December 2007 - Posts
John Addison at
Cleantech Blog offers a few case studies in flexible schedules:
In the Oil and Coal Age, everyone drove solo during gridlock hours to their one work location to toil over their designated machine. Now people are most effective working some days at one location, other times at home, others at a customer or supplier location. We are becoming increasingly flexible and mobile. We can take advantage of the new flexible workplace solutions to annually save hundreds of wasted hours, thousands of gallons of wasted gas, and pocket thousands of dollars.
The companies profiled - Applied Materials and Yahoo - use combinations of IRS transit benefits, shuttles, clean public transportation, telecommuting, cycling, and non-standard schedules to offer a working style that fits the needs of increasingly global, increasingly technologically-savvy workforce.
The results are not only fewer cars on the road and less congestion during peak times - resulting in less fuel consumption and a dramatic reduction in vehicle emissions - but an enormous employee benefit that can help attract and retain great workers.
I hope to address this topic in more detail soon, but here's a quick end-of-the-year take on the new CAFE standards included in Congress's recently passed legislation. The new standards are a giant step in the right direction in terms of reducing energy consumption and establishing some measure of U.S. energy independence. In a recent presentation to the Regional Commission, Stephen Walz - Governor Kaine's energy Czar - stated that 43% of energy consumption in Virginia comes from transportation; a 28% increase in efficiency, reflected in the increase in CAFE standards from the current 27.5 mpg to 35, therefore reflects a significant potential reduction in petroleum usage in Virginia alone.
But before we get too excited, consider how the increase is implemented. The legislation requires that all new cars sold in the U.S. meet the required standards by 2020, with the phase-in beginning in 2011. So, we've got four years before the technology even starts to change, and another nine after that before 100% compliance is reached. This assumes, of course, that implementation is not delayed by lawsuits or technological issues (though there seems to be consensus that the new standards are easily attainable with current technology, much less what might be available in another 15 years); some litigation, I'm sure, is bound to delay the process somewhat. Optimistically, market forces might actually drive some manufacturers to implement the changes much, much earlier than the 2020 target - I think we're already seeing a shift in consumer demand towards fuel-efficient cars vs. gas hogs, and the recent popularity of the Prius certainly indicates that some segment of the market is willing to pay a premium for such vehicles. Still, given the recalcitrance of the American auto industry thus far - and, honestly, the taste of American drivers - I wouldn't expect the standards to met until the date set by the law.
So, by 2020 we'll have all new cars running on CAFE standards of an impressive 35 mpg. But keep in mind that the standards only affect new cars - older cars are, of course, grandfathered in under the old standards. Let's look at what that means:
According to Kelly Blue Book, as of right now there are 213 million cars on the road each year. Every year, Americans buy 16 million new cars; assuming these ratios remain steady, this means that by 2020 only 7.5% of cars on the road will meet the new efficiency standards. Certainly, gradual increases in performance over the intervening years will result in an overall higher gas mileage across all cars on the road; still, let's keep in perspective that a change implemented in new cars in 2020 will actually take much, much longer to propagate across American roads; we'll have to wait for all those cars to be replaced before we'll see actual, dramatic decreases in fuel consumption and vehicle emissions, and at 213 million cars and growing it will be long after 2020 before that comes to pass.
Yesterday I attended a meeting at the Washington Council of Governments in Washington DC; a regional planning organization very much like the Roanoke Valley-Alleghany Regional Commission, except that it covers local governments that cross state boundaries. Being an afternoon meeting, I decided to make the trip to DC and back in one day.
The trip, each way, took about five hours, though in each case the last two hours covered only 20-30 miles of the total trip. Even coming into DC at 10:30, I hit traffic snarls around Arlington and sat in lines of cars that crawled along at 5 miles an hour, burning gasoline as they sat idle along 66 and 395. Coming home, cars puttered along I-66; it took an hour and a half to get from the DC/Virginia border to Manassas. Nearly half of the time 400-some-odd-mile journey was taken up going a distance no longer than that between Salem and Christiansburg. And I wasn't even driving during peak traffic times.
Even with access to the Metro, busses, a plethora of formal and informal Park and Rides, and active (and free) carpool programs like RIDE Solutions, DC drivers still love their cars. Love them enough, apparently, to spend an enormous amount of their day sitting idly in them while paying $3.00 a gallon for the privilege of going nowhere.
Obviously, congestion is going to be a function of population, and in an area the size of DC its going to be unavoidable. Nonetheless, there's still a lot of room to mitigate it's severity there. In Roanoke and the New River Valley, we're pretty proud of our almost nonexistent congestion problems; unless there's a Tech game or accident on I-81, you can get between the respective valleys in no more than 30 minutes or so, and within them it generally takes 20 minutes or less to get from one side of town to the other. It's worth remaining vigilant, though; if our region grow like its leaders hope it does (and it certainly has the potential to), it could be possible to taste a little of that DC traffic here. Making use of our alternatives now - Valley Metro, the SmartWay, Blacksburg Transit, carpooling and bicycling - lay the foundation for smooth driving in the future.
Some of you may have used the
Evite service to schedule and invite guests to events. I've used it on several occasions, and it's generally been helpful in tracking RSVPs, sending out reminders, and serving other useful functions. One of its most recent useful functions is the addition of a
carpool feature that allows you to rideshare with other event attendees.
The features uses a map that plots the origin of other attendees and allows you to send them a carpool request, which the attendee can either accept or decline all through the Evite interface. Once your carpool is formed, you can even use Evite to message other carpool members, just like you might message event attendees.
With the addition of this feature, Evite has broadened its potential usefulness - use it to schedule shopping trips with neighbors, business trips with colleagues, even school pools! It's another tool in the trip-reduction toolbox.