RF Generation Message Board

Today I paid $24.15 for gas. I filled up on 10.87 gallons. $2.25 is rediculous for gas. If you are going to continue to rely on fossil fuels then can you at least make them affordable for the proletariat? Or better yet, create an affordable car that runs on a renewable resource. Ethanol Perhaps? Prolly not a good idea currently to invest in hydrogen cars, as H₂ is currently collected from petroleum., and splitting water is hella expensive. Why can't the US have a good transportation system like Europe? I'd kill for a system like that, and I am studying to become a traffic engineer. Pretty screwed up, huh? And some analyst just announced that crude might have a super spike over 100 dollars, causing gas to approach $3.25.  That's not good for us, and it certainly won't be good for the economy. I would not be surprised if the US economy collapsed in the next few years. It'll be the 70s all over again, only this time there will be no return.  It's a frightening thought. We rely way too much on oil, and soon the country will pay the price.  

At least I don't live in California, I suppose.

That's what I paid yesterday when I went to my interview at Jungle Jim's.  It dawned on me that now might not be the best time to get a job at someplace all the way out in Fairfield.  Come September, I'll probably have to quit if they don't transfer me to the new loacation, because driving from White Oak to UC, back, to Fairfield, and back again all week long will just cost way more than it's worth for part-time hours....  that and DAAP will control my life anyway.  (Hopefully I can transfer to their new location though.)

Bla bla bla. Here you pay 6 bucks for a gallon of gas. It would be great if the gas prices in the USA would reach the same prices. Maybe that would make more people live a little bit closer to their jobs and buy less gas guzzling suv's/trucks.

It'll be my intention to live as close as possible to wherever I work once I graduate. Until then I shall be living near school or mooching off the parental figures. I also have a small car, and maybe someday I'll get a hybrid. I just wish that we had the rail system that Europe has. I also wish Cincinnati didn't forsake and bury its rather extensive streetcar and interurban system. It would be really cool if some of the inclines around town still existed. If only Cincinnati wasn't Daytonatti. There is no dividing line between the cities anymore, and it shall become more apparent in the coming years. Do the right thing Cincinnati, bring in light rail. The benefits will be exponential if you capitalize on it now. Just don't pull a subway if you decide to.

Cincinnati Subway History (http://www.cincinnati-transit.net/subway.html)

Here's the difference between Europe and the USA though - In Europe, there is an alternative to driving your own car.  There is realistically no way I could get to school or a job without driving myself there, short of paying for a taxi, which is even more expensive.  Heck, I can't even walk to any store.  The closest commercial or public building to my house is a gas station, and even that isn't a good idea to walk to since there are no sidewalks in this area.

If we had public transit, I would use it.  Believe me, I think it would do this country some good to put a luxury tax on gasoline.  For that to be feasible though, we would need mass transit, which save a few of the largest cities in the country, really is not in place anywhere.

If nothing else, fuel efficiency standards need to be raised, and by a lot.  My car gets double or even triple what some SUV's get per gallon of gas.  So, on the one hand I do want gas prices to rise, because we need to do something about dependency on petroleum, but in the meantime I have no alternative but to buy gas.

The actual dollar amount on gas may be lower here, but with other options in Europe (i.e. walking or mass transit), travel itself is probably cheaper where you live.

Depends where you live really.  France and Germany are big countries and you still have to pay almost $2 a litre.  I simply sold my car off at home because I'd prefer not to foot the huge costs of owning a car (Tax, MOT, Petrol, Insurance, Servicing etc.) and fortunately the public transport system is pretty good over here (in contrast to England which is really quite poor).  However, this is paid for through higher road tax and toll systems, so again if you have a car you're losing out.

Why isn't walking an option in the USA?

Because many people travel farther than walking distance to get to a job.
My grandfather drives between 100 and 200 miles a day seeing costumers and going back and forth to work and other places.

It's not like walking is much of an option for any other modern country if you think of it that way.

I am up for biking though

people in the us need to drive their own cars because most workplaces (of people i know anyway) far away.  My mom works in Springfield, MA and we live in Chicopee, MA.  If she walked to work it would take her about an hour and a half, probably more.  That is lost working time and lost money.  Also most employers wouldnt want to deal with those lost hours either.  Teachers here (in Chicopee) often live in a state bordering MA (mostly in CT) in and have to drive for one to two hours to gett to school every day.  Walking that far every day would make no sense, so the teacher would not have a job.  All of what i just said assumes that there is no public transportation in the area.  We have buses and i have seen taxis occasionally, but the buses are not flexible and the taxis are expensive.  Since i do not ahave a driver's license yet, i will have to take two buses on my way to college in Springfield, which takes a good chunk of time out of my day and prevents me from going anywhere between classes because I have to follow their schedule.  (Chicopee kind of lives in between the neigboring cities and has no real attractions or importance for most people)
The current way of life for most people here would have to change if we want a lower dependence on transportation.

