Roody

Besides eliminating fossil fuelled cars buses and trucks, the EU plans to shift freight transport greater than 300km to trains and boats.

Do you think that Europe can (or should) eliminate cars? Why does the US have a different approach from the rest of the world--that is, doing nothing about carbon consumption and traffic congestion?

cooker

Totally car free, or just free of fossil-fueled cars?

tpelle

If you follow the link and read the article, they seem to be aiming this initiative at commercial vehicles, and eliminating fossil-fueled cars within cities.

myrridin

As the article says, it is only talking about the elimination of fossil fuels as a fuel source for motor vehicles. Considering the number of folks here who claim that fossil fuels will be all used up in the same time frame doesn't make this an earth shattering announcement.

I would love to see a realistic plan that showed how a modern society could make due without any motor vehicles (or even just personal transportation vehicles)... Rail simply isn't a viable option... Bikes certainly are not a complete replacement...

newenglandbike

I don't think anyone has claimed that fossil fuels will be all used up-- in fact these resources will never be completely gone. Rather, the consensus is that after a peak in 'production', the date of which is disputable (the occurence of which is not), for each specific fuel (i.e., coal, oil, etc.), the amount extracted from the earth each year will decline.

For instance, the peak in oil production is speculated to have occurred about 4-5 years ago[1]. If true, that means that every year hence, the amount of oil extracted will be less, regardless of the demand. The easy-to-get oil has already been reaped.



[1] World Energy Outlook (WEO) 2010, IEA

Platy

As others have said, we will be able to afford fossil fuels to run cars for many years to come. However, "we" does not necessarily include everybody.

zjrog

I find it interesting that the majority of those wishing to be car free live in urban areas. Try that thinking with 100 miles to cover to get to shopping... Not trying to hash on anyone, just presenting a reality from a rural perspective.

Ekdog

That's one of the reasons many of us choose not to live out in the sticks: a car-free lifestyle is much more practical in the city.

musikguy

This is very true. However, the implication in using this model is that we will still run out. It will just be a lot more gradual than most people imagine. That being said, wouldn't it be irresponsible to not plan for the time (even if several hundred years in the future) when we do run out?

bikingshearer 

First, Europe is not "the rest of the world." It's not even that much of the rest of the world in terms of population.

Second, as someone else noted, being "car free" works - sometimes - in urban settings. In rural settings, not so much, unless you are willing to put up with subsistance farming or longer travel times. Yes, there are a few individual exceptions to this, but it is true in the vast majority of instances.

Third, most countries of Europe are significantly more densely populated than is the US. Towns and villages are much closer together than is the case in the US, at least in the US west of the Appalachians. Inner cities in most European cities are more densely populated than in most US cities because they grew up when everythng moved at the speed a person or horse could walk. To only a slightly lesser extent the same is true with Eastern US cities (e.g. Manhattan) than in Western US cities (e.g. Los Angeles). This has a very real and very direct impact on the viability of living car-free and maintaining a similar standard of living as people enjoy now. (And remember, making a car-free argument is meaningless if it includes a substantial voluntary reduction in standards of living, because you will never - never - get people to reduce their standard of living to a significant degree unless and until people believe they have no viable choice.)

Fourth, Americans can afford cars. Even relatively poor Americans can afford cars. That's why we use them. Elsewhere in the world, the people who can afford cars use them, too. Why? Because it is easier. When people cannot afford cars and/or it becomes more difficult to use cars than to not use cars, people will stop using cars. As a general rule, people wil nopt - repeat, not - choose to do things in a way that requires more physical labor and produces less if there is a way that requires less physical labor and produces more.

This is not rocket science. This is common sense based on several millenia of human experience - if a physically easier way to do something is available and affordable, people will use it. The American SST is the only example I can think of where people as a society voluntarily and in in advance decided to forego a technological advance (and that was a combination of cost and people not wanting to put up with sonic booms). In every other instance I can think of, the proverbial better mousetrap was rapidly embraced by any and all who could. Thus the wheel, fire, simple machines, firearms, steam power, pneumatic tires, internal combustion engines . . ., and, yes, the private automobile. You may think that this is a sad state of affairs or that there are serious consequences to this, but that does not change what motivates the vast majority of the people on the face of the Earth.

You want to live car-free? Knock yourself out. You want everyone else to live car-free? Good luck. It ain't gonna happen until conditions change in ways that are far beyond your power to control, or even influence very much. Sorry, but them's the facts.

wahoonc

The difference between the US and the "rest of the world" We change democratic parties like underwear...A certain party is "in charge" for a couple of years and makes thoughtful decisions (right or wrong) two years later a different party gets elected and they choose to change whatever was done by the previous party. It appears to me in the US the decisions by the administration goes to the highest bidder for that election. There is minimal long range planning, and it is subject to change at every election. While democracy is a great thing it may be our undoing...

