kEiThZ
Superstar
Obviously though, it's not like the government has stood still on urban sprawl or transit development. Better Place is one piece in a whole host of initiatives and it should be seen that way.
It's not going to help reduce all externalities. But it will help reduce emissions drastically and it will speed up the adoption of EV technologies. If this catches on, we'll have fully electric buses in a few years. And fully electric delivery vehicles are already catching on.
Obviously though, it's not like the government has stood still on urban sprawl or transit development. Better Place is one piece in a whole host of initiatives and it should be seen that way.
It's not going to help reduce all externalities. But it will help reduce emissions drastically and it will speed up the adoption of EV technologies. If this catches on, we'll have fully electric buses in a few years. And fully electric delivery vehicles are already catching on.
Well this is the problem... mainstream thinking in the US is that the only problem is emissions. I am sure it's the same in Canada.
Yep, totally correct. In fact, with a single person driving an average city car (not even honking SUVs,) only about .5% of the energy from fuel goes into moving the driver, and that doesn't take into account the energy required in moving the fuel there. Even with a coal fired power plant coming from Sudbury, a subway would have better efficiency than that.An extremely important point that was also missed in the now dieing (thank god!) 'hydrogen revolution', is that electric cars will still produce ample amounts of emissions, just not directly from the vehicle. I understand that centralized electric power generation, as well as 'green' power increase the efficiency overall, its still a sham that people are often lead to believe that electric cars produce no emissions. Looking at rail, light or heavy: electrically powered, with weight of passengers at crush load matching or exceeding weight of vehicle, steel wheels on steel tracks, limited ability to handle curves, and often overall decreased travel distance (a la density); If you wanna talk efficient transportation, that's where its at. Also remember the weight of a car (AND BATTERIES!!) vs the weight of the (usually single) occupant: most of the energy is going to move the vehicle not the passenger. That's a problem.
Like it or not, people are going to be driving for the foreseeable future. I think it's far better that we work to make sure that they drive a vehicle that's as clean as possible.
But expecting people to simply change overnight is fantastically unrealistic.