SUVs plunge toward 'endangered' list

[Mayabird]

You forgot land. Suburbia is hugely wasteful of land and had just been spreading like giant fungal growths across nature and farms. Land can't be magicked up by metric fucktons of energy. Unless you're going to be colonizing the moon or something, but let's see them grow those ridiculous half-acre lawns there.

[SCRawl]

You forgot land. Suburbia is hugely wasteful of land and had just been spreading like giant fungal growths across nature and farms. Land can't be magicked up by metric fucktons of energy. Unless you're going to be colonizing the moon or something, but let's see them grow those ridiculous half-acre lawns there.

I love that line from "The End of Suburbia": something to the effect that new subdivisions keep cropping up, and get named after whatever it was that got bulldozed to build them.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I can only imagine the terror being felt out in the boonies, where your SUV or pick-up truck is a way of life.

Actually, the farmers around here usually have an actual car, usually a mid-range sedan, for driving around. They only use the big pickup or whatever when there is an actual need for it. It's the idiot suburbanites that have ONLY SUV's that are in the worst trouble.

ditto my neighbors and I. My friends have picks for pick-up work, we drive in and arround for our errends with more fuel efficient vehicles. Hell even my old Volvo gets upper 20 in this steep winding grade territory.

---edit---
with two hour long waits, you can tell the locals from the tourons. We the locals pull in, shove into park, turn off our engines, engage the break and step out and chat. The tourons leave their engines running.

[Thunderfire]

And minivans suck up gas like crazy too, yet they're still all over the road.

Depends on the Minivan. Most minivans(VW Sharran , Mazda 5 , Renault Scenic) I used had a 30mpg milage.

[CaptainZoidberg]

You forgot land. Suburbia is hugely wasteful of land and had just been spreading like giant fungal growths across nature and farms. Land can't be magicked up by metric fucktons of energy. Unless you're going to be colonizing the moon or something, but let's see them grow those ridiculous half-acre lawns there.

Yes, but there's a difference between suburbia surviving and suburbia growing. Presumably it can survive without growing, and the population growth will mostly go closer to the cities and into denser suburbia where transit distances are smaller.

[Coyote]

Well, I'm pleased to announce that I finally bit the bullet and started riding my mountain bike to work and back on a somewhat regular basis-- 5 miles to work, 5 miles back in the aftenoon. Feels good on many different levels, and on the events I need to drive I take the motorcycle...

And, to top it off, the lawn is in the process of being transformed into a xeriscape haven of local drought-resistant plants-- sages, desert lilacs, etc. The Kentucky Bluegrass will be torn up and replaced with native Buffalo Grass. And all watering for this is being done with kitchen sink 'greywater' (rinse water, nothing with soap or animal fats of course). Vegetable chunks, fruit rinds, coffee grounds, etc are all being composted. WooHoo!


Anyhow, as for the subject at hand--
The city of Boise, which would be greatly served by a serious mass-transit project, is a well-cleaned, maintained place that takes pollution seriously-- but the roadways still dominate, and nothing is being done to at least push people towards scooters, or to increase the number of busses. And of course we still see subdivisions and McMansions going up, and the predominant vehicles here are SUVs, pickups, and minivans. We do have locally-made biodiesel available here... so those with diesels have some recourse, I guess.

I admit, like I did before, they're fucking handy as hell, but as people are forced to prioritize I wonder what will take the hit. On the news last night (NBC) it was revealed the 55% of a family's income is now spent on 'essentials', gas and food. I see more and more of those tiny Smart Cars in Boise, but I was surprised to find they get just under 40 mpg or so-- a well-tuned regular small car can match that, and a hybrid can smoke it.

[CmdrWilkens]

Why would people think prices are going down, and how at all would that solution fix the larger picture?

The most obvious solution--if one we cannot politically implement--at this point would be a gas tax which starts rising at 50 cents per year for the next 32 years, culminating in a 16-dollar-a-gallon gas tax (it wouldn't actually be that bad, because of the inevitable extensive inflation in the period, but still a very severe tax) for all non-government-owned road vehicles (ships and railroads exempt). That would force people to move closer to cities and jobs, and force everyone to work toward extensive commuter rail and bus service, and eliminate gasoline/diesel-powered cars in general or at least demand 100mpg efficiency from any that still remain, probably in conjunction with electric batteries only. The government would then use the proceeds to fund the electrification of the entire railroad net, which would also eliminate that source of fuel use.

The problem with forcing people to move closer to jobs/cities is that property prices are so high in cities that many people are effectively priced out of the market. Without fixing the problem of affordable housing all your solution does is increase bankruptcy and homelessness.

