4 ms·

The travel-related things can be solved. 1. Public Transit options (bus, tram, subway, rail) are all available in the USA. Yeah, it "sucks" but there's a bus r

The travel-related things can be solved. 1. Public Transit options (bus, tram, subway, rail) are all available in the USA. Yeah, it "sucks" but there's a bus route for all corners in the USA... and some cities have more advanced options. 2. Public Transport itself can use alternative fuels: Ethanol, Biodiesel, Electric, Hydrogen, Nat Gas. Transitioning a bus from crude oil/diesel into (whatever) will affect dozens, or even hundreds, of people. Especially if we work to fill up our busses for this incoming wave. 3. Some counties / states may not have the resources to transition public transport to alternative-fuels. That is okay, we don't need to reduce all of our oil consumption, just enough to "survive" until the long-term solutions exist. 4. FlexFuel (aka: 85% ethanol fuel), Hybrid, PHEV, and Electric cars exist as individual options. Pushing the standard from E10 (10% Ethanol) to E15 or E20 could very well handle the rest of the impending oil-crisis. All cars built since 2001 are designed to handle at least E15. 5. Carpooling. A car with 5 people in it is basically as efficient as a 30-person bus. If you can't use public transit, create efficiencies by pooling cars together. Transportation is one of the biggest users of energy consumption in the USA (https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec2_3.pdf https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec2_3.pdf), and IIRC, a significant amount of our transportation-energy is simply cars carrying just a single-person. --------- Natural Gas seems more difficult, but in the USA Nat-Gas is basically domestic. This will be a bigger issue for our European friends across the Atlantic.