Aaron

Dahon.Steve

This world is going to be very different in 50 years. Look at how different the world was in 1900 and 1950? Night and day when you think about transportation.

I don't see how moving from a combustion engine to an electric one is going save any money. It won't. I see taxes going through the roof with no one paying gas taxes to pay for road infrastructure. Once this happens, driving will get very expensive as we toll the freeways.

531phile 

I bet, I am one of the few people here that don't want the reduction of car use. Why???? Look at the bike commuters in China. Congestion. Enjoy the relatively empty bike lanes of today because in the future, it's going to get BUSY! Unless of course we find some cheap source of energy other than fossil fuels. It still takes fossil fuels to generate electricity so electric cars are not a long term solution.

gerv 

This is an interesting point and really illustrates the problem the US faces in dealing with what seems to be a major shift in transportation possibilities.

Some of this comes from the corporate world, where the quarterly bottom line is really the complete bottom line. There's little or no strategic thinking... and there's clearly no consensus on how that strategic thinking could come to life as a strategy.

It certainly wasn't the case 50 years ago, or the US would never have put together a huge national highway infrastructure or the space program. And you have to wonder if the national vision for the future will always be as divisive as it currently is.

Other countries have managed this to some extent. We see how Holland dealt with the oil crisis of the 1970s by implementing a strong bicycle infrastructure. France dealt with the shortage of oil by building a series of nuclear plants. Each country seems to have decided on a vision for the future and managed to stick with it... even as different parties came to power.

Seems to me like the patient will have to either get better or we'll be soon attending a funeral.

myrridin

Both examples you chose were not long range strategic planning, rather they were expressions of military "vision". The highway programs were an outgrowth of the past, we saw the value of the autobahns, the Nazi's put in as a means to facilitate military logistics.

The space program was simply a military program (missiles, warheads, etc...) that had a "civilian" polish for public relations purposes. It was the PR purposes that pushed manned spaceflight, when the majority of the scientists at the time were more interested in unmanned science missions...

The fundamental problem with any long range planning exercise is the need to predict future conditions. It is fairly easy to predict that fossil fuels will become a rarer commodity in the future. The effect of that is harder to predict. Since it is fairly certain that the predominant technology 50 years from now that is use to
overcome the problems almost certainly doesn't exist right now...

Even this "European long range plan" touted here is a pure PR program. It is unlikely any major funding will come from the plan for any changes they propose. Yet they can pat themselves on the back for having "accomplished" something.

The only certainty about the world in 2050 is that it will be different in some ways from today and the same in others...

Ekdog

You can't be serious.

cooker

That's not the way it works. We're not planning for some distant event. Up til now human global energy consumption has grown almost continuously for several millenia, and particularly quickly in the last century. Long before oil "runs out" (which won't actually happen - it just gets less and less worthwhile to extract it when only small, remote, poor-quality residual sources are left), and in fact right now, we have to either develop and start using alternate sources of energy that can be scaled up to replace oil and sustain the global economic, transportation and food systems, or start to see human die back due to famine, poverty and war.

cooker

He's only thinking of himself - he doesn't want to share the road with other cyclists.

newenglandbike

I guess I was thinking of the decline in extractible/extracted fossil fuels as being asymptotic towards the end. That is, ever decreasing yet not reaching zero. But more to the point: there will be oil and coal in the ground long after humans are concerned about it. Forever as far as we're concerned.

This is all virtually, of course... after all the sun will envelope and destroy the earth in ~5+ billion years. Yay nihilism!

AdamDZ

Yup. With significant reduction in car use a lot of road space would be reassigned to alternative modes: walking, biking, etc. So it doesn't mean that we'd still be riding the same bike lanes as we have today: they'd be wider and more plentiful. And one person in a car takes a lot more space than one person on a bike. And when I look around during my commute most cars carry one person. As Ekdog illustrated: a block worth of cars can be easily replaced by a handlful of bicycles.

But this is moot, it's not going to happen anyway.

Ekdog

But motor vehicles are fine?

531phile 

Huh...I didn't think about that one. Good point. Seems to me the Bus options actually takes the least amount of road space.

531phile 

Yeah. I'm greedy that way. hahahahahha.

531phile 

How about this, everyone in my neighborhood ride buses and I'll just ride my bike.

lyeinyoureye

That depends on economics/preferences in a given region. In the U.S. roughly 40% of electricity production is through fission/renewables IIRC, so we don't need to use fossil fuels. We tend to because people can make pretty good short term profits off of FFs, albeit at a negative cost to society to a large degree.