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Peter_Sym

Listed below are comments made by Peter_Sym between Friday, 20th November 2009 and Friday, 20th November 2009.

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Why cars are greener than buses (maybe) 4:21pm on 20 Nov 2009 #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.
Why cars are greener than buses (maybe) 2:43pm on 20 Nov 2009 #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.
Why cars are greener than buses (maybe) 1:55pm on 20 Nov 2009 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.
Why cars are greener than buses (maybe) 1:10pm on 20 Nov 2009 #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.
Why cars are greener than buses (maybe) 1:03pm on 20 Nov 2009 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.
Why cars are greener than buses (maybe) 11:46am on 20 Nov 2009 #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.
Why cars are greener than buses (maybe) 11:32am on 20 Nov 2009 #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.
Why cars are greener than buses (maybe) 11:26am on 20 Nov 2009 #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.
Why cars are greener than buses (maybe) 11:11am on 20 Nov 2009 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.
Why cars are greener than buses (maybe) 10:20am on 20 Nov 2009 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.

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