protomyth 5y ago
but there's a bus route for all corners in the USA... This is just plain false. The USA is way too big and has a lot of rural area that are not served by public transit of any sort.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
abalashov 5y ago
> there's a bus route for all corners in the USA I'm sorry, but this seems plainly counterfactual in view of the low-density, automobile-exclusive nature of much of suburban and rural Middle America. There's literally not a bus route in most of the USA, let alone "all corners".
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Fortunately, rural Middle America doesn't have huge amounts of traffic. So a bus isn't needed in those locations either. If you have a bus route available, really consider it. I don't think this oil-crisis is avoidable. Even if Russia retreats from Ukraine tomorrow, the long-term effects of these sanctions will propagate through the market.
  - Fatnino 5y ago
    My daily commute is from Palo Alto to Cupertino. I'd say that does not count as "rural middle America". Just now I opened Google maps to find me a way to work using public transit. As a baseline, it takes me 16 minutes in my car. Option 1) drive 11 minutes to the train station. Ride the train 3 stops, get off at mountain view and get a lyft for 8 minutes. Total travel time: 47 minutes. (note this is basically all car, so a non starter in reducing gasoline use) Option 2) basically the same thing but replace the train with the 22 bus instead. Total travel time: 57 minutes. (again, practically all car) Option 3..n) walk 19 minutes to catch the 21 bus, ride to mountain view, switch to the 51, ride to practically the doorstep at work. Total travel time: 100+ minutes. And I arrive an hour early. In summary, VTA has failed me, and I'd like to say most of the people in the north part of Santa Clara county. But the reality is, many of them actually like it this way so it's harder for the rifraff from San Jose to get here. We still pay the same taxes into the system, we just don't have it up here.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      Lets not have perfect be the enemy of good here. > Option 3..n) walk 19 minutes to catch the 21 bus, ride to mountain view, switch to the 51, ride to practically the doorstep at work. Total travel time: 100+ minutes. And I arrive an hour early. How far away is the drive to the Mountain View / 51 bus? Is it an option to drive to that bus, then bus to the doorstep of your work? If gasoline reaches $6, $7, $8, $9 or $10/gallon, would it be economical for you to use this route? Is there a convenient parking lot where you can park all-day at reasonable costs (or for free)?
gameswithgo 5y ago
flex fuel is a net energy loser
SkyPuncher 5y ago
> Yeah, it "sucks" but there's a bus route for all corners in the USA I live in rural America. This is simply not true. * The bus to the next town over takes 3 hours. * The town 15 miles north of us has no public transit options. Everything around it is inaccessible via bus as well. * Going 2.5 hours drive north, the "best" public transit option is 30 hours by bus. I could get half-way across the country in the time it takes me to net 125 miles.
moltke 5y ago
>there's a bus route for all corners in the USA. Lol. Are you from Europe? Neither the town I grew up in nor any of its neighbors have any kind of public transit whatsoever. Want to go to court and then go to the library while you wait for your friend to pick you up? (since you can't bring a cell phone) I hope you have a good pair of walking shoes. The place I currently live (just 8 miles away from the capital of a coastal state) has very dodgy transit. I think it might stop twice every weekday or something like that and just goes strait to the hub downtown. It's completely impractical.
kayodelycaon 5y ago
The public transit in my city is an absolute joke. My 17 minute commute to my previous place of work was optimistically 90 minutes, but it could be double that if one of several connecting buses was late or early. This is getting to work. Leaving work my trip was anywhere from 20~45 minutes. I doubt I’d make it home in less than 2 hours on a bus.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  In my experience, the "bus" system and "train" systems work incredibly well with your car in my area at least. None of us are selling our cars in the next 3 months or 6 months (unless we really plan to buy a new car). Instead, we should be looking for the best combination bus + car route to get to-and-from work each day. Especially when you consider carpool options, a group of people carpooling to the bus / train can grossly improve efficiencies.
- tjr225 5y ago
  Did you miss the carpooling part of the post? Imagine fitting 5 people in an suv to last mile delivery a few times a week. The burden on your vehicle and the other peoples vehicle drops off dramatically. Your fuel costs drop dramatically. The only issue(a big one) is avoiding sitting in a car with a psycopath or two multiple times a week.
ddingus 5y ago
E15 to 20 is gonna be ultra rough on a lot of engines! My car would perform extremely poorly on it, and the ethanol is lower energy density and expensive to produce. The US is finding out the ethanol program isn't really a gain. Not sure of the loss and hopefully it's minor.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  > My car would perform extremely poorly on it Ethanol has a higher octane rating. IIRC, the main issue with Ethanol is corrosion, not performance. Your _engine_ will love the stuff. The tank / seals / gaskets on the other hand... that's the problem. > and the ethanol is lower energy density and expensive to produce. So? Its an alternative fuel. If gasoline becomes $10 a gallon, then we use more Ethanol. The idea is to have a plan for the incoming oil shock. If gasoline becomes more expensive, then ethanol almost certainly will become a better idea, especially because (when mixed with Gasoline), most car engines can use it.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    From the google: Ethanol contains less energy per gallon than gasoline, to varying degrees, depending on the volume percentage of ethanol in the blend. Denatured ethanol (98% ethanol) contains about 30% less energy than gasoline per gallon.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    As alternative sure. But we won't be making a performance argument as well. And it is hard on top soil. Maybe easier if we use things other than corn. I rebutted the performance claims, and did so based on energy density and engine difficulty. Many will be dealing with those two things, with the latter being more important. There is no need to oversell. People will deal with the fuel because they need to. Engines won't love the stuff, unless their ECMs are setup to deal with the lower performance per unit of fuel. Then they will work, but not optimally. Drivers will notice their car is not as peppy. Source: I have driven on high percentage ethanol. One of my vehicles does OK. The fuel is not recommended for the other one. It may need an additive.
morpheuskafka 5y ago
You’re forgetting about the subdivisions. The house where I grew up was about an hour walk through the woods and up many hills from the nearest bus stop, which would take you downtown but to neither of my parents jobs. By car it was just ten minutes to downtown. Where my dad worked was across from some hotels, and the bus dependent workers there had to run across a six lane highway with no crosswalk then walk along another one with no sidewalks for a mile to reach a bus depot. Also, bus systems are barely functional right now due to labor shortage. The college town where I am now has a very good (for the South) free bus system, but it’s a tiny town with no suburbs and they are constant cutting service, missing routes, etc due to driver shortage. Not to mention—if people can’t, or won’t, take the bus to places other than work, retail and service jobs evaporate overnight.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Where did I make the claim that you need to sell your car and go bus-only? You can drive your car to the bus that drives to your work. The reverse trip (work -> bus -> car -> home) works out the same way. This model gets you with only one transfer, and your car only partially drives to work, cutting down on your gasoline usage significantly. Its pretty much how a lot of people I know use the rail / subway stations too. Especially because parking outside the city is far cheaper (usually free) than parking inside the city, so you end up saving significantly on parking prices (even if you spend part of that on subway tickets). --------- Bonus points: a lot of these "transit hubs" (where many bus-lines meet) are in locations with ample parking and many different bus lines. This makes it feasible to carpool to a transit hub, instead of carpooling to work (my neighbors don't go to my job, but there is a chance that my neighbors will benefit from a carpool to the same transit hub)
  - FeepingCreature 5y ago
    I strongly doubt that bus stations have enough parking lot capacity for this model. Ample parking is not scaled to the model where this location has to hold everybody's car while they're at work.
    - 5y ago

