Thread: TATA (i think) -- India's automobiles

I think millions more people driving has a bigger effect than a million SUVs. Call me crazy.

What about the gas from canada? I heard that they could refine the sand from somewhere over there (saw it on 60 minutes, I'm too lazy to google) and get gas that way.

Also about the suvs; what you said about having millions of more cars is right, but we don't have the right to stop people from buying cars since they are poor etc. (we can however limit cars to one per family). A tata nano has 33 hp, lol compare that to an suv. New forms of fuel will pop up in the future, a form of survival.

Yes, Alberta is rich from oil.

oh, and limiting one car to a family... I don't know about you but my family is a family of 6, Dad has a 30min drive to work and mom drives to work AND taxi's my siblings around... while it's possible to have one car, it's incredibly difficult. Also, two cars that go easier on gas and get less use than a gas guzzler of a van that would not only do all the driving but also need to be picked up and dropped off by people as different family member need transportation...
I guess I sound rich and selfish though =/

I didn't mean that(lol my family has more than one car too), I meant if there was to be control of gas, if there's an epidemic, then we shouldn't stop poorer people from buying gas, but we should kinda settle for a middle grounds.

Originally Posted by silverwmoon

oh, and limiting one car to a family... I don't know about you but my family is a family of 6, Dad has a 30min drive to work and mom drives to work AND taxi's my siblings around... while it's possible to have one car, it's incredibly difficult. Also, two cars that go easier on gas and get less use than a gas guzzler of a van that would not only do all the driving but also need to be picked up and dropped off by people as different family member need transportation...

Just a thought, but how about public transportation. Sure, it's not feasible everywhere and it DOES seem to cost a lot to start up, but there are huge benefits. Most places in the US spend between 10 and 20 times their budget on improvements for car transportation than on public transportation (highway upkeep, etc). Again, let me cite Portland. They are actually making a concerted effort to NOT repair some major throughways to encourage people to use the extensive, clean, reliable public transportation system (light rail, rail, bus). And it's working! I'm just saying, it's not an impossibility.

Originally Posted by bipolargraph

What about the gas from canada? I heard that they could refine the sand from somewhere over there (saw it on 60 minutes, I'm too lazy to google) and get gas that way.

Also about the suvs; what you said about having millions of more cars is right, but we don't have the right to stop people from buying cars since they are poor etc. (we can however limit cars to one per family). A tata nano has 33 hp, lol compare that to an suv. New forms of fuel will pop up in the future, a form of survival.

A) Yeah, you can get gas from a wide variety of places (sand pits, bottom of the ocean). But consider the cost. For one, it is damn, damn expensive to operate the machinery involved. Plus, the start-up investment of purchasing and setting up such an operation. Gas is getting harder and harder to extract from the earth, and that fact alone is making it more expensive. On top of that, think about the geopolitical facts involved. Oil companies don't just run around the world to wherever gas is/might be. It needs to be located, the government of that land needs to approve development (a feat in of itself. few governments are willing to concede control of their oil to foreign companies). This is an incredibly short list of problems there.

B) Again, you miss my point. I'm not saying that people in India and China shouldn't have the right to as many cars as they want, nor am I disputing that SUVs are gas-guzzlers.

Originally Posted by bipolargraph

What about the gas from canada? I heard that they could refine the sand from somewhere over there (saw it on 60 minutes, I'm too lazy to google) and get gas that way.

Oh heck, can we ever. (Opinionated piece ahead, but the point is made.)

Originally Posted by Aikido

Just a thought, but how about public transportation. Sure, it's not feasible everywhere and it DOES seem to cost a lot to start up, but there are huge benefits. Most places in the US spend between 10 and 20 times their budget on improvements for car transportation than on public transportation (highway upkeep, etc). Again, let me cite Portland. They are actually making a concerted effort to NOT repair some major throughways to encourage people to use the extensive, clean, reliable public transportation system (light rail, rail, bus). And it's working! I'm just saying, it's not an impossibility.

Since when is public transportation all about the money? I think everyone knows full well how beneficial it can be both in that sense, and in terms of the environment. Yet I have year-round coverage for the local bus system, and I hardly ever use it. I pretty much only take the bus if I'm heading downtown, for one main reason: convenience. The buses are always running to and from downtown, so I love taking it there, but if I want to go to class?

Time to get to school by car: 10-15 minutes.
Time by bus: 30 minutes.
Time spent waiting for bus at night to get home: Over an hour.

I don't care that much about the ride itself taking longer. I DO care about being out in the cold on campus at night. No thanks. Not to mention all the weird people on the bus, and how the campus, while I've never felt particularly threatened, is not known as the safest place at night. I'll take the bus when I have day classes (even though the route times still suck, despite having the largest terminal in town AT our school - you'd think they'd time at least some of the routes to our classes, but no), but I sure don't like it once the sun goes down. Those times during the day being how they are usually makes for at least two hours of standing around waiting for the bus and riding it in a day, versus the half hour I would spend in a car. Maybe this sounds like whining to you, but I would rather not waste my day away sitting (or often standing) at a bus stop. 10-20 minutes' wait, sure, but when it gets upwards of that it starts to feel silly (considering how close I am to my school).

In some of my friends' cases, the bus doesn't even go anywhere near their houses. They have to drive to catch the bus. At that point, why not just drive the whole way?

I really think you have to invest extensively in making your public transportation system appealing to the public before it will go anywhere at all. It needs to be affordable, clean, safe, convenient, and all that jazz before people will buy into it. And right now, in our city, I just don't think it's meeting people's needs (and if it doesn't meet them, people won't use it, and if they don't use it, it doesn't have the funding to be able to meet those needs, barring funding from another source - like the government).

I agree with you, I think there needs to be a big push towards public transportation...but there are more issues than just the money. (No one is going to want to invest in it if they're not convinced people are going to use it.)

Article about the Nano (Tata is the company): http://finance.sympatico.msn.ca/inve...mentid=6029946


Edit - I forgot to mention the sucker factor. I think a lot of people want to do more to cut down on their car use to help out, but the thing is, there's no reward for doing so. People aren't penalized for doing otherwise, so you're making an effort without that being recognized in any way. I think this probably plays a role in why more people don't use public transportation, even when it is fairly convenient for them to do so.

lol Aikido: I DO take the bus everywhere. I don't have a car right now, I take the bus twice a day 6days a week usually.

oh, and yeah. for what Kaom said: I DO take the bus and I used to live even further away from our school.
It took me regularily 80 mins to get to school... My dad can drive that in 25.
And getting home? a 5 min difference on one end has me waiting at 9 or 10 at night for an hour for the next bus to come. Now, I'm not really paranoid, but when you're a 5'4" female waiting at a dark bus stop that long... even if I don't wait that long, often it would take me 2 hours to get home.

Even living closer (again I repeat, I have to rely on transit, I do take it every day), when my class starts at 10, I and about 25 others have to wait at the bus stop for 20 minutes as we watch up to 3 busses go by that are too full to pick us up, we all end up late to class because we only got to the bus stop 10 min early. In order to avoid this mess, I would have to leave my place an HOUR before my class. Did I mention it's possible to walk the distance in 40 min? but that's kinda hard when your backpack weights a ton and it's icy.