A Thinking Person's Guide to Getting About Town: The Third Best Way

a little sermon on philosophy and the EV, or where the abstract meets the concrete (pavement)

        Maybe we shouldn’t move about at all.  I take my cue from an old Indian proverb, quoted by the French aphorist Chamfort, translated and taken to heart more than anyone else I know by Samuel Beckett, and expanded upon (a little) by me: 
 

 Better to stand than to walk, sit than stand, still better lie, better 
 still die, best: to have never been born. 
 

        Before each sojourn from my door, it would seem the sensible thing to ask whether I might walk it.  Exposure to seasonal variations in the local flora, the traits of squirrels, birds, cats, etc., the different forms and textures of clouds, or consistencies of rain, or patterns of cracks in pavements—can all serve to round out my sensibilities. Inevitably, though, perverse curiosity and, we like to say, the exigencies of life oblige us to distances too burdensome to traverse on foot. The temptations to clutter our time and sometimes even a yen for at least a morsel of excitement—a little wind in the face, etc.—push us to consider some mechanical contrivance... 

         The bicycle remains, though, near as simple as any of our motion machines get.  The harder breathing, faster heart rate and shiny perspiration cut a dashing image.  Why even the early Beckett, in his youthful exuberance, adrenalized a character or two on a bicycle.  (Later, of course, they retreated to living entirely in dumpsters.)  Pedaling is clearly the NEXT best way. A paradigm of simplicity, elegance and efficiency, the bicycle enlarges our radius at least fourfold. But between the vagaries of weather, terrain, the onset of wimpery and the thousand excuses we can make, the bicycle has become more a recreation—strangely, even a symbol of status that we almost pride ourselves in not overindulging—than a heavily utilized part of our urban transportation scheme.  By and by we slip between the gears and settle for a less strenuous option. We look about for a machine that taxes us less physically while speeding us farther faster. 

        The FOURTH best way (I’ll return to the THIRD, momentarily), whether because we are civic minded, or have less money or more time to spend on transportation, or find the experience of being (in a sense) chauffeured a pleasant one, or the time spent moving lends itself to reading, sleeping, perchance dreaming—is to take the bus.  Or whatever form of public transit we can extract funds from taxpayers to afford.  For many years this was as low on the transportation scale as I would stoop—for all the reasons just cited, I would say to myself.  It is still the simplest way to arrive for some trips.  You might think it should rank higher and, for reasons other than efficiency and simplicity, it might.  If all of it was electrically powered, it probably would.  But it is highly questionable how well typical bus passengers are serving themselves and the rest of us. 

         Suppose, for the moment, every bus on our city streets is always moving at near capacity. The typical transit bus weighs 10 to 14 tons empty—or about as much as 5 to 7 subcompact cars. Let’s assume all 40 odd of these people would otherwise be driving single occupant vehicles.  (This is almost true:  the real number is about 1.2 passengers per private vehicle.)  If so, a good 60 tons (probably more) less material is being carted about, not to mention all the space 40 (even) small cars take up. At the least, it would seem, relieving congestion is an undeniable benefit of public transit. 

         Of course, our supposition is incorrect.  Except at certain hours on certain routes—which account for few of actual bus miles—buses operate at far less than capacity.  So much is obvious to most of us, but it may come as a surprise how much less.  The average number of passengers per bus mile for combustion powered buses is about 10 and falling.  This number figures in not only less-than-capacity runs most hours of the day, but the number of  “deadhead” miles (non revenue miles or miles driven to and from start and termination points on a route when the bus is empty).  Deadhead miles account for 25% of all bus miles. ² 

        We have to move 10 to 14 thousand pounds, it appears, to cart 10 people (1600 pounds).  They could almost each drive a Geo Metro and not give up the door-to-door service, privacy, real or imagined freedom, and the thrill that comes from spoiling the planet no more, at least, than those suckers on the bus!  When you calculate the energy consumed per passenger mile, that is your conclusion. 