protomyth 5y ago

but there's a bus route for all corners in the USA... This is just plain false. The USA is way too big and has a lot of rural area that are not served by public transit of any sort.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

abalashov 5y ago

> there's a bus route for all corners in the USA I'm sorry, but this seems plainly counterfactual in view of the low-density, automobile-exclusive nature of much of suburban and rural Middle America. There's literally not a bus route in most of the USA, let alone "all corners".

dragontamer 5y ago
Fortunately, rural Middle America doesn't have huge amounts of traffic. So a bus isn't needed in those locations either. If you have a bus route available, really consider it. I don't think this oil-crisis is avoidable. Even if Russia retreats from Ukraine tomorrow, the long-term effects of these sanctions will propagate through the market.
- Fatnino 5y ago
  My daily commute is from Palo Alto to Cupertino. I'd say that does not count as "rural middle America". Just now I opened Google maps to find me a way to work using public transit. As a baseline, it takes me 16 minutes in my car. Option 1) drive 11 minutes to the train station. Ride the train 3 stops, get off at mountain view and get a lyft for 8 minutes. Total travel time: 47 minutes. (note this is basically all car, so a non starter in reducing gasoline use) Option 2) basically the same thing but replace the train with the 22 bus instead. Total travel time: 57 minutes. (again, practically all car) Option 3..n) walk 19 minutes to catch the 21 bus, ride to mountain view, switch to the 51, ride to practically the doorstep at work. Total travel time: 100+ minutes. And I arrive an hour early. In summary, VTA has failed me, and I'd like to say most of the people in the north part of Santa Clara county. But the reality is, many of them actually like it this way so it's harder for the rifraff from San Jose to get here. We still pay the same taxes into the system, we just don't have it up here.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Lets not have perfect be the enemy of good here. > Option 3..n) walk 19 minutes to catch the 21 bus, ride to mountain view, switch to the 51, ride to practically the doorstep at work. Total travel time: 100+ minutes. And I arrive an hour early. How far away is the drive to the Mountain View / 51 bus? Is it an option to drive to that bus, then bus to the doorstep of your work? If gasoline reaches $6, $7, $8, $9 or $10/gallon, would it be economical for you to use this route? Is there a convenient parking lot where you can park all-day at reasonable costs (or for free)?

gameswithgo 5y ago

flex fuel is a net energy loser

SkyPuncher 5y ago

> Yeah, it "sucks" but there's a bus route for all corners in the USA I live in rural America. This is simply not true. * The bus to the next town over takes 3 hours. * The town 15 miles north of us has no public transit options. Everything around it is inaccessible via bus as well. * Going 2.5 hours drive north, the "best" public transit option is 30 hours by bus. I could get half-way across the country in the time it takes me to net 125 miles.

moltke 5y ago

>there's a bus route for all corners in the USA. Lol. Are you from Europe? Neither the town I grew up in nor any of its neighbors have any kind of public transit whatsoever. Want to go to court and then go to the library while you wait for your friend to pick you up? (since you can't bring a cell phone) I hope you have a good pair of walking shoes. The place I currently live (just 8 miles away from the capital of a coastal state) has very dodgy transit. I think it might stop twice every weekday or something like that and just goes strait to the hub downtown. It's completely impractical.

kayodelycaon 5y ago

The public transit in my city is an absolute joke. My 17 minute commute to my previous place of work was optimistically 90 minutes, but it could be double that if one of several connecting buses was late or early. This is getting to work. Leaving work my trip was anywhere from 20~45 minutes. I doubt I’d make it home in less than 2 hours on a bus.

