renegademaster
Member
Bin lories surely be one of the easier ones? They spend most of the day doing nothing so the batteries don't need to be brilliant
-
Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Carbon footprint and public transport
- Thread starter urbophile
- Start date
- Status
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
Which is why public transport funding is key.
It's also why (where it would be suitable) things like quiet lanes can also be useful (see the link below for a useful guide):
CPRE's Guide to Quiet Lanes - CPRE
This accessible and informative guide will explain what Quiet Lanes are, their benefits and, step-by-step, how to promote them in your area.
www.cpre.org.uk
Obviously they're not going to work everywhere, however being able to walk and cycle in safety (or at least a lot safer than on the edge of a derestricted road) would mean that opening a car isn't essential.
I coudn't decide whether to dignify this blind prejudice with a reply, or give it the oxygen of publicity, but as I'm typing in this thread anyway, here goes:
a) my friends who are the keenest pv and Time-of-Use (TOU) tarrif advocates are people like ex-nuclear power station engineers, ex-oil rig workers and a very highly qualified Armed Forces technical specialist. I am absolutely convinced that they have nothing to do with any "narco-syndicous commune," indeed, like me, I suspect most have never even experimented with recreational drugs. I suspect the people who routinely use drugs are either in the so-called "upper echelons" of our society or much too poor to be able to get into solar pv and batteries.
b) There seems to be a (right-wing? or just backward-looking, or brain-dead?) part of this country who canot believe anything good about renewables, or accept that they are worthwhile for any reason. I have said before that I suspect that this propaganda in "papers" like the Express is driven by the big monpolies' awareness of the threat that decentralised control of electric power poses to them. Some people seem to be unable to see what is happening around them and recognise the mismatch with what they are being fed.
Octopus (a successful multi-national company) are working with the grid to see if they can use the free market (heard of that? I understand that it's quite the thing in some political circles) to alter the way people use energy. This is by using TOU tarrifs (Remember Economy 7? Well, it's still around) but taking advantage of smart meters to do it more precisely. The free market is told when power will be in short supply the next day and the reward for cutting consumption is announced... if people can be bothered (or if it fits their needs) they get a cash benefit. Today I read
so where is your "officer at a special bi-weekly meeting?" Join in if you want, don't if it doesn't suit you. It's even reported on the BBC now: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67553709 - but then we all know that is just another pinko conspiracy!
Now, back to a more rational discussion:
but in the context of offering vehicle-to-grid energy in the evening peak, they will be run down and ready for a charge just when it is most needed. I suppose you could over-specify the vehicle batteries so that there is still some to give before you recharge from midnight onwards, but if the council has money to spare (!) it might be more advantageous to put battery banks in the depots...
Last edited:
Bantamzen
Established Member
Oh dear, oh dear. Maybe I should make more use of emojis
But to clarify the reference to a nacro-syndicous comment was a joking response to an earlier comment of yours where you seemed to suggest that EV storage would somehow relieve users of the vice-like grip energy companies have on us as a country. The original use of the term came from an early scene in Monty Python's film Holy Grail. So sorry, but you wasted a lot of your time ranting there, I wasn't being serious.However in your rantings, you've raised a couple of points I'd like to tackle.
Firstly try reading the points I've made in this and other threads before insulting me. I am not right wing, nor am I backward looking or brain dead. But this is a fairly regular response I get from people when I point out that things like green technologies need to be workable in the real world, and that those pushing for them need to consider this instead of frantically calling for them because its "doing something". And that's why I challenge these things, for over twenty years in my career I've been working on both software and logistical problem solving and because I take time and ask awkward questions instead of just implementing anything and everything in the hope it sticks, I have delivered results that have brought public savings in at least 8 or even 9 figure sums. Technologies like EV storage are simply not tested anything like enough to even begin to deliver a long term solution for storing sustainably generated energy, and again I don't believe it should ever replace fixed solutions that don't drive around when the energy is need back in the grid. Having a reliable, predicable and available on demand source is the only way the bridge the gap between generation and usage will be bridged for the green energy sector. Anything else is tinkering.
And my second point is that you mention the "free market", but you are aware that this is the very same market that has driven energy prices up, right? There won't be a decentralisation of energy, that's just utter boss level fantasy. Ultimately energy prices will be dictated by the energy companies, including Octopus whom I believe have had subsidies from the government. Subsidies from the government, that right-wing, brain dead, backward looking government. Do you see where I am going with this. If you believe that somehow green energy solutions will free us from energy monopolies, well for the most part it won't. Sure there will be some people with the finances and infrastructure to become energy independent, but that probably just drive up prices for the rest of us as energy companies seek to recoup any lost revenue.
All of which is why I made the Monty Python reference that I did, for so often it seems that there are elements of th environmental movement that are just blissfully disconnected from reality.
I often wonder if any of them are connected. The problem being that the disconnected ones' rantings simply discredit any sane points that were perhaps worth making & listening to.
I believe there's tens of thousands of environmental hypocrites currently flying half way around the world to lecture us all on the evils of flying half way around the world........
