you could get away with just £5 the journey would be running at a massive loss and frankly no-one would be fool enough to book at full price. Frankly neither me, nor the country has enough spare cash to effectively pay for people to travel by train for free because your scheme would need massive subsidy from somewhere. Just this week the company running the east coast main line has given the franchise back to the government because it doesn't pay. The taxpayer is already susidising the rail network to a huge extent via network rail. Public transport certainly won't be value for money if you're being forced to pay for it whether you use it or not.
#48 The problem isn't just availability of charge points but the time it takes to charge the battery. It takes me 2 or 3 mins to put 50L of petrol into my car. A decent electric car battery will take 16 hours to charge at domestic amperage. 'Electric' cars running from fuel cells (methanol or hydrogen) are a more viable option but generating both fuels requires more carbon going into production than is saved by not burning petrol. Releasing hydrogen from water, then chilling it to a liquid, transporting it and storing it is incredibly energy consuming.
Complain about this comment
I taught English at a car factory (TPCA) here and remember a statement that the environmental manager told me - the average car consumes more energy whilst being made in the factory than it ever will on the road.
If that is true, it alters the debate considerably. Why replace an older car with a more efficient modern one if the latter uses large amounts of energy (and other resources) in the production process?
So, do we need to add energy consumption in the production of trains, planes, buses etc into the debate?
Complain about this comment
#54 - wonderful idea. Shame about the people who live in remote areas of lower employment who can't afford to move. Your proposal would make them unemployable and their homes unsaleable.
Oddly enough I think you'll find most people would prefer to live near to where they spend their time. I can't think of anybody I know who enjoys a long commute. But unless you want to see heavy industry mixed into residential areas you're always going to have people commuting.
Just for good measure, how would you define "local"? If we look at areas of London, for example (a good example since property prices range from excessive to insane within a short distance). To use an example, travelling from SW London means somewhere like Guildford can be reached in 15 minutes. Croydon is half the distance but more than double the journey time. Which one gets taxed?
Complain about this comment
Dear Justin,
The environmental impact of car culture is not simply in carbon dioxide emissions, although even here the figures in favour of cars that rely on a full load of passengers simply don't reflect everyday usage.
Instead the environmental impact can be seen in the vast range of negative social consequence from car culture. Others have already talked about the greater suburban sprawl that has a negative impact on community cohesion. Then there's the obvious destruction of vast swathes of countryside (and town green areas), and the urban isolation caused by living near busy roads. Children being allowed kept inside their houses for fear of them being run over. The huge death and injury toll every year from road traffic incidents. Even small things like the tarmaccing over of gardens to provide driveways and that subsequently contributes to faster rain run-off rates and increased urban flooding.
The sudden introduction of solar cars wouldn't prevent the continuing negative consequences of the way that cars are shaping our society. And there still wouldn't be any more parking spaces...
Complain about this comment
I drive a 15 year old diesel car that gets 60mpg. I commute 200 miles per week, and spend approximately £18 in diesel. I pay for mot and tax anyway, so I would still have these costs if I used the train for work. If I stopped using my car this would require a daily 3 mile taxi trip to the station to catch the train (£4.50), train ticket to the town I work in (£9.00 return), another £4.50 taxi trip to reach my company. I would then have to repeat the taxi trips in order make it home in the evening. If I tavelled to the station in my car to start and finish my train journey I would be hit with a daily £8 parking fee (not much different to the taxi trips). As for the bus, it does not run early enough in morning to be of use, and still £5.00 return to the station if it was a convenient option. It's also as old as, and more polluting than my car. All of these options probably produce as much carbon as going in my car, and as for cost comparison's I cannot see an valid argument. Send a bus to my street to pick me up in the morning, then have it wait at my workplace in the evening and I would use it. If I could avoid the daily drive I would do so as its not how I would choose to start my day had I another option. But economics and convenience rule I'm afraid.
Complain about this comment
The key insight that I have taken away is that buses and trains are greener than cars but only when occupancy rates are quite high. This requires people to leave their cars in the garage and use public transport more often helping to push this number up. This is how we can collectively make a difference to our environment, a message sadly omitted from this story.
Also, the government and the green lobby needs to put pressure on transport groups to reduce emissions through a more fuel-efficient fleet, as well as eliminating routes which have high emissions per passenger mile.
Complain about this comment
#54. Why is EVERY green solution apparently a punitive tax? If you choose to live a long way from your place of work and drive then you already pay about 80% of the cost of your fuel in tax, plus road tax (and in my case because I work in a hospital £300 a year for a parking permit). Slapping an additional tax on businesses who employ the best candidates rather that the bloke who lives round the corner just seems a great way to finally kill our economy off. You don't see the really big global polluters like the US or China doing this. If it wasn't for the already massive tax bill of those of us who work there'd be no subsidy at all for 'Green' tranport such as the massive white elephant that is Nottingham's tram system.
Complain about this comment
The average man must weigh more than 75kg! 75kg is my weight, an athletic male, and most men these days are carrying more fat.
Complain about this comment
Some good points by KiltedGreen.
I'd like to add that there are many people who would like to do their journeys by foot, cycle or bus, but the large numbers of cars on our roads puts them off. So they get a car instead.
A lot of people are nervous of cycling in heavy traffic and alternative provision is not being made quickly enough.
Cars take up an excessive amount of road space, and make bus journeys slower. (If you can get across the road to your bus stop in the first place, that is).
People end up driving their kids everywhere because it is safer.
In addition to this,personal car usage has encouraged firms to build out of town shopping centres which can only be reached by car.
The whole car culture creates a spiral of increasing travelled mileage which shouldn't be necessary.
Complain about this comment
I was just reading the comments and saw one relating to how full Virgin Trains are.
"Every time I travel by Virgin it is more like 80%." -- this has to be at peak times. When I travel by Virgin Trains, I usually go during the day at around lunchtimes (mainly at weekends as well when you expect the trains to be busy) and in the evenings at about 7pm onwards. I find that almost all Virgin Trains at these times are next to empty, maybe 10 people in each carriage and even less in the quiet carriages.
The point about public transport running constantly is completely valid in my experience. I live in Lancaster and the public transport system is hugely accomodating, everywhere I look I see a bus running, I live at the end of a one-way street and there are still buses running down it during the day.
Public transport is always running and they have to, people expect it to be there when they need it. Bus drivers, train drivers, tram drivers etc. can't just stop their vehicle because it's empty, they have to carry on driving regardless.
If you sat at your local bus station from when it opened to when it shut and counted the number of buses that had less than 5 people on them, I bet it would be over half of the services.
Complain about this comment
I can't afford to be "green"!
I have a car.
I sometimes use the train or buses - when I have to. But I do so VERY grudgingly, because for most journeys, I can take the car for a fraction of the cost. For example, I will be flying from Heathrow Airport soon (less carbon emissions than driving!) and will be away for six days. My wife and I could walk to the station (with our luggage) and get the train (luckily she has a railcard for discounted travel) for a grand total of £55. We could get the bus, for £45 (the bus arrives at Heathrow two hours after our plane departs, and there's a seven hour wait for the bus when we return). Or we could get in our car from our driveway and drive 23 miles each way, and pay to park next to the airport. All for less than the cost of the discounted train tickets.
Isn't London Transport planning £2 for a single bus trip? Again - think of a group of five friends who want to get from one end of Oxford Street to the other - they'd be crazy not to get a taxi (especially if they don't have Oyster cards or pocketfuls of pound coins to buy tickets from those stupid machines).
Until this pathetic excuse for a government reduces the cost of public transport, I, along with millions of others, will continue to get in my comfortable, convenient, air-conditioned/heated, exciting (relative to a bus) car. People will resist using public transport because it is stupidly expensive. That is an irrefutable fact.
Basically the planet is beyond redemption anyway, so the only option is to stop breeding so the world can cope with a substantially reduced population. The population will substantially reduce whether mankind stops breeding or not - if we carry on breeding, famines and water shortages will inevitably ensue, which will drastically reduce the population anyway. I believe the world is far more resilient than most people give it credit for - admittedly it may take several millennia (a blink of the eye in geological timescales) to recover from mankind's destructive efforts, but nature will win out in the end.
I do not have children and have no plans to burden this planet with additional polluters (and have them live through what will undoubtedly be a pretty unpleasant few decades). If you have kids, you have already slammed another nail in the coffin of the Earth, unless you can be sure that your offspring will become a genius and develop some sustainable energy source (nuclear fusion?) to "save the planet" (or, even better, develop and release a virus which sterilises at least half the population).
Wow....this rant has really gone on. Time to put the heating on and open the windows! * not really *
Complain about this comment
Firstly, Justin, you don't seem to know too much about public transport! I use public transport all of the time and have done for years owing to the fact I've never learned to drive (too expensive for me). In the first instance, public transport companies only put on enough buses to meet public demand at any given time. It is uneconomical for them to provide a peak-time service all of the time so they don't do it. Moreover, the bus routes around my way (Coventry) are largely full most of the time.
Secondly, Justin, a tonne of CO2 dumped into the upper atmosphere by an aeroplane is far more damaging than a tonne of CO2 dumped out of vehicles and so forth at ground level.
Thirdly... Jon Bowman from post #23... The comment about the energy saving light bulbs is somewhat valid, although I think you miss the point a little. but ss for your comments regarding a hypothetical journey up to York from London? Well, I find your lack of logic disturbing. Your post looks like you're feeling guilty and trying whatever you can to justify your current habits without thinking about what you're saying.
Complain about this comment
Suppose that you need to go to the shop. In you car it is 1 km. So you emit 360gm to drive (1km each way). Now you take the bus. The bus doesn't go directly to the shop so the route is longer. So you are on a bus,emitting a lower emission per passenger kilometer, but you are travelling farther so the emissions are ... the same. Actually worse. The actual emissions for a bus are the total distance a passenger travels/divided by the total miles the bus travels.Anyone who has been into the center of Oxford knows that at the end of the route, the bus leaves empty.
Complain about this comment
I am glad you have raised this issue. It is important that we know accurately how much carbon public transport uses on average otherwise we will not be making sensible plans. These figures should be published by transport companies along with their annual accountants.
Similarily - Why are we still tied to a 19th century model for trains. There were plans drawn up to provide Bristol (I think) with a train system based on small self propelled Cars. There would be no timetable. You would get into a waiting car, Enter you Destination and be taken Directly there. The station would in effect be siding with trains joining a contiuous flowing central rail system. Computers would control trains joining and leaving the flow rail. This System could be energy efficient and though the speed of the vehicles would only be 30mph Journey times would be short because there would be no stopping.
Computer analysis has shown that for over 96% of passengers a Car would be waiting.
Whilst this system may not be suitable for every situation it has enough promise that it should be developed and tried.
Complain about this comment
#54 & #61: You have both hit the nail on the head. Until PLANNING laws change we will NEVER solve this problem. Land is classified as either AGRICULTURAL, INDUSTRIAL, COMMERCIAL or RESIDENTIAL - in that order. It is not uncommon for the use of the first 3 to be switched but heaven-forbid if they are switched to residential use. The planning authorities just don't allow it. If I bought a plot on a commercial estate and tried to build a house I would be blocked.
Thus houses will never be built on business parks and offices never on housing estates.
Plus the howls of complaint from the NIMBYs.
So there you have it - to solve the green issue - change the planning laws.
Complain about this comment
#60. I'd find the idea that the car takes more energy to make in the first place than it will ever consume on the road hard to believe (although as an open minded guy I'll admit its possible). I do agree with you about the relative merits of old v new cars though. I've got an 11 year old vauxhall astra with about 60,000 miles on the clock, have it serviced every 6 months and keep the tyres at the correct pressure, my oil topped up and drive as efficiently as possible (not least because in an 11 year old car you don't want to thrash the engine and kill it!). I can get 250 miles urban driving or 450 miles motorway from a single tank of fuel. I don't believe that the fuel savings from getting a smaller or more modern car could possibly offset the cost of building the new car.
Hybrid cars in particular are very un-green to build in the first place. You have to build a petrol car then add in the cost of producing the copper and acid batteries for the electric side of things. Copper mining is incredibly damaging and usually done in places like Chile.
Complain about this comment
Your conclusion doesn't match your headline!
Complain about this comment
#40. At 10:45am on 20 Nov 2009, grahamtuer
Not going to comment on your lifestyle choice as we all have our reasons for living there, working here etc... But, is it fair to compare car travel to train travel when you probably chose were to live and work based on your options made possible by car? i.e. If you had to use public transport you wouldn't have made that choice and lived/worked somewhere else to accommodate that fact?
Complain about this comment
i spent 7 years living without a car simply because i couldnt afford one. i'm not 'lucky' to live within walking distance of my work place, i looked for a place to live that was within the distance or on public transport route *because* i didnt have a car. so it kind of worked the other way around.
having used public transport quite a bit as you can imagine (not buses very often as if its short enough to bus its usually short enough to bike, but using trains a fair amount) my main beef with the trains is the cost! if i had to travel on peak time and without booking in advance (both of which happend quite a lot because i had to take unpredictable journeys at times) i was paying like £22 for a return to the nearest major city 50 miles away. it also took as long as the same trip by car (though i prefer train travel because you can do other things during traveling time).
if the costs were cheaper then a lot more people would use the trains (but would there even be the capacity to cope with that?)!
Complain about this comment
More astonishingly bad journalism from the BBC 'I am going a green heresy' We're not really interested in you Justin, or what you do. We're interested in reading a story. You are a green journalist in the truest sense of the word.
Complain about this comment
#63 Colin: See point #40 - I made exactly the same point about my weekly commute.
Plus time is a factor: Avg wage = £25k = £19k after tax, Avg hours per year = 1900, value of personal time = £10 per hour. If you start to factor this value into the calculations the arguments for public transport are shot to pieces. I value my time.
#60 : You are so right about the cost of car/bus/plane production vs usage. So if everyone kept their car for an extra year than they planned to then massive savings would be made.
But fundamentally people are like water and will always choose the easiest route, thus if a car is available they will take it. And there's the weather. Doesn't it rain in this country? (Apologies to those in Cumbria).
