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Pastimes : Advanced Micro Devices - Off Topic -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (898)	3/13/2007 1:19:34 PM
From: pgerassi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1141

Dear Tim: I'm doing nothing of the sort. Sorry but, that is what you are doing. I'm doing no such thing. Question being asked is how long does it take you to get to work? Answes range from one minute (its just downstairs), 2 minutes (its down the block) and 5 minutes (the McDonalds near me or the local store or neighborhood school). None of those is considered a commuter. They don't go out of their neighborhood. They don't travel even 6 miles. Those people are not commuters in the normal sense of the term. Your statistics include them. So you are expanding the scope to anyone who doesn't work out of their home. And you even include those who do some work out of their home, but travel to the local office once a week or so (telecommuters). So by any definition, you expanded the scope from traditional commuters to almost all workers. Thus you are expanding the scope, period. that's a commute even if its a short one. No it isn't by traditional definitions of a commuter. NOtice the question uses "travel" and "not at home". There is no word about commuting. I'm not sure it would, more importantly where do you get the 25% rate cut? From the GAO. True but irrelevant. Where talking about commuters, so you have to include the non primary bread winners who do commute. Alright lets take into account those secondary workers who travel more than 6 miles which is the traditional definition of a commuter. That is still a smaller amount than your use of travelers, not commuters. The scope has been on commuters the whole time, and 2.8 hours is an outlier. Probably less than 1% of people have commutes that long, perhaps even well under 1%. That's your attempt to use travelers and not commuters. Using commuters, 2.8 hours is not an outlier for Chicago Metro, NY Metro, SF Metro or LA Metro. It might be for Harrisburg, PA. Highly likely for Nome, AK. "but at the most common registered weight for 4-axle single units (80,000 pounds) vehicles pay almost $3,000 less than their share of highway cost responsibility." Even if you charged them an extra $3000 per year in fees, tolls, and taxes, I don't think it would cause any massive shift to rail. It costs a lot more then $3k a year to own and operate a big rig. You need to check definitions first. A semi is not a straight truck with four axles. The only 4 axle straight trucks are either a dump truck or a concrete mixer truck. These rarely go long distance due to the nature of their loads. They also tend to be slower than semis. A "Semi" is a combination tractoir and trailer. The larger ones have five axles, one steering, two power on the tractor and two load axles on the trailer. They run 80K lbs and cost $10,000 more than they pay. The tractor and trailer generally cost $100K or so and they last about 10 to 20 years. They generate about $75K a year in revenue, so $10K is about a 13% subsidy. In addition, if the highways were maintained properly, the costs wuld go up about 20-40% (its on the high side of that because of the long term neglect). The GAO used about 10% rise for sustainable maintenance. That is how they get 25% of revenue. Now a rise of $19K in their costs effectively drops their profit to losses. The only way they could stay afloat is to raise prices. Easier because all LD trucking would be in the same boat. OTOH if your trying to argue that people will stop driving the current ones I don't really agree. Look at a Ford Expedition. Its a big SUV over 7000 lbs so its going to use a lot of gas. But its still gets 20mpg on the highway. edmunds.com Look at the cost to own figures from Edmunds edmunds.com Ignore the gasoline (that's using lower prices than your proposed $4/gal. So the cost over 5 years is $42,676 not counting gas. If it drives 12,000 miles a year and gets 20 mpg, that uses up 600 gallons of gasoline. Over 5 years that 3000 gallons of gasoline. At $4 per gallon that's $12,000. Expensive yes, but not a whole lot more than a quarter of the total costs. Maybe the driver drives a little less because of the $4 gas, but its unlikely to make someone who can afford the vehicle drastically cut their driving. Check the assumptions they made. 15K miles a year with 10K being highway and 5K being city. City/Hwy is 14/20. So the amount of fuel used is 857 gallons. At $4 a galon, that is #3,428 * 5 assuming no inflation, $17,140. And your example is a 60% cut in city mileage from the base without any thought for inflation. Mine is $4K in just 5 years. With 5% in inflation, you get $6K in just 5 years. Problem is that most don't keep a big vehicle like that for only 5 years, but use it for 15 years. It may change owners 2-3 times over that span, but the gas costs affect all owners and also effect the resale prices as well. Over that time, the higher gas cost requires $67K in fuel or about $17K in additional costs which is a larger slice of the pie. For that fuel cost of $17K, you could buy a small car to do most of the driving and it pays for itself in 5 to 8 years. That would be what many of the smart people would do. I think you exaggerated the effect of this factor. Over the long run the manufacturers will try to make a more powerful engine that will still give the car 37MPG, but people buying sporty cars want the power. Technology does move on, but what made sense at $1.50/gal, doesn't anymore at $3/gal. It is likelier that flex fuel vehicles are made. They get 37MPG at 130HP when running on gasoline, 40MPG at 110HP on diesel, 20MPG at 170HP on ethanol (E100) and 13MPG at 260HP when using methanol (M100). Your fuel choice determines the sportiness. Pete