On the other hand, food transport is one of the hugest wastes of fossil fuels in the US because, at the moment, gasoline is cheap while land near population centers is not.
Doesn't the US have this silly romantic obsession with trucker culture? Stuff would get way cheaper and use less fuel if more goods were transported by train instead.
On the other hand, food transport is one of the hugest wastes of fossil fuels in the US because, at the moment, gasoline is cheap while land near population centers is not.
Doesn't the US have this silly romantic obsession with trucker culture? Stuff would get way cheaper and use less fuel if more goods were transported by train instead.
Sadly, the North American train system is pretty pathetic. Which is why I was saying a few pages back we should be investing in it now.
Doesn't the US have this silly romantic obsession with trucker culture?
We do? O_o
We likes our cars, but I wasn't aware of a trucker fascination. That may have lived briefly during Stallone's "Over the Top".
I think we don't use trains for a lot of transport because the US is fuck-all big w/cities spread all over. And we have this great highway system that upon which vehicles can travel at 70+ mph, and can get to remote areas not served by tracks, and can stop in under a mile. I'd think having a train deliver oranges to thousands of groceries stores would be a logistical nightmare, that would still require trucks in there somewhere (smaller ones maybe).
I think we don't use trains for a lot of transport because the US is fuck-all big w/cities spread all over. And we have this great highway system that upon which vehicles can travel at 70+ mph, and can get to remote areas not served by tracks, and can stop in under a mile. I'd think having a train deliver oranges to thousands of groceries stores would be a logistical nightmare, that would still require trucks in there somewhere (smaller ones maybe).
I'd still prefer trains doing 120+ mph to get shit between distribution centrals and then trucks to move shit out to stores.
Which is pretty much how it works in large parts of Europe.
And I didn't say that trains deliver straight to the door. :P
1) More motorcycles on the road would make things safer for everyone. Everyone would be better off if we didn't have to worry about bachelors in Hummers just so they can flex their miniature peeners, who tend to have no spatial awareness and change lanes without signaling.
True.
What?! No. You think a horde of cars is trouble for your safety you've never experienced hordes of bikes. You want to know the safest way to deal with traffic issues? Reduce it from hordes to 'large sums' through various means of travel being utilized.
On the other hand, food transport is one of the hugest wastes of fossil fuels in the US because, at the moment, gasoline is cheap while land near population centers is not.
Doesn't the US have this silly romantic obsession with trucker culture? Stuff would get way cheaper and use less fuel if more goods were transported by train instead.
Sadly, the North American train system is pretty pathetic. Which is why I was saying a few pages back we should be investing in it now.
Word, they are building a train here. It goes from the Twin Cities to Big lake which is a little over halfway to St. Cloud. So basically they tried and crapped out along the way at doing a good job. Seriously, big lake isnt exactally a metropolis(I think 8k people live there). But I suppose it is a start.
JebusUD on
and I wonder about my neighbors even though I don't have them
but they're listening to every word I say
I ride a Sportster when the weather is nice. It gets about 50mph. The damn thing has so much chrome. I have to have chrome! Assuming everyone started riding bikes would the ethos change to where I, who ride what is in the parlance of our times a relatively ecologically friendly vehicle be ostracized for not riding a 112mpg Vespa?
Cruisers and choppers are the hummers of the bike world and Goldwings are the RV's. I'm not sure where I see a line being drawn for the future of consumption. Less commuters would mean slower regulations forthcoming on industry, allowing them to pollute enough to balance the whole of it.
Also...riding a bike in So-cal is not safe because everyone on the road is a tard but the guy on the bike. People will still use cars and trucks (contractors!) so more bikes ='s more targets.
My proposed solution:
In a 3 lane highway 2 lanes should be carpool, 1 lane regular. Big trucks aren't allowed in carpool so everyone is severly jacked for speed. This would force massive carpools and a greater cry for mass transit while bikers and people who care to spend an extra 10 minutes getting to a carpool rule the road!
