[tom_s2]

Hi Ghung,

but somebody either doesn't get it or doesn't care

That somebody is you. You're not following the conversation. Dashster was claiming that shipping companies had reduced the speed of their ships to adjust to higher oil prices. He was also asking if it would be possible to do something similar with tractor trailer trucks, once oil starts declining.

You responded by posting that the speed limit on a very few stretches of freeway in Texas and Maine, and freeways in the UK, had increased. Ghung, how exactly does that contradict the claims made here? That's obviously not even relevant to the claims made here.

Car traffic on freeways is something else because motorists also care about convenience and safety, not just minimizing fuel costs. Traffic fatalities are at all-time lows because of improved safety features, so maybe motorists would prefer to reduce their fuel consumption by buying more fuel-efficient cars rather than slowing down.

-Tom S

[tom_s2]

dashster,

Single commute gasoline powered automobile use is going to go the way of the dodo bird. And it may even have to be outlawed if enough people are willing to try and bid oil away from truckers and trains.

I suppose people might start carpooling etc if things get really bad. However, Americans are very resistant to that kind of thing. There have been all kinds of incentives for carpooling (like special lanes etc) which have had little effect. When oil prices increased by a lot around 2007, vehicle miles travelled may have decreased but I think that was because people decided to forego some trips.

I'm just going by observation here, but it seems that the migration into denser areas and away from suburbs has been far more significant than any increase in carpooling. I suppose consumers can reduce their fuel expenditure however they want when oil starts declining, but I suspect carpooling won't be a popular option.

-Tom S

[tom_s2]

dashster:

I think that whether someone lives in the suburbs or in downtown Manhattan they won't be single-car commuting. At that point reducing the cost of goods transportation becomes much more significant.

Perhaps, but cargo transport to denser urban areas can be far more fuel-efficient.

Most fuel consumption for cargo is used in the last few miles, after the cargo is transferred from rail to trucks. In denser urban areas, those last few miles are much shorter. Many people in denser urban areas live within a mile of a railroad.

Also, electrification of transport is far more cost-effective in denser areas. Electrification of railroads, for example, involves an additional capital expenditure which is only worth it financially on heavily-trafficked routes. That's why rail is electrified only in densely populated countries.

-Tom S

[GHung]

@Tom S said:

Hi Ghung,

but somebody either doesn't get it or doesn't care



That somebody is you. You're not following the conversation. Dashster was claiming that shipping companies had reduced the speed of their ships to adjust to higher oil prices. He was also asking if it would be possible to do something similar with tractor trailer trucks, once oil starts declining.

You responded by posting that the speed limit on a very few stretches of freeway in Texas and Maine, and freeways in the UK, had increased. Ghung, how exactly does that contradict the claims made here? That's obviously not even relevant to the claims made here.

Car traffic on freeways is something else because motorists also care about convenience and safety, not just minimizing fuel costs. Traffic fatalities are at all-time lows because of improved safety features, so maybe motorists would prefer to reduce their fuel consumption by buying more fuel-efficient cars rather than slowing down.

-Tom S

Jeez, Tom, my response was to the turn in the conversation about getting traffic on roads to slow down and save fuel. My point is; good luck with that. No need to be a butt about it. It was suggested that speed limits could/should be reduced back to 55 MPH (US), trucks even slower. Meanwhile, many stretches of road (not just my examples) have had their limits increased. I know of several major sections in my area. Our new Republican State Senator actually ran, in part, on improving roads and increasing speeds in the area, not reducing them. The Atlanta area 10 lane perimeter 'Super Loop' is in the process of increasing it's top speed from 55 to 65.

Bottom line: No popular support; No political will. "Our way of life is non-negotiable".

[tom_s2]

Hi Ghung,

Sorry if I misread your post. Sometimes I read too quickly. When you said "somebody doesn't get it", I initially thought you were referring to the original author of this thread. I thought you were providing counter-examples to what he said, and claiming he didn't get it, so I was defending him.

I apologize for "being a butt" about it.

You're quite right. I agree with the point you're making.

My point is; good luck with that... Bottom line: No popular support; No political will. "Our way of life is non-negotiable".

