Friday, June 25, 2004

MORE ON THE ENVIRONMENTAL FRIENDLINESS OF CARS

A comment from a reader in reply to my post of 23rd

One area of extra 'pollution' often 'overlooked' by the Greenies is the inevitable extra energy costs associated with transporting passengers from their residences to the transport terminal and back, train stations etc, and at their destination as well. The private passenger car itself affords 'door to door' service, which is another reason why goods transport by rail is largely confined to bulk transfer and extremely long haul. The use of rail in itself is severely limited by how many can be transported and by the fixed position of routes -- and the extraordinarily high capital costs of extending its services to more areas. The high capital costs of Traction units and rolling stock demand very long useful life expectations, leaving rail a long way behind technology advances that 'could' render improvements in efficiency. Add to the equation the time wasted in transfers and waiting for connections and the overall difference in efficiency between the private passenger cars versus mass transit starts to look like a gulf. In the aviation sector, the crossover cost starts between a 4hr and 6hr driving time and after that we are starting to look at an exponential rate of difference in costs, especially when considering time.

However, the Greenies can find a positive here: Mass transit does afford pathogens a far greater opportunity to spread themselves around, making hundreds of thousands very unhappy...... spreading misery around equally and perhaps killing a few off.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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