Cato and Randall O'Toole have it here.
Monday, April 14, 2008
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VICTORIA TAFT
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7 comments:
A very good paper, Victoria. But I think a question needs to be asked of this paper before someone genuinely clever (like iknowhowtospell) asks about it: does this paper take into account the effect on greenhouse gas emissions of some buses starting to switch over to biofuels? Granted, current petroleum-fueled mass transit may be more polluting but does the biofuels switchover by some of mass transit fix the problem or does the problem still remain?
That's a good question, one which, I'm sure, Randall takes into consideration. And, of course, you know that biofuels--specifically ethanol--require more energy to produce and burn less efficiently, so if Randall didn't take that into consideration when he does it would be even a worse showing for those modes of transportation.
Give me a break. Randall doesn't even calculate the CO2 of building all of those freeways or the reduction's in VMT that transit creates pushing the CO2 total down. He lies with numbers, thats his job.
You didn't read carefully enough; the paper specifically states that the CO2 costs of construction outweigh any possible benefits from it. Try again.
Gosh PT, are we building NEW freeways??? Do tell...
Actually O’Toole’s conclusions are badly flawed because his figures on cars’ energy efficiency included both urban driving and the much higher-efficiency highway driving (the study doesn’t say so - I had to email him to find out). A valid comparison between transit and cars must be made on urban driving alone. Based on O’Toole’s distorted figures, transit is already more efficient than autos, so imagine how much better transit actually is.
Nor does O’Toole take into account the many ways that transit makes possible a greener lifestyle by facilitating dense urban development that requires fewer and shorter trips overall. For a full critique see here.
Thanks for the extremely scientific consideration of the report, Jake... it's a pleasant switch from simply calling it wrong. One thing I'd point out, however, is that it's fair to combined the efficiency of both highway and urban driving because mass transit overlaps into both of these areas. Both the buses and the MAX follow the route of many highways, something that the subway system of NYC doesn't do to a significant extent. Also, I'd be interested to see the blog entry you wrote lay out genuine counterarguments to the report it criticizes i.e. giving us the actual BTU numbers that O'Toole omitted due to the calculation errors he made.
At any rate, I admire the rational treatment of the report and agree that if mass transit hopes to make itself a rational and viable alternative to personal vehicles, it needs to be given the NYC treatment. I've been to New York... the subways are gorgeous. They're convenient, well laid-out, widely-used, and exert no interference on traffic. Admittedly, however, few cities could be expected to reasonably achieve the same level of effectiveness. Admittedly, also, the installment of a rail system is very time-consuming, expensive, and results in years of increased gridlock until the new rail lines come online. I personally know this, having experienced attending PSU while Portland was tearing up streets to lay in new MAX rails... it was a nightmare and remains so. I encourage you to make another blog post discussing this, if you can... I'll definately be favoriting your blog to see if you do any more with this issue.
Once again, congratulations on your rational treatment of the subject. Also, thanks.
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