An open letter to poseur4x4 and EarthOnEmpty re: the "ticket" you put on my Cherokee

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Okay, a couple of posts while I was writing that…

[quote]

  1. Bike, walk, or blade, if feasible.
  2. Lobby for better transit in your locale.
  3. Get together with others from your work to establish a carpooling program.
  4. Get together with others from your neighbourhood to establish a car-sharing program.

There are lots of ways to reduce your carbon and smog-particulate output, all of which are are an improvement and can save you lots of money.

[quote]

  1. As stated, walking, blading, biking, etc. are not feasable because of my 45 mile commute.
  2. With all of the drama that happened building the MetroRail “system”, it’s unlikely that people will put up with more of it. Cost overruns, noise, dirt, Diesel exhaust, egos… It’s going to take a while for people to forget all of that.
  3. & 4) People in my neighbourhood don’t work anywhere near me, as far as I can tell; and people where I work don’t live in L.A. According to the recent census, the average commute is 27 minutes – much shorter than mine. So carpooling is not an option. Also, kittenblue mentions very real problems with shared transportation.

Public transportation is abysmal here.

I can reduce my CO[sub]2[/sub] emmission by an estimated 27,000 pounds per year if only my company would cooperate. I’ve done some things at work to reduce paper. Step One was routing a printed report to a dataset for all of our jobs. Step Two, testing of which should be in place today, is to eliminate the printed output altogether. If there is no paper output, then why do we have to be in an office? Why not have offices in our homes? I can write my Easytrieves and data extract profiles from anywhere.

If the company would understand that and approve telecommuting, exhaust emmissions would be reduced, employees would save untold thousands of dollars in gasoline and maintenance costs, cars would last longer, there would be less traffic (which itself is a major waster of resources), stress would be reduced, clothing and cleaning costs would be reduced, the company would not need to spend so much on office space, and so on and so forth.

Unfortunately we are owned by an English company in Nottingham. England is a much smaller place than the U.S. and I get the impression that they don’t understand distances very well. And their corporate rules make them seem a bit uptight anyway. Probably not the best people to approach to help make a green planet.

22

Haven’t heard back from EarthOnEmpty yet. I can see them now: “But we claim the Cherokee only gets 12.7 mpg. But he claims he gets 22.5 mpg. But he cannot be right because he is only the user. We must be right because we do not drive Cherokees. Norman, coordinate!”

23

It’s true that many people who have not visited southern California can’t understand why we all “need” cars. Trust us on this one until you can see for yourselves, OK?

My daily commute is 35 miles each way (which is pretty average), mostly via a toll road and a freeway. There is NO public transportation on the toll road. There is little public transportation on our lovely freeways, regardless of what you saw in the movie Speed.

Our public transportation system is pathetic and hardly user-friendly. I can’t blink without the Bus Riders Union having to file yet another lawsuit to force the state to comply with laws already passed with regards to number of busses, schedules, accessability, etc.

24

Holy poop on a stick.

Did EOE ever consider the fact that the owner of the offending vehicle does not live in the city, but is only visiting.

My Cherokee also gets 22.5 mpg. I live 7 miles off a paved road, so it’s only on pavement a few times a week. In the winter and during snow melt or heavy rain I normally need to use 4 wheel drive to get up the driveway.

Yes I could move to the city. But then I’d be driving up here everyday. That would cause more pollution than my trips to town.

25

Incidentally, I towed my Willys down to Long Beach yesterday for some front-end work. I would not have tried towing it with my Yamaha. Or even a Geo Metro!

26

matt_mcl said:

matt, I’m curious. You come into every car-related thread out there advocating the use of public transportation. Which is fine and your right. Public transit should be better, especially in the US.

But this weekend, I decided to enjoy some of that nature that many eco-preservationists seem to be trying to protect. My destination was Estes Cone in Rocky Mountain National Park, about 60 miles away outside of a small town. How should I have gotten there? By the non-existent train? By the non-existent bus? How would you get there?

Do you actually ever travel outside the environs of your urban area? I’m really wondering how not having a car works if you don’t live in the middle of a giant, seething commercial mass of humanity packed together like sardines?

And say someone wants to immerse themselves in nature in the middle of Yellowstone. Should they hike in 300 miles? Should they have available four-wheel-drive roads so that people can take low-impact off-raders into the spots, or should we criss-cross out national parks with paved roads som people can take buses into the interior? I know you’re Canadian. How does one enjoy actual nature (not just pictures of it in a museum) in Canada without a car?

27

Necros: You’re not actually supposed to go to wild nature! :eek: You’re supposed to be satisfied with the knowledge that it is. :stuck_out_tongue:

Either that, or you must hike 300 miles in order to truly and fully appreciate it. :wink:

28

I’ve never lived anywhere with public transportation worth a crap. Where my dad lived in Florida when I lived with him, they didn’t even HAVE busses. Tucson had an abysmal bus system when I lived there, though I’ve heard it has improved greatly. There were no commuter trains. The city is stretched out so that getting from the NW side to the SE side takes over an hour by car. Much of the year the temps are over 100 degrees, during the summer, 110 and 115 are not uncommon. Walking and bike riding for long distances is likely to land you in the hospital.