         But what about toxic emissions per passenger mile?  (Those of you who don’t care about this aspect of the issue may still find the following interesting.)  Among the principle components of emissions from internal combustion engines—carbon dioxide (“greenhouse” gas), carbon monoxide (a favorite of suicides), hydrocarbons (carcinogens), particulates (breathing and vision impediments), nitrous oxides (a reddish-brown poisonous gas) and sulfur dioxide (acid-rain)—only nitrogen oxides per passenger mile are less present in the thick black smoke trailing diesel buses, 25% less.  Concentrations of particulates and sulfur dioxide per passenger mile, however, are 200% to 300% higher in transit buses than in subcompact single occupant internal combustion vehicles.  (Note:  Throughout, comparisons are being made not between vehicle types per se, but between emissions and energies actually entailed or consumed in the movement of one person for one mile for each type—a much more accurate gauge of REAL, not theoretical, environmental impact.) 

        This does not suggest that there aren’t advantages even to under-utilized public transit apart from some relief from congestion.  Not all toxic emissions are equal: some kill you more cleanly and quickly, while others will torment you and your descendants for an extended period first. Take your pick. Diesel buses excel at the production of the more leisurely types. 

         I hesitate to go on in this vein, implying that anything short of appropriately sized, zero emission public transit is only a marginal improvement (all things considered) over single occupant vehicles.  Nothing said here is beyond remedy and I, for one, enjoy public transportation and would wish to see it made more efficient.  But except for very specific routes and times it is not, here and now, either simple or efficient enough to rank higher on the scale.  It is no mystery what we all should do to help matters, but we are simply not doing it.  Why?  No mystery here either:  Public transit is not convenient for most of us most of the time and, apparently, becoming less so.  The old Seattle transit bus and trolley system, for example, carried twice as many people 50 years ago, when the region’s population was half! ³  One day, it’s barely conceivable, we may realize what we ought to do collectively.  But that is not my point here.  Should we “hold our breath” till then? 

         Not when there is another form urban transportation can take that is more efficient than any public transit we are familiar with, partly because it takes seriously our sacred automotive autonomy (as well as very real laziness), addresses it as the genuine need it has become (for better or worse)—yet, at the same time, drastically curtails the wastefulness associated with so many aspects of the conventional personal automobile.  It does not require, contrary to some rumors, waiting for new technology or great expenditures, or large corporate or government involvement. It is within the financial reach of someone who has chosen to remain among those the IRS deems the “working poor”, such as myself... 

         The THIRD best way to get from one place to another in the city is the electric car. (Notice, I said “third”.)  The first thing to get straight about the electric car is that it is not “the car of the future”.  It is a dangerous, high speed vehicle of the past.  Henry Bliss, in 1902, was this nation’s first auto fatality—run down by a New York electric cabbie, probably speeding at 18 mph.  In 1899, the world land speed record was 65 miles per hour, set by the Belgian, Camille Jenatzy, in his electric missile shaped “La Jamais Contente”.  The Baker “Electric Torpedo”, in 1902, on its way to breaking the record again, went out of control crossing trolley tracks and slammed into a group of spectators, killing two.  More recently (in August of 1997), the Dodge V10 Viper, a hundred thousand dollar muscle car was left in the dust behind a home made electric dragster, costing several times less and finishing the quarter mile in less than 11 seconds.  Despite the electric vehicle’s old and still growing reputation for speed and danger, let me say in its defense that its famous limited range, especially at high speeds, would no doubt have kept within manageable bounds the bloody history of the automobile with which few wars compare.  A quarter million dead worldwide, each year, and countless maimed or injured.  (Speed kills, certainly, but the numbers also tell us it sells!)  Had it not been set back at least 80 years by Charles Kettering’s invention of the electric starter for internal combustion engines, we might by this time have tired of hearing the electric vehicle’s elegant hum and moved on to something simpler, like the bicycle or even good walking shoes. 

        Instead, we read and hear everywhere of its impending revival. California and several Eastern states have or are considering mandated quotas of zero emission vehicles.  Nearly every major car company in the world has its pet “green” car prototype. We are told that batteries to solve its range problem are just around the corner.  Millions of dollars are poured into battery research consortiums.  In Japan and Europe, government and corporate involvement has reached a higher pitch than in this country. 

