From: rlbell@babbage.waterloo.edu (Richard Bell)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Is car pooling for real? (was Re: Are bikes really less polluting?)
Date: 23 Jul 92 14:43:38 GMT
Organization: University of Waterloo

In article <10016@vice.ICO.TEK.COM> hall@vice.ICO.TEK.COM (Hal Lillywhite) writes:
>In article <Brsryo.BxL@watserv1.waterloo.edu> rlbell@babbage.waterloo.edu (Richard Bell) writes:
>
>>Mass transit may, or may not, be cheaper (it is for me but your mileage
>>may vary), but it is definately safer.  I was in a GM bus that was rear ended
>>by a compact.  
>
>Unfortunately at times it appears that our local bus company (a
>government agency actually) must like this type of accident.  It is
>common for busses to stop right on the road, even where they could
>find a place to get out of traffic easily.  Some bus stops are even
>places as though to encourage this.  Doesn't do much for public
>relations.
>
>>"Environmentally friendlier", a bus can easily carry 40 people (and if I
>>were shorter, I might even say comfortably) a non-carpooling vehicle seats
>>one.  Compare one bus versus forty cars: unless they are all chevy sprints,
>>or worse, they use more materials to build, collectively burn more fuel than
>>the bus, and definitely take up more space if not recycled.
>
>Certainly a bus *can* save resources and if used wisely it will do
>so.  This does not mean that it always *will* save resources,
>however.  That depends on how it is used.  There are at least 3
>things which can make a bus less efficient than individual cars:
>
>1.  The bus is quite likely not full except at peak hours.  During
>off hours here it is common to see a bus with only a few passengers,
>probably being less fuel efficient per passenger mile than if each
>passenger occupied a separate small car.

Forty people on a bus is not full, during peak hours, eighty is not
a surprise.
>
>2.  A bus must follow a specified route determined by where people
>can embark or disembark.  Often that bus travels many extra miles 
>compared to the route someone would drive.  In some cases passenger 
>Jones may even have to go to a transit station and board a different 
>bus, sometimes traveling 2 to 4 times the distance he would if he 
>drove.  The bus company of course quotes numbers of passenger miles 
>traveled without regard to how many of those miles were excess 
>necessitated by the way bus routes run.  Much of this is of course 
>inevitable.  Just be aware that 100 passenger miles on a bus does not 
>necessarily replace 100 miles driving in private cars.

Circuitous routes of buses are a compromise between travel time and walking
distance in residential areas.  If the system still has circuitous routes
in heavily built up areas, it is poorly designed.  The bus route that I
took to work when I was last on Ottawa (admittedly home to the most efficient
bus service in North America, something I thought was a joke until I went
somewhere else.) spent 10 minutes collecting passengers before going
straight to downtown.   

>
>3.  A bus will use more fuel to start and stop because of its larger
>mass.  If several people get on or off at each stop this is probably
>not a disadvantage.  However a stop for 1 or 2 passengers will be
>less fuel efficient that a similar stop with a much smaller car.
>Furthermore if the bus blocks the road when it stops it will cause 
>all the cars backed up behind it to waste fuel and pollute the air 
>while they wait.

Most of the bus stops that I have seen, occur where the bus is liable to
be stopping anyway, and the rest are either in the middle of long stretches
of road or where a LOT of people are going to get on and off (schools, malls,
apartment blocks, factories, office blocks, etc.).

The bus blocking the road is a conspiracy to make people take the bus to
work and avoid the hassle of driving behind one 8-).
>
>I'm not saying busses are not fuel efficient.  I just think we need to 
>look at each situation before claiming that mass transit will save 
>fuel and reduce pollution.  Sometimes it will, sometimes it won't.
Newsgroups: sci.environment,sci.energy