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TRAVEL ALTERNATIVES

 

Cliff Path

 

Travel Alternatives

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO REDUCE :

  • YOUR TIME SPENT GETTING AROUND?
  • THE AMOUNT OF MONEY YOU SPEND GETTING PLACES?
  • THE POLLUTION AND WASTE PRODUCED BY TRAVEL?
  • THE AMOUNT OF LAND SPACE AND RAW MATERIALS USED FOR FACILITATING TRANSPORTATION?
Following are some suggestions.
  • Walk.
  • Live close to work and activities.
  • Car pool, ride share, use available mass transit.
  • Change jobs, work out of your home, carry your work with you.
  • Lease, borrow or rent vehicles only when essential.
  • Buy used rather than new vehicles
  • Hitch-hike, and pick up hitch-hikers.
  • Bicycle everywhere; use the bike racks on buses.
  • Drive electric vehicles rather than internal combustion polluters.
  • Repair your own vehicles, or do trades and barter with those who do repairs.
  • Select modes of travel for efficiency and minimal net energy consumption, not status.
  • Become politically active: encourage bicycle paths, mass transit, pedestrian thoroughfares.
  • Live lightly: rearrange your life to require less need for travel.
  • Plan your trips in advance; design routes in geographic clusters; think proximity.
Here are a few thoughts:
  • Over 50% of a city's land space is devoted to the automobile.
  • Japan's magnetic rail is fast, efficient and well-used.
  • America's two biggest exports are waste paper and scrap cars.
  • In the time line of history,  people have been car dependent for a very short span.
  • The advertising industry has imbedded in our minds that the automobile we drive is an extension of ourselves.  Because of this the car will never die.  Instead of abolishing the car, we must simply redesign it to be more efficient, less wasteful, unpolluting, and inexpensive.
  • If we are to tax anything, it should be the amount of energy we consume.

Top Five Ways to Get There

Let's start instituting a "top five ways to get there" list to go along with every event being organized or even for existing stores, destination spots. The list would appear in the order of least impactful to most.
1) viable walking paths
2) safest and most direct bike routes
3) options for bus routes
4) carpool and riedeshare possibilities (especially to major events that have remote park and ride options)
5) cars and cabs (perhaps with info about cars with greater fuel efficiency for those considering new purchases, and encouraging people to combine errands into one trip)

Another idea would be to convince the major map websites (a la MapQuest.com to include a first question "What mode of
transportation would you like to use?" to at least raise the consciousness that there are other options. Or better yet, when
people typed in a beginning and ending destination it could answer with all the options available. If they weren't willing it do it maybe someone could set up such a website with alternative transportation options.

An easy way to get the carpool thing going is www.carpoolconnect.com  Now if we could find a similar website that allows a person to plug in a longer, more infrequent trip, in case someone else would like to share the ride, driving and gas.

Hairpin Turns


Efficient Driving

If you still have to drive a vehicle, then it is important to do it efficiently.

  • Plan your trips
    • Coordinate your stops in an order that involves the fewest miles between stops
    • Accomplish as much as possible in single trips; avoid multiple trips
    • Consider alternative ways of accomplishing the same thing: deliveries, friends already going, doing with what is available
  • Drive an efficient vehicle
    • Purchase an energy-efficient vehicle
      • All-electric
      • Hybrid
      • High gas mileage
    • Consider alternative fuel sources
      • Biodiesel
      • Ethanol
      • Fuel cells
    • Maintain your vehicle
      • Keep tires properly inflated
      • Keep the engine tuned
      • Change oil frequently
      • Accelerate and decelerate conservatively
  • Use an effective fuel additive
    • Increases gas mileage
    • Reduces toxic emissions
    • Improves performance

     


Human Car

http://www.humancar.com/news_article_membrana.htm

It is a present day muscle-car, but not in a figurative sense. If in the world of cars "brawny" is called "highly-charged" then the technical miracle of this device is a true athlete in the world of vehicle mobility.

It is not the streamline body that powers this car; it is the force of four people, who work immediately by way of muscles in the hands and legs. This force accelerates the car to automobile speeds.

A company from Seattle developed this uncommon transportation device. It is called the HumanCar, that is to say, "pour on the muscular thrust." We have seen other inventions that are similar, but the HumanCar adheres to an interesting principle: the means to which the machine is set in motion. At the basis of machine is a three dimensional frame from the steel tubes. Four people sit back-to-back to each other on the mobile seats and hold controls on long levers. Both seats and controls connect together with thrusts, and they synchronously rock back and forth, much like the manner of seats and oars in sport kayaks.