Bantamzen
Established Member
I think there are, they just don't get heard over the shouty ones telling everyone not to do what they do, or chucking orange powder around. Sadly I am of the opinion that some environmentalists have other more political agendas.
HSTEd
Veteran Member
- Joined
- 14 Jul 2011
- Messages
- 16,854
The Vehicle-to-Grid concept is a favourite of decarbonisation policy and modelling types, primarily because it allows them to magic 33 million ~80kWh (~2.6TWh total capacity) battery packs out of nowhere without having to pay for them.
As an energy systems modeller, I am far from convinced it is really a practical proposition, especially considering the stunning bad charging and discharging losses you can expect from the low voltage connection.
On the public transport aspect, I think that the biggest problem for buses moving forward is their staff costs.
They require a lot of people to run, especially in a high-stop frequency urban environment.
An electric bus is low carbon but it may become increasingly difficult to operate them economically.
As an energy systems modeller, I am far from convinced it is really a practical proposition, especially considering the stunning bad charging and discharging losses you can expect from the low voltage connection.
On the public transport aspect, I think that the biggest problem for buses moving forward is their staff costs.
They require a lot of people to run, especially in a high-stop frequency urban environment.
An electric bus is low carbon but it may become increasingly difficult to operate them economically.
An electric bus is likely to be much better than an electric car on a straight comparison, as a bus will likely be carrying far more people.
However where buses will wipe the floor with cars is their ability to reduce the issues of congestion. As whilst you'll not be having the same energy losses from a car not moving as with an ICE (although air con, entertainment systems, etc. will be using power) the stop start of traffic will still need more power than a more constant moving vehicle (even with then regen brakes).
28 people on a bus is likely to be the same as 22 cars, yet only taking up the same road space as 2. They may not sound a lot compared to the road having (say) 1,000 cars (in the same direction as that bus), however the bearer to capacity a junction is the worse each extra vehicle makes the congestion compared to the one before.
A junction running at 85% capacity has almost no delays, one running at 90% will add quite a bit of extra delay to each person, but that's still quite small compared to the extra delays when it's at 95% capacity.
20 fewer cars (22 fewer cars but then 2 extra because of the bus is the same as 2 cars equals 20), is a 2% reduction, run 5 buses an hour(that can be over different routes) and that's a 10% reduction. Neither some a lot, but in traffic terms they have a big impact.
A 10% reduction is similar to what's seen between them time and the school holidays where a journey which can typically take 40 to 50 minutes term time may well take 30 minutes during the school holidays. Whilst 2% is the term time daily variation, which means those days where for no good reason you're journey is 40 minutes compared to those days where it's 45 minutes for no apparent reason (although often just because it's raining) that's likely to be down to a 2% variation.
If everyone were to drive our roads just couldn't cope with the extra traffic, it's why cutting subsidies for buses is very bad. It's why being pro car is bad (BTW, the opposite is not the same as wanting no cars, cars still have an important role to play, there's just too many, ideally we need at least 25% fewer journey to be reliant on cars so we can deliver at least 10% fewer miles by car - that difference is often shorter car trips, such as going to school are easier to replace than going swimming, so you need more to reduce by the required mileage).
It would be far better for everyone if we were driving less, less congestion, better health (both physically and mentally - which in turn reduces costs for the NHS), better community cohesion (people will be able to talk to each other as they meet each other incidentally rather than everyone having to plan to meet up), lower CO2 emissions, less demand for parking (which could allow us to build rain gardens to reduce flooding but also adding green space to urban areas - which would also cool the urban area as well as providing wildlife more spaces to be, absorbing carbon emissions, and capturing both air and water pollutants - especially if the plants are specifically picked to do so), lower energy need (so less need to build as much generation capacity and energy transmission systems), and so on.
There are no benefits to more and more cars.
Actually that's not quite strictly true, car companies make a bit more in profits, but generally to the population (even if you count the taxes paid and the benefit to pensions from those extra profits) the benefits are close to zero compared to fewer cars overall.
There's almost no benefits to more and more cars.
The biggest barrier is the change in mindset from cars are always brings freedoms (and they do being freedoms, it's just these are often overstated) to where do cars being used individually problems?
The average car costs £3,600 per year to buy, keep and run (those who manage at about 1/2 this, do so by mostly being fairly low milage users). Whilst it's an average, it's worth noting that it'll be almost impossible to do so for much less than 1/3 (£1,200 per year). For example if you had a car which cost 10p per mile and it's used for 6 miles a day on average then that's £450 a year, which would mean £750 for other costs, (which soon gets used to when you consider £230 insurance £20 for VED, £120 for MOT and servicing, as well as £380 per year for 8 years to buy a car for £3,000).
Those coats are very optimistic and actually if you are only doing 2,200 miles a year then you're likely to be better off not owning a car (either by renting a car if a few long distance trips are done, or if you travel most days, a bike or even an e-bike might be better - even if you brought a new one each year!).
HSTEd
Veteran Member
- Joined
- 14 Jul 2011
- Messages
- 16,854
The electric bus requries a driver that is becoming increasingly difficult to source though.