My proposed solution:
In a 3 lane highway 2 lanes should be carpool, 1 lane regular. Big trucks aren't allowed in carpool so everyone is severly jacked for speed. This would force massive carpools and a greater cry for mass transit while bikers and people who care to spend an extra 10 minutes getting to a carpool rule the road!
Might work in SoCal but not in Midwestern areas where everyone lives far from one another.
I ride a Sportster when the weather is nice. It gets about 50mph. The damn thing has so much chrome. I have to have chrome! Assuming everyone started riding bikes would the ethos change to where I, who ride what is in the parlance of our times a relatively ecologically friendly vehicle be ostracized for not riding a 112mpg Vespa?
Cruisers and choppers are the hummers of the bike world and Goldwings are the RV's. I'm not sure where I see a line being drawn for the future of consumption. Less commuters would mean slower regulations forthcoming on industry, allowing them to pollute enough to balance the whole of it.
Also...riding a bike in So-cal is not safe because everyone on the road is a tard but the guy on the bike. People will still use cars and trucks (contractors!) so more bikes ='s more targets.
My proposed solution:
In a 3 lane highway 2 lanes should be carpool, 1 lane regular. Big trucks aren't allowed in carpool so everyone is severly jacked for speed. This would force massive carpools and a greater cry for mass transit while bikers and people who care to spend an extra 10 minutes getting to a carpool rule the road!
Not everyone has someone who lives near them that can drive them to work.
Are me and Q the only 2 people in this thread that know we already have a gas guzzler tax?
Fun fact: GM did some weird shit with the microcontroller that handles the computer-assisted manual transmission in the new Corvette to dodge the gas guzzler tax, causing it to shift from first directly to fourth under some circumstances and come in slightly ahead of the threshold for the tax in EPA tests. Virtually everyone who owns a 'Vette and notices this sort of thing gets a $20 part installed to get around this. This also means that in real-world circumstances, the 'Vette's gas mileage numbers are bullshit.
the more you know, etc.
The problem with gas guzzler taxes is that it's very hard to create a tax that hits people who drive obnoxiously large cars for no reason but simultaneously doesn't hurt small (and large) businesses. In the US, the gas guzzler tax only applied on cars below a certain size, to tax absurdly inefficient sports/muscle cars while not taxing commercial trucks. The downside was that SUVs were also not taxed, leading in part to the SUV craze that swept the country back before gas cost almost four dollars per fucking gallon. In Canada, they had a similar tax set up that taxed SUVs as well. What happened? Everyone fucking bought pickup trucks. There's just no winning.
My friend Joe lives a few blocks from me. He's a regular working stiff, just like me, though we work at different places, Now, Joe, he likes to do the right thing -- as he sees it -- so he recently bought himself a brand-new Prius.
Joe says, "Wow, it gets great gas mileage, almost 50 mpg around town and about 40 on the highway, even with 5 people in it -- you know 4 passengers and the driver. That's pretty good."
Anyway, Joe's grandmother for years drove a beat up old Plymouth Voyager. He used to tease her about it getting maybe just a little more than 15 mpg around town. Of course, it did a lot better on the highway with that 5-speed manual transmission and 4-cylinder engine. Grandma claims she would get something like 28 mpg maybe a little more on the highway. Pretty good. But Joe hated that thing; it was underpowered and it was ugly.
So when Grandma died, you guessed it, she willed the Voyager to him. It sat in Joe's driveway for a couple of weeks while he advertised it for sale in the paper. But as you would expect, no takers.
I went on a vacation at about this time. Returning from Sand-in-Your-Shorts-Beach in Florida, I drove by his house on the way home and there was the Voyager in his driveway, but it looked like it had been driven. Joe was home, so I stopped in. "What's up?" I asked. "Decide to keep that nifty Voyager?"
Joe says, "Well, yeah. You know I realized that I could get as good mileage as the Prius if I didn't drive it all the time."
So, is Joe flipped out or is there something going on here?
Joe is flipped out. I think he's actually talking about total petrol used yet like most people can't actually express this term properly.
I really have to say though, that I like my Prius more for how cool the engineering behind it is then the actual fuel-saving abilities.
