Comments on: How Soon Will Cutting Transportation Emissions Save Money?

By: garyg

garyg — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 05:41:03 +0000

Elana Schor,

Pictured above is the chart that depicts the “long term/maximum results” bundle — in plain English, a package deal of congestion pricing, high-speed rail, expanded transit and inter-city passenger rail, car-sharing, more HOV lanes, and increased highway capacity to clear bottlenecks. The estimated savings from those proposals begin to outweigh the costs of implementation around 2016, according to the report,

No they don’t. As the report’s authors concede, their cost and savings estimates do not include the value of such factors as travel time, comfort, convenience or flexibility. Substituting transit, biking or walking for driving would impose large costs in terms of greater travel times, reduced comfort and loss of convenience. People clearly value things like time, comfort and convenience highly. That is one reason why they are willing to spend $800 a month to run a car when they could buy the same amount of transportation with an $80 monthly transit pass. Nowhere are these benefits of car travel acounted for in the Moving Cooler report, which is why its cost-benefit estimates are essentially worthless.

By: CP

CP — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:09:35 +0000

Slower speeds in this case mean 55 or 60 instead of 70 or 80. Most vehicles have optimum fuel efficiency somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-60 mph.

“While each vehicle reaches its optimal fuel economy at a different speed (or range of speeds), gas mileage usually decreases rapidly at speeds above 60 mph.”
Source: http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/driveHabits.shtml

But interstate speed limits are usually 65 or even higher, and rarely observed. Just thinking anecdotally, I wouldn’t be surprised if the average auto speed on interstates was closer to 70 or 75.

By: Lee

Lee — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 01:58:12 +0000

You mention speed reductions as a solution. I don’t quite understand your logic. While I agree that reductions in vehicle miles travelled is good, doing it at slower speeds isn’t particularly rational. Most vehicles are designed for significantly higher fuel economy at higher speeds – i.e. highway driving. Part of the reason the current regime is so innefficient/wasteful is that the incredible amounts of congestion on most urban highways during peak periods prevent these optimal highway speeds from being reached.

Unless you’re suggesting we should punish…I mean “discourage” people from driving, lol?