To most of all you this might be a small move from the usual but I tell you this is all for a good end. I love cars & bikes and I can't but wonder how a world can survive without one. All this talk about reducing emissions, increasing fossil fuel emissions, depletion of fossil fuels is getting somewhere but where? Will that do us any good ? Can we actually adopt any of them ? These are the million dollar questions that people want to know the answer to.
All this talk about having to adopt public transport is good, if we can trust the public transport to be on time. Believe me in most countries they work like clockwork. But here lies the problem in most places where they work like clockwork the frequency & the operating hours are horrifying to say the least. This being one valid reason for people to avoid using them people never will want to relinquish the little freedom if at all they have any. So where this leads us is, most of the time the public transport ends up operating at 10% of its capacity. The trains may be electric but the electricity is mostly generated by the fossil fuels. The buses either run on Diesel or CNG. They may be efficient when you take the full capacity but at 10% I doubt it very much. They also emit particulate matter, CO2, CO, the entire works. If we consider this to be a start and say people have to use them more, one word my friends, convenience . Most of us never like wasting time waiting for something but we dont spend all our time wisely, again I blame human nature for it or its just me. And we have to agree a car is never just a transportation its much more a style statement, a symbol of prestige and a lot more. So nobody is going to give it up very easily. You always have to arrive in style my friend.
Car pooling works to an extent. And most corporations are also getting greener by providing their own transportation. I bet the MBA suits have a lot more and better reasons for the company providing the transportation. One more step in that direction should be to give incentives to the people who use the mass transportation instead of their own cars to get to the office.
One thing the developed nations can learn from the developing nations is the use of small motorcycles to travel. Most of the time we travel in our car all alone. Why not ride a motorcycle to work ? Even the very fast ones have better fuel efficiency than a car (I am not even thinking about yummy mummy SUV's). The real small ones are also getting close to running very clean with all the fuel injection and catalytic converters. Yes, I agree its definitely not as safe as a car. But also you seldom fall for something which was not your mistake. Your dodge-bility increases. The icing on the cake are the mini electric scooters. These are Zero emission vehicles and also small ones so you dont waste electricity charging them. They can reach 40 mph/60kmph max. For a city with speed limits in force I dont see a point why one shouldnt ride one. At least at 40/60 you are on the limit on these :D.
The pricing of fuel should be based on the mileage you are getting out of the car. Most cars have the average fuel efficiency on their onboard computers. Why not take this data and use it to base the price of fuel on this. If you are driving a small car or a car more efficiently you are rewarded. For people driving good sports car I bet its just the price we can afford to pay for all the fun we are having. For those with big heavy SUV's, I dont know what to say, maybe pay the price for the road presence you have ? This can make people drive keeping the fuel efficiency in mind. If we are having fun we also pay for it. That makes it a fair game. Doesnt it?
I saw the story of Gordon Murray's new car on Top gear . His ideas also for the implementation are also awesome. If the above idea is implemented it would only make these small cars sell more. So if car manufacturers are listening, have you started making the calls for the lobbying ;). I bet a lot of 'green' guys would help you here.
One of my pet peeves is the hybrid car. Top gear just showed the entire world that a M3 BMW is much more fuel efficient than Toyota Prius. If at all there had to be hybrids I would say make the big SUV;s a hybrid. The fuel savings percentage will be sky high. A mile saved can be worth a lot of digits. Think in terms of cars like Escalade and the Hummer, think one more mile per gallon. Ah! see thats what I am talking about.
Fuel being depleted, no fuel in the next ten years ? Well with fuel prices increasing it is just making it more economically feasible to dig at places which were not feasible. Moreover fuel is called fossil fuel for the reason being it is decayed plants and animals basically. All autoclaved in the Earth's crust. SO there will be more fuel formed and we can dig it.
So there you have it. A small start. Lets see.
