8 weeks of clean living

The final day of my eight weeks was this past Saturday and I thought I would post a quick update about how I did with my mileage goal. At the end of the eight weeks I had a reading of 166,495 miles on my odometer. That means that I drove 428 miles since starting out the project at 166,067 miles. I carpooled for approximately 292 of these miles (this isn’t quite true since sometimes I had three people in my car, but it’s a pretty close estimate), netting me 146 miles in carpool credit for a final mileage of 282 miles, which is about 40 miles below my goal of 320.

Most of my mileage was spent either going to meet friends at places difficult to reach via public transportation, picking up and dropping off people at the airport, and driving to stores when I planned on buying unwieldy things. I also took some fairly long walks during the eight weeks, including a trek with my sister from Hillcrest through Balboa Park to downtown, and a 10 mile hike with a friend from my house up to UCSD, down La Jolla Shores Drive to La Jolla and ultimately all the way through La Jolla to Pacific Beach. It’s actually pretty entertaining to ogle all the things you don’t normally notice when you’re driving through an area.

During my last eight week project I tried to use my car as little as possible, but I didn’t set any hard and fast goals. When I did drive I tried to follow many guidelines in order to increase fuel efficiency. This time around I’m going to put a hard limit on my driving by setting an explicit mileage goal. Since I don’t do any recurrent and necessary driving (I take the bus or walk to campus and back) my baseline use is 0 miles per week. On the other hand, when I purchase large, heavy things or pick friends up from the airport, I accrue miles that don’t seem all that optional. Also there are times when for social reasons or because of timing it is preferable to drive.

With these thoughts in mind, I’m going to set a goal of 40 miles per week during my eight weeks (320 miles total). If I am driving a carpool somewhere I’ll count only my share, so if the trip is 90 miles and there are three people in my car, I’ll charge myself 30 miles. At the start of my experiment my odometer read 166,067 miles and so far I’ve driven two miles. We’ll see how it goes…

I think this kind of goal can be an interesting exercise for anyone. Calculate the number of miles that you have to drive every week (to work, for example) and then give yourself a mileage “budget” above that. If you beat your goal, take yourself out to dinner in celebration with the leftover miles. I’m sure anyone can find innovative ways to string trips together, carpool, walk/bike/take the bus and otherwise reduce his or her driving.

In an earlier post I considered the difficulty of getting to the airport in a timely fashion via bus in San Diego. The main problem is that the MTS route 992, the only route that services the airport, simply follows a loop between the airport and downtown, and thus one must go all the way downtown and then back up to the airport if coming from the north. When I wrote the article, I had not actually tried taking the bus the whole way, however, and now I have several times.

It turns out that depending on when one is traveling, taking the bus is not too big of  a hassle. Specifically, if one is traveling around rush hour on weekdays the 150 runs every 30 minutes and gets downtown from campus in approximately 40 minutes where you can then catch the 992 (running every 12 minutes) to get to the airport. This is actually all fairly quick and costs just $2.50 without a student bus pass or $2.25 with (for the 992, which is inexplicably not part of the free bus zone). The story is different mid-day or on the weekends. Mid-day the 150 only runs hourly, which can waste a lot of time, and on the weekends it does not run at all, and one has to take the 30, which can take over an hour to get all the way up to campus.

I’ve actually taken to scheduling flights that fit well with the bus schedule and I’ve had good luck getting to and from campus quickly and inexpensively.

Having efficient public transit to and from the airport (in any city) is a great boon for travelers looking to save a few bucks and avoid driving or being driven. Despite this built-in demand, there is only one MTS bus, the 992, that services the San Diego Airport. This bus goes back and forth between downtown San Diego and the airport, and thus anyone trying to take the bus to the airport from north of downtown has to go well out of his or her way to do so.

I flew into San Diego on Monday morning and needed to get up to school quickly, but I was reluctant to pay the approximately $45 it takes to get to UCSD by cab. I also wanted to try and use public transit if at all possible. I came up with the following solution, which I think is the best compromise given the current transportation mix available at the airport. I hired a cab to take me to the Old Town Transit Center, which cost me $17 including tip. Then I caught the MTS 150 express up to campus, which is free for students. All told, I landed at approximately 9:20 AM, caught the cab at approximately 9:30 AM, caught the bus at 9:48 AM and arrived at school at approximately 10:05 AM (driving to the San Diego Airport takes about 25 minutes and taking the bus the whole way takes approximately 65-90 minutes, for comparison).

