Carbon offsetting?

[andydiver]

Sorry folks, talking absolute rubbish there! I acquired my free bus pass at 60 of course. Afraid I'm "away with the fairies" just now, running a temperature with a very bad cold/possibly "man flue". I only did the last 6 years on the free bus pass prior to that I alternated going on the bus with my treasured, but not awfully reliable, 1500 Allegro estate.

We all can talk rubbish Jock!
Wishing you a speedy recovery, and the best to your family too.

 

[DaveMcT]

In less than 10 years we will have robocabs providing taxi services at much less cost than Uber or Lyft. They are likely to put buses and Hackney Carriage taxis out of business never. They are even likely to mean that many people in towns just don't bother to buy their own car.

Tesla are now selling their enhanced self driving for £7500 above book price for the car. Rip off? Not if you think that in around 5 years you'll be able to send your car out to earn it's keep while you sit at work. Then when it's home time, you call it back and it takes you home again.
It's another major nail in the coffin of the old car industry. Fewer people will buy cars and those that do will keep them longer (500,000 mile batteries, etc). AND why buy a boring steer-it-yourself FordBumWDub when you can have it done for you by the self driving computer.

 

[Maybemaybenot]

Along with flying cars on every corner and protein pill meals! Some of this will be in cities for those that can afford it but not for all and not everywhere.

 

[Schumi2001]

In less than 10 years we will have robocabs providing taxi services at much less cost than Uber or Lyft. They are likely to put buses and Hackney Carriage taxis out of business never. They are even likely to mean that many people in towns just don't bother to buy their own car.

Tesla are now selling their enhanced self driving for £7500 above book price for the car. Rip off? Not if you think that in around 5 years you'll be able to send your car out to earn it's keep while you sit at work. Then when it's home time, you call it back and it takes you home again.
It's another major nail in the coffin of the old car industry. Fewer people will buy cars and those that do will keep them longer (500,000 mile batteries, etc). AND why buy a boring steer-it-yourself FordBumWDub when you can have it done for you by the self driving computer.

Maggie Philbin called. She wants her royalties for plagiarising an episode of Tomorrow’s World circa 1984.

 

[DaveMcT]

I suggest you copy the post onto a txt file and you can send it to me in 10 years time.

Major change is coming to the transport sector. Those who pretend otherwise will get steam-rollered just as Nokia and Motorola were taken out by the iPhone. Cars are big ticket items but the change will happen.

 

[StevenRB45]

I would suggest that if we ever do get serious about climate change that personal transport is an inherently wasteful thing.

The existence of large scale personal transport also damages the viability of public transport which is cleaner if used on a large scale.

Then there is freight, they are currently knocking themselves out to develop long range low emission trucks, they exist..they are called trains. If you employed a bit of joined up thinking you'd take the freight to a regional centre by rail and your final delivery could be by a reasonably short range electric vehicle.

If anything something similar to what existed before BR was starved of investment and broken up in the 50s.

Yes I am aware that I have personal transport..but unfortunately in my area is not viable so we all intents and purposes don't have any. I drive to Sheffield in the time it would take me to get to the office in Newcastle and back on the bus.

 

[AndyRKett]

I’ve changed how I commute a year ago with a change of office, I now get the train instead of driving 18,000 -20,000 miles a year.

Trains around here are electrified and we have now big coal power stations so local emissions are seriously reduced compared to using the car. It takes me 17 minutes to do 20 miles and I can sit back and read or listen to podcasts or catch up on work. I also walk to the train station and from the station to the office, less than 10 mins at either end. Ok so the trains can have problems sometimes but 17 mins compared to an hour spent in nose to tail traffic, over a year I’ve saved a huge amount of time and I’m walking a lot more and reducing my footprint.

I do still drive if I go to other offices as the train doesn’t always make sense with changes and having to take different routes early in the morning, but I can get into london very quickly if needed. At the moment I could realistically get by without at car at all.

 

[DaveMcT]

The "Big Four" railway companies were all monopolies, but they worked and the job got done. WW2 had them "commandeered" for the war effort and run into the ground so would have needed government help to recover. But political dogma said they had to be nationalised. That said, they were by now effectively government property so it was the easy option. Poor management led to slow progress on the recovery work.

The Beeching cuts were a classic case of government measuring by input costs with no measure of the output value (knowing the cost of everything but the value of nothing). Beeching initially closed rail stations on the basis that if nobody bought tickets there were not being used. That put many destination towns especially resorts out of business because passengers generally had return tickets. Then, Oh look - nobody is using that line lets close it.
Then other lines like the Okehampton loop around north Dartmoor was closed because the southern (Dawlish Sea Wall) route did the job. No thought about anyone living in North Devon or what happens when the seas are too stormy. The busy Great Northern line between Matlock and Buxton was chopped out. Now you had to go up to Leeds or down to Birmingham with nothing across the Peak District. The Great Central from Leeds to London was largely closed. It had been built to the European loading gauge so could carry double decker rolling stock. Suddenly all that had to go on the other lines or the roads. Main line Derby to Birmingham had fast and slow tracks each way. Not any more everything had to go at the speed of the slowest.

 

[Schumi2001]

I believe the reason we don't do more rail freight is that we just don't have the capacity to do it - either because you physically can't get any more trains on the lines, or because the freight traffic would slow the fast inter-city services to such an extent they'd no longer be viable transport.

 

[StevenRB45]

I believe the reason we don't do more rail freight is that we just don't have the capacity to do it - either because you physically can't get any more trains on the lines, or because the freight traffic would slow the fast inter-city services to such an extent they'd no longer be viable transport.

Well what is going to cost more?

Installing millions of charging points, and building millions of new electric cars or building new rail lines?

Genuine question railway isn't cheap but we're at a point where either way huge investment is required. Ideally rather than getting everyone with a petrol car into an electric car we probably should be aiming to reduce the number of cars and road transport in general. One way is to provide a viable alternative.

 

[Schumi2001]

We're talking about a government that curtailed funding on the Paddington to Wales line, so the TOC now has to order bi-mode trains so they can fun on filthy diesel West of Cardiff!

They're pushing us into BEV whilst not actually investing in any kind of infrastructure to either support BEV or move people away from private vehicles into clean and efficient public transport.

 

[DaveMcT]

The high speed electric trains have been shown to be not especially energy efficient. And over head lines cost a fortune to run. The diesel-electric hybrids that can also take power from overhead pantograph are there to improve the situation.