i've inserted comments below...

IS Edit wrote:

> Muriel,
>
> I find some of your questions interesting and as a society we should always
> question our strategic directions, economically, environmentally, even
> philosophically and spiritually.
>
> "But...the phrase "productive" heavy vehicles begs the question of what is
> being produced exactly that is the goal."
>
> Road freight transport offers a service that is available to all takers. Our
> cities and broader society could not exist without efficient freight
> transport.

i take it that efficient here means the thermodynamic and mechanical energy
efficiency of the truck itself, rather than the efficiency with respect to
output of necessities being situated at useful locations of spacetime and input
of petroleum.

without the kind of freight transport now used, it's true that cities and
society would look different.  but to claim that civilization requires trucks
would seem to require ignoring a great deal of history.

> It is up to society to decide what the acceptable costs of
> transport are, how clean, how noisy, how long, how tall etc. After all a
> truck is a product of legislation.

'society' is rather an abstraction, and typically society's decisions are on the
margin, and about small details. our political processes aren't really
engineered to talk about the direction of society's evolutionary road, as
opposed to not getting a flat tire or driving into a ditch.  i don't recall that
'society' ever had a discussion about whether 'it' wanted so many trucks
carrying around things like potato chips and soda pop or whether 'it' wanted
everyone to drive everywhere.  altho 'society' has been lamenting for several
decades now about sprawl-oriented development, no one seems to be able to figure
out how to get developers to stop proposing plans that cater to cars, local
bureaucrats to change the design standards, elected officials to stop approving
them unaltered, and banks to finance anything else.

> But road transport's efforts to function as efficiently as possible within
> the parameters laid down by society has nothing to do with social
> engineering. We are specialists that offer a vital service. Not social
> engineers.

i submit that the discussion about dsl's included many comments about driver
psychology, which may overlap social engineering.  also, accepting the existing
technology & paradigm is a passive form of social engineering.

> Regards,
> Bob Murphy

Craig Fletcher wrote:

> Thanks Muriel, and to everyone contributing to the debate, it's been really
> enjoyable reading all the discussions and it's interesting to see the debate
> opening up somewhat.
> I appreciate the Big Picture point of view that Muriel has put forward and
> would like to respond to several points.
>
> In the context of "appropriate benefits" i'd definitely like to stake the
> claim that saving lives (due to death or injury) is of primary importance to
> me on the subject of DRL.  Perhaps we could start compiling a list of
> others, and a similar one for costs from this discussion group?

would a death or injury involving a truck carrying something such as garbage
bags (manufactured from nonrenewable fuel simply to be thrown away) be worse
than a death or injury involving a truck carrying rice and beans for people to
eat?  how can the actual results of using a truck be irrelevant to the
benefit-cost discussion?

> As for the wider context of costs, this list is really about discussing road
> use, and in particular road freight, so the option to discuss 'not' driving
> isn't one we usually canvass here.  That's not to say that i'm incapable of
> considering the issue, so please feel free to raise it, it's just novel in
> this forum and i'm not sure it will be given it's due consideration here.

i realize that i'm off topic, but the terms 'cost-benefit analysis' and
'economic efficiency' tend to bring out my soapbox.  and i do appreciate
everyone's indulgence.

> You also notice that the nature of what is produced isn't given much thought
> on the costs/benefits side here, but i believe that productivity for a given
> product is encompassing enough.  Details need to be considered on a case by
> case basis.  Whether it's grain, fuel, fissile material, milk or military
> personnel it's only "stuff" and if an engineer can come up with a way to
> expand the envelope so that more of it can moved in a given span of time
> then that opens up the "production efficiency".  Whether people need or want
> it to happen will be decided by those people, and the resulting form of this
> improved efficiency will be achieved by the discussion between regulators
> and industry (eg. Nuclear power is there to use even if we don't want it).
> As an engineer i won't decide a priori what should or shouldn't be produced,
> although i'm happy to advise a regulator on the negative/positive aspects of
> transporting in a particular manner a particular produce.  I'm not sure what
> DRL has to do with productivity, perhaps someone will discuss this?

the discussion between regulators and industry may have been hijacked by
political contributions.  i'm not sure drl's have a very noticeable effect on
productivity, however i am pretty sure that people rarely define the input and
output they are thinking of when they say "productivity."  and i believe that
making sure one can explicitly define this, and considering all the possible
phenomena that can be defined as input or output, is a very important aspect of
the economic discussion.