Your house to were your mom works is way more than a 1-1.5 hour walk.
It is 20-30 minutes just to drive there Dan.

Because outside of the colonial cities, are cities are much more spead out than European cities.  

Take Cincinnati for example.  

Both of these are to scale.
Here is Cincinnati-Dayton. 3.3 million people.
(http://skyscraperpage.com/gallery/data/500/2748cincinnati-dayton.png)
Here is Paris. 10.5 million people.
(http://skyscraperpage.com/gallery/data/500/2748paris.png)

In addition to this, Paris also has a world class subway, compared to our subway tunnels sans trains.

There are a few other reasons, but these are the main few. (This is all outside of Chicago and New York, btw, a lot of people do walk to work in those two cities.)

I seriously doubt those are the same scale.

They are on the same scale.  It really isn't that surprising when you look at they typical housing for both cities. In paris, an apartment or row house would be the norm, where as in Cincinnati everyone has they own house and I would estimate about 1/4-3/4 acres of land.
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?s=7afee4617d4b982ebf69b412bfdf4742&threadid=44966

I guess to be fair I should have posted cities of equal population. So here is Chicago vs Paris:

Chicago: 10.8 million
(http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/2413/CHI.png)

Paris: 10.5 million
(http://skyscraperpage.com/gallery/data/500/2748paris.png)


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Also:
(http://www.hydrobond.net/forum/NASA_City_Comparison.PNG)
Here is the image I used:
http://www.hydrobond.net/forum/ev5826_land_ocean_ice_lights_8192.tif
Its a 10MB tiff, so it will take about 4 minutes to dl, if you are the only one on my server.  BTW, save it to your hard drive first, it won't work well in the browser.

Americans also tend to like living away from big cites.  I personally can't stand the country.

Getting to my job or school is about a 20-30 minute drive, and they are in opposite directions of my house, so going from one to the other would take over 40 minutes, and that's when I'm driving on the highway at 65 miles per hour.  Walking at 5 miles per hour would take quite a bit longer (several hours each way), especially since there are no sidewalks, and I wouldn't be legally allowed to walk on the highways.  Pretty much all job applications here now ask if you have "reliable transportation," meaning a car - because they are necessary to work if you live anywhere but the middle of the city, which is rare around here.

Live closer to my job and school?  Well, Cincinnati just doesn't have the urban housing that many European or South American cities have.  Many of the urban neighborhoods are not safe, are physically falling apart, or are just the opposite - in very high demand and very, very expensive.  Besides that, I'm paying for college, so it makes it a lot cheaper to live at home with the parents than trying to pay inflated rent prices near a college campus.

We also need light rail.  Why did we ever have to abandon our subway?

Hooray for the Great Depression.

Are you talking about UC to Jungle Jims taking 40 minutes? I dont belive that at 65 MPH.  With traffic it could take upwards of an hour, but I just don't see a 17 mile trip taking 40 minutes.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=from%3A%20Cincinnati%2C%20OH%2045221-0063%20to%3A%205440%20Dixie%20Highway%20fairfield%2C%20ohio&ll=39.280273%2C-84.511376&spn=0.180908%2C0.308172&hl=en

Hey, this was your 2000th post.  Congrats.

Heh, just took a 7.5tonne Mercedez truck from Bedford to St.Malo in France, to drop some furniture off, and was delighted at how cheap the diesel was compared to the U.K

Is gas just taxed that much over in Europe or do we just really get that good of a deal per barrel?

I'd say from UC to Jungle Jims it would be a 40 minute drive under normal conditions any day, but that is just from experience. With traffic, It would take well over an hour. Thanks I-75! Luckily Vine St. runs parallel to 75 and eventually turns into Springfield Pike, so you can always avoid 75 all together.

It's taxed sooo much it's unbeliavble (oh, and a U.K gallon is slightly larger than  a U.S gallon, but even so, it's still far too expensive) but per litre diesel is as much as 98 pence in places here, and as cheap as 69pence per litre in parts of France and Ireland (from my expereinces in the last 4 weeks).

