Real World Lessons About Electric Cars

I recently watched a documentary on PBS "Revenge of the Electric Car".  You can see a preview here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po1XA6l19Mk

Today I was looking up Tesla cars on Google to see how they have been doing since the documentary was made, and one interesting development is a series of quick recharge stations called "Superchargers", that Tesla has installed across the USA.

But in researching the Tesla, I came across a different article that I believe shows all the negative aspects of the Tesla.  Whether this was a deliberate hatchet job, I don't know, as it seems an innocent enough test, and fair observations of the result.  The article was called "What Running Out of Power in a Tesla on the Side of a Highway Taught Me About the Road Trip of Tomorrow", written by Nate Berg on a website called "The Atlantic Cities"

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2014/04/what-running-out-power-tesla-side-highway-taught-me-about-road-trip-tomorrow/8978/

There are many comments after the article, and surprising to me, most support the Tesla, and even more shocking, I saw none that were vulgar or rude.

One comment that caught my eye may be typical of many neutral observers reactions (because after all, the seemingly neutral article did spend a lot of time pointing out the electric car's main shortcoming.) :  Adam Schulz says "Fantastically balanced article. I really like how you didn't demonize Tesla for your breakdown but illustrate that there are genuine constraints to electric vehicles, even with the supercharging stations. Thanks for this work!"

That was in part, my impression also, but I did not take this as an illustration of "genuine" constraints on electric vehicles.  On the contrary, it's amazing to me that the author drove from Barstow to Kingman (206 miles) in an electric-only car, and that if he had gone three more miles, could have recharged in about one hour.  And after that, he could continue his trip all the way to the East coast.

Obviously, the main limitation of the car was the driver himself, who should not have blindly followed the computation of the car's range calculator.  If I was driving that car, I would have slowed down to less than 65 mph once I saw the that the extra distance turned negative.  And I would not have bothered to pass that "psycho" trucker that nearly forced Nate Berg off the road.  Instead I might have stayed behind the truck, and benefited from the lower speed and the draft of the truck to save electricity.  And I'm pretty sure I would have made it to Kingman.

By the way, dimming the car's computer screen to save electricity is almost funny.  Or was he being serious?

I suppose I should not be making such absolute comments about an electric car, when I don't own one, but come on!  This is just basic Physics.  Most cars operate on the same principle.  They carry X amount of energy, and have to go Y distance.  The big unknown is the efficiency of converting the energy into distance (also known as "miles per gallon" in the internal combustion world.)  Another factor is the grade of the road, and as the author noted, Kingman is higher in elevation than Barstow.  I checked, Barstow is at 664m, Kingman is at 1016m above sea level.  So again simple Physics would tell us how much electricity would be needed to lift a car that distance straight up, and subtract that amount from your range.

In the end, I was very impressed by Tesla's range and speed.  Even more impressed by the number of their Supercharging stations, and how fast they can recharge the batteries.  Not too impressed with Nate Berg's driving, but since I would not be hiring him to drive my car, I don't care.

Picture:  This is how you sell cars in the real world.

Are Cost of Living Subsidies for Northern Canada Too Expensive?

Do Canadian First Nations people in the north of Canada really have too high a cost of living?  Do we need to keep subsidizing them? I want to help answer this question.  Here is a comment to start us off.

Mike Zwarich Yesterday 11:00

You have to wonder whether it would help, just a bit, if they moved to a part of Canada where it didn't cost ridiculous amounts of money to ship things to them.
When it costs $20 for a jug of milk, you know you're not going to have the standard of living that we enjoy in most of Canada.

https://plus.google.com/+NationalPost/posts

(I cannot continue without addressing the Freudian slip calling the southern part of Canada "most of Canada".  It's not most of Canada.  Now I can go on.)