Complain about this comment
There is the social cost to those too old or infirm to drive - they need easily available public transport. It will make it easier for them ot have some kind of social life, and complete normal tasks like shopping, and it will keep people off the roads who could be considered a danger, since we all feel the need to drive 'skilfully' and 'fast'.
Complain about this comment
#13 You only blow a hole in your own argument.
If everyone travels during rush hour why do we continue to run empty buses throughout the day?
To summarise the blog:
Full bus greener than full car? Yes
Empty bus greener than empty (driver only) car? Yes
Empty bus greener than full car? No
As many posters have said though, only those with access to buses have a choice.
Has anyone mentioned the weather yet? How many walk out their front door and past their car to wait on a bus in torrential rain/snow and/or howling wind?
Complain about this comment
#79 I posted before your post appeared.
Complain about this comment
Did anyone ever consider the logistical problems associated with trying to be green?
I bought a mountain bike six months ago - partly for recreation and partly to replace the car for shorter trips where no bulky bags are required. But then I hit a problem. Where do I park my bike? Where can I leave it, secure in the knowledge it will still be there when I return?
As it stands I need to secure the bike to a solid post. No problem there. But I need a lock to secure the rear wheel and frame, a cable to secure the front wheel, and I need to take the lights, GPS mount and saddle with me to prevent them from being stolen. London Police's own crime fighting advice is to take anything with you that's quick release. Er, that means the entire bike except for the frame. So it seems I can't take my bike into town in case someone nicks it. The bus is smelly and unreliable, and by the time I've walked to and from stations I might as well have driven. So I guess I'll take the car after all.
If we can get secure cycle parking and get away from the idea that "cycle provision" means a green bit of tarmac beside the main road so people can park in it, perhaps we'll get more people out of cars and onto bikes. Until then, cycling remains a recreation rather than a viable means of transport.
Complain about this comment
Someone suggests "looking harder" for the information about the distance travelled with passengers and the distance without. GOOD LUCK. I've been saying this about busses for years after noticing heavily polluting busses pass my workplace every 5 minutes with only the driver on board almost every time. YES it was near the end of the route, but even at peak times and on the busiest parts of the routes there were rarely more than 10 people on board.
No-one has ever been able to provide me with this information, and at least one bus company has told me that it's "impossible to record" this information.
Complain about this comment
#76: Please see my comment #73 regarding planning laws.
I would dearly have loved to live near my work but my work regularly takes me to different places AND I had to move here due to the high cost of housing in the SE. If the planning laws were altered and allowed me to afford to live near my work I would gladly give up my weekly commute. As it is, I do it as efficiently as I can by travelling out of peak hours. Life is not perfect, but public transport certainly isn't.
Complain about this comment
Empty bus greener than empty (driver only) car? Yes
**************************
I don't think so, how can it be greener for a bus with an at least 4 litre diesel engine weighing 3-4 tons be greener than an empty 1.6 litre 1 ton car?
That is too obvious to me.
Complain about this comment
Derek: Cars take up an excessive amount of road space, and make bus journeys slower
Actually, buses take up an excessive amount of road space and make car journeys slower. Mostly by taking up the bus lane and the car lane when they stop at bus stops. The last round of bus driver strikes were a joy here - traffic flowed so much more smoothly, even though a) there were more cars on the road and b) cars STILL couldn't use the bus lanes.
Complain about this comment
I've never understood why the carbon cost of maintaining the entire railway infrastructure is not included in the comparison. Hundreds of railway stations, maintenance buildings etc across the railway network all consumer significant amounts of power, resulting in CO2 emissions. In fact, it's very possible this infrastructure results in as many tonnes of CO2 emitted over a 24 hour period as the trains themselves. Roads don't need stations.
Complain about this comment
#69 Paul: Well done - you dared mention children. (Like you I have none).
IF man is responsible for the demise of the planet (I think the planet is quite capable and does not need our help - just look at the state of roads that are rarely driven on, then the logic goes that anyone who has more than 2 children are responsible for furthering its demise. Can I claim my 2-child carbon credits now please?
Complain about this comment
Re: green punitive taxes only hit car drivers.
from another post :-
'I drive a 15 year old diesel car that gets 60mpg. I commute 200 miles per week, and spend approximately £18 in diesel'
If the fuel duty was raised so that a litre of derv was 2.20 (double what it is now)
and your car manufacturer raised your mpg to 120 then you would still only be spending 18 pounds per week on diesel.
Complain about this comment
I think that this is a really interesting contrarian post.
It is proving massively hard to shift consumers (myself included) out of cars but there are sites that are trying at least to get to choose greener cars. Unfortunately the age old debates about whether Prius's are really green given that they are complex technology shipped from Japan rage on...Sites such as http://www.whatgreencar.com do an excellent job at informing the public as to what is going on in green cars as well as helping them choose the most environmentally friendly ones. Interestingly WhatGreenCar makes the new Prius its Car Of The Year 2009!
Complain about this comment
So we need to invent public transport that's just like a car. Hmmm. That's really difficult. Why don't we make a car that's available to the public. We could call it a 'taxi'. When nobody wants to use it it could sit on a 'rank' and not emit any CO2. Maybe we should subsidise taxi's rather than inefficient public mass transit.
Complain about this comment
"The average car emits something like 180g per passenger kilometre"
Is this the average car with only the driver in it or the average car with driver and 3 passengers? You say pack in passengers but I believe the average car is the one with the driver only, that is where the problem lies. Where there may be buses and trains empty off peak there are certaily cars with driver only off peak and all the rest of the time too.
Complain about this comment
Post #10 Annsome wrote "Climate scientists now seem to be in agreement that manmade global warming is a fallacy and always has been" ...I think it is possible to count the number of Climate scientists who disagree with man made global warming on one hand - but carry on ignoring the blatant inconvenient truth if you so wish.
Climate change aside, we still need to conserve our resources and look to move to a low carbon economy for the following reasons:
- National security and energy independence
- Oil is only going to get more expensive
- Have renewable energy resources so we are not dependant upon finite resources
Complain about this comment
#86
Sorry posted in a rush
Should have said
Empty bus greener than empty (driver only) car? No
Complain about this comment
I used to go to work on the train 1 or 2 days out of 4, until the office moved from the town centre to a new out-of-town development. I tried it once (with added extra cost and time of a bus journey) but have always travelled by car since then.
However, the only thing that makes it practical for me to work 35 miles from home (as a contractor, not a permanent employee, so it's not worth trying to move house) is the motorway. Without it I would have to drive miles through the city or suburbs which would take too long and I wouldn't have contemplated taking the contract.
The more we improve our roads, and develop sites with road transport in mind, the more we encourage people to increase their CO2 output.
Complain about this comment
So why not argue to fill up trains and buses rather than cars?!
Complain about this comment
Justin, one big issue often ignored in favour of the car is the carbon footprint of the public transport infastructure and the journey to the public transport point which can often be in the wrong direction.
Factor the above in and public transport suddenly becomes very ungreen compared to the best design green cars.
More on this and other related issues at the Internet-Public-library.org
Average Bus occupancy in Cardiff 5.5 passangers (average for all bus journeys 2006 source: Cardiff Bus Company).
National average bus fuel consumption is 5.6 mpg (1328gm/km CO2) and average occupancy 9 passengers (Source Cambridge Energy 2007)
Complain about this comment
It always amazes me that we only ever focus on the most easily measured culprits for CO2 emmissions. The arguments above tend to focus on useage and a few variations on the complexities of usage.
However, has anybody ever produced believable figures regarding the Carbon Footprint associated with the production of different forms of Transport, e.g. small/medium/large Car, Train, Bus, Plane... starting with the extraction of base/mineral Resources, working through the formation/manufactuer of base Products used in the production of Parts/Materials, moving through the Vehicle Manufacturing Process right up to final delivery to a Sales Point ?????
It would be very interesting if somebody conducted such analysis, including the CO2 emmissions associated with the use of all Enery Sources used at every stage of that process.
In other words, how does the CO2 footprint to get a Vehicle 'on the Road' compare with, say, the footprint for its first year of typical use ??
Food for thought
Complain about this comment
You might want to dig out the research from Lancaster University on the greeness or not of public transport, carried out some years ago. It was very quiclky 'disappeared' by governments and the media, presumably because it conveyed the wrong message.
When governments brief the IPCC to deliver a report with the worst case scenario and then send it back for redraft because it's not bad enough, you know that climate change has become a political football, with a healthy, attached industry represented by a strong and vibrant lobby group. The fact that 'hundreds of world scientists agree' distracts attention from the FACT that those who agree are mainly climate modellers, not climate specialists. These people have a vested interest in promoting modelling and obtaining funding for their industry.
The FACT that a petition, signed by 1750 of the world's leading climate scientists, denounced the IPCC's findings as unscientific, never made it to the headlines in front of our cereal bowls may give free-thinking individuals a clue as to the drivers...
Complain about this comment
#90: 30 years ago I was able to get 30mpg out of my car, now 60mpg, so manufacturers are improving cars at the rate of roughly 1mpg per year. I don't think Colin (#63) wants to wait that long !
Complain about this comment
Re my comment at 60 and those at 74 and 79,
Here is along item looking at energy costs of production:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=433981
Seems my quote was wrong! Only about 11% of total energy consumption is in production.
Complain about this comment
Has it occurred to anybody that the whole CO2 Emmissions concern is just a veil for the fact that we have finite Resources that we've mis-managed since the late 1800s to the point that Governments now (perhaps rightly so) want to slow the rate of exhaustion of those Resources by the Masses, in order to direct as much as possible towards the exploration of new, renewable Energy Sources before we run out of what little we do have to pursue such experimental ventures !!
Complain about this comment
ThoughtCrime2008 you bought the wrong bike, if you want a bike to commute on you get a cheaper one without quick release, then all you need is a lock. I use a 1983 raliegh cost nowt and is much faster on the road than any mountain bike which generally have the wrong gearing for road use.
Complain about this comment
To get a fair playing field on the car vs public transport, what you need to do is:
Pick your chosen transport route. In fact pick 2, one for someone who lives in the sticks and commutes to somewhere else out of the centre of any major town. And then someone who commutes from say somewhere in london to somewhere else in london, so a nice urban commute.
Be sure not to pick locations purely for their convenience for public transport, nor for major trunk roads, houses convenient for rail stations / bus stations are more expensive than those not even in this market and not many people live next door to a handy train station.
Then obtain the annual total miles travelled for the sensible public transport options, also obtain the total annual ticket sales for those public transport routes (this will be higher than the actual occupancy but probably only by 1% or so), divide one over the other to get the average co2/mile for that route.
Do the same for the car. It'd be worth working that commute out both as single occupancy and also as car sharing (remember to add in the miles for going and picking up and dropping off your ficticious sharing buddy).
I suspect that they will be closer than most people think with the car being the sensible option by a long way in rural areas and public transport being better for urban commutes. Which is pretty much what everyone sensibly does now.
The argument that we should use public transport is self fullfilling, if we didnt use it, it wouldnt be there! Also it there does smack somewhat of what some refer to as the green communist attitude, i.e. we must all use the same thing because its greener, rather than the traditional communist opinion of it being 'fair'. Surely a better method is to apply a 'carbon tax' to products and services dependant on their production / usage, to give people the choice but make them aware of the costs involved. However this needs to be applied across the board on everything from watches to cars, from holidays to school clothes, insurance to food, subsidies for things should be reduced or removed, public transport should stand on its own feet otherwise you have no idea whats going on. Use the greatest strength of the free market to allow people to choose. If its going to cost someone £10 more for a pair of jeans made on the other side of the planet compared to ones made just down the road yet are otherwise identical which do you think they'll choose? The same applies to transport, if it costs you £10 more to travel by a more polluting means you have the choice, you can pay that and travel by your chosen means or save it and travel by the less polluting method. That makes it your choice. The only hard bit is correctly balancing the pollutants vs tax so that it is a real choice and not just a privelage for being good at kicking a ball around...
Complain about this comment
A couple of years ago I tried to live without a car myself. I did so for 18 months and it was impossible. Out here in the sticks, the public transport is a disaster. Getting anywhere was a nightmare of multiple connections, buses not turning up, and routes that were many, many miles longer than a direct connection (factor that into your carbon calculation.) A journey of minutes would take hours by bus. very different to the situation in London. My work also took me to London (Heathrow) regularly and I tried to use the train, but fares became stupid - over £170 for a standard return (discount tickets are very hard to get hold of) where I would use about £50 of petrol for the same journey by car. My bicycle was not suitable for most journeys - I just had too much to carry with me, too many long steep hills, and no showers at the destinations. It all became untenable. I'm back in a car for most journeys. My bike is back in the shed.
Complain about this comment
I think there's a key interpretive piece of information missing from these analysis and it relates to the miles/km travelled per journey.
Let's say I take a train journey from Point A to Point B but in order to get to Point B I have to make a connection in-between - perhaps this connection takes me 50 miles further in total than I would have gone in the car. How does this impact the final stats?
Let's then assume that I take a cab from my house to the train station and from the train station at the other end to my final destination. My overall carbon footprint is now very different from the starting point offered by train company stats.
As Disraeli said there are, "Lies, damned lies, and statistics".
Complain about this comment
I live 40 miles from work and very close to a motorway junction, my work place is also situated very closed to a motorway junction.
I can drive to work in 40 minutes in a Mondeo that gives 60mpg (when driven carefully) and cost just a few pounds per day, taking into account all vehicle expenses.
If I use public transport it would cost me £3 to get to town (and return), £18 pounds (and return) by train, £2 pounds (and return) for the bus to work. And all this will take nearly 2 hours each way.
For me public transport is 10 times more expensive, at least 2 and a half times more time consuming.
The only way I can go greener would be to car pool but no other colleagues live anywhere near me.
I'm very happy that I'm as green as I can be.
