The Greening of Gavin

Highway Hell

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As it is my last day of Easter leave, I have been chilling out and doing a lot of reading. This one article in the Melbourne newspaper The Age got me thinking. It is titled “Stuck in our cars on the highway to hell“. It describes the nightmare that is the transportation headache around Melbourne. Building new freeway tunnels and bypasses are not going to solve the problem. Our public transport system has not had a major upgrade for many years, and even India is upgrading their metro rail system. This means that the expanding western suburbs of the city, which have grown considerably in size over the last 10 years, cannot cope with the increasing amount of cars on the road. I will give you an example. When I first moved to Melton West in August 2000, it would take me 45 minutes to get to South Yarra by car, which is some 51 km. This was with me leaving at 0630 in the morning. If I drove to the Central Business district today, which is only 42 km from Melton West, it would take between 70 -120 minutes if I left at 0630. This is craziness, because if I did not have a Hybrid, I would be idling longer in traffic jams and stop/start driving is not very fuel efficient. When I do drive my Hybrid, I can’t help to think about everyone else who’s car/trucks do not turn off when idle, or don’t use electric only mode when crawling along at 20-40 kph. All those emissions make me sick!

So what are the alternatives? Public transport in my area is a joke, but because of my painful bonus, I am forced to use it (I can’t sit down for very long). We have a bus stop about 10 minutes walk from my house, and many times I have been standing, waiting for a ride to the railway station and it doesn’t turn up. The buses have a frequency of about 30 minutes during peak and hourly off peak. Then when I do get to the train station, the platform is jammed packed with people, and a two carriage train turns up! Talk about sardines in a tin.

The train system out west is a joke. We have a single track, that is not electrified, and serviced by slow old diesel locomotives made in the 70’s. There are some new fast trains, but the carrying capacity is nothing like what is required. I know trains are more efficient at transporting the same number of people compared to cars, but I am sure these old loco’s need a tune up, you should see the smoke when they start moving! The train frequency is every 30 minutes peak and every 60 – 90 minutes off peak. The similar journey that I take by car takes me 75 minutes by public transport and walking part of the way. One very positive thing I will say for the Melbourne public transport system is the single ticketing system and the fares are very reasonable. An all day ticket from my area to the city of Melbourne is only A$10.20, and you can travel on any bus, tram, and train all day. Packed like sardines, but all day travel.

This country is addicted to automobiles and building freeways to solve the current issues. Our current climate change targets will never get met if we continue in this manner. Even if everyone changed to Hybrids, it would still not solve the problem for too long. In a few years, the volume of traffic would have increased further, negating the efficiencies of the new technology. The only solution I can think of is to beef up the public transport system, and to start making Electric Vehicles or Plug-in Hybrids, that have been charged by renewable energy, and do it very, very quickly. As in most citys, the urban sprawl is increasing every year, so the transportation and emission problems will only get worse, unless we act quickly. I am no expert on this subject, but I can see what is going on around me, and it is not pretty.

Another solution would be to decentralise the Central Business District. Take the business and industry out to the suburbs so that workers are local and not spread across the entire city. Just a thought, it might work. With modern communication as it is today, there shouldn’t be any problems, except for the companies ego’s worrying about the stigma attached to being located in certain suburbs. They will have to get over it! With this solution, car travel is reduced as most people could ride bikes! How fit would everyone then be? Obesity in this country would be a thing of the past, decreasing the strain on the public health system. The road toll would reduce, because a head on collision between bikes would not be a tenth as bad as two cars hitting each other (and easier to avoid). The air would be cleaner, and we would be well on our way to meeting any emissions targets that are likely to be set in Kyoto II. When Peak Oil does does happen, if it hasn’t already, and global oil supply starts to decline rapidly, we would not free fall into a spiralling economic depression (maybe) because of transport issues. The railways would be freed up to transport more goods instead of using massive diesel powered trucks. Just like the good old days.

Well, I have had my rant for the week, and hopefully got you thinking about the transportation options of the future. As I said, I am no expert on these matters, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure all this stuff out!

