My friend Kat posted a link to this blog entry comparing the fuel efficiency of buses against cars. Kat’s a fully paid-up member of the eco-mentalist brigade but I forgive her that because she does at least have the sense to use valid logic in her arguments most of the time which is more than can be said for most of the eco-mentals.
In simple terms the conclusion of the linked blog entry is that if you cram a bus full of people; it’s more efficient, but if you compare a full car to a half-empty bus, the balance tips in favour of the car. The important thing really is that the numbers are in the same order of magnitude – buses are not a magical fix-all solution to the polution caused by cars, nor are trains.
The important thing in determining the efficiency of any vehicle in terms of “miles-per-gallon-per-passenger” is the weight of the vehicle in comparison to the weight of the passengers. This is simple physics. A big heavy bus takes a lot more energy to move than a small, lightweight car. The bus only wins on efficiency when all that extra weight is being used to move a large number of people, otherwise you’re just moving around a big hunk of metal for no purpose and that is seriously wasteful.
So the conclusion is that buses should be crammed full at all times. I can see a couple of problems with this. Firstly; people do not like to be crammed into small spaces with strangers, it’s simply not a pleasurable experience. I guess the environmentalists would argue that this is a price we have to pay to protect the planet. Not true. Secondly; part of running a bus service requires that you run buses half-emtpy a lot of the time. For a bus service to be considered worthwhile, I have to be able to go to my local bus stop at pretty much any time and reasonably expect to get on a bus fairly soon. Achieving that requires that you run buses at the off-peak times. You cannot simply stop running buses when it isn’t efficient or profitable to do so – even if those empty buses do not make direct profit to the bus company, to stop running them would devalue their entire service as a whole. Empty buses are sorta like a loss-leader for the bus company and one they can’t do without.
Besides, if the future is to be one in which people are transported around crammed in tighter than cattle taken to be slaughtered and we can only travel at the same time as everyone else, I’d rather take my chances with global warming thanks.
Driving for me is one of the few simple pleasures in life. Although obviously personal motorized transport is only a very recent thing in terms of the history of mankind, and cars themselves are technological marvels; the actual act of driving itself is a very simple, physical thing. Driving talks to the lower-level, primeval parts of your brain – it says “I’m free”, and “I’m in control”, occasionally interspersed with “This is fun” and “Wow that’s beautiful” and sometimes even “This is dangerous”. To me those are all very simple emotions and they’re often sadly lacking in modern society.
We’re basically not free – we have the government interfering with our lives to an increasing degree on one hand, we have the media trying to manipulate us on the other, and we have the eco-mentalists sitting on our shoulder telling us we should feel guilty for bascically everything we do and to top it all off; we’re bound to work for 8 hours a day just so we can afford to continue our own miserable little existence. No, we’re not free, not at all. We’re born into bondage, the bondage of a modern capitalist consumer-based society.
In such an oppressive authoritarian society it’s crucially important to try to maintain some sense of freedom and control. This is why I would fight to the death to protect the motorist. Behind the steering wheel of a car is one of the few times you can inject a sense of freedom and self-determination into your life.
The eco-mentals are only the latest in a line of people to attack motorists. If it’s not complaints about pollution, it’s not-in-my-backyard complaints about the construction of roads, or how we’re a danger to cyclists (I’m sorry but you’re the one who’s riding around our roads on an insufficient vehicle, the fact that you haven’t got a metal box around you to protect you isn’t my problem).
“the fact that you haven’t got a metal box around you to protect you isn’t my problem”
Actually it is, you signed up to the responsibility of protecting other road users (i.e. pedestrians and cyclists) from your dangerous hurtling metal box when you got handed your license
Otherwise I agree with you, driving is on-par with taking the bus in terms of emissions if you share occasionally, it’s just flying we’ve got to worry about heh.
They’re my roads, I paid for them. I don’t consider people who don’t pay road tax or insurance to be valid “road users”, particularly when they rarely feel the need to stop at a red light (or zebra crossing) and often wobble about as if they either drunk or retarded. Such behaviour is commonplace – to operate a motor vehicle with such a disregard for the rules of the road would be a crime, because it puts people’s lives at risk. Just because your pathetic vehicle doesn’t have an engine doesn’t mean you can’t cause a crash in which a real person in a proper vehicle might die. Being a road user comes with responsibilities and cyclists rarely meet any of them; consequently they are not worthy of the title “road users”. “Road freeloaders” at best. I think of them as “road menaces”.
As a motorcycle rider, it’s cars that I find to be the problem. Dawdling along often at 50mph max. (but then right up your arse after you’ve overtaken them and then slowed for a 30 limit); unable to pass parked cars if something is coming in the opposite direction; dipping their headlights just *after* they’ve dazzled you (most car drivers don’t seem to think that other road users might be looking more than 20ft ahead); believing that they can out accelerate you on the outside lane of a dual carriageway after exiting a roundabout. I could go on…