Car co-ops: was Re: [sustran] intro

[DUNCAN WILLIAM MACKENZIE SHARP]

Dear all

I am inclined to agree with Adnan H. Aliani on the importance of finding 
sustainable and clean energy sources for vehicular transport as well as 
trying to reduce car use (particularly in cities). I too live some distance 
away from work (because I prefer to live in the countryside, and finding 
affordable property in this area is difficult and invariably results in 
having to live some distance from work), which means that car use is 
unavoidable since it is to far to cycle every day, and the nearest bus 
stop is several miles away. However, I am not sure about Adnan's idea 
of following the Japenese example of limiting the life span of cars to five 
years. This may be good for the car production industry, but I was under 
the impression that the majority of pollution produced by a car was in its 
manufacture rather than its use (given a ten year life span) - please 
correct me if I am wrong! In any case, car production uses vast amounts 
of energy and creates a lot of pollution, therefore producing many more 
cars with an artificially short life span does not seem sensible even if it 
does result in cleaner cars coming to the market slightly more quickly.

Cheers!

Duncan

**********************************************************************
Duncan W.M. Sharp
Centre for European, Regional and Transport Economics (CERTE)
Department of Economics
Keynes College
The University of Kent at Canterbury
Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NP,  UK

Tel: +44 1227 827946    Fax: +44 1227 827784
Email: D.W.M.SHARP at ukc.ac.uk
**********************************************************************