In answer not only to Mike Zwarich, but to everyone I know who is at a loss about why Indians and Eskimos (or First Nations people) continue to live in that part of Canada where milk is expensive, it is not because Canadians are a stupid people.  The answer is partly in the subject of  sovereignty. I may have to explain "sovereignty" later, in the meantime you could Google it if you didn't learn it in high school history.
Now, here is a quote from a government of Canada website about our sovereignty.

http://www.northernstrategy.gc.ca/sov/index-eng.asp

With 40% of our landmass in the territories, 162,000 kilometres of Arctic coastline and 25% of the global Arctic – Canada is undeniably an Arctic nation. The Government is firmly exercising our sovereignty over our Arctic lands and waters – sovereignty that is long-standing, well-established and based on historic title, international law and the presence of Inuit and other Aboriginal peoples for thousands of years.
At the same time, international interest in the Arctic region is growing, in part as a result of possibilities for resource development, climate change and new or longer access to transportation routes. Canada is demonstrating effective stewardship and leadership internationally, to promote a stable, rules-based Arctic region where the rights of sovereign states are respected in accordance with international law and diplomacy.

I think there are two problems some Canadians have in understanding the north of Canada.  First is, most Canadians do not live there, have never even visited there, never would want to visit there even if it was an all expenses paid trip.  Most Canadians are huddled close to the US border, and spend more time wishing they could get into the US than wondering about what goes on in 90% of Canada's land territory.  Second, never take "sovereignty" for granted, no matter how uninhabitable the land is, somebody always wants it.  See how Canada is already fighting Denmark over possession of some island nobody even knew existed?  We have fought most wars over sovereignty, believe it or not.

Yes, Canada is the second largest country in the world.  Most Canadians are aware of that fact, although they do not really understand it.  We often call the 49th parallel the border between Canada and the USA, and yet most Canadian cities are on the American (or southern) side of that imaginary line called the 49th parallel.  Feel free to look that one up on a map.  I will concede Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver are north.  Victoria BC is south of the line, so is Toronto, Montreal, Fredericton NB, Halifax NS,  St. John's NL, and Punkeydoodles Crns., ON.  And (I'm guessing) 80% of the population of the country, along with 3 entire provinces.

Canadians think they understand that Canada is really big, yet they do not understand how much of it they have not seen, how much is almost a wilderness.  That is a problem, when you remember that most Canadians do not really understand why Canada, with a population of only 35 million (now, it used to be less) has sovereignty over this huge land mass, larger than the entire United States of America.

One way to exercise sovereignty is to buy military equipment and train a large army, navy and air force. Canada with only 35 million people, does not actually have the economic ability to do that, and still maintain a high standard of living for it's masses huddled along the border. Russia can hold its territory with a population of 144 million and 17 million square km. (8.4 people/sq km) Canada's 35 million people claim 10 million sq. km. (3.5 people/sq km).  For the Russians, claiming all that territory involved shipping millions of prisoners in chains to Siberia, raising a huge army and keeping everyone's standard of living quite low.  Canada has had a relatively easy time of it, for various reasons that I don't really know right now, but I'm sure it'll come to me.  But part of our equation would have to be our hospitals, schools, airports, harbours, the extensive maps, and the Canadians who live in the far north, and most of them are still First Nations people.

In the end, it is much cheaper and more effective to claim land by treating the First Nations people as part of Canada than to bring them south to live in squalor in Saskatoon and spending a hundred times as much money on new jet fighters.  A ten dollar litre of milk doesn't seem so expensive now, does it?

Picture: From http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/battle-for-the-arctic-heats-up-1.796010

Maybe 100 mpg is Possible (Imperial Units of course!)

I recorded my personal best fuel efficiency yesterday, on Mary Ann's 2005 Burgman 400.  It was 89 mpg (Imperial units), which is approximately 75 mpg (U.S.) or 3.15 litres/100 km. This achievement was just in time for the Burgman, as we were already shopping for a replacement scooter, but now I think we will keep the Burgman for a few more years at least.