No home prices in "Good' neighborhoods are beyond the reach of most people. I could, however, very easily take you through large swaths of DC with sub 100k housing and relatively eay transit access. The problem is that this is the "bad' part of town lower-middle and middle class folks don't want to live there. The problem is that until they do move in the neighborhoods will stay shitty. Force folks to move back into the city and you could revitalzie area's like the Camden and Hamden neighborhoods of Batimore or the streets surrounding Little Italy, theses are neighborhoods where todays suburban kids were raised and they were good neighborhoods until it became status to move into the suburbs and poor to live in the city. Change that dynamic by dint of economic neccesity and a lot of things will change (not the least of which would be that cities may have enough of a tax base to actually fix their infrastructure problems).

[Crayz9000]

We combine errands. I can easily get by with buying gas only once a month if need be (in actual fact, I like to keep the tanks at least half full, so that's a slightly more frequent purchase, but for less than filling an empty tank)

Actually, doing that is less efficient. Half-filling the tank when it goes below a quarter is better. since it means that you're carrying less fuel around with you.

Of course, in my case, I have so many tools in my trunk (since I'm living in an apartment that doesn't provide garage space for me) that I have nowhere to put them. That alone weighs the car down quite a bit.

Another good tip is to regularly check your tire pressure, and keep the tires inflated close to the maximum recommended pressure, to decrease road friction.

[Big Phil]

The most obvious solution--if one we cannot politically implement--at this point would be a gas tax which starts rising at 50 cents per year for the next 32 years, culminating in a 16-dollar-a-gallon gas tax (it wouldn't actually be that bad, because of the inevitable extensive inflation in the period, but still a very severe tax) for all non-government-owned road vehicles (ships and railroads exempt). That would force people to move closer to cities and jobs, and force everyone to work toward extensive commuter rail and bus service, and eliminate gasoline/diesel-powered cars in general or at least demand 100mpg efficiency from any that still remain, probably in conjunction with electric batteries only. The government would then use the proceeds to fund the electrification of the entire railroad net, which would also eliminate that source of fuel use.

The problem with forcing people to move closer to jobs/cities is that property prices are so high in cities that many people are effectively priced out of the market. Without fixing the problem of affordable housing all your solution does is increase bankruptcy and homelessness.

No home prices in "Good' neighborhoods are beyond the reach of most people. I could, however, very easily take you through large swaths of DC with sub 100k housing and relatively eay transit access. The problem is that this is the "bad' part of town lower-middle and middle class folks don't want to live there. The problem is that until they do move in the neighborhoods will stay shitty. Force folks to move back into the city and you could revitalzie area's like the Camden and Hamden neighborhoods of Batimore or the streets surrounding Little Italy, theses are neighborhoods where todays suburban kids were raised and they were good neighborhoods until it became status to move into the suburbs and poor to live in the city. Change that dynamic by dint of economic neccesity and a lot of things will change (not the least of which would be that cities may have enough of a tax base to actually fix their infrastructure problems).

Asking middle class families to move to the shitholes of the inner cities isn't particularly reasonable, particularly when they can move to the suburbs and buy more house for the same amount of money.

Using Seattle as an example, the cheapest house I could find in what passes for the ghetto here is a 105 year old $250K two bedroom crap shack. There are roughly a dozen homes under $300K, none of which are very nice, and none of which are in a particularly nice part of town. The average home in this part of town is $400K-$600K (depending on size). If you work nearby, then taking the bus would be efficient, but if you don't work in the CBD, then you're either looking at a 2-3 hour commute by bus (each way) or you're driving yourself.

Alternatively, you can buy a nicer home in the suburbs for the same amount of money, not deal with crime, poverty, and drug use on the sidewalk in front of your home, send your kids to good schools instead of the crumbling cesspits the Seattle School District runs, and deal with the increased cost of commuting.

Regardless, buying a home in the city and taking the bus to work only benefits those who work in the city. Maybe other cities are different, but in the Seattle area, businesses are all spread around and are not all centralized. I work about 15 miles from where I live, my wife's office is ten miles south of mine. The bus doesn't work for us, and even if we lived near one of our offices (not reasonable as we'd have to live in an apartment/condo with a baby and two dogs, or pay way too much for a house), the public transit between our places of employment still sucks, so one of us is still screwed.

It'll take more than just cramming people together in cities to fix the housing/commuting/gasoline/transit problem. The jobs have to be nearby as well, as does affordable housing, and that just isn't reality for most people.