Complain about this comment
hi,
i dont belive in this "climate change" stuff, i mean its good that vehicles are getting cleaner if only for benefits in air pollution. to me though it seems just a money making tax excersize. human activity (co2) is a drop in the ocean compared other factors (e.g. volcanic erruptions/the vast herds of wilderbeast)if they wanted to make a difference then they should use incentives not you must be greener or else/ or it'll cost you. (if 4x4's are bad for the enviroment then why not ban them? ahh well we dont mind as long as you pay tax on the price, the loads of petrol you use, oh an £450 a year road tax)
personally the fact its constantly being rammed down our throats has the opposite affect on me and i hate all of the recent propaganda commercials, especially the one with the know it all son.
climate change is exactly that the earths climate changes, were still emeging from and ice age (did wooly mamoths have cars? and we've only been studying it a matter decades with is nothing in the grand scheme of things and certainly not enough to have definative proof. either way you cant stop it, thats just stupid and even 'IF' we are responsible for speeding it up theres nothing we can do about, we just have to adapt to the new conditions.
i use/love my car its so much easier and above all cheaper. i live in a small town and it would take me hours to get places on public transport but if i go to london, or if i have to make a long journey where its easier i use it i do so. i dont see why i should always be made to feel quilty just for useing my only feasable mode of transport?
can you imagine if everyone in the country who commutes by car took public transport? there would be absolute chaos, there simply isnt enough track/trains/ busses for a start. it can barely cope at rush hours as it is and besides if more people take public transfort theres less traffic for the rest of us lol.
Complain about this comment
Another efficient reason to use a car is that it goes straight from A to B, when you want to go. Without waiting in the rain to get a bus into town so that you can wait for a train to a main station to wait for another train, and or bus etc. and ending up covering twice the distance you would in a car.
Complain about this comment
The more we improve our roads, and develop sites with road transport in mind, the more we encourage people to increase their CO2 output.******************************************************************
I disagree, firstly many that are not in the large populated centres are forced to buy and use their own personal transport.
Secondly, it is the govt of the day's job to devise and implement a comprehensive, interlocking, affordable and efficient transport system. That INCLUDES the car, just as it is impossible to move all freight to rail it is also impossible to dictate to people, telling them to use inadequate services that still require the use of taxis or other's cars to complete journeys.
Look at the rest of the world, most medium sized cities have an Underground, not so the UK. First to create a comprehensive public transport system in London that was admired around the world; it was neglected to build upon this and install this in other towns and cities in the UK.
If this had been carried out then there wouldn't be the number of vehicles on the road today that there are.
Complain about this comment
What about heavy luggage, push chairs, wheelchairs, or even the monthly shopping? I have almost always found driving around the West End faster than the Tube or a Bus and with a person in a wheelchair we have usually not had much choice.
Despite the convenient umbrella it gives the government to raise congestion, parking, fuel duty and any other indirect taxation on the motorist, the current debate seems as fundamentally flawed as wage and price controls were in the 1970s on controlling inflation.
Rather than constantly trying to manage demand, we need supply side policies that address the causes of pollution in the first place. Electric trains, buses and cars would all but end the otherwise endless debate without asking the humble household to sacrifice quality of life, and yet the Government still fails to move this beyond the drawing board, despite the obvious potential for jobs and industry it would create, not to mention exporting it around the world.
As an expatriate I can also assure you that however noble our "green" discussions may be in the UK, most people outside Northern and Western Europe have more important things to worry about when making lifestyle choices than the size of their carbon footprint and simply asking Londoners to pay a few quid more when they book their next BA flight is not enough to solve the undoubtedly massive environmental impact humanity is now having on this planet.
Complain about this comment
Well done WayneB (#108) saying "I'm very happy that I'm as green as I can be."
If we can all say that then surely that is the pragmatic solution?
Complain about this comment
I run a big old (12 years) 7 seater 4x4 when its my turn to do the school run (7 miles) and its always full. When I'm on my own I ride a motorbike (unless its icy.) I feel doing this is pretty green. Ok, it takes more energy to build two machines, but then they will probably last twice as long. But I am seriously discouraged from doing this financially because I am taxed twice and insured twice. I can only ever drive / ride one at a time, so this seems a little unfair. If the government wants to encourage us to go greener then they should give us the financial benefits. (I think I read recently that new motorcycles can now be fully offset against tax. If so, I think thats a great idea, although I am wont personally benefit as I bought mine over a year ago.)
Complain about this comment
YOU SAY .. Travelling by car can be less polluting than public transport - you should always take the public transport option: that's because buses and trains are running anyway.
AND I SAY .. You should ALWAYS TAKE THE CAR .. because its less polluting .. and you've bought it and invested thousands of hard-earned pounds in it anyway.
Not to use it will allow it to deteriorate - and it will become more poluting when you do 'get round to it' - and you'll turn into one of the many south-surburban drivers who only drive short distances at the weekend (the least efficient type of journey).
And you will consume MORE fuel - and so pay MORE taxes - just at a time when the government need to maximise its revenue to repay the enormous loans it has taken out and the re-payments we are saddled with for decades to come.
Complain about this comment
@23 (Jnhn Bowman):
I agree that you have to look at the total emissions of the train service including stock positioning moves, but it is utterly false to compare a train's daily movement with a single car journey! You have to look at the emissions of the train over the course of the day against the emissions of the cars that would be used by everyone who travelled on the train that day. And that those trains are usually pretty full for most of the time, I'm pretty sure that will balance in favour of the train.
@25 (GrondaGronda):
Public transport can be good outside cities as well. I live in a small rural market town. There is a good bus service to the city where I work 15 miles away (every 20 minutes during the day, buses running until after 11pm every day). Regular trains run to nearby towns and cities across the region, and the 200 mile journey to my parents' house on the other side of London is an hour quicker by train than by car.
@30 (Kilted Green):
You don't just take a train on a whim although a bus journey may be spontaneous.
That depends where you live! In plenty of cities and even in rural areas, trains can be the main mode of public transport. Sure, I wouldn't get on a train to the other end of the country just like that, but there are several million people living in cities like Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and of course London, for whom a quick and frequent train service to the city centre is the obvious way to make a spur-of-the-moment journey.
@38 (Ken Haylock):
A friend of mine once pointed out that in general, public transport is a means of getting from where you are not, to where you don't want to go, at a time you do not wish to travel, in the company of people you would normally cross the street to avoid.
It is true that most buses and trains are running from where I am not to where I don't want to go, but for each individual bus or train, there will be plenty of people who do want to use it, and for each individual journey I make, there is often a convenient public transport option. Don't rubbish public transport because of your perception of inconvenience, when the endemic overcrowding on many routes shows that, for a lot of people, it is the best way to travel despite the overcrowding!
@41 (John Bray):
Maybe a web-based solution could be helpful for the problem of undersubscibed public transport. You tell the transport company well in advance when and where you wish to go so that they can use their resources most effectively.
The problem with that is (a) you lose the convenience of being able to make an unplanned journey, and (b) the social mobility aspect of public transport is at least as importance as its environmental benefits, and many of the people who rely on it the most are those who would have least access to online booking.
Complain about this comment
While I would like to be greener, I find it's virtually impossible to do without the car : my work (12 miles away over roads with no bus route takes 15-20 mins, or 21 miles via motorway, or 2 train journeys taking over 2 hours including waitovers)which involves visiting several businesses per day to conduct inspections; monthly shopping trip (cat litter, cans/boxes cat food, perishables - I cook in bulk & freeze lots of dishes, toiletries etc etc; 2x yearly trips to the vet with 2 cats (have you ever tried to get a large cat carrier on a bus???); trips to visit parents for weekend (100 mile round trip, cats & paraphernalia come with me in car), holidays with cats (& stuff) -the list is endless.
I learned to drive many years ago, but didn't own a car until I had to move 100 miles away to start work - the factory was in the middle of an industrial estate, not on a bus route &, even if it were, buses don't run at 5.30am! Therefore, I bought my first car for the express purpose of actually getting to work every day & in time.
PS - even if I chose not to take my cats with me on holidays, I'd still need to get them to the cattery - guess what? - it's NOT on a bus/train route. So, until we get mini minibuses which run a) when I want them to, b)where I want them to and c) which are prepared to transport me/cats etc, I won't be giving up my car -WAY too much hassle! C'est la vie....
Complain about this comment
Something else has occurred to me. Taking a more all encompassing viewpoint, are the running costs of the infrastructures taken into account in these calculations, I would assume not. A train requires tracks be laid, signals maintained etc plus staff who have to be paid to operate ticket offices, trains, stations, maintenance (and we'll assume they don't live in the station and eat nothing so will spend money on co2 producing activities). Now obviously cars also require an intrastructure to operate, roads, lighting, service stations, fuelling stations. I'd be curious to see information comparing the 2 on such a large scale.
Incidentally most of the trains I've ever travelled on have been less than half full except at rush hour. If thats the only time you travel then of course they'll all appear to be full...
Complain about this comment
The West Highland Line in Scotland is a great example of statisticians trying to run a railway rather than common sense.
The line runs from Glasgow to Crianlarich north of Loch Lomond. Here the train splits into two- the front unit goes to Oban a small ferry port and the rear unit goes to Fort William, a small town next to Ben Nevis. On the return leg the train waits about 10 mins at Crianlarich for the two units to meet up and continue to Glasgow.
Scotrail paid statisticians to make the line more efficient. They concluded the line was profitable from Glasgow to Crianlarich but not beyond that point so proposed shutting the northern half of the route. They totally missed the point that Crianlarich is 3 houses, a postoffice and some sheep and that if the line was shut north of here then no-one would use it at all.
You have exactly the same problem with trains and buses: to actually get to main hubs via public transport enevitably means that buses and trains will be running mostly empty. Dr Beeching axed all the local branch lines feeding the main lines because they ran at a loss but by removing the local feeder links it forces people onto the roads to get to the main stations and once you've bought a car (with all its fixed costs) you get your money's worth.
I'm visiting my parents this weekend. Its about an hours drive down the M1 which will cost me about £10 in petrol. The train will cost £14 (so £28 for me & my wife). The problem is that we live a few miles from the station here with do direct bus and my parents are a mile and a half from the station at the other end so add in the cost of taxis and public transport becomes ludicrously expensive.
Complain about this comment
Letzbe_Avenue - 111 - You disagree that the more we improve our roads, and develop sites with road transport in mind, the more we encourage people to increase their CO2.
I'm not complaining about having good roads - I use them after all - but the better they are the more I'm likely to use them.
Complain about this comment
Ethical Man is such an arrogant choice of title.
Nothing wrong with reducing pollution, you should have seen it before the Clean Air Act! Every visit to London had one's collar black by about 11 am, the pollution was so bad. That was back in the late 50's. Now we have the myth of CO2 being a poison [never in the quantities in the atmosphere]. If like me you live out in the country [greener now with extra CO2!] then a car is essential if you have to be in work by say 07:30. In urban areas it may be different but as usual the treehuggers regard everyone as similar in habit and that is just not possible, unless we all become dedicated serious left wingers. Not me and to be taxed for exceeding a "Carbon limit" is about as stupid as the the Plane Stupids think that aircraft are polluting the planet.
We only produce 3% of the Atmospheric CO2, that is All humanity! The UK contributes about 1.6% of that and the whole CO2 content of the atmosphere [Including Mother Nature's massive 97%] is barely 0.038%! And we are being taxed already and badgered by the "Save our Planet for our Children" braindeads to pay even more.
Renewables are a joke and should be confined to experimental sites until real efficiency and cost effectiveness can be achieved. So Ethical Man, find something useful to do as at present you have made an utter fool of yourself. Don't breathe out because that is CO2 at 40,000 parts per million! And 6 Billion humans are doing the same!
Complain about this comment
#109. I'm not convinced by man made climate change either but volcanic emmissions are equal to about 2% of man annual CO2 production. Thats about the same as the UK's total carbon footprint but is a drop in the ocean compared to the worlds emmisions. Wildebeest emit a fraction of the methane of domestic cattle (more efficient guts)
However equally the difference between 180g/km and 150g/km is pretty negligable too and trying to argue that it makes any significant difference on a global scale is silly.
Personally I'm off the opinion that 24hr news is forcing the media to make dull weather stories sound more exciting. In 1947 the North Sea froze off Skegness thickly enough to stop the RNLI deploying its lifeboat. The storm surge on Jan 31 1953 killed nearly 3000 people in NW Europe and the UK (more than 9/11) which should put the 'freak' floods in Cumbria today in some sort of perspective.
Complain about this comment
What these arguments always seeem to ignore are:
1. Security issues.
2. Health issues.
3. Personal preference, convenience, comfort.
1. It is becoming increasingly less safe to be out and about sharing the same space as the less law-abiding among us. I would not want to be catching a bus in the dark - standing at a bus stop in the dark is bad enough but you may not be much safer once you're on it. And certainly a lot less safe once you leave the bus and head towards your destination.
2. Being cooped up in a steamed up bus full of coughing sneezing people - or even those who are just breathing - is a chance to become ill that I would prefer to avoid.
3. I like the idea of getting into my car outside my door and staying warm and dry, listening to my own choice of entertainment on decent equipment and then arriving right at the place I'm going. Public transport seems unlikely ever to achieve that unless it's a taxi and that would be the same as driving except for the parking issues.
If we really want to make progress on this we must try our utmost to avoid the need for people to take a step back in terms of comfort and convenience and simply make cars greener.
On that note, I undertand that there is a little-publicised government action that has made planning for offices etc have the number of parking places limited to much less than the buildnig's capacity in terms of people.
Which means, in a nutshell, there won't be enogh parking spaces to go round. All this in an attempt to have people use public transport.
Are they nuts? The last thing I will give up is my car. Whether I use public transport or not I will now have a long walk to the office (I spend most of my time on client sites far from my home) and that means many hours of misery in the rain, dodging muggers... etc etc.
I wish they would understand that people do not want to be pawns to be told how to live - especially when those making the rules are living in a different (safer and more convenient) world themselves.
Bottom line: YOU get the bus, Gordon, if you think it's such a great idea. I'll have your parking space.
