Cabs Get 12 MPG
At least in Seattle, according to the city's vaunted Green Ribbon Commission report. As I've been yammering on about for the last couple of days, 12 mpg is needlessly bad.
For each taxi boosted to just 22 mpg -- the average vehicle on the road, roughly -- the climate would be spared about 570 gallons of gas and more than 7 tons of carbon-dioxide.* It'd be like taking a car off the road for good. It'd be like upgrading an average car to one that gets 140 mpg. It'd be groovy.
The city of Seattle regulates the taxi medallions. So one good step would be to provide strong incentives to switch to cleaner and more efficient vehicles. Requiring hybrid taxis -- which are in use in New York City and Vancouver -- might be in order.
Hybrid taxis, by the way, are rated at 36 mpg in the city. So the savings could be more like 800+ gallons of gas and over 10 tons of carbon-dioxide saved.* Multiply that by the 667 cabs in Seattle's fleet and it's starting to look like a serious climate benefit.
*My figures are probably ridiculously conservative because they're computed on the basis of 15,000 miles driven per year. Cabs almost certainly drive far more than that. In fact, the city's report appears to be using higher numbers. The report, however, doesn't make clear whether it's just some cabs that get 12 mpg or if that's the fleet average.
Is This Good?
Article in the Washington Post today about a 35 year high in American fertility. Apparently, we've once again reached 2.1 children per woman, aka "the replacement rate."
Here's what I found interesting:
While being a mother who works outside the home is far from easy for many American women, many experts said the United States is in many ways more amenable to the practice than many other developed countries. The high-octane consumer economy, for example, helps women run households more efficiently in a number of ways, including making prepared foods more widely available, and weekend and late-night shopping possible. American men are also helping more with their children than in the past, experts say.
"We also have a relatively high percentage of part-time jobs available," said Ronald Rindfuss, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina. "There's also more shift work outside the normal nine-to-five, Monday-through-Friday schedule that enables parents to share child care."
Alright, I don't have children so I probably shouldn't chime in, but does this bug anyone else? Are pre-prepared foods, late-night shopping, and off-hours shift work really positive developments for families? Or for the women who -- of course -- run households?