Mary Ann originally liked the Burgman 400 because of its gas mileage.  Last summer, it averaged 83 mpg (Imp) travelling from Ontario to the west coast and back.

The actual 89 mpg result was on a 135 km. trip from Kitchener, Ontario to Dutton Ontario.  As I left Kitchener, I filled up at a Petro Canada station.  There was a 5-10 kph north wind, while I was going south west, so that helped a bit.  I did the first 37 km on city streets or country roads at 60-80 kph.  Then a distance of 87 km on the limited access highway "401" at 90 to 110 kph. (These are indicated speeds, so I may have been going 10% slower.)  The last 18 km were on a country road at 60 kph.  I may also have benefited from following in the air wake of some slower trucks on the 401.  But I was not "drafting", I hope I left enough space to be safe.  Normally I leave more than 3 seconds space, but at times I was not leaving that much.

So now I find it more believable when I see on the eco-modder website that a Burgman 400 rider claims 101.9 mpg (Imp) for 90 days.
http://ecomodder.com/forum/em-fuel-log.php?vehicleid=1870

My next goal would be to try and get 100 mpg going to Dutton, by avoiding the 401.  I think the Burgman would get its best economy at 60 kph, not 100.  However, that trip will take much longer than   the very reasonable 1 hour and 45 minutes I took yesterday.

A Day in Toronto

Our nephew, Andrew Moir, had a film he made called "Just as I Remember" showing at the "Hot Docs" film festival in Toronto.  Hot Docs is a festival for documentary films, and although it is smaller than the Toronto International Film Festival (or TIFF), it is still quite a big deal by our standards, showing about 250 documentary films.  A link to the IMDB synopsis of Andrew's film is here:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2212234/

Since December 2011, there has been a commuter train, called the GO train, that runs from Kitchener to Toronto.  We both like rail travel, even though we rarely travel that way in North America. So we decided to try it out.  There are only two trains a day from Kitchener running into Toronto, the last one being 7:07 AM.  Convenient for commuters, not so good for tourists going to a 4:00 PM movie, but .. oh well.  At least we can walk to the train station from our house.  And the train is a double decker, so I imagined the view from the top would be pretty good.  Actually, the upper deck is not really that high, as the lower deck is near the ground.  Also, the tracks do not often run at ground level, so I never got much of a feeling of being up high except when we were next to the station.  But it was fun seeing the back yards of all these houses and businesses on the way in to Toronto.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchener_line

Paying for the train was a learning experience.  As it is a commuter train, apparently they do not have a person selling tickets at the train station. (machines are no good, because we need to ask dumb questions)  So a few days earlier, we went to the Kitchener bus station, where we ended up buying a "Presto Card" pass.  This card is loaded with a certain amount of money, and each time you make a trip, you touch the card to a reader to get on, and then touch it again to get off.  If you forget to touch it getting on, you can be fined, if they catch you.  If you forget to touch getting off, your card will continue to pay for the train that you are no longer on, until the card is worthless.  OK, a little bit scary, but we can handle it.  We loaded up our two cards with exactly the amount of money for a return trip to Toronto.  When we got to the train station, we found out, by watching other people, where the Presto card tapping post was (not on the train, but on the platform!). Then we walked to the place where the front car would be, thinking we would get a good view.  This was a long walk, because the train has ten double decker cars, but because it also has two separate locomotive engines, we could not see to the front, and we couldn't even give the driver advice.

The complications continue.  We needed to return abut 9 PM, but the last train would have already left.  But GO Busses keep running, so the last bus back to Kitchener would be around 11 PM, although we would need a transfer at Mississauga.  Although this setup seemed complicated, we went ahead with the plan.  But then we met another nephew at the film, who offered us a ride home, so our Presto Passes are still left with about $15 each unused on them.  But that money can be used at a later date if we want to go to Toronto again.  (and we probably do.)

