Tesla CyberTruck

WetGeek

Justin I doubt a low emissions vehicle will ever trump a bus or train for efficiency on a specific route.

Probably depends on whether it is carrying 5 people or 55. I've ridden some buses that were nearly empty, but they still had to run their route and burn a lot of fuel.

Justin

WetGeek Precisely! One car with good software and connectivity could understand that other people are going in the same direction and pick them up or a car could be hired exclusively, etc.

kyrios

WetGeek Nope because the calculation should be done on the whole lifetime of the vehicle, not on a single trip and should include the manufacturing and the end of life/recycling environmental cost. Not even mentionning that the collective transport will keep on operating even if some of its regular passengers decide to switch to an alternative means of transport.

Anyway public transports must be efficient to be successfull, this means frequencies should be high enough and they should be on time. They should have enough capacity to handle crowds during the peak hours but since the size of the vehicles won't magically change depending on the amount of people, they might be almost empty during off-peak hours. Urban lines will always perform better than rural lines for small villages for example, but still these lines are critical as they play a social role and prevent some people who don't own an individual vehicle for example not to be isolated from the rest of the world.

Bruce-McL

brent It's just starting to breathe and grow. It always comes back to Tesla somehow.

I agree. I think it's fun to bend the thread back to Tesla now and then.

Regarding public transportation, people don't always choose the most efficient, cost effective form of transportation. Pickup truck sales in the US are one indicator of that. Edit: I think Tesla's marketing strategy is to get people to do the right thing for the wrong reasons. Things like Ludicrous Mode and even the Cybertruck itself are designed to get people emotionally excited about EVs, rather than logically explaining why EVs are good.

If truly autonomous cars become the majority, I think it will cause some major changes in people's transportation habits that are hard to predict now. Horace Dediu (of asymco.com) half jokingly made a prediction about that. Once you know you aren't going to drive, you might as well do something else during the trip. Autonomous cars evolve into RVs, with office space for work and a couch and big screen TV for relaxing. Even a shower for long commutes. You could jump out of bed in the morning, grab some fresh clothes, jump into your driverless RV, then shower, shave, and get dressed while it drives you to work. You don't have to park this big vehicle in front of your house because it's autonomous. It could drive to a shopping center parking lot to spend the night, and charge itself up there as well.

WetGeek

kyrios Nope because the calculation should be done on the whole lifetime of the vehicle, not on a single trip

The lifetime of the vehicle probably contains a large percentage of low-capacity trips, not just one. Here's some interesting data from the US Federal Highway Administration:

Five people in a bus get a little less than 3 mpg, on average. Five people in my hybrid car get 40+ mpg. Even one person in my car is more fuel-efficient than a nearly empty bus.

And that doesn't even take into consideration that, where I live, a bus starts at a location where I'm not, ends up at a location where I don't want to be, at a time I don't want to go, and takes 3 or 4 times longer to get there. And I can't carry more than will fit on my lap. Forget about grocery shopping.

sgvd

There is one subjective factor in addition which will wipe-out public transport in favor of autonomous vehicles regardless of how clean they are and probly even incentives because of it; comfort.
Public transport always requires some last-mile transport, which is a large inconvenience that autonomous 'pods' do not have. Even if it's more expensive, this will make it way more attractive as an option.

For the rest I agree with Kyrios here, public transport as it is now is very inflexible and hence cannot be efficient at all times (or places) because of it.

kyrios

sgvd I understand your point of view but again there could be exceptions: I go to work by train and I like it, I can sleep, read, use the computer etc. anything I couldn't do if I had to drive a car (autonomous vehicles are not yet a reality and there is no guarantee they would drive me door to door rather than stopping on some fixed drop points). Okay there is still the first/last mile problem. I have to walk 15 minutes to reach the railway station or to take subwayt for 2 stops, using a bicycle, etc... in my case, I am lucky there are plenty of solutions.