Get some technology that makes cars viable. And... if it's about greenhouse gases, do some real science and you'll find that the CO2 is coming from the sea after the temperature rises, not before it rises. In which case cars are already viable - as long as they continue to have a source of fuel.
If I'm forced to emit less CO2 I want to do it in an electric car, not on a bus. So get going on that science and in the meantime stop limiting parking so stupidly or we will end up with a very long term problem with no realistic solution, in that once we have cars we're happy with... we still won't have anywhere to park them! Sigh.
Complain about this comment
I run a big old (12 years) 7 seater 4x4 when its my turn to do the school run (7 miles)
*********************************
No offence, but these vehicles and such trips are the sort of thing that the world really could do without.
I have never understood why people have bought 4x4s, they are large (hard to park in cities) thirsty (have to lug all the extra weight of an extra diff, splitter box and create transmission drag even if they do have not permanent AWD) and nowawdays (well even back then) there are better alternatives, Tiguan/Espace etc style people carriers which have a higher driving position for those that need that and flexible multi-seating arrangements.
To my mind 4x4s are decadent, if you're living out in the sticks or use it for daily work (Land Rover) then they make sense but most of these cars end up in the crusher never having seen any off-road use.
Complain about this comment
There is a phrase; lies, damned lies and statistics. In your article there is a tendency to turn the phrase around to paint a misleading picture. As trains, buses, etc are replaced they will be less CO2 emitting per passenger kilometre than the present average. You will have to defeat the laws of physics to produce a five seater car that when half full will be 27g per passenger kilometre. It is the motor car that is in part responsible for public transport not being fully utilised out side of the rush hour. Part of what needs to be done is to find how peak levels of communicating can be reduced for motorised transport, e.g. changing peoples start and finish times or living closer to the work place. Less traffic congestion would make public transport more efficient, including reduction in its CO2 emissions. Better facilities at bus stops would encourage the use of public transport, i.e. bus shelters and seats and time tables at these bus stops.
Complain about this comment
The argument that we might as well use public transport as its running anyway is a little spurious. We might as well argue that we should cancel ALL public transport as my car is running anyway and if we did then more car sharing would be the outcome. Then there's the issue of what I would LIKE to do. Being forced down one route is tantamount to transport communism. Then there's the particulate issue. Buses spew filth into the atmosphere at prodigous rates even if the CO2 per passenger can look OK. And finally...a huge amount of CO2 is produced by congestion caused by insufficient road space given that buses enjoy preferential treatment in the shape of greenways.
Complain about this comment
Statistics can paint a very cloudy picture - in this case its a smog! Whilst the experiment shows that a car can be less polluting than a half full bus (as they are most of the time), what are the total energy needs of a car during its lifetime compared to a bus - or a train. Factor in the cost of upkeep of road and rail and you get a better comparison. Add long term average capacity usage, the manufacturing costs and footprints of different types of cars for their equivalent lifetimes and so on and you could eventually get a clearer picture.
How about this - a kilogram of beef is responsible for the equivalent of the amount of CO2 emitted by the average European car every 250 kilometres, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days," so I can offset the carbon if cycle to a steak house 125 km away, although it would take me 2 days for a dinner out.
Or 1 kilo of cotton (thats 4 Primark tee shirts) uses 11,000 litres of water in its production, not to mention its carbon footprint. That is 11 tonnes of water for 4 tee shirts that might get discarded after a few washes. Devastation on a scale that only Uzbekistan can understand.
Its not just transport causing this problem. It is how we live, purchase and discard. It all has a foot print. If I take 6 kids to school in my 2.5 litre 30mpg 4x4 around dangerously busy South London main roads (negating the need for 3 smaller cars to do the same run) and eat ethically produced local produce, I have polluted less than a big mac has on its journey from beast to burger. So before the anti car lobby points fingers, perhaps they should consider a bigger picture.
Complain about this comment
The message I get from this is simple. Don't travel.
Obviously loads of people are going to say things like - don't be stupid - how how will I get to work and so on? - but I think that this just emphasises the size of the challenge. To have an effect on climate change we need to change the whole way our society functions. Just making small changes like taking the train/bus now and again, or driving an eco car is not going to make enough difference to matter.
Complain about this comment
Whilst being Green is OK if you live in london, what happens when you do not?
I live in a small seaside town in kent. My nearest mainline station is Ashford, which is nearly 20 miles from where i live. There is no public transport in the morning so I would have to drive to the station. I then have to park and pay up to £10 per day, with no gurantee that the car will be there when I get back. I have the cost of the train to pay as well, not to mention that it takes longer to get from ashford to Bromley by train than the whole journey door to door by car. So the daily cost of me going by public transport is over £25 and approx 5 hours traveling providing the train turns up and is not delayed. By taking the car It costs me about £10 per day in diesel and takes me a 3.5 hours.
So everybody is now thinking, well why not move closer, its your own fault. OK, There are no jobs locally and I cannot afford to move closer due to the house prices plummeting and not wanting to get into stupid amounts of debt that I could never afford to pay back.
Everything else I do is green, My house (heating, lighting, insulation, you name it, I've got it!), my shopping (lots of local produce) recycling etc. Its just the job. I've tried to minimise it by having a small clean diesel (55+mpg), but there is only so far one can go.
Green is good, but sometimes its just not possible.
Complain about this comment
My wife and I did not have a car for many years and we were happy to use the train and less happy to use the bus. We almost always went only to places accessible by train. As we grew older, we found that returning home on buses in the evening was becoming increasingly unpleasant. There was always aggro on the buses; drivers were unable to do very much to moderate the behaviour of their unsociable passengers. Eye contact with other passengers had to be avoided at all times.
So, we bought a car, an old one costing less than a grand. We now feel much safer and save a lot of time and money. If, or when, we become unable to drive, we expect we will become house-bound. But for now, we have some freedom to go to the theatre, visit family and friends, do the shopping without risking a back injury and easily collect bulky items from shops and the postal sorting office. Are we Green or not? You tell us!
Complain about this comment
The only real way to cut CO2 output is to radically alter the start and finish times of different business, schools, uni's colleges etc. We all start our working day at about the same time (or the vast majority of us do), so if we altered half of our start times to the middle of the day and alternated in a kind of shift pattern then public transport would be less crowded at current peak times. This alteration of working times would enable the public transport networks to cut the number of journeys during current peak times and increase them during the middle of the day.
It's simple logic; if we really are serious about cutting our CO2 output levels then it's an option that must be looked at. We could also look at moving goods around during the night time hours, with less traffic on the roads at these times large lorries can travel faster and with less stopping and starting due to traffic buildups they would not waste anywhere near as much connectic energy. We might need to make this a more attractive option to the companies that delivery our goods and the chaps that drive them about, but again it's a worth while route to a reduction.
I have relatives in their late 50's with no children who have said on many occassions that the earths warming will not affect them so why should they give a toss. And here in lie's the problem; if we gear all the restrictions as monetarty values, then the rich simply buy their way around them. Essentially most humans are selfish and want "their own space". I don't care too much for the train in the morning, why? Well it's too full, it's too hot, it smells etc, why should I spend ex amount on a ticket when I can't even sit down? The selfish arguments or the "it's my right" arguments will always be with us, but unless we take action now, I'm afraid it will be too late.
Radical thoughts and radical solutions must be required and altering our way of working must be the key. We don't all need to start at 9:00 and finish at 5:00. Again though, it must be done in an even handed way. Key workers like the police, Dr's, fire service etc all work shift patterns so why not bankers, shop workers, teachers???????????
Complain about this comment
Bus passenger levels in the UK seem similar to those you give for the USA. Simple way to get a close estimate is to divide the number of bus passenger miles by the number of bus vehicle miles. Last time I saw these figures it worked out about 9 passengers on a bus nationally and 12 in London. However I am not sure whether the bus passenger miles include the driver (so the number of real passengers could only be 8 and 11 respectively). However most users experience of public transport is during the rush hours when they are full, while few experience them in the day when passenger numbers are tiny.
However things become far more complex when you include other factors. A bus or train is highly unlikely to take a direct route. Hence you travel more miles for the same journey. Halving the fuel used per passenger mile is useless of you double the mileage those passengers have to do.
Then we get to the life expectancy of the vehicles (and so energy in replacing them). This is one area that cars do badly on (although partly through fashion reasons) when compared to buses and trains. However to balance this there are the energy costs in maintaining the roads or rails. Road damage is proportional to the axle weight to the power of 4, hence a 10 ton bus does about 5000 times the damage to the road of a 1.2 ton car.
While many seem concerned about CO2 emissions, many do not appear aware that these vary with the fuel used. While a diesel vehicle might well manage more miles per gallon of fuel than a petrol vehicle, each gallon of diesel burnt produces about 15% more CO2 than a gallon of petrol.
Further you claim that an average UK car emits about 180g of CO2 per passenger km. A litre of petrol generates about 2.31kg of CO2 when burnt, so if that was for a single person in a petrol car it would be about 36mpg. With your figure of 1.57 passengers in a car it would mean that the average fuel consumption of a petrol car is 23mpg (equivalent figures for diesel would be 42mpg and 27mpg), which would appear to be far from reality. The new car average CO2 emissions appear to be 150g/km (~43mpg petrol, ~50mpg diesel), so 95g per passenger km.
I must comment on the idea that extra weight directly affects fuel consumption (i.e., that 7% more weight means 7% more fuel used). At a constant speed the fuel used is pretty much down to the power required for the speed you are doing. This power is very much related to the aerodynamics with the weight only making a tiny difference to the rolling resistance. At a constant 70mph your 240kg weight of 4 passengers people would probably make about 5% difference to the power required (and so roughly fuel consumption) compared to just the driver. Where weight is important is under acceleration, something that could be improved if serious attempts were made to help traffic flow.
Complain about this comment
One point that I find is frequently missed when people present a case for one form of transport being greener than another is the distance travelled. To illustrate this consider one return plane flight from the UK to Florida should be compared to an 12,000km trip in a car; OK, the plane might emit the same amount of CO2 as the car per km, but the plane journey is really the equivalent of an average morotist's entire annual 'mileage'. So, on that basis, taking two or three flights a year is the equivalent of running three cars simultaneously for a whole year.
Complain about this comment
As far as I can see, the figures all add up in favour of public transport as being best for the environment. It's good for numerous other reasons too, especially in a country as overcrowded as Britain. But it's part of a much bigger picture, which is where it starts getting more complicated.
A good public transport system is better for people in general, because it's available to everyone. Cars cause road deaths, injuries, congestion, pollution. They stop children playing safely in the streets. Widespread car ownership encourages urban sprawl, in a vicious circle that makes town-centre housing and employment more expensive and therefore increases the pressure to build houses, shops and workplaces further out -- inaccessible to those without cars and therefore increasing car use, etc.
BUT once you own a car, it's usually cheaper to use than to buy bus or train tickets, except in very well-served places like London. In a society that's increasingly fragmented, hiding in cars increases the isolation, but it makes people feel safe while they're doing it.
The answer, in Britain at least, is to heavily subsidise public transport. Then, because more people will use it more often, it becomes safer and services run more frequently. It starts to feel like the normal thing to do again. More routes can be developed and more areas served with more frequent and convenient public transport.
It would not be difficult. In fact, it's what we used to have. Renationalisation of our splintered rail services would be a start - no one can seriously claim they haven't gone sharply downhill since privatisation.
But it would need a feeling for society and community that has been absent from politics for a long time.
Complain about this comment
If I take 6 kids to school in my 2.5 litre 30mpg 4x4 around dangerously busy South London main roads
******************************************
I know the 4x4 brigade always feel "picked on" by everyone else, but as I said previously there is no single argument for "townies" to be riding around in 4x4s.
There are much more efficient and equally, if not more, practical alternatives.
Not only that but if a child is hit by one of these monsters there's a far greater chance of the child being killed.
The 4x4 was not designed for "the school run" but for use in arduous terrain (i.e. off road)
Complain about this comment
I've just driven out into the countryside (less than a mile) to chop up fallen trees for firewood.
As far as I'm concerned I'm green as I'm recycling :)
Complain about this comment
This article is fundamentally flawed - why is the choice only between car and public transport?
Commuting by bicycle beats both of these. Several comments have pointed out that cycling is not suitable for all journeys, but for a huge number of people, it is a very practical alternative. I have commuted for 15 years by bicycle, working in a variety of different office locations up to 12 miles away from my home.
Many offices already have showers, parking and lockers, but these will become more and more common if more people can be encouraged to cycle to work.
I use the bike primarily because it is faster and more convenient than driving or using the bus, but also because it is more fun!
Complain about this comment
To all those using your car to go shopping. Use supermarkets online shopping services. Having them deliver is well worth the cost and it must be a more carbon efficient process and the more people do it the more efficient it becomes and the less the supermarkets will charge. Similarly why would I go to my local computer superstore? Just go online, buy what I want for less money and get it delivered.
There are many journeys that we think of as necessary, that can be avoided by some lateral thinking.
For example. Why go to work at all? Do your work at home. Many people could do this for at least part of the week.
Complain about this comment
I think you also have to take into account the fact that average use density of public transport will increase if fewer people use cars. The main argument towards public transport is that a shift away from private transport will reduce per capita emissions. So it is not quite accurate to compare current usage levels - you will need to factor in improved usage from a shift away from car use.
Complain about this comment
that was a good article, put forward a number of interesting points, however it does rely on a particular person believing in global warming/climate change(which occurs naturally and has been for centuries). A recent poll shows that 3 out of 5 people don't believe in global warming. ( i am one of those 3, but i am entitled to my views). Therefore people like me must not use public transport for different reasons. From my experience these include:
1. Cost, i love driving and where i live,i can run my car on £15 of petrol a week,whereas the bus will cost me £22. In addition, why spend £40+ on a rail ticket from Edinburgh to London, when you can fly for as little as £1 in some cases.