It was a misty day in Toronto on April 29, but we never got caught in any rain.  We arrived at Union Station about 9:00 and immediately compromised our health by going to Cinnebon for coffee and one of those things that cinnebon sells.  (I just call it a cinnebon, but I'm sure it has a name).  I always go there on my way to the December motorcycle show, it's a hard habit to break when you smell the cinnebons baking.  Then Mary Ann wanted to see the Skywalk, going from Union Station to the Convention Centre.  Across from the Convention Centre, is the Roundhouse Park.  It is an outdoor museum of trains, and in the actual roundhouse is the Steamwhistle Brewery, with free beer and $10 brewery tours.  Unfortunately they did not open until 12:00, and we had other things to see.  It only took about 20 minutes walking from Union Station to the Entertainment District, where the film was playing later at the TIFF Lightbox Theatre. So to kill more time, we walked about 20 minutes further to see the Kensington Market. Mary Ann likes markets, so this was a good walk, as we also passed through Chinatown on the way to Kensington.

The Kensington Market is not one big market building, it is an area covering several blocks around Kensington Avenue, where there are lots of little businesses. As you turn the corner from Dundas onto Kensington, you are instantly struck by the funkiness of it all.  And actually Dundas is quite funky, too, but in a different way, as it is still Chinatown.  Kensington has graffiti, narrow streets, motorcycles, bicycles and scooters parked everywhere. Many people look like they are either from the fifties, or possible from some alternate post apocalyptic universe.  And this is still early Monday morning.

In the afternoon, we met up with some of Mary Ann's family who had come to see the film.  The theatre was normal size, I don't know why I expected it to be a small screening room.  And surprisingly (to me) it looked about 3/4 full, or maybe more.  Not just family members either.  They mostly went to the Saturday showing, which was sold out.  That's why we had to go Monday. Andrew's film was under 20 minutes, but was being shown together with a longer documentary, so it felt like watching a normal length movie.

So now we are home again, and with our partly used Presto cards, we will find it much easier to plan our next outing to Toronto.

Electric Vehicles Perform Some Functions Better than Gas

Today the Globe and Mail had an interesting headline: Why modern electric vehicles are like cars from 1905


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/green-driving/news-and-notes/why-modern-electric-vehicles-are-like-cars-from-1905/article5374751/


I could not figure out what the headline meant, even after reading the article.  Anyway, one comment got me motivated to write a blog, it goes like this

Edgenet 9:23 AM on November 17, 2012

"Electric cars will never replace the gas cars. Electric cars are for crazy professors and people like them that do not live in the real world."

I know many other people think the way Edgenet does.  So it's time to have a public service lesson in how an average Canadian uses a car.  I do not wish to argue that electric cars will completely replace gas cars.  But they will be increasingly creating niche markets alongside gas cars, where a family may own one of each.  So instead of owning three gas cars, a family may own two gas cars and some kind of an electric vehicle.  Electric cars are not just for crazy professors and people who don't live in the "real" world.

Although I don't have statistics in front of me, I know that many Canadians are turning to electric four wheel and two wheel vehicles to get around.  The four wheel vehicles (also called mobility scooters) are often used to go to supermarkets for shopping, and can in fact go right inside the mall or supermarket, because of their electric technology, and because their owners have great difficulty walking.  You may not want to call these things "cars", but they use the same technology, and they perform the function that a car used to perform, but do it better.  Their batteries and charging systems are adequate today,  to accomplish the goal of shopping.