While I agree that public transportation is great if you can use it, it’s impractical to suggest that everyone can use it.

Carpooling may be “easy to set up” if you either A) work in a large company or B) know a lot of people… My husband right now works for a company whose local office is less than 15 people. He works 2 towns away and none of his co-workers lives in the town we do. On our end, we know almost no one here, and those few we do know don’t work anywhere close to where he works. In addition, he works different hours every day. In addition to that, he frequently has to travel to (in yet another town) the building where the servers are located, which requires him to drive.

29

Incidently, hybrid SUVs should be available pretty soon,
e.g. here

So cake and eat it to, apparently.

30

Johnny L.A. - I agree with you that putting a note on your car is pretty obnoxious. However:
[ul][li]Though your gas mileage may be not as bad as the note implied, I still find by comparing the advertised gas mileage of the Jeep Cherokee to the Toyota Corolla and Toyota Camry that the Corolla can go twice as far on a gallon of gas, and the Toyota Camry one and a half times as far.[/li][li]Motorcycles have even more gas mileage, but motorcycles are very dangerous. So not very many people will recommend that you ride a motorcycle for regular commuting.[/li][li]Not everyone can ride a bike to work and/or use the bus. But it’s true that in California we get out of the habit of doing that. At my last job I could have taken a bus to work or even my bike (about a 30-45 minute bike ride), but I didn’t do it because I was lazy and appreciated the convenience of not having to depend on the bus schedule. When I go to the movies I could get there in 10 minutes on my bike, but I take the car, again because I’m lazy. So reminding people to use public transport/alternate modes of transportation is not a bad idea.[/li][li]For visiting the great outdoors - I get along fine in my small 4-door sedan. In national parks, I can get almost anywhere (even on the steep gravel roads) in it. To get to other hard-to-reach places, I can always hike. If I were a non-car owner depending on public transportation, or a small-car owner that wants to visit a spot that requires a more manly vehicle, I could always rent it for that occasion.[/li]Some people need cars for towing large items. But many of those people only tow the large items infrequently (perhaps once a month or even less.) The rest of the time those people drive a large car when it’s not absolutely necessary. And there are many people living in the city who only use the four-wheel drive/all-terrain features of their car once a year or less.[/ul]So there are merits to the anti-SUV argument, though perhaps not in your case.

31

Well, that is where transit is most useful. And that is where most people (80% of Canadians) live around here. The vast majority of car use takes place in cities, and cities being built for the car is one of the great self-fulfilling prophecies.

I admit there are circumstances in which cars can be useful; e.g. those of us who live in rural areas. (Let’s not even discuss suburbs/exurbs, which I regard as a blight, specifically engendered by the automobile.) But as to your question:

Here’s one way:

http://www.viarail.ca/tourists/en_tour_aven_arre.html

32

Arnold: Checking the ol’ econometer, I’m averaging 23.5 mpg on this tank of gas (freeway and city driving). It’s true that a Toyota will get better mileage, but these people are stating fallacy as fact. They plead for us to drive cars that get at least 22mpg. Done. I get that in my Cherokee. And of course, I mix up the commute with the Yamaha so my actual aggregate mileage is better.

Motorcycles “dangerous”? Hm. Define “dangerous”. :wink:

I actually bought a bicycle once specifically so that I could ride it to work. The next day I was laid off. A month later the company hired me back – at a facility 70 miles away.

I agree that people should pay more attention to their fuel consumption. But as I said at the beginning, winning someone over to your side is difficult when you start off by calling them jerks. (Not you, of course; EoE.) And their assumptions are false or inaccurate.

33

Public transportation is abysmal in L.A. It has been abysmal for ages. Years ago (in my dad’s day) they had the “Red Cars”, which were pretty handy (so my aunties tell me). They had more convenient routes, and you could actually get around LA in them. But, OH NO. The Red Cars were too convenient. They had to go. Public transportation’s been sucky since then.

I used to take the bus everywhere, and it sucked. Something that takes 20 minutes by car will take 2 hours, because of schedules and routes. And…schedule? What is that? I remember taking a bus that was scheduled for every 30 minutes. But when the busses were often 15-30 minutes late or a few minutes early, what was the point of having a bloody schedule at all? The damned busses came whenever they felt like it.

34

Fine for Canada, but there is no such service in the U.S. for most of our major national parks, and definitely not for smaller state and local attractions.

I live in a city with exceptional public transit and I use it. (Well, not lately, because a 1,912 month pregnant woman schlepping up and down subway steps is a scary idea.) But I own a car (a small SUV, Honda CRV) and I use it when I need to, without guilt, because I know what other green things I do on a daily basis to contribute to my world.

If anyone had the cojones to ticket me, I’d have to ask them - do you recycle? Do you compost (in NYC, it’s rough, but its doable)? Are all the lightbulbs in your house low-energy fluorescents? Are all of your toilets and showers low-water usage? Do you use environmentally friendly cleaners and personal products? Do you know what you buy and where it came from and who made it and where?

Really?

Yeah, right.

It’s easier to go around sticking paper (that won’t be recycled, you know that) on people’s cars.