In Manchester they are now offering over £30k per year for bus drivers and they still have shortages.
I don't expect the employment situation will improve!
I'm not sure any meaningful expansion of bus capacity would even be possible.
The problem is the same argument used to claim that building roads is hopeless for combatting congestion also demonstrates that spending money getting people to use public transport is hopeless to combat congestion.
Because the logic is that reducing congestion is what causes more congestion.
Despite major continuing spending of billions of pounds a year subsidising buses (in the form of bus passes), bus use continues its decades long decline.
I'm not sure making everyone riding a bus will promote community cohesion, in my experience everyone stares at phones whilst attempting not to look at each other.
£1200 a year or even £1800 a year won't actually get you much public transport compared to what you get with a car though.
I pay £700 for the ability to travel on one bus company's busses in Manchester, a small portion of the total bus network. After Bee network is introduced I will be able to use all the buses, but I will also be paying for four-weekly tickets at £80 a pop to do it. Which is £1040.
I have no ability to transport large or heavy items and no ability to go beyond Greater Manchester. De facto I only have reasonable access to about a third of Manchester, and the bus service is not particularly reliable at non-peak times.
Sometimes a bus just does not turn up for an hour and a half!
I have to shop at a low-choice local shop because I can't reasonably travel to a supermarket every day, and without a car I cannot haul a weeks shopping around very easily at all.
If we were talking about tickets like General Abbonments being available it would be one thing, but we have nothing like that alternative.
There's generally a shortage of staff, which is only going to get worse as the current working population is at to fall by around 600,000 over the next decade (if you look at 8-18 year olds Vs 55-65 year olds) unless there's immigration (and that's with a background of a rising overall population, which would likely require more working people).
Somewhere significant like Manchester should have more higher capacity public transport (tram and trains rather than buses) to facilitate further modal shift from car.
Whilst there would be a point where creating more bus capacity would result in more congestion, most of the UK is a long way off of that.
Central Manchester may be one of those areas, however there's other public transport investment which could happen (trams and trains) to cater for that.
What is certain though, is that scaling back public transport use isn't the way forwards.
Ultimately, the best way to reduce congestion is to reduce how often/far people travel. WFH is one way this happens and it's often quite a useful tool as it's travel at the busiest times.
Much of that spending has been on bus passes, local councils have been feeling the squeeze with their budgets cut and so have cut direct subsidies of routes, fewer routes means that buses aren't as attractive and so more people shift to cars, which delays buses, which means that you need more drivers to run the same frequency, which means costs of running the services goes up, increasing ticket prices, which leads to more people going by car, etc......
Arguably, it would have been better to spend the bus pass money on ensuring a good level of service at a reasonable (read cheap) price for everyone, as a full bus (50 people) of people paying £2 is far better than 20 people paying £4. Not least, as the roads would be less busy and so the bus wouldn't be held up in congestion so much.
I agree, buses should be more frequent, more reliable and cheaper, that would likely mean extra spending on buses.
However even at £1,100 a year for a bus pass, the extra to go further (bearing in mind £1,200 per year was owning a car for 8 years which cost £3,000 and doing 2,200 miles a year, and is fairly optimistic on the costs) is likely to be doable without going over the actual costs of car ownership for those going shorter distances a year (sub 5,000 miles a year), due to the high up front costs.
With regards to bulky items, whilst it's important, it's not all that frequent an event for most people.
Clearly the Swiss have the right idea and it would certainly be a significant help if we also had something like that.
Even Scotland had the right idea with their removal of peak hour train tickets, as it will enable more people to travel at a reasonable rate and so result in lower carbon emissions. Yes there's a cost to it for them, but then there's costs in not reducing our carbon emissions (the problem is that cost isn't fully known).
miklcct
On Moderation
This is your Manchester problem.
London is well known to have expensive public transport, an annual Travelcard for Zones 1-2 costs £1628. This is not cheap but it gives access to:
* multiple underground lines running every 3 minutes from dawn to midnight in the inner city, where most needs and wants can be satisfied
* all buses in London, some of them going as far rural as Slough, Redhill, Westerham, Borehamwood and Dorking
* 1/3 off other rail fares on the occasion you want to venture outside London as long as you depart after 09:30
Of course it is still not possible to transport large or heavy items, but van hires exist for such purpose. I have never had problems hauling shopping wherever urban area I live because a reasonable-sized supermarket always exists within 10-minute walk from my home, or en-route of my commute, so I only buy 2 days worth of food each time.
So make use of your vote to copy London there.
Bantamzen
Established Member
But who exactly are we voting for to get a scaled version of TfL? There's certainly lots of political chatter out there about improving public transport, but where are the actual plans away from Manchester who have had a head start? Here in West Yorkshire we have a "vision" for a tram network, along with the usual shiny renderings of what it might look like, but nothing firm. And the local political parties seem to have no firm idea of how to turn renderings into an actual network save all being "committed" to the idea.
For many parts of the country, even in large cities and towns the public transport systems have been getting worse, not better. And frankly had it not been for the subsidies to allow the £2 cap on local buses, we would likely being seeing further cutbacks.
- Status