A second use for an electric car, this time a more conventional electric car, is getting kids to school.  School busses do not carry all the kids, for proof you only need to go by a school at 3:00 to see all the parents waiting for the kids to come out.  Those people drive their kids to school or back four times a day, with a cold start each time.  And it is getting to the point where some families have a minivan that is only used for this one purpose.  Toyota is having some problems with engine failures in minivans whose oil turns to sludge and burns out the engine, because the vehicles never get operated for more than 15 minutes at a time. So the engine never has a chance to get up to operating temperature.  Families who use a minivan like this, usually also have huge four wheel drive pickups and SUV's that they use for longer trips, relegating the minivan exclusively to school shuttle duties. It would make a lot more sense for this type of work to be done with an electric vehicle, that needs no oil changes, no gas fillups, no warmup time, and does not burn out the engine on stop and go driving.  200 mile range and top speed of 100 mph are not needed in this application.  Just plug it in at home and drive around the block when you need to.

I don't necessarily agree with driving the kids to and from school four times a day, but I'm just observing the "real" world that I see developing around me.

Picture: Taken from this website "EV World The Future in Motion"

http://evworld.com/news.cfm?newsid=27678

Why Does Toyota Make Big Honkin SUV's and Pickup Trucks?

For a company that claims to be green, Toyota makes a lot of large SUV's and pickup trucks. What could be more natural than making these honking big luxury all wheel drive vehicles if it makes money? Well, it's not that simple.

The only place in the world where these large gas-wasting vehicles sell well is the USA, and that is because of low gasoline prices, which are kept low by the political danger of imposing taxes on fuel in America. And even in America, as we have seen, the price of gas sometimes rises to the point that vehicle sales decline. (especially the gas-hogs)

Toyota started off in the sixties sending fuel efficient cars to the USA because that's what they made for their home customers, and that's what they understood. Not only that, but since 1963 there has been an import duty on light trucks coming to the USA of 25%. It is called the "Chicken tax" as this import tax is applied to potato starch, dextrin, brandy, and light trucks in retaliation for a European import tax on American chickens. OK, sorry that this is getting complicated but really so many things we consider natural came about through unnatural and complicated legislation.

Anyway, Toyota continued to make cars for the US, content to ignore the truck market. Then the US congress began to pass laws requiring increasingly strict standards for fuel economy, crash safety, and clean burning engines. Toyota complied, and set their engineers to work conforming to these regulations. Meanwhile, Detroit began to exploit a loophole they had at their disposal, by getting light trucks exempted from all these laws. Once again, Toyota more or less ignored the unfairness of this, and continued to build fuel efficient cars. The American car makers, on the other hand started pushing the definitions of what exactly was a light truck. Eventually, Detroit managed to include all minivans as light trucks and even started making pickup trucks with no bed at the back, calling them SUV's. Toyota still had no response, but things were getting worse. When gasoline prices declined in the nineties, sales of SUV's, pickup trucks and minivans increased to the point that cars became an endangered species in the USA (literally!). And finally, I guess the thing that pushed Toyota over the edge was the proposed CAFE standards.

Although CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) did not pass, it threatened Toyota's existence in the US market. The law proposed a percentage improvement in fuel economy on each corporation, over time, starting with their existing fuel economy average. The problem was that if Toyota was starting with mostly fuel efficient cars, it would have to compete against American makers who were starting with wasteful vehicles. It is hard to increase the fuel economy of a Corolla, but easy to do if you are starting with fuel wasting American style vehicles.

As a result of (or sometimes anticipating) all these pressures, Toyota decided to enter the truck market in the USA, so that they would be on an equal footing with the Detroit companies in case CAFE ever became law. To do so, they set up truck factories in the USA, because the chicken tax of 25% would have made them uncompetitive to import from Japan. And now we have the Toyota Tundra and the Toyota Sequoia, and several other big honking things you would not expect to find many years ago in a Toyota showroom.

Last year, both GM and Chrysler declared bankruptcy. They were relying too heavily on their big truck sales for profits, and when fuel prices went up along with job losses, many people stopped buying the trucks and SUV's. Toyota fared better and became the world's biggest automaker because of their superior line of cars.

But now Toyota is facing billions of dollars in lawsuits in the USA because of the not yet proven "runaway acceleration" syndrome.

So it's not always as simple as you might think.

