[sustran] cost to a city of a single say 3 km. car trip during the day?

[Eric Britton]

Thanks so much Alper.  

 

What I am scratching for is some indication of the "total cost" (including
externalities) of a sample 3 km car trip made in a city center in the middle
of the day - and sure with a cold start. 

 

I realize that there are a lot variables than need to be figured in (hey,
people have been working on this in various ways for more than three
decades, as Todd Littman's note on this points out so usefully), but what I
am looking for is one or more ballpark figures. Or some kind of qualified
range. 

 

Here is what we can standardize to, to get us going I hope: 3 km., cold
start, average speed (say 10 kph or so, which might give us time for an
"average" parking hunt).  In my mind's eye the whole thing will take on the
order of a quarter hour, one way of course.

 

Age, make and maintenance of car, meteorological conditions, altitude,
driver skills, city size, traffic conditions, and other such stuff will
obviously influence our number(s) - but it must be possible to be sensible
about this and use available data without someone having to do another PhD.

 

Here's my rough guestimate this morning to get the ball rolling on this: on
the order of a.5 Euros or call it two dollars. Not only that, I think this
may prove to be  a low estimate, but maybe with more input from all of you
who know better we can nail this one down.

 

It's an important number!

 

Eric Britton

 

PS. I know all of you know this - but the single most important blow we can
strike for sustainability and the planet is a carbon tax. Now, I am not
working on that (since I have chosen to concentrate my limited time and
resources our narrower patch), but that's the bottom line.  Believe it!

 

 

 

 

From: Alper Unal [mailto:alper.unal at gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, 11 October 2007 12:42
To: Lee Schipper
Cc: eric.britton; NewMobilityCafe at yahoogroups.com; john.shaw at dot.state.wi.us
Subject: [Norton AntiSpam] Re: [NewMobilityCafe] cost to a city of a single
say 3 km. car trip during t he day?

 

Lee,
I am not sure if I understand the question, are we comparing a 3km trip with
10km trip? Are we comparing a 3km trip with cold-start versus a 10km trip
without a cold-start?
For cold-start emissions, as you know it varies a lot depending on ambient
temperature, driver aggressiveness (letting the vehicle warm up vs. trying
to warm the engine up hitting the gas as they do it in Turkey!), as well as
the condition of the catalyst (we have seen a lot of dead catalysts in
Istanbul which were 2006 model year!). I did look at some of our
measurements and  the measurements say that cold -start (which is generally
assumed to be the first 200 seconds)  might emit about 20-30 times higher HC
and CO, twice higher NOX and 30-40 % higher CO2 (all in g/km basis).
However, as you know generally cold-start emissions are given as grams/200
seconds rather than grams/km since vehicle might be idling during this
period. 
Does this answer your question?
Best,
Alper