The interior design of the Prius is pretty cool. I like them, but I'll like them a lot more when they start using lithium-ion batteries instead of the Earth-unfriendly nickel ones. The 2009 or 2010 Prius is supposed to use lithium-ion and approach 100mpg, so that will be very cool.
As a side note, does anybody remember when gas was $1.09 a gallon? When I had my first job when I was 16, that's what it cost. That was only summer 2001. It wasn't even that long ago. >_<
Joe is flipped out. I think he's actually talking about total petrol used yet like most people can't actually express this term properly.
I really have to say though, that I like my Prius more for how cool the engineering behind it is then the actual fuel-saving abilities.
The interior design of the Prius is pretty cool. I like them, but I'll like them a lot more when they start using lithium-ion batteries instead of the Earth-unfriendly nickel ones. The 2009 or 2010 Prius is supposed to use lithium-ion and approach 100mpg, so that will be very cool.
As a side note, does anybody remember when gas was $1.09 a gallon? When I had my first job when I was 16, that's what it cost. That was only summer 2001. It wasn't even that long ago. >_<
Li-Ions will be neat, though far as I know Toyota had problems with them and dropped them from the 2009 model Prius - has that changed recently?
As a side note, does anybody remember when gas was $1.09 a gallon? When I had my first job when I was 16, that's what it cost. That was only summer 2001. It wasn't even that long ago. >_<
I remember paying as little as 79 cents a gallon, though 89 cents was more common.
I don't ride, I'll admit. But the fact that I've never seen anybody do it combined with the enthusiasm with which riders up here bring out their bikes come spring suggests that it sucks ass. And/or is incredibly dangerous.
The average "rider" does 1000 miles a year and melts in a slight mist. I wouldn't go out on race tires, but a dirt bike with studded knobbies makes it laughably easy. Throw on an Aerostich suit and heated grips and you're good to go. When other folks were getting stuck this winter I made it to campus just fine -- some people even do it for fun.
It's true that bike mileage could be better, but no bike manufacturer has ever tried for mileage -- it's all about squeezing an extra two horsepower out of the engine.
Anyway, it's not a gas tax, but requiring RV drivers to hold a CDL license (which they should, given the size of the things) would remove 95% of them from the road.
Li-Ions will be neat, though far as I know Toyota had problems with them and dropped them from the 2009 model Prius - has that changed recently?
I read that they couldn't get the same energy density as the nickel batteries and as such the electric motor would be underutilized. I think this was in engadget about a year ago?
Also, hi5 on the Prius engineering appreciation. Though, is it just me or is the music player's interface woefully under-engineered?
Li-Ions will be neat, though far as I know Toyota had problems with them and dropped them from the 2009 model Prius - has that changed recently?
I read that they couldn't get the same energy density as the nickel batteries and as such the electric motor would be underutilized. I think this was in engadget about a year ago?
Also, hi5 on the Prius engineering appreciation. Though, is it just me or is the music player's interface woefully under-engineered?
It is my opinion that the Prius should be a USB device which I can plug an external computer into and that it should have about 4 more RGB touchscreen device spaces on the network.
I want registration taxes on every vehicle made more than 25 years ago, not just for the fuel economy but for the emissions as well.
Yes, because slapping a registration tax on a 70s VW Rabbit Diesel that is more fuel efficient that many cars today is a good idea and deters those gas guzzlers!
Posts
Doesn't the US have this silly romantic obsession with trucker culture? Stuff would get way cheaper and use less fuel if more goods were transported by train instead.
Sadly, the North American train system is pretty pathetic. Which is why I was saying a few pages back we should be investing in it now.
We do? O_o
We likes our cars, but I wasn't aware of a trucker fascination. That may have lived briefly during Stallone's "Over the Top".
I think we don't use trains for a lot of transport because the US is fuck-all big w/cities spread all over. And we have this great highway system that upon which vehicles can travel at 70+ mph, and can get to remote areas not served by tracks, and can stop in under a mile. I'd think having a train deliver oranges to thousands of groceries stores would be a logistical nightmare, that would still require trucks in there somewhere (smaller ones maybe).