While this works pretty well coming from the airport, it does not work very well going to the airport because there is no taxi stand at the Old Town Transit Center. Ideally MTS would operate a bus on a loop between the Old Town Transit Center and the airport, Which would vastly simplify the project of getting to and from the airport. Cynically one might suppose that there is a strong disincentive for the airport to enable better public transit, given the revenue associated with airport-owned parking lots, fees garnered from private drivers and the like.

The other obvious option for somewhat mass airport transit is taking a shuttle bus (like SuperShuttle, with which I had some experience in LA), but they insist on arriving at the airport maddeningly early (around two hours before one’s flight), and take their sweet time doing it. For these reasons, I think they are even less palatable than an out-of-the-way bus route.

…and I for one welcome our new robot bus overlords.

In order to join my family for a weekend in Lake Tahoe, I hopped on a Southwest flight from San Diego to Reno. Despite the fact that air travel is a form of mass transit, it is extremely energy intensive, due to the large distances covered and the necessity of putting a huge steel pipe up in the air. For a quick overview of air travel’s impact on greenhouse gas emissions, check out the last couple paragraphs of this page.

Flying therefore represents a conundrum for environmentalists. Unlike driving, which often can be avoided through the use of alternatives such as walking, biking and mass transit, air travel has no reasonable substitute (unless you are John Madden). Thus the decision is ultimately between air travel and no travel. A couple air carriers have attempted to solve this issue by offering carbon offsets alongside plane tickets at the time of purchase, and Boeing is about to introduce its 787, which it touts as one of the most efficient passenger aircraft ever produced. These are positive changes, but it would still be better, environmentally speaking, to avoid a flight rather than take a flight in a 787 with carbon offsets.

Ultimately, then, I think air travel is one of the hardest activities to cut down at the source. On the other hand, certain attitude changes could make an impact. A friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous, recently flew from Hong Kong to Toronto for acupuncture. Presumably he could have saved some money and the environment by finding a suitable (if not quite equal, apparently some of the best acupuncturists in the world are in Toronto) acupuncturist in Hong Kong. Further, I often find that short trips to Europe are often met with a bizarre form of moral approbation. When someone announces, “I’m going over to France to spend a couple weeks in the countryside,” one often hears in response, “Oh good for you!” I could be wrong on this, but I feel like travel for entertainment is morally equivalent to sitting on the couch and watching sports for two weeks (if not morally worse due to the substantial environmental impact). Both activities are simply entertainment.

In addition to some of the larger changes that I’ve been making, there are a host of little things I try to do that also have environmental consequences. Time for my first list!

I:

• Turn the water off while soaping my hands, brushing my teeth, and doing dishes (and generally try to waste as little water as possible)
• Turn the lights off whenever I leave a room
• Shop for groceries with a reusable bag, and when I do end up with a plastic or paper bag I use them as trash and recycling bags, respectively (I never have to use actual trash bags)
• Recycle everything that is recyclable, including electronic waste
• Unplug chargers and other electronics while not in use (also, I’ve turned off the circuit breakers for my electric heaters, since they draw power even when not in use)
• Use my cell phone in lieu of having an alarm clock
• No longer initiate or renew subscriptions to magazines or newspapers (they are painfully wasteful and obsolete these days)
• Never buy non-rechargeable batteries (they are awful for the environment, classified as household hazardous waste, and way more expensive in the long run than simply using rechargeables)
• Collect any extra unused napkins given to me at restaurants, etc. for later use, and use cloth napkins for dining at home (I never have to buy napkins)
• Take the stairs
• Reuse packing materials myself, or take the peanuts back to UPS/FedEx stores for reuse
• Pay bills online, and cancel all paper statements from financial institutions
• Try to stop as much junk mail as possible (see this helpful article)
• String as many trips together as possible if I have to use the car (and carpool when possible)
• Let my dishes air dry instead of using heated dry
• Buy environmentally friendly personal care products such as 100% recycled toilet paper, paper towels and facial tissues that are whitened without chlorine bleach, phosphate free dishwashing soap and laundry detergent etc.

There may be some small things that I should be doing that I’m not doing. Feel free to share some small green tips!

UPDATE: Green Wombat just posted a great article about the opportunities and challenges that Think and Tesla face in entering the global automobile market. Check it out!

A couple of nights ago I watched the 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? directed by Chris Paine. Though at times the movie threatened to degenerate into Michael Moore-esque theatrics and disingenuous editing, in general it was an entertaining glimpse into the factors behind the “failure” of electric vehicles (most notably represented by the GM EV1) in the mid-90s. The movie downplays some limitations of the EV1, such as its two passenger capacity, cost of production and charging time, but overall provides a compelling argument that there was a reasonably-sized (and sometimes fanatical) market for such a device.

