Articles by Andy Brett

Get your (hybrid) motor runnin’

The New York Times reports this morning on the 2005 Honda Accord Hybrid. Two points of note:

• The Times cites Consumer Reports, which found actual on-the-road efficiency to be just 25 mpg for the Accord hybrid.

  The E.P.A. figures show a larger benefit for the hybrid, but the agency's fuel economy figures are considered by many to be inaccurate because they do not reflect the way cars are actually driven.

  The EPA figures are 29/37 mpg city/highway for an automatic transmission Accord hybrid. That's about a 15 percent jump in fuel efficiency if you drive like the EPA thinks you should. There are a number of habits many people have that needlessly hamper fuel efficiency (flooring it from light to light is an egregious example). Installing an mpg meter in your car lets you know when you are getting the best mileage and what behaviors detract from optimal fuel efficiency, rewarding the driver with flashing lights and colors, to which the human brain seems to respond.
• One hybrid owner was quoted as saying:

  I wasn't prepared to give up anything to 'go green' - not performance, amenities, or space.

  Maybe it's because I just read Suburban Nation, but this sounds similar to the concept of "induced traffic." The idea there is that building more roads or lanes on a highway, rather than easing and speeding traffic flow, leads to more traffic: Drivers will flock to the faster-moving roads until they become just as congested as before.

  In the same way, making cars more efficient, rather than leading people to buy new cars with similar performance but higher gas mileage, could lead people to buy new cars with higher performance but similar gas mileage. So the end result will be the same overall level of fuel use, but roads packed with high performance cars. If the quoted driver is indicative of public sentiment, new hybrids could have a neutral environmental impact at best.

NYC takes to hybrids for (some of ) its taxi fleet

Just in case you missed it, New York City is going to start using hybrids as taxis.

NYC also has a plethora of hybrid buses. I caught one of these last winter and didn't even notice a difference until it pulled away and I saw the hybrid label on the side.

Macroeconomy as microecosystem

To follow up on this post, it's great when ecologists and economists start speaking the same language. Even better is when they form the US Society for Ecological Economics. If you're the conference type they are having their third biennial conference next week.

Even if you won't be in the Tacoma area, though, one of their policy briefs is of particular note. Written by Herman E. Daly of the University of Maryland, it covers "Economic Growth and Development." But it has a very environmental twist.

It's a Word document and it's only 1.5 pages. Go read it. To further entice those terrified of commitment, two particularly poignant excerpts are below.

The opportunity costs of not taking mass transit

Anyone who has watched someone pull a bonehead maneuver on the road only to pull up next to the driver and see that he or she is on a cell phone can attest that it's hard to multi-task while driving. And given the uphill battle to get people out of cars and using mass transit, some of the benefits of ditching the car could use some (re)framing. For example:

• Mass transit cuts down on the opportunity cost of transit. It frees the rider up to do anything, from preparing for the day at work to just getting your head together or decompressing after a stressful day, instead of having to be alert and focus on yet another task: navigating rush-hour traffic.
• Mass transit is the logical next step in an industrialized society, since it furthers the division of labor by allocating the task of moving people around to those who are best at it. Not everyone is a great driver.
• Mass transit has none of the overhead costs present in cars.
• You can't sleep and drive across the country at the same time.

Granted, there are some things inherent in driving that are irreplaceable and not transferable to mass transit. There's a certain romance about driving from coast to coast, and a certain excitement that comes from shifting a manual transmission into fourth gear. The majority of driving, though, is neither of these. It's mundane, point-A-to-point-B drudgery through rush-hour traffic, which mass transit can easily match or improve upon.