Highway Construction and Engineering Ethics
Recently I came across an article that commented on the fact that many state highway departments are still promoting increased road construction. Their motivation is reduced congestion and reduced CO2 emissions due to reduced idling during congestion periods. Even tree-hugging, CO2-hating states like California are promoting increased capacity at major arteries that suffer from congestion.The article made mention of the “induced demand” principle which was already identified by traffic engineers in the 1920’s.
Eye on Design: Hybrid Blood, Sweat, and Tears
In earlier columns, I have discussed various approaches and issues with Hybrid Propulsion.I have now had the pleasure of a number of years of experience with the design, operation, upgrade, modification, and maintenance of ship (and car) hybrid propulsion systems and may be able to make a claim of gradually becoming a little less confused.It is still not easy, but at the same time, I am starting to see a few shortcuts that make it less likely that a beautiful vision of marine efficiency ends up being beached somewhere.In essence, they are variants of the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle.
When Efficiency Does Not Help Sustainability
My brother and I had a discussion about methanol where we concluded that methanol is a promising sustainable liquid fuel for transportation devices when batteries cannot do the job. While Methanol is initially not carbon zero, as long as we focus on developing zero carbon electrical energy, eventually we can produce zero carbon green methanol. Once there is plentiful green methanol, existing methanol vehicles will automatically become zero carbon transportation.The core argument…
