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Fears of ‘transport poverty’
Jane Cowan, AM, ABC Radio National
TONY EASTLEY: Petrol prices weigh on the mind of any motorist, but there are predictions that if the cost of fuel continues to rise, the poorest Australians will be forced to quit work because they can’t afford to travel back and forth to their jobs.
Researchers are calling it “transport poverty”, and it’s a concept that’ll be presented to a conference in Melbourne today.
Jane Cowan reports.
JANE COWAN: On the outskirts of Melbourne alone, at least 20,000 families earn less than $500 a week but run more than two cars.
Monash University’s Chair of Public Transport, Graham Currie, says the price of petrol doesn’t have to rise much more before those families simply won’t be able to afford to fill up the tank.
GRAHAM CURRIE: What this new research project has found is that there is essential transport poverty associated with people who have got no option but to own and run very expensive cars, and these cars are… the expenses are increasing with fuel prices growing.
JANE COWAN: Professor Currie says the real risk is that people will start dropping out of work because they can’t afford to drive there.
GRAHAM CURRIE: Our cities are gigantic, and there is really no alternative other than using the car at the moment. And if that is further marginalised with increasing oil prices, climate change, then this will further marginalise groups who can’t afford these cars.
(27 June 2007)
Reader Matt Picio writes:
“GRAHAM CURRIE: Our cities are gigantic, and there is really no alternative other than using the car at the moment.”
This is a great reason to increase bicycle infrastructure. Portland, Oregon has a 5% to 7% bicycle share, Bogota, Colombia is well over 10%, Amsterdam in the Netherlands is well over 20%. As transportation costs increase, alternate modes will have to become available, and bicycles are the logical alternative. It takes only a few hundred dollars in paint to create a bike lane and reallocate existing pavement from cars to bicycles. Modern clothing solves most of the weather issues involved, and bicycle trailers, panniers and other bags solve the storage and transport issues (for the most part). Some of these items can be a bit pricey, but the average new car costs as much as $7,000 annually. ($300 monthly car payment, $100 monthly insurance, $100-200 monthly gasoline)
[See also Bogota’s urban happiness movement]
Is There a Model T in Your Future?
Michael I. Nimanm, Art Week
I remember the future. I believe we were supposed to be wearing silver suits and zipping about in atomic-powered hovercrafts. The future of my childhood, however, is now, and as far as transportation technology goes, things ain’t all that different.
Take government-imposed CAFE standards. “CAFE” stands for Corporate Average Fuel Economy. Created during the energy crisis of the 1970s, CAFE forced automakers to improve fleet gas mileage. The US Senate just passed a controversial bill to increase CAFE standards to require automakers to achieve a lethargic average of 35 miles per gallon in their consumer-grade vehicles by the year 2020.
Wow. Let’s put this into perspective. My 1987 Hyundai got an EPA highway rating of 40 miles per gallon, a figure it often surpassed. My current 11-year-old car also earned an EPA rating of 40 miles per gallon, and it averages 38 miles per gallon in real-world driving. So excuse me if I’m not impressed with 35 miles per gallon by the year 2020.
What is futuristic about this bill is the political climate in Washington, where this lame and worthless legislation is currently received as “controversial”-as if it were some sort of ecotopian plan drafted by deep ecologists just back from burning an SUV dealership. The future is now, and it’s dominated by corporate interests that can’t see past tomorrow morning’s stock valuations. Hence, most Republicans in the Senate voted against imposing 1980s Hyundai technology on the American auto industry of the 2020s.
Dr. Michael I. Niman teaches journalism and media studies at Buffalo State College. His columns are available online at www.artvoice.com, archived at www.mediastudy.com and available globally through syndication.
(28 June 2007)
Get Americans to drive less by raising gas taxes
Randy Salzman, Christian Science Monitor
Tougher CAFE standards won’t make a dent in US oil consumption because those with more fuel-efficient cars tend to drive more.
—
As an environmentalist, I was among the first to get a hybrid car, which helped me be among the first to admit that government-imposed fuel standards – known as Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) – don’t work.