Rowing on the wheels is not a new idea. However, the authors of this machine assume that over the course of time, this may become conventional.

Both seats and controls are inclined at the sides. Passengers of the HumanCar govern the turning of the front wheels by leaning. As a result, as the company asserts, passengers have intuitive control over the machine (like the driver of a motorcycle does, only in this case, there are four drivers). It is by utilizing the many muscles of the body that makes it possible to reach high speeds. Even on a small descent, the HumanCar can reach speed of 100 kilometers an hour. According to our own experience, we know that speeds of 30-40 on a bicycle (heading downhill) are frightful.

The HumanCar was created years ago. But recently its authors improved the apparatus, after adding a small storage battery and electromotor (electrical assist). It is no so much to ensure the motion of the vehicle, but to reduce the load on each person for a longer distant trip.

For technical details:

http://www.humancar.com/design.htm

"The HumanCar is an arrangement of mechanical parts that convert oscillatory motion into rotational motion about one axis. Simultaneously, it converts oscillatory motion about another axis into oscillatory motion about an axis connected to a reference frame."


Join a Travel Club

Have you ever considered owning timeshare as a way of vacationing and staying at beautiful and luxurious resorts throughout the world? Timeshare is a popular way to vacation where you often times have to pay tens of thousands of dollars up front plus hundreds every year for taxes and expensive maintenance for a designated week(s) of your choosing. Look for a resort club membership that entitles you to unlimited access to vacations with accommodations. Find a club that does not have expensive annual dues, maintenance fees and exchanges fees when you want to change what location you want to vacation at.


Travel Exchanges

Travel lightly and for free with one of the many on-line travel exchanges, such as airbnb.com, wooffing, home exchanges, couch hostiles, and eco-tours.


10 Tips to Get Off Oil

1. Keep up on your vehicle maintenance. On average, an efficient engine could cut your gasoline use by over 46 gallons per year, saving you $139 and reducing your carbon footprint by 900 kilograms per year.

2. Keep your tires inflated and invest in low-rolling resistance tires. With well-inflated advanced tires, you’ll save $50 every year on gasoline.

3. Drive efficiently. Driving at a steady, reasonable pace can reduce your fuel use by as much as 15 percent. That means over $175 per year in savings on gasoline, and over a ton of carbon removed from the atmosphere per person.

4. Get rid of unnecessary weight in your car. Your fuel efficiency drops by 1 percent for every 100 pounds of stuff that you keep in your car, so it pays to clean out your trunk.

5. Carpool. Social networking websites like eRideShare have made it increasingly easy and convenient to match up with people with similar commutes. And companies such as NuRide offer discounts at restaurants, free tickets to events, and other rewards to  commuters who carpool, vanpool or find other green ways to commute to work. [1]

6. Consider telecommuting as an alternative to the daily drive to work. New technologies are making it easier and easier to do more of your work from home. Working from home saves Americans an average of 46 minutes a day on their commute, which adds up to over 100 hours a year that would otherwise be wasted in traffic—more than the total vacation time many of us earn in a year.

7. Be efficient with your shopping and other travel. When you can walk, walk.  When you have to drive, plan ahead and try to hit multiple stores in one trip. Shopping locally saves the gasoline consumed by trucks and ships transporting goods, and shopping online saves the gasoline costs of driving to the store. 

8. When you purchase a car, consider its energy costs and impact on the environment. This summer alone, a 60 mpg car would save the average consumer over $500 at the pump. Plug-in electric vehicles, meanwhile, offer superior driving performance and can be operated for just pennies per mile while producing no tailpipe emissions. 

9. Prioritize public transportation and walkable, mixed-use communities when you choose a home. Online resources such as the Housing and Transportation Affordability Index can help you figure out which neighborhoods have the most transportation choices. [2]

10. Tell your political leaders that you want real transportation alternatives to get us off oil. The first step is for President Obama to set fuel efficiency standards for passenger vehicles at 60 mpg by 2025. The second step is for Congress and state leaders to pass legislation that will provide more transportation alternatives, and invest in electric vehicles. Follow our campaign at our Twitter and Facebook pages and help get this country off oil. 

 

Snow Road

 

Take a look at all the unsold cars:
http://www.vincelewis.net/unsoldcars.html


 

Hyperloop

http://www.rgj.com/story/money/business/2017/04/06/worlds-first-hyperloop-site-completed-nevada-las-vegas/100108838/



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