Picture: Photoshop was not used in this picture. I did not reduce the size of the person in the drivers seat. The Sequoia is just a very big vehicle, at least for a Toyota.

Republicans in the Office (Of Counter Terrorism)

An interesting case has just come up in the murky world of intelligence gathering. It once again brings up the topic of how best to get important information, by torture or not by torture?

The pro-torture crowd uses this simple situation to make their case. An atomic bomb is about to go off in 10 minutes in New York. You have the bomber in custody, and he doesn't want to talk. Do you torture him and get the answers you need, or wimp out and let the building blow up (and most of the rest of the city?) A simple situation with a simple answer.

This situation is actually the easy part of the process of intelligence gathering. You have the bad guy in custody. You know he knows something that you need to know. You have a way to verify quickly whether or not his answer is correct. At that point you really would have to fumble the ball badly to not get the information you need, like for example if you threatened him with a loaded gun, it prematurely went off and killed him.  So let's stop using this mythical situation to rationalize torture.

A part of intelligence gathering that has importance in real life, is having ordinary people voluntarily come forward with important information. I know this is too passive to have any appeal to the bulked-up-on-steroids types among us, but in the overall security picture, this part of the intelligence gathering is usually 60 percent of the effort. In this type of operation, you must be seen as the "good guys" by at least some of the local people, and you must have the infrastructure in place to sort through the incoming data. Notice here that passive intelligence is actually somewhat in conflict with torture intelligence.

Now for the most difficult part of the process, the one that breaks down most often, and is the greatest threat to our security. Once the raw data is obtained by one department, how and when does it get passed to another department within the system? That is where the usual office politics and personality conflicts get in the way of people doing their job, day in and day out to the best of their abilities. To learn more about how office bickering can reduce effectiveness, you will need to go to "Dilbert". I know it's a cartoon, but it is a cartoon ironically based on "tips" sent in by people on the ground who deal with this stuff every day in a real office.

The situation I started off with in this blog post is the underwear bomber. Nobody needed to be tortured to save that plane. The very fact that an internationally well liked African-American was president, and had signed a bill renouncing torture, made it possible that the bomber's own father would come forward with the tip that his son was going to try something. All that was necessary to stop him was that the various paper shufflers in government offices should be able to promptly deliver this information to the right inbasket. You would think that since this problem was identified as part of the cause of 9/11, something could have been done about it by now.

But sadly, most of the public discourse is still all about whether or not to torture. If not torture, then even stupider things such as whether to declare war on Yemen. The debate is not about people in the bureaucracy doing their jobs. And what might help is to at least have somebody in charge of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Obama's appointee has been blocked for months now. By petty political bickering, of course. The head of Customs and Border Protection agency also remains vacant, but no one has been chosen yet, so I'm not sure if you can blame that on political bickering. That won't even begin until someone is chosen.

Another issue about these appointees and why so may jobs are unfilled (125 senior political appointments remain open and 96 nominations await Congressional confirmation). Would you want to take a job that apparently the entire country thinks is so irrelevant that the job is empty for up to a year, and yet if any attack ever succeeded, the person holding that job would be the first to be pilloried? Now that is classical office politics.

Picture: My words on the cartoon.

A Perspective on Fuel Economy

Let's compare fuel economy in methods of transportation. In these measurements, the lower numbers are for less fuel.















First comparison in kJ per Km., as we are not always using gasoline as fuel.

• Walking 330 kJ per km (the fuel is food, in case you were wondering)
• Bicycling 120 kJ per km
• Toyota Prius 1600 kJ per km (Calculated from 5.1 L/100 km at 32,000 kJ per Litre)

Second comparison, switching to L/100 Km., but I included a Toyota Prius in both comparisons for a benchmark.