35

I bike to work 2 or 3 times a week-- about 11 k, or 6 miles each way. I wear a suit at work and I don’t smell like livestock – if I need to I take a shower (what? your office doesn’t have a shower? Sucks to be you. Go to the gym.)

But now the wife and I are trading off. After 4 and a half years of living next to her workplace, we’re moving next to mine at the end of the month. Soon I be walking 6 blocks to work, and she’ll have the 11 k commute via bicycle or scooter.

36

I’m a territory salesman. I work out of my house in Columbia, SC, and have to make calls ranging from Jacksonville, FL all the way up the coast to NC. I also have to carry a couple-hundred pounds of textbooks for gimmes. I drive (because the company gave it to me–oh, the emasculation) a brand-new Dodge Caravan. Guess what? It gets worse mileage than my 7-year old Isuzu Rodeo.

I also live in the suburbs where there is no public transportation. Am I supposed to lobby the city to run a bus route out here so I can take an hour to get to the Greyhound station 10 miles away so I can take 2 days to get to Jacksonville (which is about 5 hours away)?

37

stofsky - if you were concerned about the issue, you could always try suggesting to your company that they get you a Dodge Neon or Stratus (the 4-door sedan Dodges) that presumably have much better gas mileage. (I tried checking the advertised gas mileages at dodge.com but you had to open a .pdf file to see it and I didn’t have the time.)
I would guess that a couple-hundred pounds of textbooks would fit in the trunk and/or the back seat of a standard 4-door sedan.

38

Wow! Seriously? Gym memberships (at least around here) are prohibitively expensive! There is absolutely NO WAY I could pay for a gym membership. Some of us tried cycling to work and in our stinkin’ humid summers the place most definitely smelled like a barn! Even if I could afford it, the nearest gym to our office is quite far.

Luckily our public transit system is excellent. And I also have the option of walking to work, though it takes me over an hour.

39

matt_mcl said:

Yep, transit is useful in cities. You’ll get no arguments from me on that. I didn’t know 80 percent of Canadians live in cities. Here in the US, I don’t think it’s anywhere near that. Maybe 55 percent? ← (talking out of my ass).

But what about all those people who live in the cities? How do they get “out there”? Mass transit works fine as long as mass transit goes where you want it to go. It’sd not economically feasible for it to go everywhere.

As far as your example of rail to the wild goes, that’s a very interesting idea. But I can say with certainty that I’d fight very hard (as I’m sure most enviros would) before they build a rail line through my local wilderness areas. I don’t want to have hiked twenty miles into the interior of the Mount Zirkel wilderness so I don’t have to hear or see anyone for a week and a half, only to hear train whistles at night. :slight_smile:

40

To be fair, the majority of the rail lines in question were put in 150 years ago as a condition of British Columbia’s joining Confederation.

Another popular way to enjoy the wilderness by train is to take a train trip - VIA runs its Canadian Toronto-to-Vancouver (?) trains with dome cars that permit a panoramic vista through some of the most gorgeous wilderness country you’ll see.

I forgot to mention another way to get to the wilds - sailboat. My family used to go up the St. Lawrence River from Montreal to the Thousand Islands in the summer. Beautiful wilderness. You can get all the way up to Thunder Bay in Lake Superior or down to the Gulf of St. Lawrence from Montreal by sail. (You do have to motor through the seaway, but that’s only a few hours of transit at each lock.)

While I’d rather not see SUVs all over the place, I do recognize that cars can actually be useful, voire necessary from time to time. As I said, my mom is a doctor, and if there’s a lady in labour, she’s not going to be taking transit to get to the hospital. And it’s very important to do those other green things as well.

This means that the problem is not so much with you - it’s with the overwhelming proportion of the car culture. Our cities are designed around cars, and the more they are designed around cars, the less they are designed around humans. 75% of smog particulates in Canadian cities are released by cars. Deaths due to respiratory illness such as asthma, attributable to car-released atmospheric pollutants, are in the thousands. If Montreal’s public transit system’s ridership were replaced by cars, they would fill a three-lane highway bumper-to-bumper as far as Toronto.

You are not responsible for these things. From what you explain to me, and from the testimony I hear from others, you are conscious of environmental issues and using your cars in responsible fashions. (There are still ways to reduce, if you want to, but I don’t expect the impossible.)

The problem resides in the car culture, which blinkers us into seeing the car as a primary mode of transportation, more important than mass transit or even walking, when this is incredibly destructive to the health of our neighbours, our communities, our cities, and our environment. People complain about mass-transit subsidies when car subsidies - in the form of constant millions expended for the construction and maintenance of roads, and public spaces intentionally designed for cars, not people - pass without comment.

I had the pleasure of hearing a speech by Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogotá, at the National Youth Summit on Sustainable Urban Transportation last week. Perceiving the havoc and inequality that the emergent car culture was imposing on his city, and using the resources of an impoverished city in a third-world country, he drastically reduced car use in Bogotá, made the streets liveable for pedestrians, children, and transit, and generally improved the city and urban life, an achievement for which he is internationally recognized.

If they can do it in Colombia, why can’t we do it in North America?