TAX it is. We got pulled by customs yesterday, all they were interested in, was looking for contraband tobacco, cos that's so heavily taxed. We had 200 bottles of wine, 2 dozen crates of beer etc etc, they didn't even examine them., just wanted to know if we had tobacco. Only allowed 3 kilos of that.

That's why I said @ 65MPH.  I know it could take an hour with traffic, I live here too.  But in the middle of the day it should be a 25 minute trip, especially considering the average speed on 75 is well over 65 during most of the day.


THX -
Please tell me all that alcohol isn't for you.  Thats a hell of a load.

I know the situation is worse in the USA than it is in Europe, but it's definately no disaster.  It seems that everyone thinks that low gas prices are the result of situations that lead to more car usage: 'gas prices need to be cheap, because there's no public transport and everything is far apart'.

But it might as well be the cause of that situation. If in the early days cars weren't made available to everyone at cheap prices with cheap gas the whole country might have looked very different. And if low gas prices cause situations in which you will need your car a lot, high prices might cause the opposite. The demand for public transport will increase. Housing will be more concentrated. Maybe shops will be opened again near smaller villages. etc. etc.

It's not as if everything will just (have to) stay the same, just because it's like that now. We will run out of fossil fuels sooner or later anyway.

The beer was mine, most of the wine was my friends. I had a few bottles of Absenthe though, and some cask condition Grouse whiskey at 59% alc. instead of the usual 40%

going off topic got a moment, I've never known it this busy before :)

so many replies in a thread, so close togehter in time

Yeah, I agree completely.  I think it'd be great if this happened.  But like I said, what option is there right now?  I can send letters to my congressman, but my opinion will be outnumbered by a lot to people who just want to keep driving their SUV's for all of eternity, poluting the air and keeping this country dependent on the Middle East.  It would be nice if things changed here in relation to fuel sources and everything related, but I just don't see it happening anytime soon.

It is slowly changing.  The inner city areas are slowly becoming gentrified, and people are starting to move back into the city limits.  In Cincinnati, there is a condo/apartment boom going on currently.  Just about every old, empty downtown building is being turned into lofts and there are several new apartment building proposals.

Here is a thread about one of the new inner city developments.  It is about a mile west of downtown in an area aptly named the West End.
http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=1743.0


Here is an area just north of downtown that has been gentrified (mostly) already.  You can also see what new urban development looks like.
Prospect Hill:
http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=327.0


Of course, these projects are much rarer than the McMansion suburb developments.  


And THX, it is quite unusual, it's like a real-time conversation today. I guess the trick yesterday got us all happy to see the old boards back. ;-)

what trick? I missed April 1st jokes, as I was asleep in a cabin on board a ferry in the English channel

http://composite.rfgeneration.com

Isn't that illegal in the states?

Probably.  I know that Khat (Qat?) Which can be bought quite legally here, is a banned substance in the USA.

This absinthe, isn't quite the same as the old Victorian era drink though, it's more a kinda "echo" of it. It's all pre-mixed, to very safe levels. I think a few gothic poseuers, might still make it the old fashioned way, but I care about my health.

Today gas hit 2.34 at most places in the Queen City, those who kept their prices at 2.18 or below saw either their pumps run dry or face such long lines that those trying to get in blocked the exits and even overflowed onto the main arterial. As a future traffic engineer, light rail, please.

Light rail isn't the answer. We need jet packs!

That spit out blue flames o' death! Hell yeah!

But on the serious side,  Cincinnati really needs some sort of mass transit that isn't the bus.

The transportation situation in this country is so fucked that the day that we run out of fossils, the entire country is going to grind to a screaching halt.  Here in Detroit we have this joke of a mass transportation system called the People Mover.  It's a God Damned monorail to nowhere.  Maybe if we could get a train system like they have in Chicago then we could start talking, but for now it's just worthless.

Also, I don't like those arguments comparing Europes gas prices to ours.  The comparision isn't proper.  We should be compared to other oil producing countries.  Any other country that produces a substantial amount of oil gets their gas for dirt cheap.  I can't remember the exact country, but somewhere in South America you can fill up your tank for 35 cents.  In fact compared to other major producers of oil, The U.S. pays something like 2 or 3 times what other countries do.  I realize that the circumstances are different in some of these countries (I don't think they have too many traffic jams in Guatemala), but it still kind of irks me.

