Sean talks of many things. He says that he generates one pound of CO2 for every mile he drives. Quite an accomplishment. I'm sure that some chemist can supply a calculation, but if a gallon of gas weighs six pounds or so, how do you get one pound of CO2 per mile? Oh, I see, his car only gets one mile per gallon?
He mentions the old saw popularized in Roger Rabbit about "It is a real shame that Standard Oil, GM and Firestone bought up and dismantled the wonderful trolly system we had in Minneapolis" and offers a link to something that says this isn't true. Visit www.EffectiveTransit.org/streetcars.htmlx for factual information on TCRT and the streetcars. He says that our air quality is calling for a rapid move away from single occupancy vehicles. Let's take a quick look at the federal standards and what the emissions were for typical cars before 1968. These are in grams per mile and are not related to gallons per mile. It's worth noting that the standards have required maintaining this performance for the first 100,000 vehicle miles. Type pre-1968 2004 Hydrocarbons 10.6 0.125 CO 84.0 1.7 NOx 4.1 0.2 This is from a 2000 National Academy of Sciences article. There was a proposed change to the standard aimed at ozone, which is the main problem now, which would have a fleet average. This change would cut NOx to 0.07, HC to about 0.09, and CO to about 4.2. Looking at typical comparisons to Europe, transit's share of Britain's trips dropped from 32% to 16% while cars rose from 73.8% to 78.3%. I think that this was between 1990 and 2001, but I don't have the article in front of me. The main things that promote transit use are frequency of service, travel time, and schedule reliability. Lrt in our area is a massive waste of money compared to expanding the bus system. $715 million and more for lrt on one route versus $440 million to double the number of buses on all 200 routes (if we chose to deploy them that way.) You hear all this enthusiasm for the northstar train. They all like the idea of reduced congestion on Highway 10. Problem is that the Draft EIS says that the rush hour speed will be the same with or without the train and there will be more severely congested intersections with the train. What will those traveling Highway 10 have to say after $265-310 million spent on the train does nothing for them? Companies located along the way are backing it because they think that their employees and trucks will be able to go much faster because of the train. Wrong. Dallas built a rail system that was projected to recover 50% of its operating costs from fares, the most recent figure was 16%, down from 35% in 1985. San Jose lrt is carrying about 15 people per train during the rush now, with operating costs jumping 41% in a year. Visit www.EffectiveTransit.org The Independent Unsubsidized Voice of Citizens for Effective Transit in the Twin Cities (no lrt) * lrt isn't a potato chip, you can stop at just one * Bruce Gaarder Highland Park Saint Paul MN [EMAIL PROTECTED] REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