[Broomstick]

We combine errands. I can easily get by with buying gas only once a month if need be (in actual fact, I like to keep the tanks at least half full, so that's a slightly more frequent purchase, but for less than filling an empty tank)

Actually, doing that is less efficient. Half-filling the tank when it goes below a quarter is better. since it means that you're carrying less fuel around with you.

In all but the warmest summer months condensation is a factor - keeping the tank 1/4 full in the winter is an invitation to water in the fuel tank or line in this area. Also, I'm not carrying a full tank in the name of "efficiency", it's so that if we get a temporary price gouge I can pass on fueling for a week, or if I have a sudden need to make and urgent trip I don't have to worry about running out of gas along the way, or stopping at 3 am to buy gas. Over the last three years I've had to make several such trips to both Michigan and Tennessee on short notice. In other words, I have a couple reasons for keeping the tank full which you may or may not share.

Another good tip is to regularly check your tire pressure, and keep the tires inflated close to the maximum recommended pressure, to decrease road friction.

I do that the first weekend of every month, check every tire and inflate as necessary on both the car and the truck.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Well, Seattle's topography is unique and weird and doesn't really apply to the average American city. Amy and I live 18 miles from the downtown, but we don't have to use a car at all because we live in Bremerton, and the ferry is a straight shot into the downtown core over an hour. Granted, Amy's commute lasts two hours and ten minutes, but that's not so bad--I was working down in Georgetown for a while and managed a three hour commute in and a two hour commute back. Take the Kitsap transit bus from the apartment to the ferry terminal, wait for the next sailing, then once in Seattle walk up a couple blocks and hop on the bus south. We are however completely independent of automobiles--we have a 2003 Corolla but we don't need it, remotely.

We really should try to use the water system here more. The light rail is nice, but we could, for instance, use hovercraft to operate coastwise along Lake Washington and the Sound--or even hydrofoils in the later case. That would be particularly useful up from Olympia and Tacoma and not require any infrastructure.

Suburbia, in that sense, can survive if placed properly. You can have radial clusters of homes along the rail-lines, for instance, if there is commuter rail service. You can keep all the coastal towns, Everett, Mukilteo, Edmonds, Shoreline, etc, can be served both by rail and by boat. Isn't just Seattle. That will work for the Bay Area too, of course, and even for river cities like St. Louis--you can have shoreline commuter villages served by boats.

Of course, people will have to accept commuting times that are pretty long. But that's just part of adapting to the inevitable death of suburbia, since we don't have the ability to produce infinite energy to sustain it. It's just that it won't totally die--we'll be able to sustain dense "tentacles" of housing out from the cities along the major commuter routes. Hell, we can rip up the inner lane on most freeways, lay third-rail powered electrical rails down it, and even keep the cities built along the freeways somewhat intact.

As for Amy and I will, we'll be moving in with a friend (third person to spread around the rents to make things even cheaper) in September somewhere closer in Bremerton so that we can just walk to the ferry terminal instead of taking the Kitsap transit buses, and Meg and I can walk to the college. It would be a lot easier if the fuckers who one those expensive homes on Rich Passage would all go fucking die, though, losing their beaches to high-speed passenger-only ferries, so they go and get them killed, making our commute last 25 minutes longer. I'd like to take a cruise along the passage one night with a Vietnam-era Zippo Boat--that would be as fun as hell.

The other stupid thing the ferry system does is only run one Super on the route instead of two when they've got the largest passenger capacity in the fleet, so people get packed in like sardines on the Kitsap on the five-thirty from Seattle instead of getting a comfortable ride if they sent the Elwha down to us to join the Kaleetan. But now that's local politics. I'd also like to get an initiative passed to turn those bike trails into an interurban system, but the biker mafia wants to kill transit for more fucking trails instead, and King County is in their pocket.

Ah, well. It really isn't a bother, those two hours on the ferry each day--with the wireless internet now, it is, in fact, very much not different at all, when I was commuting over there, than what I spend most of my time doing when I'm sitting here at home. They even have a cafe onboard that serves beer and wine; everything is overpriced, but it does at least include tax.

Anyhow, the ferry system makes our transport network far better connected, as in addition to the Bainbridge Island, Bremerton, and Vashon PO straight shots downtown and the Vashon/Southworth service to West Seattle, we've got the Edmonds-Kingston and Mukilteo-Clinton runs which connect directly with the north line Sounder service (well, the later will once they finish the damn station). It's not been widely published but the two have actually synched their schedules so you can get on the ferry in Kingston and walk directly onto a commuter train downtown, which means the no-car commute from north Kitsap county to dowtown Seattle is only about an hour.

