Dear reader, if you're here you're already interested in electric vehicles (EVs). Perhaps you already own one, or perhaps you're just curious, but like so many of us you're trying to figure out if they and the infrastructure they need are actually reβ¦
Car, if 1000km roundtrip⦠Luxembourg, last year. If one way, sort of, then also car: a 7000km road trip around scandinavia (NL-GER-Ferry-FIN-NOR-SWE-DEN-GER-NL. In dire need of a change of scenery again.
Not really 1 trip but nearly 1000km in 2 days: visiting a friend at the other end of the country and going to a concert across the border in Germany. But planning some longer camping trips π
in the US, car is the only economical way to travel with a family of 6.
But every time I'm on an interstate driving through a low-population area in the middle of the night, with my kids asleep in the back of the minivan, baggage piled all around, I wonder how we got to the point where anyone thinks this approach is superior to a compartment on a train.
Train of course, itβs the best way to travel. The week before last I traveled 800km for work, stayed at destination for three nights and took the overnight train home. Good times.
Plane. I wanted to take the train but the only available options for my travel dates involved several stops and half a day, and car rental was 3x as expensive and involved driving in some places I didn't want to try driving.
(I usually drive an EV, which won't make the trip without several recharges.)
@kat I feel you on this! Our EV has a range of 250-300km, so we'd need 3 charges minimum to make a 1000km trip. Chargers aren't always spaced exactly 250km apart, though!
We'd probably split it up into two days: drive and lunch + charge, then drive and sleep + charge, then drive and lunch + charge, then drive.
@brion so, I think 1000km gets you to the Bay Area, right? I think that's a 20-hour trip on Amtrak; a pretty close equivalent to driving! But I think it leaves and arrives in the evening.
@brion yeah, I was just using this route as the example in my human-computer interface class. I'm doing a project on selecting transportation modes based on real experience like door-to-door times.
The drive time from SF to Portland is about 15 hours, iirc. While it's possible to do that if you have multiple drivers and can trade off, it's more likely that you'll need to stop for meals and sleep, so I estimated a door-to-door time of 29 hours (15 drive, 8 sleep, 6 meals).
@brion flying is about 1.5 hr in the air, but with getting to the airport, check-in, security, then arriving and getting out of the destination airport, I anticipate about 6 hours door-to-door.
That's still a big advantage over driving or train! It only makes sense if price or carbon footprint are *really* important to you.
Once you have 3 or 4 people travelling, that 2-day drive starts to look really economical.
@brion I think it's probably fair to say that while a solo 15-hour drive is kind of a test of your sanity, a 15-hour drive with 3 other people is a *R*O*A*D* *T*R*I*P* wooooooooo
First, there's a threshold between 500km and 1000km where train travel becomes significantly uncompetitive on time compared to air travel; 2x or 3x the door-to-door time commitment.
Second, I changed the phrasing of my question. Instead of, "What is your preferred mode of travel...?" I asked, "What mode of travel did you choose last?"
I think this cuts down a lot on the social desirability bias in responses.
For me, the last trip I took of this distance was a family wedding in New Jersey. We drove down in our electric car. It was harder than we expected; the availability of chargers in the Adirondacks was pretty lacking.
I expect country variability also. Trains and distances in Europe vs US vs Australia very different. (Compared with most everywhere else, Australia has very large, nearly empty gaps between major centres and slow trains)
Not just *social* desirability bias, but true desirability vs practicality. Iβd love to take the train more often, but it lends itself best for travel to city centers and not for camping or roadtrips (by definition, of course, but also based on the smaller, more rural stops Iβd like to make then).
actually let me rephrase that. I would love to spend a week on a train getting somewhere, but the capitalist hellscape weβre forced to live in does not allow for that extra travel time.
@aaron I think if those of us who can manage it shift some of our travel to low-carbon modes like rail, especially when it's only somewhat more inconvenient than flying or driving, it will help build out the rail service and make all trains better.
@GuillaumeRossolini that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about why many respondents might prefer trains at shorter distances but not longer distances.
@Evan Prodromou My "preferred" transport was a 5β7-hour train that doesn't exist but could and should, so it was a plane rather than a 25-hour train ride (wall clock time) with 4 interchanges.
Chris AlemanyπΊπ¦π¨π¦πͺπΈ
•https://chrisalemany.ca/2022/08/15/saving-co2-on-a-cross-country-ev-journey/
#ElectricVehicles #RoadTrip #Canada #EVCrossCanada #Family #CarbonEmissions #CO2 #ClimateAction
Saving CO2 on a Cross Country EV Journey - Murkyview
chrisale (Murkyview)Stephen Michael Kellat
•James M.
