[Terrapreta] FUELS AND VEHICLES: AN INTEGRATED SOLUTION

[Greg and April]

I personally have been on several lists over the last 10 yrs, where one or more people believe that mass transit was the answer to all of mans fossil fuel ills.    

I have seen some people go so far as to suggest that we should  eliminate suburban living all together, force everyone into the city's where there was no cars allowed and force them to use mass transit.    Indeed I was on one list where the list owner believed that, and woe to the individual that tried to document otherwise - I was on that list until he told me to show otherwise ( on list ), and when I did, he banned me, because I showed that mass transit is not the perfect thing that he thought it was - using the local bus system as example.

While I know that "phony" does not come across well, but given my previous experience, that is the closest that I could get to putting in words, what I was thinking about the entire idea of mass transit being a great thing.

Greg H.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: MMBTUPR at aol.com 
  To: gregandapril at earthlink.net ; mlehmann3 at austin.rr.com 
  Cc: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org ; gasification at listserv.repp.org 
  Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2008 12:41
  Subject: Re: [Gasification] [Terrapreta] FUELS AND VEHICLES: AN INTEGRATED SOLUTION


            from            Lewis L. Smith

  Ref Greg H.'s comments on mass transportation.

  I am a semiretired energy economist who has  been concerned with mass transportation sporadically since about 1975.

  I have never heard of anyone who thinks that it is a panacea for anybody's transportation ills. Only strong criticisms that for assorted reasons and in most locations, we do not use mass transportation to the optimum level, a criticism with which I agree. Hence the word "phony" is out of place in a professional discussion.

  However, Greg H. is very right that mass transportation systems are very sensitive to these very same local conditions and that one must "do ones homework" before accepting or rejecting a special proposal for a specific locality.  I couldn't agree more.

  This brings up point open overlooked by most people who are evaluating mass transit proposals. Economists can often give quite a narrow estimate of the value to a potential rider of an hour saved, say $2.35 to $2.65 per $10,000 of annual income, or at least $9.40 for someone earning $40,000 a year, to pull some numbers out of a hat.

  But it will be extremely difficult in practice to get someone who saves one hour per day to give up even $4.70 at the turnstile. So the project has to resort to "end runs" like increasing the cost of downtown parking, increasing property taxes or whatever, in order to subsidize the system, most of which are not favored by either political leaders or their supporters !

  The foregoing illustrates the basic problem of so many mass transit proposals and systems. They have good benefit/cost ratios at the level of "Standard Metropolitan Area, Incl.", that is, the SMA taken as whole. But they are money losers at the level of the organizations which has to run them.This is because it is very hard to "capture" from the beneficiaries enough of the benefits to cover the costs of the organizations which must actually provide the services.

  Cordially.  ###






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