2. the value of Time, There is a time factor when using Public transport. For example, the time taken to walk to the station/bus stop, then the actual journey itself, with all the stop start stop start, and then you get off the bus and walk to wherever you need to go. On the other hand with the car, you just get in, set your music, pop the heater on, and go. its the same with the Edinburgh - london example, time by train 5hrs if there are no delays, time by plane 2.5hrs (including time to get to the airport). I know which one id rather do...
3. the experience: I like driving, i like flying, and i like travelling in general, but when your in you car, you can listen to your music out loud, put the heater on, eat etc.. But on the bus, you can't do any of these..Every time i get the bus i always seem to get the disease from the person i sit next to, who is usually some desperate character...please don't ridicule me for saying this because 70% of the time it is true.
4. Safety: terrorists, apart from the IRA, rarely use cars, they tend to attack public transport, so this would suggest that if you use a car, your more likely to live?
I would be happy to discuss this further with anyone who is interested.
Complain about this comment
134 "A good public transport system is better for people in general, because it's available to everyone. Cars cause road deaths, injuries, congestion, pollution. They stop children playing safely in the streets"
If you read the article you'll see that (squabbling about exact stats apart) ALL transport pumps out the pollution and personally I'm far less concerned about C02 than the PM10's from unburnt diesel. Trains and buses also cause their fair share of fatalities and serious injuries (including 3 this week when a bit of plastic fell off a tube train slashing passengers on the platform). There are even a handful of pedestrians killed each year by cyclists. Public transport ISN'T available to everyone because not everyone lives near a station/bus stop.
Also I'd argue that rail services have actually improved massively since privatisation. People forget how truly ghastly British Rail was. We didn't spend a penny on the trains for decades and the Tories sold it off cheap rather than pay billions to revitalise it. All the new trains (pendolinos etc) have been paid for by the private sector. The current problems with trains are a result of them being too succesful... most commuter trains are bursting at the seams because the private rail companies can't run any more trains down the state controlled track. The Victorian train network ran from just about every where to everywhere else and was entirely built & run by private companies. The forced nationalisation post war lead straight to Beecham axing most of it (at the governments command)
The problem with "subsidising" is that what you mean is that people who don't wish to use the network, can't use the network or have no need to use the network pay the travel bills of those fortunate to be able to benefit. In personal terms this means that I will shortly be charged £300 a year in 'parking space tax' by Nottingham city council on top of the £300 a year I pay already for an NHS parking space so that people in Clifton, a council estate south of the river Trent and a long way from where I live can get a tram into the city centre. if the plan had been to improve the bus network across the whole city I'd be in favour but as it is it seems the many will be forced to pay for a new transport system for the few.
Complain about this comment
One thing that always seems to be missing from this equation is the comfort and convenience factor.
When I use my car I am guaranteed to get a seat & it leaves when I want it too and goes directly to where I want to go. I don't have to put up with screaming children, people talking loudly into their mobile phone, people playing tinny music on their MP3 player. There are no muddy footprints on my seat, lager cans rolling around the floor, graffiti all over the place and no smell of urine permeating throughout the vehicle.
Public transport is slow, smelly, dirty, inconvenient & expensive.
Most public transport employees are rude.
Many of the people you meet on public transport are rude, inconsiderate and far too often become violent towards total strangers for no real reason.
I'm perfectly happy to use my motorbike when I'm travelling alone and don't have much luggage but at all other times I'm using the car.
Strangely enough this only applies to Britain; public transport in France, Germany and many other countries is very good, in fact it is virtually unrecognisable to those who've only ever experienced the discomfort and inconvenience of British public transport.
Complain about this comment
I think that you and others are not comparing like for like, for instance to make the same journey that you would do in a car would mean going a lot further in a bus/train combination and this needs to be taken into account when comparing the CO2 figures
Complain about this comment
Not a very smart argument Sam Critchley (#88) - Have you not noticed the many filling stations at the side of roads and motorways? I think they need maintenance and heating as well.
Complain about this comment
'...you think my experiences have clouded my judgement on this issue.' That you joined the BBC is all the evidence anyone needs of clouded judgement. Everything after that is details....
There are a number of recently filed patents on technologies for making gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel from waste plant matter. Arther C. Clark and Isaac Asimov both wrote stories in the 1950s about the use of algae as a future food and fuel. Certain large oil companies are now advertising their research in this area, after discovering that the oil they were pumping out of the ground came from algae that settled into the muck millions of years ago. In short, hydrocarbon fuels are getting greener by the day.
One of the programs on cable recently was about 'Ardi', the protohuman that lived in Africa 4 million years ago. The non-sequiter that became evident from this fossil is that human ancestors walked upright earlier than anticipated, and they did so in dense rain forests, not the savanna. The current speculation is that this made it easier to carry food long distances since both hands were free, and this was a survival advantage compared to foragers that had to move to their food (and face predators), rather than vice versa.
Boats and cars are perfectly suited to carrying food (or fuel or in a pinch, potable water), compared to the nuisance of doing so on bicycles, buses, trains, or airplanes. In short, these two vehicles increase the odds of reproductive success. For boats, the evidence has been around for thousands of years. Human fascination with cars, particularly for picking up dates, is probably further confirmation.
'Mass transit' countries, like Japan, Russia, continential Europe, and certain other countries in Asia have below-replacement birth rates. America's is above replacement, and China's is close to replacement. 'Car crazy' culture may indicate that a society is maintaining demographic equilbrium. If you think the world is overpopulated, get rid of the cars.
Complain about this comment
Apologies if all of this has been covered in one of the 80000 previous comments, but...
Conspiracy theorist climate change deniers aside, there are few people who can sensibly welcome this article. There are some serious flaws in it:
1) People who own cars make more unnecessary / luxury journeys than people without cars. Sure, a hybrid car full of children driving along an empty road may beat a half-empty bus along the same route. But will the car owners always use it that way, or will they do more trips to shops that are further afield, occasionally do the odd lazy trip around the corner, and maybe even just go for a drive for no other reason than that they can? Reliance on public transport is not always the most convenient / lazy option, but it does mean people ration their journeys more sensibly.
2) Public transport is more easily able to introduce green technologies than individuals. Hydrogen powered or electric buses will happen a lot sooner than personal vehicles - at many airports in Europe, they are already operational. The infrastructure for public transport, because centralised, can be truely green (if there is the political will to invest the initial expenditure) a decade before the same could be widely available to members of the public.
3) Not all cars are environmentally friendly. Replacing fuel guzzlers with hybrids brings with it a lot of manufacturing / material cost. The most environmentally friendly solution is not to replace them, but to retire them, and with them, the right to personal transport ownership.
4) Not environmental, but consider safety. Public transport is far safer than the car. That hybrid full of children is many times more likely to end up killing its passengers and/or others than the train, bus or plane that could have been taken instead.
So, on the whole, I'm not exactly sure what the benefit of this blog post is. For car-loving petrol-junkies and the (environ)mentally challenged, it simply produces one tidbit they will remember: "BBC's ethical man / green guy says cars are more environmentally friendly than public transport" - they'll read straight past any of the reservations, conditionals, etc and use this as some kind of justification for being irresponsible. Hardly a desirable outcome.
Complain about this comment
Public transport is remarkably similar to private transport in the number of people killed or injured by it. However accurate comparisons are difficult. The railways claim a very low number of people killed and injured, yet they manage this by ignoring those that they classify as "trespassers and suicides". While ignoring the suicides is understandable, the trespassers should certainly be counted. After all, imagine the outcry if any pedestrian killed on the motorway was ignored in road death figures.
While some will push for subsidies for public transport this ignores the massive amount that public transport is already subsidised. Both directly and through reduced taxes. I.e. public transport is VAT zero rated, while fuel used for bus services is subject to a fuel duty rebate. Whether you use a bus or not you are already paying a substantial amount towards it.
Complain about this comment
I previously have cycled to work a trip of 30min, a real joy in the pooring rain with no changing facilities at the other end. If there had been a bus which ran and would have enable me to get to work early enough, it would have required two changes and a walk and taken almost an hour. The bus journey was also a little over double the distance needed to do the journey by car. A factor which is often the case and alway overlooked when calculating car versus public transport carbon costs. In the end I gave up trying to be green and took the 5 min trip in the car.
Complain about this comment
There are some important points made in this piece, but probably the most important is: the simplest heuristics are probably the most misleading.
However, there are a few things that I think need to be cleared up or discussed further:
1. Just because you can see it, doesn't mean that diesel emissions are worse. Diesel produces more nitrogen oxide and more particulate matter, which *is* bad for residents of cities if you have a lot of them, but generally produces less carbon and hydrocarbon. Diesel engines are also more efficient, so less of it is needed to cover the same distance as a regular car.
2. Diesel also has very different performance characteristics. So the other *very* important dimension of this problem that is missing from the analysis above is the change in the *rate* at which CO2 is emitted over distance and/or time. Diesel produces fewer emissions from a cold start than petrol, so if most of your car journeys are short then a diesel vehicle can be 'better' for the environment.
3. Similarly, airplane emissions tend to peak during takeoff and landing, so you get very different per-passenger emissions figures for a short-haul and a long-haul flight. For long-haul (more than 600km) then the convenience of planes time-wise combined with the much lower per km emissions profile probably swamps any other method of transport. But for short-haul flights (say, within the UK) then *any* other method of transport (including car) would probably be a major improvement.
Cheers,
jr
Complain about this comment
Justin,
Quoting carbon footprint numbers is a slippery slope to doom! Do your numbers for cars vs mass transport include the following:
1) the footprint for the millions of cars produced and disposed of every year?
2) the footprint for the millions of tires produced and disposed of every year?
3) how about the carbon footprint that went into constructing the M25 or other roads?
4) what about resurfacing the miles and miles of roads every year?
5) Then again, what is the carbon footprint of the construction of a typical commuter train or bus?
6) How much carbon will it take to upgrade our railway infrastructure?
7) What is the carbon footprint of the construction of a typical multistory car park.....
8) Do trains and buses last longer than cars?
The list goes on and on and on....
Taking a value for a typical commuter car vs train doesn't mean anything. Folks listen to you at 'Newsnight', you have moral obligation to understand exactly what the values you report actually mean. Come back to us with more accurate values, then I will listen
Complain about this comment
I'm with you most of the way on this, Justin. I have long subscribed to the logic that a high-occupancy car is loads greener than a low-occupancy train or car. It's fact. What I don't agree with is that you should always take public transport. To get to where I need to be would take
- a 5 min walk to bus stop
- a 30 min (at rush hour) bus trip to the station
- a 25 min train journey
- a 15 min walk (no bus) to the office
That's an hour and 15 mins, assuming everything is bang on time (ha) and there's no queueing. I'm not going to do that - it's just not feasible or realistic. But I'm also not willing to drive the whole way in a single-occupancy car, as that's environmental madness. I car-share on my daily 30 mile round-trip commute (with people I met through www.liftshare.com - now that's a ground-breaking idea you should be blogging about!) which effectively means I leave my car at home 2 weeks out of 3. I honestly think that a lot of people realistically CAN'T take public transport all the time, and that getting 4-5 of these people who are going the same way into one car will reduce congestion and pollution. It'll also clear the roads so the buses can make their journeys more quickly.
Complain about this comment
A sensible enough article that is, in effect, an invitation to debate our transport policy. Some comments above do address various inputs to a more cogently thought-through policy than what we currently have: for instance, it would be better not to have internal combustion engines (particularly diesel) running in cities and, instead, have a more efficient set of electrically powered trams or light railways. Then there is the chicken and egg syndrome: more difficult to get public transport so move more towards the car for single person trips.
We lack a 'joined-up' transport policy whereby it is possible to find bus and train timetables coordinated so that it is possible to travel a long distance and make connections along the way, which is often impossible at the moment. In essence, I believe that the government should be putting a lot of money into the right sort of electrical infrastructure to encourage both electric cars and more electrically-powered public transport, with as much renewable energy feeding into the network as possible.
But in answer to the original article, one thing not mentioned is the fact that car use is not sufficiently penalised financially, by which I mean that the vast majority feel that they can drive as much and as far as they like and it remains relatively cheap. Pricing per mile driven would be a powerful disincentive to to indulge in car use.
Complain about this comment
Not all cars are environmentally friendly. Replacing fuel guzzlers with hybrids brings with it a lot of manufacturing / material cost. The most environmentally friendly solution is not to replace them, but to retire them, and with them, the right to personal transport ownership.
************************************
First of all, I know NuLabour has set up an overbearing (with almost fascist control mechanisms) but there's no way people will tolerate having their personal mobility limited by the govt.
Secondly; try telling that to people that live away from big cities, or will the countryside be urbanised in your "great scheme", nice tower blocks for all so that we don't need "several houses" we can all live together in one great big slum!!!
Complain about this comment
#146. You clearly don't own a car. If you did the idea that you go for a drive just for the hell of it would be so ridiculous you wouldn't post it. Even Jeremy Clarkson drives because the BBC pays him too, pays his costs and gives him an empty airfield to run around. The idea that I would fire up my 11 year old car with petrol at £1.06 a litre and crawl round the Nottingham ring road for fun during my very short weekends is a new and extreme form of sado-masochism.
Likewise cars do crash but they crash very infrequently and normally do so because the driver has done something very dumb indeed. Its not blind chance that causes accidents.
I do about 5000 miles a year almost exclusively for work and almost exclusively because I'm either carrying stuff too heavy or too dangerous for public transport (such as a compressed gas cylinder). When I use the car for personal reasons (such as visiting relatives) its because its a fraction of the cost of public transport. Being relatively sane I would much rather be stretched out in a comfy seat on a train with a drink and a good book than on the M1 in bad weather but when its £50 for the public transport journey for two of us compared to £10 in petrol there's no choice. Fortunately the enviro-facsists haven't 'removed the right to personal transport' quite yet.
Complain about this comment
Oliver Dudley @ 42 said it all (edited slightly):
"You can debate the greenest form of transport ad infinitum. The fact is moving things around needs a lot of energy. The solution is to avoid moving around more than necessary. Consumption is the issue, not efficiency!"