Unfortunately, GM was too shortsighted to see the potential competitive advantages offered by developing EV (electric vehicle) technology, choosing instead to focus on drawbacks (for GM) such as the lack of a substantial maintenance revenue stream (EVs require almost no maintenance compared to their gasoline counterparts). Now GM’s CEO Rick Wagoner and R&D chief Larry Burns realize that the cancellation of the product was a mistake (see quotes at the bottom of the EV1’s Wikipedia entry), and GM is hard at work creating a spiritual successor to the EV1, the Chevy Volt (see below).

Other (more exciting and dynamic) car companies are also developing EVs. Tesla Motors is producing a sports car called the Tesla Roadster, which gets from zero to 60 in approximately 4 seconds while getting the equivalent of 135 MPG. The first production models should be in the hands of early adopters by the end of this year. Think Nordic is developing a more economical EV called the Think City, which will hopefully make it to the US by late 2008. Though these cars share some of the limitations of the EV1, they promise to be practical vehicles for a wide range of users.

In an earlier post, I talked about my plan to drive the speed limit for a long road trip from Southern California to Northern California. The experiment went pretty well, as I was able to stay near 70 for practically all of the trip. Additionally, the car I drove on the way back had a really easy to use cruise control function, which I used extensively and supposedly increased my fuel efficiency a little bit.

There is a ton of online guidance concerning all the ways one can increase the fuel efficiency of one’s car (for example here, here and here [pdf]) both mechanically and behaviorally. I’m primarily interested in the behavioral modifications that lead to increased fuel efficiency. In terms of behavioral suggestions, I think there is one central heuristic that encompasses all of them: a complete and total aversion to touching the brakes. When I drive, I’m essentially playing a mental videogame (in some cars, like the Prius, this videogame can be surprisingly literal) where I gain points for coasting and lose points for heavy acceleration and especially braking. In this way, I expect to lose as little fuel as possible to inefficient low gears and necessary stops.

Needless to say, there’s a little bit of tension between legality, safety and efficiency. Obviously safety should come first, but oftentimes legality, in the form of full and complete stops at stop signs for example, might be justifiably set aside for efficiency. If I’m going up a hill I’ll try to time things just right in order to coast to a very low speed at a stop sign and then accelerate away from it without ever having touched the brakes. Another trick is to touch one’s brakes extremely lightly so that the brake lights come on and it looks like one is stopping when really one is simply coasting then accelerating. So far I haven’t gotten a ticket, and if I do I imagine it might change my behavior.

Despite the fact that avoiding substantial acceleration and braking is in general safer and more economical, many drivers I see on the road act like they’re in some sort of pitiful race where everyone is continually stymied by traffic laws. The maneuver that annoys me the most proceeds as follows: I see that there is a red light 200 feet ahead and immediately take my foot off of the accelerator. The person behind me, unsatisfied with my resulting speed, floors it and passes me to the left. Said person then slams on their brakes at the light while I am still coasting towards it. When the light turns green, they are at a complete stop and I’m still going 20 mph, at which point I accelerate through the light and pass them. End result: I’ve used less fuel and caused less wear and tear on my car to end up well ahead of the person that passed me.

The only difference between me and this other driver is our driving mentality. How to change one’s driving mentality from “go as fast as possible at all times” to “slower can actually be faster and save me money (and never touch the brakes!)” is not quite clear to me, but given enough reflection it seems like an obvious choice.

I’m about to go on a fairly long road trip (around 450 miles each way), and I’m curious about how to maximize the efficiency of my trip. Obviously I could try something novel, like taking a train, but I’m swapping cars at the destination, so this one I have to drive. The most substantial change I’m going to make on this trip is to attempt to actually drive the speed limit. I’m going to be traveling several hundred miles on Interstate 5 in California, and traditionally I drive somewhere between 80 and 90 MPH. According to fueleconomy.gov, every 5 MPH one drives over 60 MPH is equivalent to paying $.20 extra per gallon of gas (and therefore using that much additional gas). So this time around I will try to maintain a steady 70 MPH during the trip. Incidentally, the ideal speed (in terms of energy use) is different from car to car and depends on several factors. There are tons of other ways to make driving more efficient, and I’m planning on making them the subject of an upcoming opinion piece (where I rant about the people who zoom out from behind me only to slam on their brakes at the stoplight 100 ft ahead).