We need to at least get started on connecting and vastly expanding the downtown streetcar network. It's such a shame so much time and money was wasted on the monorail when we could have gotten the same routes covered with ground-level service. For that matter, way back in the 1960s when my unlamented father was on the steering committee for the World's Fair he tried to get them to put the Space Needle on Queen Anne Hill (where the TV antennaes were, and then the Space Needle would have had broadcast antennaes placed on top of it), and run the monorail on an extension up to the top of Queen Anne as well to take people there from the main fairgrounds. That would have been nice.

[Starglider]

Also, I'm not carrying a full tank in the name of "efficiency", it's so that if we get a temporary price gouge I can pass on fueling for a week, or if I have a sudden need to make and urgent trip I don't have to worry about running out of gas along the way, or stopping at 3 am to buy gas.

That's why I keep 20 litres of diesel in the shed. That's actually the legal maximum in the UK, but I may put another couple of cans in there anyway, in case there's a significant supply disruption. It's not really that much hassle to use and refill one can each month.

[Broomstick]

We really should try to use the water system here more. The light rail is nice, but we could, for instance, use hovercraft to operate coastwise along Lake Washington and the Sound--or even hydrofoils in the later case.

Hovercraft are fuel hogs, they are NOT an efficient use of fuel!

Hydrofoils I'm not sure about.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

We really should try to use the water system here more. The light rail is nice, but we could, for instance, use hovercraft to operate coastwise along Lake Washington and the Sound--or even hydrofoils in the later case.

Hovercraft are fuel hogs, they are NOT an efficient use of fuel!

Hydrofoils I'm not sure about.

Well, you're achieving enormous economies of scale when one trip in a hovercraft can--assuming it had the same passenger capacity as the Super-class ferries, say, their upper two passenger decks without any car capacity at all, of course--hold 2,000 people, and therefore take 2,000 cars off the road. Hydrofoils would probably work just fine, anyhow, I grant.

[Broomstick]

Hovercraft guzzle fuel like aircraft, not like boats. Neat idea, but not efficient. A hovercraft with that sort of capacity might as well be a jumbo jet.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Hovercraft guzzle fuel like aircraft, not like boats. Neat idea, but not efficient. A hovercraft with that sort of capacity might as well be a jumbo jet.

S'pity, too, since the capacity could be huge, whereas hydrofoils tend to be smaller, about 150 - 250 passengers (I'd have to check if some designs are larger). OTOH, they're efficient enough to warrant their effective commercial use on the Budapest--Bratislava--Vienna route along the Danube river, so perhaps they could indeed be commercial implemented even on long distance routes, like Chicago--Milwaukee commuter service, for instance, or Toronto--Buffalo/Rochester and other such operations.

Of course, if hovercraft were built large enough to be nuclear powered, this problem would not exist, but that's a bit of a pipe dream, sadly.

[CaptainZoidberg]

Why does everyone think that Suburbia isn't sustainable? The only unsustainable aspect I see is land consumption and energy usage. If we switched to nuclear and were able to increase output without dramatically increasing fuel costs (as happens with fossil fuels), why wouldn't suburbia be able to function indefinitely?

[Raxmei]

Why does everyone think that Suburbia isn't sustainable? The only unsustainable aspect I see is land consumption and energy usage. If we switched to nuclear and were able to increase output without dramatically increasing fuel costs (as happens with fossil fuels), why wouldn't suburbia be able to function indefinitely?

Most suburbs are planned with the assumption of easy car travel. This leads to long stretches of road between most houses and the nearest business and no way to cover that distance except by car. That means high gas consumption, and gas is getting expensive.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Why does everyone think that Suburbia isn't sustainable? The only unsustainable aspect I see is land consumption and energy usage. If we switched to nuclear and were able to increase output without dramatically increasing fuel costs (as happens with fossil fuels), why wouldn't suburbia be able to function indefinitely?

Most suburbs are planned with the assumption of easy car travel. This leads to long stretches of road between most houses and the nearest business and no way to cover that distance except by car. That means high gas consumption, and gas is getting expensive.

Bingo. Suburbia is dying because we cannot implement replacement technologies for the internal combustion engine rapidly enough to keep it alive. All the energy in the world is useless if you can't put it in your car for the purpose of keeping suburbia alive.

[CaptainZoidberg]

Why does everyone think that Suburbia isn't sustainable? The only unsustainable aspect I see is land consumption and energy usage. If we switched to nuclear and were able to increase output without dramatically increasing fuel costs (as happens with fossil fuels), why wouldn't suburbia be able to function indefinitely?