So climate conferences, G8 summits, and mass protests in Trafalgar Square are examples of activities causing unnecessary consumption. Flying to 38000 ft and then travelling 1000s of miles to a warm place for a holiday (and then coming back) is another, extreme case.
I don't say you shouldn't do these things - just don't preach to me about saving the planet if you do them (and that includes you, Al Gore!).
Complain about this comment
Several posters have challenged the calculations. They get rather complicated after a while. The car scrappage scheme seems very un-green to me. Buses running empty seems dumb (but I like the idea of dial-a-ride, which may be a way of improving efficiency in cities and towns). I read a good argument recently for the now-banned incandescent light bulbs: someone pointed out that losing a few hundred watts of incandescence may cool the room so that you need to turn the heating up...
Complain about this comment
have you been on public transport lately? very often trains are standing room only. which is over full (200%). and pretty well packed at of peek times, so I think your half full train is very off the mark. but of course you should all ready know this having given up your car for the year, and I presume you have been commuting to work. The major problem now though of course is that passenger prices are quite high, and to take a family of 5 on the train can be quite costly. though compared to your 30K saab + MOT + fuel (70% gov tax) + road fund tax + getting stuck in a traffic jam, it doesn't feel like the rail companies are taking you for so much of a ride any more.
Complain about this comment
No surprise to me. If you had a bus taking you from a>b>c you'll find that you will have saved much more in less time than a bus...
Complain about this comment
The case for wether vechicles are relatively friendly/unfriendly must be affected hugely by the vechicles engines size. A big Saab is going to emit three times per passenger(regardless of number of passengers) than a Toyata IQ. This point needs to examined in a bit more detail if one is to truely assess the relative benefits of public vs private. There is an emotional case for having your own vechicle but in most circimstances do people really care wetiher they are driving a V6 or a three cylinder deisel. Most small engines are smooth and the differences not really noticeable under 50mph unless you are a sad imitation of Jeremy Clarkson
Complain about this comment
Please also comment on full-lifecycle carbon costs... ie: fabrication costs and disposal costs....
Construction (fabrication of steel etc) is more carbon-intensive than useage is... and construction of a bus/plane is more carbon-intensive than of a car (more steel...more fabrication....).
But then pretty much every plane is in use.. and not sitting in a car park in Swindon awaiting someone to buy them, for months on end..
Further, Buses and planes do more miles per average life than a car...
So perhaps it all evens out....
Complain about this comment
But in answer to the original article, one thing not mentioned is the fact that car use is not sufficiently penalised financially, by which I mean that the vast majority feel that they can drive as much and as far as they like and it remains relatively cheap. Pricing per mile driven would be a powerful disincentive to to indulge in car use.
*************************************************
This is a dangerous line of argumentation. The thing is, the cost of motoring is high enough as is, i.e. what's the first thing that gets more tax slapped on it at budget time, no not public transport but beer, fags, road fund licence and fuel duty.
Secondly; if the money taken off people was actually used to create an all-singing all-dancing public transport infrastructure then maybe people would wear the extra taxation.
You of course also forget how "unfair" this would be on people commuting from rural areas.
Complain about this comment
Sorry Justin, but I don't buy into this emissions malarky at all. You could take every single car IN THE WORLD off the road today and make no difference whatsoever. How people can't see this beyond me.
How people are naive enough to believe that we have a long-term effect on the climate is again a mystery to me. The world has been around for a rather long time and looking at datasets of a few decades will never be good enough to draw any valid conclusions. The quicker people realise this, the quicker we can all get back to having cheaper road tax. The fact that the VED has now basically become an emissions tax is revolting, to the point that it makes me so annoyed that I can't put into words the absolute hate and disgust I have for those in power.
Complain about this comment
Peter_Sym and Kickstart, you cannot be serious about the deaths caused by public compared with private transport. About 10 people a day are killed on the roads in Britain alone - and that's very rarely by a bus! It makes major news headlines when a train crashes.
It's also wrong to compare trespassers killed on railway lines with pedestrians killed on the roads. We all have to cross roads every time we go into town. There's no sensible reason for running across railway lines.
Complain about this comment
"Use the buses because they will be running anyway.....the pollution you create will be on top of whatever the public transport option is producing..."
This makes me pretty angry.
It goes to prove that the system is flawed; this line of argument is a brainless compromise, an excuse of a conclusion, and makes no long term sense.
"Dont do anything because it's already being done by someone else"
Complain about this comment
The trouble with buses is that, where I live at least, to try and gather a viable number of passengers they take painfully slow and indirect routes to wherever they're heading. To get to my nearest city I have a choice between a forty minute car journey or an hour and twenty minute bus ride. Add to that the fact that all buses must have, by their nature, a journey packed full of fuel burning stop/starts and it is clear that they can never be more efficient than cars in rural areas.
Complain about this comment
I think that it is resonable to use any form of transport. It is a function of public transport to provide a service for destinations at regular intervals. However, we will always want to go somewhere else at a time we want to and that is the strength of the car. Therefore, public transport to work must be filled to capacity which conveniently matches the ecconomic case not the end user.
If you have a car and live outside London you may as well use it. If you want to save the planet, mabe think why you are making the journey in the first place. In some cases commuting to a desk could be eliminated by working from home at your own desk!
Complain about this comment
Or you could maybe even (and here's a revolutionary concept) walk or cycle. At least on shorter journeys. Now there's a thought.
Complain about this comment
Justin...interesting article but should point out the following.
"...most Virgin trains are nowhere near as clean as the Pendolinos".
At the last count, Virgin Trains leased 52 Pendolino sets, 21 Super Voyager sets and 16 British Rail Class 57/3 diesel locomotives. Even taking into account the Class 57 locos which, without additional carriages can't convey passengers, the Pendolinos account for over 58% of Virgin's total vehicles. Thus, only 42% can be compared with the Pendolinos, hardly "most Virgin trains".
Secondly, as has been said elsewhere, everytime I've travelled on a Pendolino they've always been at 70%+ full, way above the 50% figure used to do the sums in your article. Granted there will be the odd late night service running with less passengers but the majority seem to be well utilised, so much so that an additional carriage is being added to Pendolinos and, in some cases, an additional two carriages just to keep up with demand. If one of these extra coaches was unpowered, this would further improve the figures for Virgin's publicity machine.
For the last 2-3 years I have switched to being less reliant on my car and, indeed, in Summer 2008 sold it altogether and have not replaced it. Aside from a couple of occasions, I can't honestly say I've missed it. We are served by excellent public transport connections in the form of both a frequent bus and train service and the places we wish to travel or visit or easily reachable via bus and/or train. My girlfriend and I both have bus passes covering the whole Greater Manchester area and are therefore financially encouraged to use the service other than for just commuting to/from work. For just £25 a month, in my case, and £60 a month in hers, we can travel to Wigan, Bolton, Manchester, Stockport, Rochdale, etc at any time of day on any bus. If not, a £3 off-peak return to Manchester can be purchased for the train.
I strongly recommend it to others.
Complain about this comment
Busses and bus lanes cause congestion - and hence pollution. Unlike modern cars with catalytic converters, older busses also belch out harmful diesel fumes.
Bus lanes should be abolished! Why should people who have paid no road tax get preferential treatment?
Complain about this comment
Surely the running emissions are only part of the story? This is measured on how much fuel the vehicle uses when running. What would be the Co2 calculation if you took the total life cycle of the vehicle into account? So the carbon cost of R&D, manufacturing, distribution, running (spare parts, servicing etc) and the disposal?
This also applies to white good, fridges freezers etc. You get a star rating based on the electricity consumption but this does not take into account to total lifecycle impact.
Complain about this comment
I think the ethical man's arguments regarding the train efficiency are flawed.
The train is running anyway and adding just one more passenger will only increase its fuel consumption by a very small amount - very efficient. The best car efficiency is fixed at the maximum number of passengers of say 4 and cannot go beyond that. The train equally is most efficient with the train full of passengers. The more people who join a particular train the greater that trains efficiency - well beyond that of a full car.
Complain about this comment
Head4sport may be interested to know why the petition denouncing the IPCC report never made it to the headlines. Immediately after it was published a number of the most prominent names on the petition brought a legal case against the petitioners.
The reason was that the first they had heard of the petition was when it was pointed out to them that their names had been added. That kind of dirty trick not only misleads members of the public but undermines the prospect of sensible discussion between the two sides of the argument.
From my own perspective, I have read enough of the reviews over the past 30 years to be reasonably convinced that Anthropogenic Global Warming is indeed real; but that is no reason to close down all future debate - so long as people stick to good science.
More on topic; I drive a car, I also travel by train, when I travel by train it is usually to work, where I would otherwise be alone in my gas guzzler - bit of a no-brainer really. The assumption that either of these transport modes is likely to be abandoned is wrong-headed. The best we can do is to encourage use of decent public transport where appropriate, and to make all transport modes (including cars) as energy efficient as possible over the coming years. If only to make the most of an increasingly expensive commodity, regardless of other considerations.
Complain about this comment
The main problem with todays world and the cause of 99% of the planets woes is too many people - but we are not supposed to discuss it, and our world leaders won't do anything about it.
Complain about this comment
#156. I've heard the 'replacing incandescent lightbulbs means having to turn the heating up' argument too. Its nonsense for two reasons: firstly heat rises and generally lightbulbs are on the ceiling so you don't feel the benefit and secondly if that argument were true it would only apply in winter, not summer when you'd be turning the aircon up to try and offset the heat from the bulb.
Complain about this comment
A excellent well thought out article slightly spoilt by suggesting that average British people have a weight in Kg which seems somewhat unlikely most average British people have a weight in stones and pounds. I also know of no places in Britain which have a distance between them measured in kilometres. We need to watch out for our linguistic environment as well as our CO2 one...
Complain about this comment
"I couldn't find good occupancy figures for UK public transport systems - please help me if you can - but it seems most of our buses and trains are far from full most of the time."
While getting good occupancy figures is difficult, good CO2 per passenger kilometre info is available - the best source is Defra/DECC:
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
e.g. the figure for National Rail is based on total diesel and electricity consumption of the trains versus total passenger kilometers: 0.05774kg/pkm or 58g/pkm when rounded up to a more sensible number of decimal places!
Comparing CO2, this has:
Average car: 203g/km (divide by 1.6 which is average occupancy)
Local bus: 110g/pkm
London bus: 83g/pkm
National rail: 58g/pkm
Coach: 30g/pkm
David Mackay also dug out some total energy versus total passenger kilometre data in Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air:
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c20/page_121.shtml
However CO2/pkm is only part of the story - what about the fact that private cars create far more deaths and injuries, noise, air pollution etc. per pkm
LOW CARBON DOESN'T EQUAL ETHICAL/GREEN - I don't consider rich people speeding around in expensive electric cars run off nuclear power while the poor walk or cycle an ethical solution, but it would be low carbon!
Complain about this comment
Living in West Cornwall (you know, the part of the UK that HM Government (apart from HMRC of course), doesn't really believe exists, a car or two is essential. Public transport's almost adequate but doesn't seem to go when or where you want it to.
I'll get rid of my car when teleportation becomes a reality.
Complain about this comment
You should have paid more attention in your physics lessons Justin.
You don't use 12.6% more fuel because your car has 12.6% more in lardy passenger on the back seat.
"A body persists in a state of rest or of uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force", as Isaac said. Apart from making the tyres a little less round the weight only has an effect when you go up hill or accelerate. Wind resistance is the biggest factor which is why long & (proportionally) thin buses and trains can be much more efficient.
The car has taken over because it's more convenient, the solution would be to improve the convenience of greener alternatives and make costs reflect the impact better - Stick the tax on car usage in fuel duty rather than car ownership in roadtax.
Complain about this comment
I think that the 'problem' with public transport for a large proportion of the population can be summarized as
1) For many people living outside of cities, there is no direct 'door-to-door' service, to get you from you home to your destination.
2) Using public transport can take longer (and sometimes considerably longer) than by car, especially when factoring in the time to get to the bus stop / train station, and again at the other end.
3) Public transport can cost a lot more than travelling by car.
A lot of it comes down to convenience, time and cost. A lot of people will ask 'why should I pay more, waste more time, and have more hassle to use public transport'?
This would take a major lifestyle shift for the public to change their perception. Like most things, price is a main driver. Public transport would need to be considerably cheaper than using a car. However, this would need massive subsidies from the government, which in the current climate is not likely to happen.
In the meantime, I believe that the best solution is to educate drivers on how they can reduce their CO2 emissions whilst driving their cars.
For instance, there are lots of tips on the Green Saving Expert website (amongst others) - http://www.greensavingexpert.com/driving_transport.html
Perhaps we need to aim for their pockets - the more mpg they can get, the less money they will spend.
Also, everyone should always ask the question 'IS THIS JOURNEY NECESSARY?' - like the current TV adverts, if everyone can drive just a few miles less a week, this could make a big difference overall.
Complain about this comment
To Th1nk-about-it - In 2007 there were 418 bus passengers and 37 bus drivers killed or seriously injured. Sounds a lot less than for cars (equivalent figures are 4488 and 8479). However in 2007 there were 689 billion passenger km by car compared to 50 billion by bus. Works out as roughly half as many users of buses are killed or seriously injured per passenger mile, better but not the kind of vastly better safety record that we are led to believe. Per vehicle mile it is far worse. In 2007 buses had 2.1 fatal accidents per 100m vehicle km, compared to 0.8 for cars.
In 2007 there were 235 pedestrians killed in accidents with a car, compared to 38 pedestrians killed in accidents with a bus or coach (both single vehicle accidents, ignoring multi vehicle ones). That is roughly twice as many pedestrians killed per passenger mile by buses as by cars.
The point about trespassers is that they are just ignored or hidden in the railway figures (the 321 listed as "trespassers and suicides" in 2006, compared to the 12 killed by the movement of railway vehicles), yet there would be an outcry if the 30 pedestrians killed on the motorways (essentially the equivalent of railway trespassers) were similarly ignored. Randomly deciding that the railways can ignore some deaths makes it very difficult to meaningfully compare the different modes
Complain about this comment
Taxis have often been mentioned as 'public transport', and therefore part of the environmental solution. I don't get this. A taxi taking JUST you (and any people with you) is no different than you doing the same journey in your car. And quite likely the taxi(s) had to travel for at least part of the journey each way at each end empty.
