@TransportBlog would #cyclists ever pass the precautionary principle?

Jim Rose's avatarUtopia, you are standing in it!

If bikes were not invented until today, would they ever be allowed on the road by road safety regulators. Here is the business case: allow pedestrians to move around at high speed on the road including at night with poor visibility as long as they travel on a metal contraption.

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Source: Ministry of Transport, Cyclists 2014.

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With tech from 1960, you’d be more than twice as likely to die in a car wreck

https://twitter.com/MaxEhrenfreund/status/661946222970855424

Self-driving cars – a surprising quirk in the cost benefit analysis

Source: Self-Driving Cars and Organ Transplants – Concurring Opinions

Rocket man overtakes Boeing A380

HT: David Taverna

@JulieAnneGenter @jamespeshaw kill the case for electric cars @NZGreens

https://twitter.com/RadioLIVENZ/status/662064658203840512

In the course of calling for generous subsidies to electric cars, Greens co-leader James Shaw and transport spokesman Julie Anne Genter destroy the case for further public investment in electric cars and charging stations.

The Greens’ spokesmen refer to the biggest drawback of electric cars. Right now, it takes hours to recharge an electric vehicle. With generous investment by the long-suffering taxpayer, this recharging period will still be reduced to a still unacceptable 30 minutes.

Source: Business Tax Breaks for Clean Transport Options | Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Recharging times for electric cars are much worse than I previously thought. They highlight how little progress has been made in solving that problem.

Range anxiety is the biggest drawback of the electric car unless you’re willing to buy a very expensive Tesla. Even with a Tesla, because of the amount of time it takes to recharge even when a short is 30 minutes, the effective range is much less than the maximum range.

The motorist will have to build a larger buffer into their range of their batteries because of the time it takes to recharge. It takes a couple of minutes to fill my tank. Half an hour out of my day is still unsatisfactory, much less the current hopeless several hours.

Rather than fill up when you near empty, the green motorist will have to recharge when say a quarter empty or even half empty. The buffer must be larger than for a conventional car because the motorist does not necessarily always have time spare in the day to fill up.

With a conventional car, you can fill up at any time. With an electric car, you must plan in your week to ensure you have that half hours spare when you won’t need your car, can retrieve it from the recharging station with convenience and anticipate no urgent use of the car will arise.

Source: Business Tax Breaks for Clean Transport Options | Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand.

In an quirk, the Greens want to increase electric car ownership by subsidising alternatives to car ownership for commuting purposes. People have fewer reasons to buy a car, much less an expensive sort of status symbol car, if they can commute for less because their employer gave them a free bus pass to take advantage of a fringe benefits tax concession.

Electric cars are a poor investment to begin with and what’s the point of shelling out all that cash if you don’t even drive it much? What more, electric buses are to be phased out in Wellington soon you will be commuting in a diesel bus to work courtesy of a free bus pass supported by the Greens.

The list of no-go zones for U.S. airlines keeps growing

The Economics of Red State vs. Blue State Carbon Politics

1.   My JPAM 2000 paper documents that suburbanites drive more and consume more electricity than urban residents.

2. My 2011 JUE paper documents that center city liberal resident NIMBY zoning regulation has deflected more development to the suburbs where people live a high carbon life (see paper #1 above) and then oppose carbon pricing.

3. My co-authored 2013 JPUBE paper documents that energy intensive manufacturing industries seek out cheap electricity price areas.  Whether U.S carbon pricing and the resulting higher electricity prices would nudge them to move oversees remains an open question.

4.  My co-authored 2012 EER paper documents that more educated people are more likely to have installed solar panels and to go off the grid and thus not pay higher electricity prices.

5. My 2013 EI paper documents that Congress Representatives oppose carbon mitigation regulation when they are conservative, their district is poorer and their district is high carbon.  Nancy Pelosi and Tom Steyer are in liberal, rich, low carbon San Francisco.  There, it is easy to comply with carbon regulation.  They will pay few new costs for such low carbon regulation.

6. My co-authored 2015 JAERE paper documents that even in California and within counties that suburbanites vote against low carbon regulation relative to center city residents. Since we control for the fact that liberals live in center cities, this 3rd variable does not explain the urban form/voting correlation.

7.  In my co-authored 2015 JUE paper we document that U.S protectionism through the Buy America Act has hindered the improvement of our bus fleet as a green technology.

Source: Environmental and Urban Economics: The Economics of Red State vs. Blue State Carbon Politics

Bear populations in Europe

Range anxiety is the least of Tesla’s problems – check out the price!

Why are visiting dignitaries still greeted on the tarmac with red carpets?

Bridges were invented by Frank Der Yuen in 1962 and have been installed at every modern airport. Why the old-fashioned pomp and ceremony that only works when it doesn’t rain. I remember landing at Soul airport at Christmas dressed for the Australian summer but had to walk downstairs to a bus with the wind fresh from Siberia. It was very cold.

Tesla’s autopilot

The hidden inequality of who dies in car crashes

Creative destruction in car prices

The world’s most dangerous road

There should be more traffic roundabouts

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