I'd still prefer trains doing 120+ mph to get shit between distribution centrals and then trucks to move shit out to stores.
Which is pretty much how it works in large parts of Europe.
And I didn't say that trains deliver straight to the door. :P
One of my roommates in the Army had a huge Kris Kristofferson fetish. No, I have not actually seen this film. But he owned it.
What?! No. You think a horde of cars is trouble for your safety you've never experienced hordes of bikes. You want to know the safest way to deal with traffic issues? Reduce it from hordes to 'large sums' through various means of travel being utilized.
Word, they are building a train here. It goes from the Twin Cities to Big lake which is a little over halfway to St. Cloud. So basically they tried and crapped out along the way at doing a good job. Seriously, big lake isnt exactally a metropolis(I think 8k people live there). But I suppose it is a start.
but they're listening to every word I say
Cruisers and choppers are the hummers of the bike world and Goldwings are the RV's. I'm not sure where I see a line being drawn for the future of consumption. Less commuters would mean slower regulations forthcoming on industry, allowing them to pollute enough to balance the whole of it.
Also...riding a bike in So-cal is not safe because everyone on the road is a tard but the guy on the bike. People will still use cars and trucks (contractors!) so more bikes ='s more targets.
My proposed solution:
In a 3 lane highway 2 lanes should be carpool, 1 lane regular. Big trucks aren't allowed in carpool so everyone is severly jacked for speed. This would force massive carpools and a greater cry for mass transit while bikers and people who care to spend an extra 10 minutes getting to a carpool rule the road!
Not everyone has someone who lives near them that can drive them to work.
Fun fact: GM did some weird shit with the microcontroller that handles the computer-assisted manual transmission in the new Corvette to dodge the gas guzzler tax, causing it to shift from first directly to fourth under some circumstances and come in slightly ahead of the threshold for the tax in EPA tests. Virtually everyone who owns a 'Vette and notices this sort of thing gets a $20 part installed to get around this. This also means that in real-world circumstances, the 'Vette's gas mileage numbers are bullshit.
the more you know, etc.
The problem with gas guzzler taxes is that it's very hard to create a tax that hits people who drive obnoxiously large cars for no reason but simultaneously doesn't hurt small (and large) businesses. In the US, the gas guzzler tax only applied on cars below a certain size, to tax absurdly inefficient sports/muscle cars while not taxing commercial trucks. The downside was that SUVs were also not taxed, leading in part to the SUV craze that swept the country back before gas cost almost four dollars per fucking gallon. In Canada, they had a similar tax set up that taxed SUVs as well. What happened? Everyone fucking bought pickup trucks. There's just no winning.
I really have to say though, that I like my Prius more for how cool the engineering behind it is then the actual fuel-saving abilities.
As a side note, does anybody remember when gas was $1.09 a gallon? When I had my first job when I was 16, that's what it cost. That was only summer 2001. It wasn't even that long ago. >_<
XBL: QuazarX
I remember paying as little as 79 cents a gallon, though 89 cents was more common.
The average "rider" does 1000 miles a year and melts in a slight mist. I wouldn't go out on race tires, but a dirt bike with studded knobbies makes it laughably easy. Throw on an Aerostich suit and heated grips and you're good to go. When other folks were getting stuck this winter I made it to campus just fine -- some people even do it for fun.
It's true that bike mileage could be better, but no bike manufacturer has ever tried for mileage -- it's all about squeezing an extra two horsepower out of the engine.
Anyway, it's not a gas tax, but requiring RV drivers to hold a CDL license (which they should, given the size of the things) would remove 95% of them from the road.
Also, hi5 on the Prius engineering appreciation. Though, is it just me or is the music player's interface woefully under-engineered?
I wonder how long it would take to download "2008 Prius fullcar all packages - REAL.iso" from LimeWire?
Depends on your pipes. But would you trust it?
Yes, because slapping a registration tax on a 70s VW Rabbit Diesel that is more fuel efficient that many cars today is a good idea and deters those gas guzzlers!
See how many books I've read so far in 2010