For example, I live in the country. If I travel by taxi to my local train station, some 10 km away, any taxi has to travel a round trip of at least 20 km for that journey there and back, and quite likely more if the taxi is stationed off the direct route between home and station. Not clever as regards CO2 emissions.
I would suggest that from an operational point, taxis are less environmentally friendly than using your private car. The only time that taxis may fare better is not having to provide public parking.
Complain about this comment
I wondered how long it would take for someone to trot out the old "4x4" cliche? About 20 posts!
Let's get this straight - I drive a "4x4". My 'enormous' 4x4 is shorter than a volvo estate, narrower than a BMW 5-series, and not as tall as a Ford Galaxy. Furthermore, it's less poluting than a mini cooper, it averages around 35mpg, and most of the time I run it in 2 wheel drive However there are times when 4 wheel drive is either useful or essential. I therefore object to the uninformed assuming that all off-roaders are like Hummers - they're not!
As for whether cars can be more green-friendly than public transport, I live on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. Public transport is virtually non-existent, and in bad weather it can't run anyway. So cars are not only a better option, but the only option. Perhaps, one day, those in government (and those intent on insisting that all cars should be banned) will understand that cars are sometimes the ONLY way to get around.
Complain about this comment
This is not about a single car but rather the large number and the accumulation of pollution. You may remember that lead was removed from gasoline after a great delay in determining it was harmful to human health. This was fought by the oil companies protesting increased costs, loss of jobs and the usual nonsense and fear tactics they provide to the elected who do their bidding. Now we have lesser chemicals in greater amounts just killing people more slowly...progress.
Complain about this comment
Let’s compare like with like. There are people on this thread wanting to include the cost of replacing the rails in the train costs but conveniently forgetting to repair the roads. If you want to take 800 people in to central London in the rush hour you are clearly going to do better putting them on a train in terms of fuel, emissions, road space, car parks etc. Does anyone really still want to tear up enough of our cities to make enough road space to replace all the trains with cars? Equally if you want to drive 20 miles across rural Wales you are going to find it pretty hard to justify building and running a train.
What I haven’t seen on this thread is any acknowledgement of the imminent shortage of oil. If we are not there now, within the next 10 years we will reach peak oil. It doesn’t mean that suddenly there won’t be any oil, it means that when the exponentially increasing demand for oil resumes after this recession it will collide with a supply that will not go any higher. The consequence will be a steep increase in price and a fall in availability. Ten years is not a long time to reorganise our transport not to use oil. Currently transport uses, primarily as oil, one third of the energy in this country. To replace that with electricity would require a truly massive programme of building power stations, nuclear, wind, tide, whatever that would double the size of the present generating capacity. It is not something that can be done overnight. It will cost a lot. But has anyone got an alternative? When you consider the uses of oil that are going to be very hard to replace, like growing our food, the horrible human costs we will incur if we continue to burn oil in transport doesn’t bear thinking about. We have to face it; the era of cheap transport is rapidly coming to an end and we need to plan for it.
Complain about this comment
I fail to see how anybody can discuss this issue due to the lack of honest figures which do not have an attachment to, 1) Politicians, who have a short term agenda, 2)Industry, which has its profit agenda and 3) Environmental scientists who have their job to keep.
If it were possible to have unbiased statistics rather than figures that promote a particular cause (political acceptance, profit, long term job prospects etc) Then those of us who want to make informed choices would be able to.
Lets stop treating the issue with so much emotion and have some straight honest information.
Complain about this comment
Justin, thanks for referencing my page in your comments. To answer some of the questions this brings up...
o) U.S. transit passenger loads are indeed very poor. I have not got figures for the UK but I have seen figures suggesting that European transit loads are twice as good as in the U.S. Some U.S. cities have higher loads (like New York) but some are dreadful.
o) We have a natural bias to assume loads are high. By definition, more people take the bus when it's full than take it when it's empty, after all. More of the typical person's experience will be of a more full bus, not the late night or mid-day run which has a few people. The only way to really find out is to get the figures from the transit authority -- how many tickets did they sell, and how many km did they go?
o) We demand those empty vehicles, however, even by riding at rush hour. We take the transit knowing it will be there for us if we need to go back at something other than peak times. Commuter trains, which run only at rush hour, tend to have much better passenger load factors.
o) Nobody works at making transit efficient. In the last 30 years, there's been a lot of work at making cars more efficient, but transit has actually gone down slightly according to U.S. DoE figures. While individual buyers have pushed Toyota to give them the Prius, municipal bureaucrats don't shop the same way.
o) Trying to figure out how this could be, I looked into the weights of the transit vehicles, like trolley cars, buses and the like. They are amazingly heavy. Some of them are carrying around more iron per passenger than an lightweight car even when they are packed to capacity, and they are starting and stopping all the time.
I put some more notes on that here: http://ideas.4brad.com/ultralight-vehicles-vs-large-mass-transit-vehicles
Complain about this comment
This was a really interesting post. I just bought a new-to-me car after a brief stint as a car-free family. Even though we were really well poised for it, living in an urban neighborhood close to everything we need, I found that getting two small kids around without a car was more than I could physically handle while recovering from a serious illness.
As a writer, I'm always on the lookout for stories about car-free living and how to make it work. It didn't for us, but I'm hoping to try again when my kids are out of carseats and my health has recovered.
Here's my article about our decision to purchase a car: http://childwild.com/2009/10/27/caving-in-on-car-free-living/
Complain about this comment
Could Simon Rose (#185) please provide some evidence that Environmental scientists have to produce dishonest science to keep their jobs? It is an extraordinary claim and need some strong evidence to support it. I could claim that policeman encourage crime to keep their jobs secure, doctors find ways of making us ill to safeguard their lucrative employment, opticians sell us glasses needlessly when simple eye exercises are all we need but before I make such libellous claims I would need evidence.
If you really believe that Environmental scientists are dishonest you have to follow the money. Please identify these mysterious people funding these Environmental scientists to produce this bogus science. If you look I think you will find the big money is on the other side, oil companies and other big businesses have a clear financial motive in maintaining the status quo. If they could find credible scientists who would deny manmade climate change they have plenty of money to pay them but strangely there are very few scientists trying to make the contrarian case; journalists, economists, politicians, yes, but not scientists. So who is this mysterious funder that has bought all the scientists and why don’t the “honest” ones take some of the money available on the other side?
Complain about this comment
Bradtem,
Of course buses weigh more per bum on seat: they need access aisles along with the seats and a structure to support 50 odd bodies, as well as itself, on 2 axles is going to be much more substantial than any number of 12 foot long tin boxes with a wheel at each corner. However, a far smaller proportion of the total mass will be reciprocating pistons or spinning shafts, cogs and wheels. Bus fleet operators have a vested interest in buying vehicles with the lowest running costs and manufacturers have an interest in keeping down the production costs - including energy, but feel free to think yourself more expert than they.
As for 4x4's it stands to reason that carrying around the weight of a spare driven axle and spinning an unused diff & final drive will make a vehicle less fuel efficient. There was a time, when winters were colder and roads were less well used, maintained; and on the whole more challenging to drive on. The only 4x4's lacked any creature comfort so the only people who actually used them really needed to (farmers on farm tracks - not rural commuters) and the rest of managed well enough. Some in real Minis that managed 50mpg.
It's taken us a long time to build our car dependent society where we commute 20+ miles to our white collar career jobs and shop in out of town malls. You didn't expect it to be all a bed of roses leaving behind the local factory production line and corner shop surely?
Complain about this comment
Almost forgot the Prius...
Carrying round a floor pan full of toxic heavy metals and turning petrol into kinetic energy to make electricity to make more kinetic energy is a sure fire way to save the planet - not.
Complain about this comment
175. At 4:21pm on 20 Nov 2009, chrisc_w wrote:
A excellent well thought out article slightly spoilt by suggesting that average British people have a weight in Kg which seems somewhat unlikely most average British people have a weight in stones and pounds. I also know of no places in Britain which have a distance between them measured in kilometres. We need to watch out for our linguistic environment as well as our CO2 one...
=====================================================================
Chrisc_w - sorry, you need to come out of the 19th century and into the 21st. Stones are things you dig out of your garden, pounds are things that I use as money, and actually, ALL distances in the UK are measured in metres (check the Ordnance Survey maps, which are all metric - the OR grid used to calculate distances is METRIC!). Only the road signs get converted to imperial to satisfy the more ignorant among us.
We in the UK need to take of our anti-EU blinkers, and realise that the entire world is metric (except for about 50% of the USA). Oh, and don't forget that the ONLY legal definition for an inch is that it is 25.4 mm exactly.
Justin, you did right in making the article metric. Thanks from this 66 year old world citizen.
Complain about this comment
My carbon footprint is absolutely fine. It comes from the way of life passed down to my by my parents and solidly supported to continue by my government and the world of commerce around me.
We civilised people are so lucky. Others only know what a footprint is while all animal species, other than man, have no carbon footprint what so ever. The poor devils.
More of those yummy baked-beans please.
Complain about this comment
Car, Bus, Truck, Train, Plane.
It doesn't matter what form you use, if it ain't human powered then it ain't green.
Human powered may be green but it is not always preferred or practical.
The rise in the mpg of cars has been a response to increasing road fuel prices.
Increase road fuel prices further and manufacturers will increase mpg further.
Polluter pays. (and pushes efficiency demand)
Complain about this comment
Let's us look at efficiency, as has been mentioned above, by examining the low energy light bulb.
But a low energy light bulb will only save energy depending on where you live. Here in the north of Scotland it gets cold when it goes dark. If I have incandescent bulbs most of the energy they us is given off as heat.
The light bulbs heat the interior of the house. They contribute to the back ground heat of the building. If they are changed for low wattage that give out very little heat. What happens? If the setting of the thermostat is not altered, the central heating will kick in earlier/longer. The house is still heated to the same degree, but all by gas and not a mixture of gas and the heat from the bulb. So no overall energy saving.
Now in a warm evening in summer in Spain, no heating is required. So heat from a light bulb is not required. So replacing it with a low energy bulb with save energy.
In Scotland in winter the heat from the bulb subsidises the heating, so there is no overall saving using a low energy. Less heat just trips the thermostat, no matter what setting it is at.
But low energy bulbs contain compounds which are hazardous to the environment. Both in construction and disposal. So with no over all energy saving they have a damaging audit with respect to the environment.
Complain about this comment
Sorry David123 *188* I wasn't meaning to be offensive.....Just trying to illustrate a point.
I think your emotional response to my comment illustrates it rather well!
Complain about this comment
Sorry... while the incandescent bulb does indeed give off heat which is not wasted (at least when the light is indoors) what that amounts to is electric heating. And electric heating is very inefficient. Coal gets burned in a power plant to make electricity (or nuclear reactions, or gas, or whatever) and about 1/3 of the energy goes into electricity to your house, and 2/3 goes up the smokestack and is thrown away.
With your good gas furnace, 90% of the heat goes into your house, and 10% goes up the chimney.
It's a huge difference so it is very misleading to write that the bad bulb is a good idea. In addition, as you do note, outside of winter (or if the bulbs are outside) the heat is entirely wasted.
The mercury in fluorescent bulbs is an issue, but minor compared to the energy saved. So minor in fact because the extra coal burned to run the old bulb will put more mercury into the air, along with other nasty stuff.
Turns out fluorescent bulbs are by far the most cost effective way to go green there is, and by a large margin. Vastly better than putting solar panels on your roof, even in sunny places like Arizona. Vastly, vastly better than that. Better to just give bulbs to all your neighbours than do anything else on the green checklist.
Complain about this comment
188. At 00:56am on 21 Nov 2009, David0123 wrote:
Could Simon Rose (#185) please provide some evidence that Environmental scientists have to produce dishonest science to keep their jobs? It is an extraordinary claim and need some strong evidence to support it.
Shsssh! That kind of talk can get blogs closed down.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2009/11/copenhagen_countdown_17_days.html
As always, if you think I've missed something important in this weekly round-up, please post a comment.
Update 2309: Because comments were posted quoting excerpts apparently from the hacked Climate Research Unit e-mails, and because there are potential legal issues connected with publishing this material, we have temporarily removed all comments until we can ensure that watertight oversight is in place.
There is a certain irony in that penultimate para, all things considered. But a new era of watertight oversight is to be welcomed, if and when it arrives, and is applied consistently and not according to the needs of a perceived narrative or to interpret events.
It's entirely possible that this 'incident' was/is/will be a flash in the pan, but we have been subjected to many such before consistently and even more speculatively, across the entire mainstream media. And here it's not like every other one has been weighing in in. Seemingly, bar one. Rare professionalism?
Personally I think it best these days to hew close the line and let the chips fall where they may as things evolve. 'Evidence', especially across the blogsphere, is now cowboy territory, and it seems odd to suddenly get concerned about its validity now. I have seen howlers from all quarters, which just a fact of life now.
But I'd still like the opportunity to find out more to make my own mind up.
Complain about this comment
"189. At 02:11am on 21 Nov 2009, Tommy Edison wrote:
As for 4x4's it stands to reason that carrying around the weight of a spare driven axle and spinning an unused diff & final drive will make a vehicle less fuel efficient. There was a time, when winters were colder and roads were less well used, maintained; and on the whole more challenging to drive on. The only 4x4's lacked any creature comfort so the only people who actually used them really needed to (farmers on farm tracks - not rural commuters) and the rest of managed well enough. Some in real Minis that managed 50mpg."
Hi Tommy
Whilst your comments certainly would have had significant weight 20 or 30 years ago, car design has moved on quite significantly. My off-roader has rear wheels driven by electro-magnetic motors and doesn't need a heavy rear axle, lockable diff, transfer box, or any of the other older items which substantially increase the weight of the car. And I must say, my real mini, even when driven at 55mph, never gave 50mpg.