        We hear electric cars will become affordable as soon as everyone is convinced they can make do with shorter and fewer long trips and start buying the EVs in numbers.  Perhaps, if (despite Kettering) we’d bought them first way back, we would now have a different standard of what constitutes a short or a long trip. If the nuclear powered car—which used to excite us, I remember, in my grammar school days—had become commonplace, allowing one to circle the globe several times without refueling, would I today view as measly a gas powered car’s 3 or 4 hundred mile range? 

        Conservatively, 70% of Americans drive less than 30 miles in a day.  45% of all the trips they take are less than 5 miles. In Washington State, 75% of all driven vehicles have one occupant. We gather from this, on any given day, first, that we don’t usually stray anywhere near as far from home as our gas tanks might permit; and, second, that we like to do it alone.  We must be thinking how nice it is to know that we could—on the way to the grocery store—simply strike out for Spokane, if we should take a notion. Moreover, we believe everyone in our household should have a vehicle capable of such a stunt. 

         I am not wholeheartedly demeaning the compunction to behave this way.  I remind you, I don’t assume we give a damn about the broader social or ecological consequences.  (If we do, a little, so much the better for what I am going to say.)  Deep down I prize very highly this sense of limitless possibilities, so much that once in my youth I sold or gave away all that wouldn’t fit on my back, stuck out my thumb, and hitched from Seattle to New York City.  I still like to believe I’m capable of disappearing at any time. 

        But I probably won’t.  And you’re not likely to slip away to Spokane on your lunch hour either. What do we need a better battery for?  One that would permit the ranges we are used to? So that we can choose not to avail ourselves of its full capacity, the way most of us most of the time now do not utilize all of the range our gas tanks make available?  Repeating, I am not suggesting sacrifice—why not have a “distance” vehicle always at our disposal?  Most American households (and, more to the point, a vast and increasing number of individuals) have more than one vehicle.  Why isn’t one, at least, electric? Indeed, if you, like most of us, stay embarrassingly close to home the better part of the time, why bother owning the gas one at all?  Pause to consider the insurance, maintenance, registration, emission testing expenses and hassles of owning a long-distance car—and weigh this against the slight inconvenience of sharing or the cost of infrequent rentals.  What are you needlessly sacrificing now in order to indulge your automania? An electric car, too, can be accessorized, waxed on weekends, doted over as an expression of our inner most child and values, decorated with fish of the Christian or Darwinian sort... 

        I am not blind to the blessing that a greatly improved battery would be to EV acceptance. Needless to say, many people would enjoy having the capacity—on a whim or need—to go further than they are routinely inclined to.  Obviously, the electric car is not a one-for-one replacement (for many of us) for the gas powered automobile...not for a long time yet, anyway.  But the eminently practical electric vehicle is here now and it can take on a great deal more of our real transportation needs than most people realize.  Let the gas car do what it does best, which is not what we typically use it for.  What efficiency it ever attains, it achieves exactly when used for those substantial trips when it runs hottest. 

         Simplicity and efficiency—even in moderation—are all that I am daring to expect.  Your electric car needn’t be new and priced accordingly (though it could be).  If you converted an older gas car, you would be recycling a vehicle that would otherwise become increasingly wasteful and inefficient as it lived out the rest of its short internal combustion life. Electricity is much kinder to the moving parts of your vehicle; indeed, it keeps those parts to a minimum.  Only 15-25% of the energy locked up in a gallon of gasoline is employed in moving the vehicle.  The rest is converted to heat, vibration, noise, or simply expelled as unutilized, uncombusted, unwelcome gases. Electric drive systems have efficiencies above 75%. 

         Are we merely displacing the waste from the car to the power generating plant?  Even assuming those plants burn fossil fuels (which is not the case in the Pacific Northwest, where over 90% of electricity is renewable hydroelectric), efficiencies of scale, the experts tell us (and common sense echoes), permit a central combustion plant to burn these fuels more completely, extracting a greater proportion of stored energy, while more tightly controlling emissions per unit of energy.  Leveling peak daytime demands overnight (when EVs generally charge) enhances efficiency to such an extent that it would take millions of electric vehicles nationwide all charging at off-peak times before an increase in fossil fuel consumption (over current levels) would begin to become significant.  Also, renewable sources of electrical energy—such as solar, solar thermal, wind, and hydro—are more easily tapped on a larger scale. 