Before I bought my 2001 Toyota Prius (which gets 46 m.p.g.), I drove my old, low-mileage Suzuki rarely because I wanted to save on gas and pollution. I opted to commute as much as possible on my bicycle, as well as ride it for pleasure. Then I picked up the Prius, and before I knew it, I seemed to be driving everywhere.
I was proof of economist David Greene’s “rebound effect” – that buyers of high-mileage vehicles drive more. With high-mileage cars, we pollute less per mile, but we cancel that benefit by spending more time behind the wheel. But with the rebound effect in mind and a son who was serving in Iraq, I cut back my driving to roughly its previous level. I am in the minority, however. The fact is that after more than 30 years of CAFE, oil consumption, pollution, and traffic congestion have soared, and automakers have found ways around the tightest standards.
…The US Senate can hold CAFE hearings and chide Detroit. The president can say we’ll be saved by ethanol or hydrogen. Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain can claim that “cap-and-trade” systems are the answer. But all this falls apart when anyone does any real analysis of Americans’ “love affair with the automobile.”
Randy Salzman, a former journalism professor, studied transportation-demand management at Oxford University.
(26 June 2007)
One of the first sightings of “rebound effect” meme in the media (aka Jevons Paradox). Let’s hope this represents the beginnings of a more sophisticated discussion of energy usage. -BA
California has worst U.S. traffic: study
Joan Gralla, Reuters
Californians idle in the nation’s worst traffic jams on interstates surrounding major metropolitan areas but they are far from alone — 52 percent of these urban stretches of highways are congested, according to a new study released on Thursday.
…Some 83.33 percent of California’s urban interstates are overcrowded, followed by Minnesota at 77.78 percent and New Jersey at 73.35 percent, according to the 16th annual survey by The Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles-based nonpartisan group.
Manhattan popularized the term “gridlock” but traffic jams on New York’s urban interstates were only mediocre, ranking 37th at 53.39 percent, according to the libertarian-idea promoting group that compared volume-to-capacity ratios.
(28 June 2007)
Public transit ridership in Canada hits record in 2006
Canadian Press
Public transit ridership in Canada increased in 2006 by just over three per cent to set a record for the fourth year in a row.
The Canadian Urban Transit Association says preliminary figures for 2006 show there were 1.7 billion trips nationally, a 3.21 per cent increase.
On a year-over-year basis, ridership grew by 52.7 million trips, which is close to the entire ridership on a transit system the size of Edmonton.
Association president Michael Roschlau says the upward trend is expected to continue partly due to Canadians’ concern about the environment.
(27 June 2007)
Electric skies?
How to navigate a flight path to greener air travel.
Editorial, Nature
Nature 447, 1032 (28 June 2007) | doi:10.1038/4471032a;
The widespread availability and affordability of air travel has delivered unprecedented opportunity to travel and a world that is more closely interlinked than ever before. But air transport is also a substantial contributor to greenhouse-gas emissions, leading to a flurry of discussion about what could be done to reduce its ‘carbon footprint’.
The airlines and the aerospace industry are increasingly conscious that this concern could put a damper on the growth of their businesses. The Boeing 787, the first exemplar of which is expected to be rolled out of the factory next week and flown next month, is said to be 20% more fuel efficient than the airliners it will replace. Richard Branson’s Virgin Airlines said earlier in the year that it plans to begin testing unspecified biofuels in airliners. And EasyJet, a low-cost European airline, has said that it hopes to halve its emissions per passenger kilometre by 2015.
It is by no means clear how much of this is public-relations talk, aimed at deflecting growing public disquiet about the carbon emissions associated with flying. But in the long term, there can be no doubt that the industry will pursue technologies to cut emissions.
(27 June 2007)
More at the original, which is behind a paywall. Reader Michael writes:
Yet more denial of the probable course of the future based on technological developments that might (but very probably will not) occur – this time coming from the editorial staff of the leading science journal Nature. Sadly, it seems that our science journals are as much in the business of presenting optimistic (rather than realistic) visions of the future as the mainstream press. So much for responsible journalism!