dragontamer 5y ago
In my experience, the "bus" system and "train" systems work incredibly well with your car in my area at least. None of us are selling our cars in the next 3 months or 6 months (unless we really plan to buy a new car). Instead, we should be looking for the best combination bus + car route to get to-and-from work each day. Especially when you consider carpool options, a group of people carpooling to the bus / train can grossly improve efficiencies.
tjr225 5y ago
Did you miss the carpooling part of the post? Imagine fitting 5 people in an suv to last mile delivery a few times a week. The burden on your vehicle and the other peoples vehicle drops off dramatically. Your fuel costs drop dramatically. The only issue(a big one) is avoiding sitting in a car with a psycopath or two multiple times a week.

ddingus 5y ago

E15 to 20 is gonna be ultra rough on a lot of engines! My car would perform extremely poorly on it, and the ethanol is lower energy density and expensive to produce. The US is finding out the ethanol program isn't really a gain. Not sure of the loss and hopefully it's minor.

dragontamer 5y ago
> My car would perform extremely poorly on it Ethanol has a higher octane rating. IIRC, the main issue with Ethanol is corrosion, not performance. Your _engine_ will love the stuff. The tank / seals / gaskets on the other hand... that's the problem. > and the ethanol is lower energy density and expensive to produce. So? Its an alternative fuel. If gasoline becomes $10 a gallon, then we use more Ethanol. The idea is to have a plan for the incoming oil shock. If gasoline becomes more expensive, then ethanol almost certainly will become a better idea, especially because (when mixed with Gasoline), most car engines can use it.
- ddingus 5y ago
  From the google: Ethanol contains less energy per gallon than gasoline, to varying degrees, depending on the volume percentage of ethanol in the blend. Denatured ethanol (98% ethanol) contains about 30% less energy than gasoline per gallon.
- ddingus 5y ago
  As alternative sure. But we won't be making a performance argument as well. And it is hard on top soil. Maybe easier if we use things other than corn. I rebutted the performance claims, and did so based on energy density and engine difficulty. Many will be dealing with those two things, with the latter being more important. There is no need to oversell. People will deal with the fuel because they need to. Engines won't love the stuff, unless their ECMs are setup to deal with the lower performance per unit of fuel. Then they will work, but not optimally. Drivers will notice their car is not as peppy. Source: I have driven on high percentage ethanol. One of my vehicles does OK. The fuel is not recommended for the other one. It may need an additive.

morpheuskafka 5y ago

You’re forgetting about the subdivisions. The house where I grew up was about an hour walk through the woods and up many hills from the nearest bus stop, which would take you downtown but to neither of my parents jobs. By car it was just ten minutes to downtown. Where my dad worked was across from some hotels, and the bus dependent workers there had to run across a six lane highway with no crosswalk then walk along another one with no sidewalks for a mile to reach a bus depot. Also, bus systems are barely functional right now due to labor shortage. The college town where I am now has a very good (for the South) free bus system, but it’s a tiny town with no suburbs and they are constant cutting service, missing routes, etc due to driver shortage. Not to mention—if people can’t, or won’t, take the bus to places other than work, retail and service jobs evaporate overnight.

dragontamer 5y ago
Where did I make the claim that you need to sell your car and go bus-only? You can drive your car to the bus that drives to your work. The reverse trip (work -> bus -> car -> home) works out the same way. This model gets you with only one transfer, and your car only partially drives to work, cutting down on your gasoline usage significantly. Its pretty much how a lot of people I know use the rail / subway stations too. Especially because parking outside the city is far cheaper (usually free) than parking inside the city, so you end up saving significantly on parking prices (even if you spend part of that on subway tickets). --------- Bonus points: a lot of these "transit hubs" (where many bus-lines meet) are in locations with ample parking and many different bus lines. This makes it feasible to carpool to a transit hub, instead of carpooling to work (my neighbors don't go to my job, but there is a chance that my neighbors will benefit from a carpool to the same transit hub)
- FeepingCreature 5y ago
  I strongly doubt that bus stations have enough parking lot capacity for this model. Ample parking is not scaled to the model where this location has to hold everybody's car while they're at work.
  - 5y ago