> As for the "consumption efficiency" aspects of engineering, i must take
> exception to "no one is paying any attention."  In the area of what we can
> control in vehicle design and structure of use we pay alot of attention to
> minimising consumption of resources, time, money, and energy because that's
> what people want usually.

what i mean by consumption efficiency is consideration of the amount of
essential consumption of food, shelter and clothing (needs not wants) that is
available for a given set of inputs.  another way of looking at it is to talk
about the number of people who can physically live for a week by means of the
given set of inputs.  the trouble is that no one makes a profit from the kind of
efficiency that forestalls frivolous products, except a thrifty family.  this is
not the kind of profit wall street wants.

> Some things are beyond our control and are in the
> hands of society to decide as a whole, and i can't see the point of
> discussing them here given that the vehicles are there now, on roads that
> are there now, driving produce that is there now.  The question is should
> their lights be on or off, and the consumption aspect relates to energy use
> and costs are they currently exist.  If conditions change due to
> environmental or societal pressures at some point, then i would think that
> the discussion will have to re-emerge governed by that future scenario (much
> to Bob M's chagrin i'm sure:-) ).
>
> And lastly, i'd like to know what that "minimum wage human powered price" is
> exactly, and how is it used?
>
> Thanks all,
> Craig

a reasonably athletic person, paid about minimum wage, would charge at least
$500 to generate (say on a bicycle generator) the amount of energy available
from a gallon of gasoline.  this is based on data that such a person can sustain
1/10 hp and on data about the heating value of fuel.  the rest is converstion
factors.

this is my rule of thumb for sustainability.  i like it because it gives people
a gut-level feeling for how cheap gas is and how far we are from living within
our ecological means.

.....
Steve Mueller
Denver, CO, USA wrote:

(except, perhaps, for muriel and others who apparently don't want us
to drive or our economies to grow).

i want driving to be a choice, not a practical necessity.  what's so great about
driving anyway?  it's only a means to an end.  it's really important to keep
track of ultimate goals.

and what's so great about economic growth?  from a theoretical perspective,
using a monetary measure such as gnp to evaluate how well our economy is doing
is like looking at the speedometer to see if you are going in the right
direction.  fundamentally, prices are based on our collective values.
discussions about price trade-offs are a way to avoid talking about our values
and how we want to prioritize them.  i'm not saying it's a waste of time to
compare prices, i'm just saying we should make decisions based on explicitly
stated values and not hide behind monetary calculations when we are choosing
social expenditures.

how can economic growth be sustainable?  only if the physical reality in the
world which is represented by the monetary numbers is in ecological
equilibrium.  the trouble is that money represents both physical and
metaphysical goods.  only metaphysical growth is sustainable.

muriel

--
The political-economic challenge facing California is real.
Every Californian needs to contact their elected representatives
to solve this problem.

Any resemblance of any of the above opinions to anybody's official position is
completely coincidental.
******************************************************************

The energy challenge facing California is real. Every Californian
needs to take immediate action to reduce energy consumption. For
a list of simple ways you can reduce demand and cut your energy
cost, see our web site at http://www.arb.ca.gov

Muriel Strand, P.E.
Air Resources Engineer
CA Air Resources Board
1001 I  Street
Sacramento, CA  95814
916-324-9661
916-327-0640 (fax)
www.arb.ca.gov