Most suburbs are planned with the assumption of easy car travel. This leads to long stretches of road between most houses and the nearest business and no way to cover that distance except by car. That means high gas consumption, and gas is getting expensive.

But it's not like personal automobiles only work with gas. Electric cars are plausible, and perhaps even fuel cells will be used at some point in the future.

The fossil fuel scarcity issue seems like more of a modern issue with suburbia, rather than a fundamental flaw that will lead to an inevitable downfall.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Why does everyone think that Suburbia isn't sustainable? The only unsustainable aspect I see is land consumption and energy usage. If we switched to nuclear and were able to increase output without dramatically increasing fuel costs (as happens with fossil fuels), why wouldn't suburbia be able to function indefinitely?

Most suburbs are planned with the assumption of easy car travel. This leads to long stretches of road between most houses and the nearest business and no way to cover that distance except by car. That means high gas consumption, and gas is getting expensive.

But it's not like personal automobiles only work with gas. Electric cars are plausible, and perhaps even fuel cells will be used at some point in the future.

The fossil fuel scarcity issue seems like more of a modern issue with suburbia, rather than a fundamental flaw that will lead to an inevitable downfall.

The problem with suburbia is that it's inefficient. Waste heat can be used to power closely clustered buildings, lawns could be turned into cropland, etc, etc.

Why is the survival of suburbia important to you, when the land could be used to grow food for starving children instead?

[Surlethe]

Why does everyone think that Suburbia isn't sustainable? The only unsustainable aspect I see is land consumption and energy usage. If we switched to nuclear and were able to increase output without dramatically increasing fuel costs (as happens with fossil fuels), why wouldn't suburbia be able to function indefinitely?

The catch is this: by the time we switch to nuclear, suburbia will be long gone. The whole fuss about peak oil is not that oil will run out, but that society will take decades to adjust to prohibitively expensive and decreasing oil supplies. Alternatives exist, but producing them and manufacturing them in suitable quantities, especially with oil shortages, will require years and years -- and by then suburbia will be gone.

[CaptainZoidberg]

The catch is this: by the time we switch to nuclear, suburbia will be long gone. The whole fuss about peak oil is not that oil will run out, but that society will take decades to adjust to prohibitively expensive and decreasing oil supplies. Alternatives exist, but producing them and manufacturing them in suitable quantities, especially with oil shortages, will require years and years -- and by then suburbia will be gone.

That's not really true at all. Sure, if we wanted to just go straight from gasoline cars to electric cars with nuclear power, that would take a prohibitively long period of time. But it's not like we'd go straight from 100% gasoline to 100% electric/nuclear. There are numerous intermediate stages:

1. President Obama begins to push for the construction of more nuclear power plants.

2. People drive less, and try to integrate metros and subways into some parts of their trips.

3. People buy motorcycles for their daily commute to work, since many motorcycles get over twice the gas millage of the average car.

4. When a person's car starts to fall apart or show signs of aging - the new choice for a car is a hybrid.

5. Companies that convert hybrids to plug-ins and add extra battery capacity prop up across the US.

6. Over time, car companies end up producing cars with large built in batteries.

7. At this point, the nuclear power plants come on line, and Suburbia is saved.

8. Barack Obama is known as the Saviour of Suburbia, and is greeted as a hero far and wide throughout the land.

[The Yosemite Bear]

They are still comming to Yosemite, and those who live outside of the park are doing some pretty massive lobbing to get the Park Service to let families live in the park.

[Broomstick]

The problem with suburbia is that it's inefficient. Waste heat can be used to power closely clustered buildings

On the other hand, crowding people too closely can be bad, too - in the 1960's urban poor people where clustered into high rises "for their own good" and the result was an explosion of violence and crime. Yes, there are wealthy people who live in high rises but they have the resources to get away if they need to, either to a very low density location or just physically move away from people who annoy the fuck out of them. If you crowd people to closely you will wind up with energy-efficient riot zones.

lawns could be turned into cropland

But they won't be. The roads, buildings, basements, etc. would all need to be removed for efficient farming, and it's ever so much cheaper just to plow new land further out of town. Lawns are much more likely to sprout vegetables if people are living there.

You are also focusing on the later versions of suburbia - older suburbs (some of which were absorbed into the cities themselves) have buildings with smaller footprints (easier to heat) and smaller lots. They also, once upon a time, had things like bus service (and some of them still do). There are many Chicago suburbs that pre-date the automobile - and it's no coincidence that they follow the rail lines out of the city.

I don't care what you call the ring of homes around a city core, but you do need to allow adequate space for human beings to live in.