I will leave you with this quote for the day;

“When the freeway disappeared, so did a lot of the problems. Now, the neighbourhood feels like a neighbourhood.” – Robin Levitt



Low emission transportation

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I had been looking for a replacement car for my petrol guzzling 1997 Toyota Camry for about 6 months before my epiphany. I hadn’t talked much about it to my wife Kim, but I now begun to think about the possibilities of low emission vehicles.

I had only just watched “An Inconvenient Truth” a few days before hand and noticed that at the end of the movie it mentioned something about hybrid cars. No knowing much about this type of technology, I did what all good technologists do and “Googled” the word hybrid car for Australia only. I was disappointed to find that only two car companies distributed Hybrids in Australia and none of them manufactured in Australia. At the time, only the Toyota Prius and the Honda Civic Hybrid were available on the market. You would think that Australia would be at the forefront of this technology, but I soon realised that we are just puppets of the U.S. vehicle giants GM and Ford.

After studying both models specifications and the price tags for both, I was swayed towards the Honda Civic Hybrid because of both looks, low emissions, and price. Now I had to sell the idea to Kim! We had an evening of deep discussion, and her main concern was the vehicles performance compared to other cars on the road. We hit the net, and looked for car reviews about the Civic and found a range of extremes, with a few good and one bad review. I believe that she was a bit taken aback by my sudden urge to buy this car, but then she hadn’t seen the movie, and didn’t know what I knew. I don’t blame her, and I must have looked like a real nut case at the time.

We came to an agreement that we did need a new car and that the Civic was a good as any, but that we had to take a test drive first and then both agree that it was OK. I booked it for the very next weekend at the Werribee Honda dealership. The next few days wait was painful, but the weekend arrived and off we headed to Werribee for our exciting day.

When we arrived we were shown the vehicle, and it was an appealing style and exactly the same as the normal Civic (Kim liked it straight away). Only the drive train was different. The dealer was more than happy to point out all of the aesthetic features of the car, however, when I asked him how the engine worked to reduce emissions, I could tell he did not know, and he tried to fumble his way through an explanation. Click here to get a real explanation of how the car really works! It just goes to show that the technology was new to him, however that does not excuse Honda for a lack of dealership training, especially if their role is to sell their cars!

Anyway, the test drive as wonderful and the car performed above my expectations. I noticed the Auto Sop feature whereby the engine automatically turns off when you are in Drive and come to a stop. A bit daunting at first, but you get used to it quickly. I began to smile as I realised that I was not creating any Greenhouse Gasses (GHG) when stopped at the lights! You also soon learn about the electric motor assist when driving. The 1.3 litre internal combustion engine really feels like a 2 litre when accelerating as the electric motor helps when necessary. The batteries are Nickel Metal Hydrate, and are charged by using the wasted power of braking or deceleration. The other eco feature is that the car is entirely driven by the electric motor whilst cruising steadily between 30-50 kph. All with the fuel economy of 4.6 litres per 100 km.

After returning from the relatively short test drive, both Kim and I knew it was the car for us, so the very next morning I ordered a nice alabaster silver model through my employers novated leasing company. The leasing company called me late the same afternoon, and informed me that I could take delivery in three weeks! Fantastic, much better than the 6 month wait the dealer had hinted at. What a slow 3 weeks that was!

I took delivery of our new car on the 24th of October 2006, and it has run very well to date. Our average fuel consumption is 5.6 litres per 100 km, which is a little above the 4.6 as advertised in the Honda media. Still it is far better than most other petrol guzzling cars around me. Honda also has a great programme whereby they purchase offsets on your behalf to neutralize the vehicles remaining emissions for the first 3 years of the cars life. This is via Greenfleet. I hope it is not green wash and that they really do it.

On looking back 17 months later, I see that a car for me is a necessary evil, as I live 50 km from my workplace. Public transport is unreliable out here in Melton.
I wish I could ride my bike to work and instead of low emission, I could be NO emission except for the sweat of my brow!