I also have a subscribtion to a car sharing service which is very cheap because it's partially financed with public money, I got a discount because I combined it with a subscription to public transport and I am confident that in the coming years I'll be able to include this in the mobility plan my employer pays for me. This is ideal when the last mile is an issue (have to carry big/heavy things) or when I have to go in places where there are no/few public transports. It's really comfortable because I don't have to worry about anything (insurance, technical control, cleaning, maintenance). I can park the car for free in the streets of a few cities and in case of technical problem/accident, I just have to call a number and they take care of everything, including bringing a replacement vehicle if needed.

Combining soft mobility solutions is the key imho for people living in medium/large cities. I owned a car only for 1 year just after I got my driving license long time ago and I don't feel any constraint not having my own car. Of course it requires some organisation (have to look at the schedules, eventually going or coming back with a friend, booking a car in advance, ...) but when I hear my colleagues (the car is at the garage, my daughter is using it so I can't come now, I'll come back 2 hours late because I have to bring the car to the technical control, ...) it's just different constraints.... just a matter of habits. But yeah this isn't a universal solution a place isn't another place.

sgvd

kyrios Correct, my argumentation only applies to post-autonomous-vehicles period.

kyrios

WetGeek Thanks for the graph, it is indeed very interesting! I found this on my side, it's the CO² emissions per kilometers per passengers in urban cycle (Brussels) for the public buses, tramways, subway, average fuel car, SUV.

The point to consider is that if you currently have a car and switch to public transport, the environmental win is immediate since your car is removed from the equation but if you switch from public transport to an efficient hybrid or EV car, there is an extra environmental cost since a car is added to the equation and the public transport will continue to operate with or without you.

Another scenario, there is a school bus (low fuel economy) transporting 60 students to/from school every weekday. This bus is withdrawn meaning that 60 students will come by car (perhaps a little lesser than 60 cars as a few neighbors or brothers/sisters may travel together). Would 50+ average cars be more efficient that a school bus ?

WetGeek

kyrios Would 50+ average cars be more efficient that a school bus ?

Of course not. But 50+ students would make a very full school bus. In that case, the bus would be the more effective solution for that particular task. The same would be true for transporting a football team to a match, or other events where the bus would be full or nearly full.

Full airplanes are similarly efficient.

brent

kyrios @Bruce-McL @Justin
Two people addressed my public transport questions and one alluded to it.
When shipping the masses to work, it seems electric/petrol can be justified to some extent vs. individual transport to work options currently.
Workforce needs certainly enter into this debate. But I see a new thread far from Tesla has opened up regarding these things.
I like public transport because I am conscious of my petrol emmisions and what kyrios said about being able to get a lot of work done.
Soon when we all are jobless and serving our robot overlords, then my concerns here become moot😉

Thank you🙂

DataDrake

WetGeek Most public school districts try to minimize the number of buses they operate by setting the routes to maximize occupancy. A typical front engine bus in the US seats 44 students and a driver. A typical rear engine bus seats 56 students and a driver. In cases where the run would take too long to fill the bus (ie. rural areas), districts may even opt for smaller buses on those runs to increase fuel efficiency.

I would also like to point out that most regional bus companies take the same approach to tuning the routes. The difference there is single vs double-long buses. And this allocation changes throughout the year as the demand raises and lowers for a particular run. They will also restructure routes and reduce run frequency to further reduce cost and maximize ridership. It's a profit incentive for bus operators to increase efficiency. This is in stark contrast to the trade-off you make relying on public transit and not owning a vehicle. You own a car for convenience and efficiency of your own time, not for the profit incentive of saving money.

brent

DataDrake From my particular city, local school districts are more astute than municipal as the equipment needed to run their routes.
Municipal (city) is a different animal in my city and others I have been in. They are all rear-engined, some CNG, but I've seen the double-sizes in off hours (4:45 am weekday, or 7am on a Sunday, etc) that cruise by with one person...and the smaller ones used during peak and rush hour. I think it's that disorganized sometimes.
Any "incentive" regarding operating efficiently per route gets tossed when demand increases or availability complaints made public.
The conundrum of your last sentence, albeit not directed at me, becomes what happens if you own a functioning vehicle but opt for public transit 60% of the time?