•infinite love β΄³
•Evan Prodromou
•penryu
•Fred Brooker
•Fred Brooker
•Mark Darbyshire
•Potato ENTHUSIAST
•: j@fabrica:~/src; :t_blink:
•Vincent π»πͺπΊ
•Tony Hoyle
•Frank
•Evan Prodromou
•Frank
•Phil L.
•Mark Andrew
•On the way back we took the OBB night train from Hamburg.
JP
•Evan Prodromou
•JP
•Marky Mark
•Samuel Johnson
•But every time I'm on an interstate driving through a low-population area in the middle of the night, with my kids asleep in the back of the minivan, baggage piled all around, I wonder how we got to the point where anyone thinks this approach is superior to a compartment on a train.
Oloturia
•DrJekyll
•genevieve
•Evan Prodromou
•genevieve
•Michael Roberts
•Evan Prodromou
•Michael Roberts
•Marco
•Roughly 3500 km.
Evan Prodromou
•Evan Prodromou
•JTLeskinen
•Mark Keisler
•Evan Prodromou
•John Socks
•Regina M
•Juju&Baba&Yoyoπ
•Evan Prodromou
•Maike
•Haelwenn /ΡΠ»Π²ΡΠ½/ :triskell:
•Evan Prodromou
•Oliver Cox
•βοΈΞΟakakiΟπ
•Ottawa (Bike) Montreal (Plane) Boston (Bike) Bar Harbour (Boat) Yarmouth (Bike) Halifax (Train) Montreal (Bike) Ottawa
Total distance approx. 2,300km
Evan Prodromou
•Kat
•(I usually drive an EV, which won't make the trip without several recharges.)
Evan Prodromou
•We'd probably split it up into two days: drive and lunch + charge, then drive and sleep + charge, then drive and lunch + charge, then drive.
Kat
•Evan Prodromou
•Evan Prodromou
•The drive time from SF to Portland is about 15 hours, iirc. While it's possible to do that if you have multiple drivers and can trade off, it's more likely that you'll need to stop for meals and sleep, so I estimated a door-to-door time of 29 hours (15 drive, 8 sleep, 6 meals).
Evan Prodromou
•That's still a big advantage over driving or train! It only makes sense if price or carbon footprint are *really* important to you.
Once you have 3 or 4 people travelling, that 2-day drive starts to look really economical.
Evan Prodromou
•Evan Prodromou
•WOW. These results are wildly different than my poll about distances around 500km:
https://prodromou.pub/@evan/109855866780546735
...and the one around 200km:
https://prodromou.pub/@evan/109790441129698185
Evan Prodromou
2023-02-13 05:51:38
Evan Prodromou
•First, there's a threshold between 500km and 1000km where train travel becomes significantly uncompetitive on time compared to air travel; 2x or 3x the door-to-door time commitment.
Evan Prodromou
•I think this cuts down a lot on the social desirability bias in responses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social-desirability_bias
response bias exhibited by survey respondents
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Evan Prodromou
•Evan Prodromou
•Thanks to everyone who replied!
Martin π§
•James
•Vincent π»πͺπΊ
•Evan Prodromou
•It's the tendency to give answers that conform to one's image of oneself, rather than to one's actual behaviour.
aaron
•Evan Prodromou
•aaron
•Evan Prodromou
•Evan Prodromou
•aaron
•Evan Prodromou
•aaron
•Evan Prodromou
•I don't think policymakers are going to invest in a network that nobody uses.
That's just throwing money away.
aaron
•Evan Prodromou
•aaron
•Empire Builder Train | Amtrak
www.amtrak.comEvan Prodromou
•Myk
•Till Westermayer
•Evan Prodromou
•Guillaume Rossolini
•Evan Prodromou
•Guillaume Rossolini
•Distance might not be the only or the main reason, and respondents may not have made the link between the polls (I hadn't)
Evan Prodromou
•So, 69% of respondents said they'd prefer trains for a trip of 200km.
23% of respondents said they booked trains for their last trip of about 1000km.
I am trying to explain the difference in those percentages -- 69% vs 23%.
I said that two possible explanations of those different percentages are a) the way the question was phrased, and b) the distance.
I agree that there are lots of factors in choosing a transportation mode.
Mark Andrew
•James Brown
•Evan Prodromou
•I guess that comes down to how you define "preferred".
I'd say that my preferred form of exercise is lifting weights, since that's the one I do most commonly.
If wine-drinking helped me stay in shape, I'd "prefer" to do that instead.
It doesn't, though, so my habitual or "preferred' form is weight lifting.
Evan Prodromou
•clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy πΈπͺππ°ππ
•Evan Prodromou
•penryu
•Evan Prodromou
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