When people say that ("our way of life is non-negotiable") it just means they won't do anything about this until they're forced to do so. However, when they are forced to do so, they adjust in a somewhat reasonable way (much of the time, anyway). When gasoline prices doubled back in 2007, people quietly gave up their monstrous SUVs. Those things are FAR rarer now. I haven't seen a Hummer in years. I know the company went bankrupt, but it seems like people stopped driving the ones they already had, because they all disappeared so suddenly.

Personally, I think gradual reductions in oil supply would be a big blessing to humanity. We could avoid the worst of global warming, and it would impose tolerable changes in peoples' lifestyles. Personally, I was hoping oil would peak in 2006 and then start declining gradually.

-Tom S

[dashster]

dashster,

Single commute gasoline powered automobile use is going to go the way of the dodo bird. And it may even have to be outlawed if enough people are willing to try and bid oil away from truckers and trains.

I suppose people might start carpooling etc if things get really bad. However, Americans are very resistant to that kind of thing. There have been all kinds of incentives for carpooling (like special lanes etc) which have had little effect. When oil prices increased by a lot around 2007, vehicle miles travelled may have decreased but I think that was because people decided to forego some trips.

At this point the Chinese and Indians, beneficiaries of decades of OECD job export, are now bidding some oil away from the OECD countries and you are seeing OECD oil consumption drop as a result. However, when oil production begins declining, the bidding will become more intense and something has to give each and every year. The US will have to continue to make more sacrifices. Single car commuting is a luxury for most, while farm equipment is a necessity as is construction equipment to build housing for the infinite stream of immigrants (unless we get to the point where we no longer consider immigration a necessity - part of the solution. But that's decades away). So I think that even if a large number of consumers are willing to make sacrifices in other areas in order to bid oil away from farmers and construction and railroads and airlines, if those entities cannot get the oil they need without going bankrupt, the government will step in and institute rationing. And the thing that will take the hit in rationing is single-car commuting.

I'm just going by observation here, but it seems that the migration into denser areas and away from suburbs has been far more significant than any increase in carpooling. I suppose consumers can reduce their fuel expenditure however they want when oil starts declining, but I suspect carpooling won't be a popular option.

I don't think it is correct to say there is a migration away from suburbs to denser areas. The country's population is growing constantly from immigration. People are migrating from other poorer countries into our denser areas. So the process isn't green at all, as the environmentalists like to think when they see another high-rise residential unit go up, as the migrants start using much more fossil fuels and other resources, post-migration. The other thing is that the suburbs have filled in. If you want to build houses now in these major metropolitan areas you are building an hour and a half drive away. So then the building becomes "infill" to house the new migrants. And "infill" is easier to do in dense cities because it already is overcrowded, so more overcrowding is less noticed.

[tom_s2]

GHung,

Our way of life is non-negotiable

Also, I should point out that in my interactions with economic decision-makers in corporations, they don't take that kind of thing seriously. They don't take it any more seriously than you do. I think Dick Cheney said that, and it's prolly just political stuff to whip up the electorate.

People who make decisions at airlines and ocean shipping companies are obsessed with when oil will become more expensive. In fact, there are significant sectors of the economy (like futures markets), which exist solely to predict when various resources will get more expensive. Those are the evil "speculators" that everyone talks about, whenever prices increase.

Of course, speculators don't really cause prices to increase. They attempt to anticipate an increase and thereby cause it to be sooner and less sudden. Speculators are performing a service, if they speculate well.

The "speculators" were the ones who started driving up oil prices, back in 2006. They drove up prices a couple of years before it would have happened otherwise. They apparently thought our way of life was negotiable.

-Tom S

[vtsnowedin]

Back to slow steaming for a bit. I found an article from back in 2009 where shippers were slowing their tankers from 15 down to 10 knots. This dropped fuel consumption from 90 to 25 metric tons of bunker oil a day. At today's prices $550/tonne that is $35 ,000 a day savings. Of course if prices are falling and your cargo is oil you want to get it to market as soon as possible if it isn't already under contract.
I remember the "Rumors" of full tankers circling over the horizon back in the seventies waiting for the price to go up.