• Toyota Prius 5.1 L/100 Km (55 mpg US)
• Jet Aircraft 4.8 L/100 km (this is per passenger)
• Ocean Liner Ship 16.9 L/100 km (per passenger)
• Diesel Electric train 1.2 L/100 km (per passenger) (I got this from another site, as wikipedia was unclear about the units and passengers, also seemed unrealistic at 12 mpg for the whole train?)

Note that for two people to go across the country, the Prius would be more efficient than flying. But with only one person in the car and a full airplane, it is close to a tie. Again, if the aircraft is half empty, the Prius wins.

In this website Matti proves he can run his car for a year with less fuel than to fly two people from Toronto to Acapulco and back on a winter vacation. Part of the secret is that he has a VW Golf with only 12,000 km in one year. In this case it is appropriate to say YMMV.

The Interstate Highway Sytem, Wonder of the World?

I have always been a great admirer of the interstate highway system in the USA. I would go so far as to say it is one of the wonders of the modern world, and one day in the future, long after we have run out of oil, it will be admired by people from who travel to the USA (in oxcarts) just to walk along sections of this system, in awe of what primitive peoples had accomplished.

This system of roads was built mostly after World War 2, and it is the biggest public works project in the history of the world. President Eisenhower introduced the bill and it was passed in 1956, called the "Federal Aid Highway Act". There was not much debate on this bill, at least not by today's norms. For example, almost nobody complained about the debt load that the government was taking on. Also, very few people were made aware ahead of time that the government was going to decide exactly where the roads went, and that many towns would die as a result of being bypassed by the opening of the new roads. No one understood that there would be what you could even call a "Death Panel" that would make decisions about which towns would be served, and which would not. And there was literally no debate about whether illegal aliens would be able to drive their cars on this road system undetected. Also, many trucks would be scrapped if they did not conform to the standard height and length determined by the federal bureaucrats. But more than that, it was never once mentioned that Hitler had basically invented the idea of a national highways system, called the Autobahn, and Eisenhower was so impressed with it as he travelled through Germany, that he decided that the USA should build it's own.

Why did no-one ever question the Federal Highway Act before it was passed? Why did nobody threaten to filibuster it? Why did nobody call it socialism? Well for one thing, the big carmakers were lobbying for it. Lots of people were going to get jobs from it, even though those were Government jobs, not private sector. And even though the jobs were just temporary, until the roads were completed.

Looking back on the "Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways" as it was officially named, nobody, even today, ever comments on it negatively. And yet it has led to a huge increase in oil consumption, to the point that the USA is no longer self sufficient in oil. It led to the dismantling of some of the national railway system, which is a far more fuel efficient way to transport goods long distances. And thousands of people have died in traffic accidents on it.

But what I like about it is that it allows me to travel great distances by car or motorcycle, assured of being able to find gas stations, restaurants and motels along the way. In fact the only real complaints I hear about it are that it prevents people from seeing the "real" America as they travel around. Which is actually similar to the argument if you take the plane from NY to LA. Of course it's true, but if you really want to see America, just get off the road. Any time, any where.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_highway_system

Footnote for Canada. Yay for us! Canada has a smaller freeway system than the USA, but it is busier. Specifically on the 401 through Toronto, the average daily traffic flow is 425,000 (measured in 2004). While the busiest on the Interstate System in the USA is 390,000 vehicles per day: I-405 in Los Angeles, California, (estimated in 2006) Highway 401 has 12-20 lanes through Pickering to Mississauga and this is thought to be the world's longest continuous stretch of highway having 12 or more lanes.

In contrast to the US system, this particular Canadian highway is actually an obstacle to traffic movement, and it is amazing to me that people keep using it in spite of the frequent slowdowns, even at 3:00 AM.

http://www.urbanplanet.org/forums/topic/11058-Torontos-401-Busiest-Freeway-North/


Picture: Me and the BMW on Interstate 10 New Mexico. Returning from my trip to Baja Mexico. I know I should not be fiddling with my camera while driving, but I had slowed down to 100 kph, to take a picture of the two bikes ahead of me.