However, the point I was trying to make was that the generally-uninformed use the term "4x4" as a form of abuse, without any proper consideration of whether or not the vehicle in question actually has the adverse properties that they're complaining of. And, whilst the truly severe winters of the 60s and 70s may have gone (for the moment), over the last week I've had to drive through water that was 2 feet deep - something you can't do in anything other than an off-roader - and I've lost count of the number of times that I've done similar things over the last few years to bring back stranded family members, or had to tow stranded family cars.
Ultimately, this is about personal choice. I have chosen to drive an off-roader because it suits my needs, and because it's highly practical and a pleasant place to be - it's a car, a van, a load-carrier and a rescue vehicle, all-in-one, and I'll never change from off-roaders now.
Complain about this comment
This is very dangerous misinformation (despite some good points). If someone is going to write high profile articles on warming impacts then they need to abide by the convention of using full information. Comparisons of 'greenness'-(which in this case is taken to mean slightly less high carbon footprint and impact) then a cradle to grave approach is needed-All impacts including manufacture disposal and nature of pollution. 2 main implications:
1)the energy of extraction and manufacture plus impact of materials (such as electronics, airconditioning and batteries)is much much higher for personal than public transport.
2)Unless the car lobby here are proposing a scheme where people will pass their cars around for 18 hours of the day the overall requirement of earth's resources is drastically higher-huge swaths of the earths resources and energy are used to park vehicles on tarmac. When this is further extended in future to the 5 billion people without cars-game over.
Regardless of this, traffic congestion in most areas makes the cars claim to efficiency a farce already. I've been to most of the world's largest cities to witness this. I've experienced it living in UK (including London)and now enjoy ALL the advantages of the public alternatives in duesseldorf Germany.
Public transport has a lower impact, even if as stated the benefits are limited until more people start acting responsibly and using it, rather than believing only what thay want to hear!!
Complain about this comment
How about they take the extra step and actually make public transport free, solve your half capacity problem quite quickly.
Also has added benefits that even after tax raises to pay for it most people would be better off as they would be able to save the car just for emergencies. Business would be happy too as the would have a much larger local employment pool as people would be prepared to commute a lot further.
Oh and public transport does have the one massive advantage in that it's a lot easier to convert it off oil than it is 35 million privately owned cars.
Complain about this comment
Simon Rose, #185, #195, now you have me confused. If you accept that environmental scientists are in general honest in their work, what point were you seeking to make about them in your first post? And how has my “emotional response” to your comment (whatever it was) illustrated it rather well?
You say “Lets stop treating the issue with so much emotion and have some straight honest information.” I ask for you for some evidence to support your stated point of view, you know, data, facts, experimental results, that sort of thing, and you say this request is emotional. Come on what are you trying to say?
Complain about this comment
To Neil - While you are correct we should use the full impacts, both public and private transport would appear worse from it. Regular replacements of all the damage items on public transport probably equates quite closely to just building a new car.
While buses, trains, etc, do have a longer life expectancy which does improve their use of raw materials in building them, this is counteracted by them still running with old and out of date technology. We have the contradictory situation of running a car scrappage scheme which uses removing old cars off the road as an excuse (many of which are still perfectly servicable), while at the same time claiming 30 year old rail vehicles (eg, the HST sets) as a benefit of public transport
The size of car parks is tiny in relation to the country. Space taken by 25m cars parked is far short of even 0.1% of the land area of the UK.
The car is as efficient as claimed despite the current traffic congestion. Solve the congestion (rather than the current situation which amounts at best making no real effort to avoid making it worse) and the efficiency of cars would dramatically increase. Removing plenty of underused bus lanes would be a start.
On a recent trip to London for work I did land up using the underground for most of the time. I was surprised on the last day that using a motorcycle for the same rush hour journey took less time, despite not really knowing the route let alone any short cuts and certainly not taking advantage of the bikes small size.
If public transport was as efficient as its supporters claim then it would easily undercut on cost private transport without the need for subsidies. That despite large subsidies it is still more expensive than a heavily taxed private car shows how inefficient it is.
Complain about this comment
As with many discussions regarding carbon emissions and transport, there is one key point missing here: carbon emissions should be calculated over the full life-cycle of the mode of transport, including manufacturing and disposal. With the majority of emissions occurring during manufacture, this would, I suspect, skew heavily the numbers in favour of public transport - cars are replaced much more frequently than trains or buses and you need a lot more of them to service the same number of people.
Complain about this comment
diesel buses???
diesel trains???
is the UK still in the dark ages?
even my city (perth, australia), with under two million people (statistically insignificant as far a city goes) uses electric trains and natural gas buses (we even have a few hydrogen fuel cell buses running now)
yes, i do realise that due to our isolation, it takes a lot more fuel to get food and supplies across the huge distances to us down here, so we do use a lot more carbon per person (most of this however is due to our continued use of coal powered power plants, because of the scaremongering of the anti-nuclear freaks who dont know what "clean" or "safe" means, and a lot of us are still trying to re-educate the ignorant masses to change this policy)
if u dont want this planet, i will gladly take it off your hands..
and, i will defend my grandkids right to a clean place to live WITH MY LIFE (or yours)
this IS a matter of life or death for all of us.
Complain about this comment
It seems to me, that making public transport electric and more energy efficient, will me much easier, than doing the same, to any nation's fleet of private motor vehicles. Also, passenger and freight cars, can be added to any train, to adjust service levels to meet demand. Bicycle and train journeys, could be encouraged by providing each train station, with enough bike-racks to label, load, and un-load, a rack for every destination.
When we have enough trains, cargo-bikes, and rickshaws, we will need far fewer buses and will not need private motor vehicles at all. If all the world were to follow suit, the million road deaths a year, would drop to nearly nothing.
Sounds like ultra capacitors (or solar thermal) will soon be able to provide the energy storage needed to make solar and wind power viable for 100% of our energy needs. Which means we will not need to risk more Chernobyls or three Mile islands, to have a zero carbon electrical grid.
Finally, we should strive to improve standards for everything. We could even start by trying to improve the methods we use for determining what works better. We should try to build almost everything to last forever.
Until then, the reality, is that everything has an average life-expectancy, and until it can be made without carbon, it will have a carbon footprint.
Complain about this comment
Glad you are investing time working out Carbon Footprints.
Some of us though work out things in more practical ways-----Like "Money"
Have you attempted to take your family of proposed car occupants on a "Public transport system" Buses;Trains;Trams;Planes;Boats. If you have then we are now down to the real "Nitty Gritty"----Money. All these Public services are operating whether you are using them or not --Half full- empty except for driver only at rare times are these services being "Carbon Efficient?" let alone financially viable for Joe Public and there entourages.
E.g. £150 for a short day trip via Public Transport. Your own vehicle with a full complement of "Passengers, luggage, food--toys-cameras. This of course does not include the sheer comfort of Dryness, Restful place at journey's end and all for less than £20. Do this for a 52 week period of weekend trips and the maths speak for themselves 52 * £150= £7800 Public Transport per annum excluding connecting Taxi services. against own transport £20*52 weekends £1040 You still have £6760 left to cover all other expenses of the vehicle + 24hour availability of your vehicle. Now who is kidding who about responsibility for Carbon Footprints?
The thing I find frustratingly annoying about this process of where the blame lies is the total lack of the most uncommon process--Lets call it "Commonsense" for where the responsibility lies, and more lies trying to pull the wool over our eyes!!
Complain about this comment
Justin,
If cars, buses, trains and planes are all so polluting (and I'm not denying that they are), and the said pollutants are made up predominantly of Carbon in the form of CO2, then we need to think outside of the box in order to combat the situation.
It's not a case of losing the car to adopt the train or bus. I don't have a car any more, much like yourself, but my situation was brought about by my engine going 'bang' and so I'm being forced to use the train to get to work daily. That said, I have become accustomed to using the train for work, albeit I have to leave almost a whole hour earlier to make it in time.
No, the issue here is purely about the increased Carbon, only part of which is due to the exhaust from petrol and diesel engines. Part also due to power stations generating huge amounts of electricity to charge laptops, mobile phones, to power TVs, PCs, Fridge-freezers, ovens, lights and central heating, not forgetting the Pendalino trains, the London tube, the Tyneside Metro, the Manchester trams and the Clockwork Orange in Glasgow.
If Carbon (in the form of CO2) is the culprit here, we should be planting millions and millions of trees. There is plenty of space on this planet that has not been used (yet). Forests in the UK have been depleted beyond recognition to allow urban development. It's time start claiming back the land for the planet. We don't have the monopoly on the ground under our feet.
Changing our ways is a mammoth task. Whilst the global economy is still promoting mobile phones, TV and all things electrical, the only remedy can come from redressing the balance. If we cannot reduce the CO2 output from our modern society, then we need to increase the CO2 processing ability of the planet, and that comes from nature.
Give nature the tools to do this - give her more trees.
Complain about this comment
...and another point, on the car versus bus / train arguement.
I used to drive to work, in a fairly economical car, and it would cost me around £20 per week in petrol for the work journey. I might put more petrol in the tank at weekends for personal use, but in general £20 per week covered it. I'd use the car for other things, like a weekly trip to the supermarket, once a month to the council tip / recycling centre and taking the dog to the vet maybe.
I now use the train. A return ticket costs me £4 (it's only a short journey), and so for a 5 day week, it's £20. If I want to get to the supermarket, I could walk to the station, then take the train into town and back, but a week's shopping is not really 'train-friendly'. The train doesn't go to the council tip, so that means a taxi, which likely will cost a lot more for waiting and cleaning afterwards - the driver might not like to take my garden waste, bottles, cans and paper recycling in his car. The train doesn't go past the vet, so that means two buses, at a cost of around £12 return busfare.
OK, the train doesn't ask me to pay road-tax, have insurance, or arrange an MOT, but in daily running costs, there is no financial advantage for me, between car and train. The downside, for the train, is that, as already pointed out by someone earlier, it takes me from a place that I'm not, to a place where I don't want to be, and so on. My journey was 15 minutes, door to car-park, by car, and is now one hour, including a walk to / from the station at either end. I stand in cramped rush-hour trains and suffer delays and sometimes cancelled services.
Let us live the lifestyle that we've created but address the problem by helping nature combat the change. Don't change the lifestyle to combat the problem.
Complain about this comment
70. At 11:41am on 20 Nov 2009, Lateralis wrote:
"...Secondly, Justin, a tonne of CO2 dumped into the upper atmosphere by an aeroplane is far more damaging than a tonne of CO2 dumped out of vehicles and so forth at ground level..."
Just to quantify your statement, Lateralis, the entire aviation industry emits just 2% of the total global CO2 emissions. I can state that quite confidently, as I'm currently working on an EU initiative within the air transport industry (ATI) in relation to Carbon Trading. How does that compare with the total emission of CO2 from petrol / diesel engines per head, at ground level?
Complain about this comment
For a typical car, the cost of manufacturing is about the energy of 1,000 U.S. gallons of gasoline -- which is a lot, but ranges at around 15% of the energy that will be burned in the engine. So it alters the equation, since I bet the number for transit numbers might be less as they see more km, but it doesn't alter the equation very much.
Complain about this comment
The choice of traveling by auto or public transport isn't always dictated by carbon footprint or even the cost of petrol. If I travel by car I know who I'm sitting next to and I can be confident I'm not going to be mugged, molested or murdered. I get to control the choice of music or no music, the topic and volume of the conversation, and I'm at much lower risk of being forced to sit next to someone who needs a serious discussion about personal hygiene. I can even roll the window down if I feel a bit of gas coming on. I may be at less risk of an accident on public transit but if an accident does happen I'm more likely to go flying about the cabin while in my car I have air bags and seatbelts to restrain me and an interior designed to reduce my chance of injury.
Give up my car? No thank you.
Complain about this comment
You can see that some transit -- typically the well run and high-use commuter rail systems -- are greener than cars. But only modestly, and often not if considered together with "feeder" bus systems.
Complain about this comment
rrudd #206
The real lies, are the ones that hide the true costs of private motor vehicles.
Half of all road damage is cause by the elements, the other half, motor-vehicles. Who pays for that?
Lung ailment rates have be shown to increase in step with SUV ownership. World-wide road deaths are over a million, serious injuries must be between 2 and 10 million. Have you included the cost of hospitals in your cost of ownership?
All those cars on the road, seriously discourage walking and bicycling as a regular form of transport. Which must add a lot to long term health care costs.
Finally, if everyone was physically and financially able to own a car, no one would be able to drive anywhere, as there would be gridlock 24/7.
Building cargo-bikes, and light-rail, to feed the heavy-rail, then ditching the cars, trucks and buses, could maximize everyone's mobility.
Complain about this comment
Depending on what assumptions you make, you can get any answer you like to the 'is the car/bus/train greenest for my 25 mile each way daily commute?' question. As others have alluded to above, a more pertinant question might be 'why do so many people have to commute such distances to work anyway?'. Building homes closer to places of work and/or siting workplaces in residential areas is one part of the answer, but homeworking is the forgotten option here. Sure, it's not possible for everyone, but a lot of peoples' jobs essentially involve working on a PC & making phone calls. If this could be done from home (at least some days a week) then there's instantly less cost/time wasted/pollution/congestion/CO2 - everyone wins. Wht is this not generally done? Are bosses convinced everyone would skive? Any thoughts?
Complain about this comment
what a great fun challenge! I would like to give up my saab too, but i only got so far as to realize i'm addicted to it. gonna try though.
you know one thing i heard about turning crops into fuels is that it causes food prices to rise in third world countries.
Complain about this comment
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
You are also ignoring the emissions produced in the manufacture of the car, which can amount to a tidy sum. The are literally millions of components that goes into a car, every one of them carries its own emission overhead.
Complain about this comment
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
@Alistair Brand - You don't think that it's a coincidence that the scientists who asked for their names to be removed from the counter-petition were dependent on Global Warming Industry finance? Note too, that the IPCC's petition was predominantly signed not by climatologists but by climate modellers.
Complain about this comment
View these comments in RSS