        Of course, we pay a price every time we move—and even the cleanest renewables still exact a toll on less renewable resources.  To mention a few concerns:  Consider the energy expended in the manufacture of still relatively inefficient solar cells, the depletion of salmon runs, the suicide of certain species of birds on wind turbines, the unbenign effects of electro-magnetic fields on health and environment, the small but nearly unavoidable wastes in the manufacture and recycling of lead batteries, etc...but all these pale in comparison with the vast wastes and inefficiencies that go into oil exploration, extraction, transportation, refining and distribution...ignoring, for present purposes (since we don’t care), the ecosystems and human cultures we lay waste along the way. ⁴ 

        No better than THIRD, recall.  But unless we are prepared to lead a radically static life (or none at all), we are committed to a certain amount of waste and complication.  There are better and worse ways to cut a dashing figure.  And if you must cart a ton or more of vehicle about wherever you go...I think the options are clear. 

        Back to the ranking. 
        (I won’t say much about ways further down the list.  We are only too familiar with them.) 
        FIFTH:  Carpooling.  Certainly better for evident reasons over what most people do.  But except for those of us with very standard job hours and locations—and, still, for these only at commuter times—carpooling’s practicality is limited. 
        If you drive a small fuel efficient gas car, you come in around SIX. 
        SEVEN:  What most people drive. 
        EIGHT:  32 valve turbocharged road hogs, 4x4 mountain scalers, suburbans, and not so “mini” -vans reeking of  “consumer values”: what more and more people are driving... 

        At the beginning of this essay I mentioned Hitler in connection with the basic ideals of simplicity and efficiency. Perhaps he isn’t, after all, the best example to emulate.  One of the reasons he lost the war, they tell us, is that his mechanized forces ran out of gasoline.  We have about 40 years before we also run out.  It’s my hope (dare I use that word) that long before we do, we (unlike him) will plan our logistic requirements more wisely... 

         It is not so much a question of saving the environment. On Nature’s time scale, we and anything we do scarcely matter.  It’s more a matter of having been a worthy species, a thinking one. Of giving future archaeologists, rummaging among the bones of our culture, less cause for shaking their heads. 

NOTES

¹  As the term is used here, “efficiency” is meant in a wider sense than that of simply maximizing the effectiveness of a given quantity of spent energy.  The question I'm begging is the more mundane but difficult one of how well we manage to get what we say we want out of life with limited resources and time?  A method that purports efficiency in this more generous sense must address desires and aspirations as we find them, not merely offer us a hypothetical alternative low waste lifestyle. The fact of the matter is that we do value activities that are inherently wasteful if the goal is simply survival.  However, supposing we demand more than survival, then our concept of efficiency must be predicated on more sophisticated considerations, which entail a certain amount of waste—enough that we come to stop calling it “waste” and inflate the notion of  “survival” to include it. Thus, we depart very quickly from the purest notions of efficiency and simplicity.  The effort to perfect our as-we-find-them values is the noblest and, I fear, most hopeless of tasks—and not my business, not here. Still, many of us do pay lip service to the ideas of efficiency and simplicity.  I am asserting we might do more without expecting us all to become ascetics. 

²  This analysis of the King County Metro transit system owes much to Herbert Burke’s scrutiny of a 1992 Regional Transit environmental impact statement. Mr. Burke—a physicist, teacher, activist, and former editor of the Seattle Electric Vehicle Association newsletter—found a host of statistical abuses in that EIS.  Not distinguishing between a bus’ theoretical capacity and its typical passenger load was among the more glaring. 

 ³  Seattle Times, March 5, 1995. 

 ⁴  See, for example, The Environmental Impact of the Car: A Greenpeace Report. Seattle: 1992. 

More information on electric vehicles can be found at the end of "About EVs: Frequently Asked Questions". 

rev 2/4/98