DataDrake

brent Most municipal bus routes are changed at most twice a year. This leads to a sizable lag between demand changes and route changes. Switching between single and double is still the easiest thing for them to tune between those route changes. These changes might happen on a week to week basis, but not every day.

But it's also worth noting that every bus has to travel back and forth between the central depot at some point during the day. If all routes travel to and from the same depot on every repetition of the run, it's likely that at some point in that run you will see a bus that is mostly empty. This is a simple byproduct of people switching buses at the depot, not yet being picked up at the start of a run, or having all been dropped off at the end of the run. If there are routes that do not return to the depot until after several repetitions, you might also see a few stragglers taking the bus at a select time of the day back to the depot. You should also consider the fact that any bus in the fleet may be retasked to every route. So you might be seeing a bus that just finished a peak-hours run going back to the depot to switch off to a different route. You should also consider that something like a 4AM run might be made available for people who work night shifts or to serve as a "drunk bus" after last call. I would also say that 7AM Sunday isn't off-hours. People will be commuting to church or even to work as usual. You may also see that bus starting its run with the anticipation of having to pick up many more people later on in its scheduled repetitions. Observations like that are anecdotal at best and rarely reflect the efficiency of the system as a whole.

As for the conundrum, it's nothing really that complicated. Some people may very well opt to use public transit to reduce their environmental footprint, to reduce wear on their vehicle, or because they know that they should not be behind the wheel of a vehicle (e.g. out to a bar, anesthesia, etc.). Now if a majority of people would choose to start using public transit or car-pooling to cut down on their environmental impact, this would of course lessen the impact of their own vehicles, but it wouldn't eliminate it.

Bruce-McL

After considering the cost of various kinds of transportation, the next thing to consider is Urban Planning. There are ways to make cities (cities are where most of the world's population lives at present) easier for people to get around in without spending as much time and money on transportation. Urban Planning discussions naturally lead to Public Policy discussions, which can easily lead to Politics.

What Tesla has done by using conventional automotive mass production to manufacture electric cars in volume is to force everyone else's hand. All the studies, should be's, best cases, and what if's are not as convincing to government regulators or automobile executives as a ride in a Tesla.

brent

DataDrake Agree with every word except:
*I have much more faith in the consistently -observed (not random) anecdotal evidence of a local citizen than you do
*you have much more failth in a civil planning/civil engineering degree that I do🙂
as far as the conundrum, thank you. you did not offer a moral conclusion. As I give every position credence, I will confess to the many moral perspectives in this thread, I did not know how I stacked up:

DataDrake use public transit to reduce their environmental footprint, to reduce wear on their vehicle.

for me at the end of the day it's this ^^

John-Poot

WetGeek Load up a Ford F350 4WD (the actual equivalent of Tesla) AND the Tesla, pick a freezing cold day, and then we'll see some vehicular combat:-)

sgvd

John-Poot
Just with a 5 minute delay as the driver of the F350 has to de-ice the windows first 🤣

John-Poot

caesar96 Now that is an extremely disturbing picture.

DataDrake

brent Anecdotal evidence for phenomena that cover long time-scales is worthless. You'll never build up enough data to get a meaningful correlation. Instead, you are intentionally introducing a bias that creates a misrepresentation of the the actual phenomena. Any data you then present has the potential to do more harm than good when trying to improve the situation.

If you really want to understand the dynamics of a route, you would need to be tracking ridership all the time. This is the kind of data that the bus company does collect and uses to optimize their routes. Municipal bus services are paid for by tax dollars so they absolutely have accountability to the tax payers. They don't have a profit motive in this case, but they do still have the incentive to minimize operating costs. If you think that your local municipal bus service is sub-optimal, you are free to petition for access to the data and make a case for their mismanagement.

There is no morality to facts.

brent

DataDrake I would've took a simple "well that's just your opinion, man" but all good.

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