Europe produces oil. Maybe not as much as the USA, but it is produced here. And there is a lot of oil refining.

best description of Coleman's Train that I've ever heard!

when I first stared driving gas was under a buck a gallon. sure I wish it was still that cheap but it is what it is. I suppose if I were still a student or working a minimum wage part time job it would be more of a burden. I've got a small car and work close to home so I get a weeks worth of driving out of a tank of gas and that's including all my weekend jaunts.

Small car? Where did your mustang go?

By US definition, any car with two doors is a small car.  

I dunno where you heard that, but I'd be very interested to know/  It's certainly not Peru, because gas prices were two or three times what they were here for a liter, not even for a gallon.  I know similar things can be said for most of South America, but perhaps not all.  In Brazil, many of their cars have run on alcohol or partly on alcohol since the energy crisis of the 1970's.  Apparently that was sort of kind of phased out in the 1990's, but it seems it is coming back now due to high fuel prices.

As for traffic jams....  in the big cities, you would not even believe it until you see it.  Nobody follows traffic laws, and because of this, cars enter intersections from four directions at the same time, and it is a MESS.  I've never seen worse traffic jams.  Somehow people manage to make at least nine lanes out of five.  Nobody owns a personal vehicle, but being a taxi or minibus driver is a very common profession, and because of this, big cities in South America are very, very crowded with cars and pollution.  I remember gas being so expensive and drivers being so poor that they ALWAYS drove below empty, and whenever we were going more than a mile or so, we had to pay half in advance so they could put 60 cents worth of gas in the car.  I have no idea how they made a profit with gas prices so high and fares so low.

Funny you should mention that, I had to do 2 rush hour traffic counts in Historic Downtown Mason, Ohio, and it was funny how many laws were being broken. Only a single car followed the "No Turn on Red" Sign,  and the intersection was so backed up that people felt it necessary to run every red light that was given to them. Couple that with the illegal activity of blocking the intersection to move through the intersection while avoiding a cycle and you have yourself one hell of a dangerous intersection during rush hour. I saw probably three near miss collisons today because people were riding each others ass trying to squeeze through the intersection.

Two things on this.
Traffic Engineers spend a lot of time determining the timings and signage at the intersection. If it wasn't of maximus benefit for your safety and the capacity of the intersection then do you think we'd really do it that way? You can argue that old intersections are dilipadated and don't meet current standards, but then you'd have to remember that those intersections were created at a time when those designs were safe. Who ever thought in 1940 that people would be speeding in cars over 65 mph over 6% grades designed for a maximum of 55 mph? Not many people, probably. The truth of the matter is that intersections and interchanges are regulated with restrictions for your safety as well as the safety of others. Don't make yourself vunerable for an accident because you thought the signage was unneccessary and stupid. You might regret it in the future.

Second, Americans (to be more specific, the stereotypical American) are the most self-centered group of individuals in the world. How honestly is cursing at someone 2 cars  up that refuses to illegally block the intersection the right thing to do? So what if you are running late, you should have planned ahead, it isn't as though the traffic patterns haven't been around for a while, deal with it. Americans only care about themselves, and would be willing to compromise and incovenience others as well as themselves to get to where they need to be quick. Screw everyone else, it's all about me, me, me. People need to stop thinking that way, and look at the big picture. You're not the most important person in the universe, in fact, everyone else is just as important as you (Thanks Jesuit Education!) Learn to accept that, and live your life less self centeredly.

REMINDER: Refering to the Stereotypical American, not all Americans. Please don't be offended if you don't fit my description.

My friend designs traffic singal layouts for towns. He says the biggest problems, is by the time it's all finalised and installed, a different part of the local authority will have given the go-ahead for a major building change in the town. So, for instance, a cinema might get knocked down, and turned into a 1,000 place car park. This won't have been in his calculations for the traffics set up that he would have designed, and be built generally just before the car park opens.....

okay "technically" it would be considered "mid-size" but next to all the big ass honkin' Cadillac Escalade's, Hummer's, F-150's and Lincoln Navigator's it's quite small.

You haven't seen ANYTHING until you've seen the French drive.  Jesus wept!

What do they drive like?  Is it anything like LA drivers who refuse to use turn signals, follow speed limits, and stop signs/lights?

[Barbershop2mode] Now can you tell me why Jesus wept? [/Barbershop2mode]

That sounds like NYC/New Jersey drivers too.

That's a great decription of 99.999999999999% of drivers here and in Michigan.