Living Like Ed by Ed Jr. (whitelam books .txt) 📗

And in a city like L.A., the bus system carries nineteen times as many passengers as the light-rail system.

So the city’s transportation system is like a big-city hospital. Most of the work is done with sutures and tongue depressors and thermometers, the basic tools. The bus system is part of that basic infrastructure.

But you still need a big MRI unit, too! And that’s the subway or the light-rail system. It’s another important tool in the transportation toolbox. We still need to get people off the roads entirely, not just create more bus lanes.

According to the APTA, throughout the United States as a whole:

• There are more than 6,400 providers of public and community transportation.

• From 1995 through 2006, public transportation ridership increased 30 percent, while the U.S. population increased only 12 percent. During the same period, use of U.S. highways increased only 24 percent—less than the growth rate for public transportation. That’s good news.

• In 2006, Americans took 10.1 billion trips on public transportation, the highest ridership level in forty-nine years.

Using public transportation is certainly a good way to save money, too.

Augmenting your driving with public transportation could even eliminate your family’s need for an additional car, and that’s a way to save real money.

Public transportation is also a great way to save fuel. According to the APTA:

• Public transportation use in the United States saves 1.4 billion gallons of gasoline each year, or nearly 4 million gallons of gasoline per day.

• That eliminates the need for thirty-four supertankers of oil to make their way to the United States each year.

• It also eliminates 140,769 local fuel deliveries, those big tanker trucks that clog our streets on their way to local gas stations, not to mention the wear and tear they exact on our roads.

Public transportation also reduces traffic congestion, which reduces travel time for everyone on the road. In 2003, according to the APTA, public transportation in America’s most congested cities saved travelers 1.1 billion hours in travel time.

All that public transportation use reduces emissions dramatically. When you compare its per-passenger mile against private vehicles, public transportation produces 95 percent less carbon monoxide (CO), 90 percent less volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and about half as much carbon dioxide (CO2) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx). Those savings really add up.

Electric Cars

There are times when I just need more flexibility than public transportation can offer, and on those occasions, I turn to my electric car. Some places are hard to reach via bus, light rail, or subway, and of course, I’m at the mercy of their schedules. Driving the electric car is also much more convenient when I need to transport a lot of stuff or heavy items.

Let me be clear here: By electric car, I mean a vehicle powered exclusively by an onboard battery pack. That’s different from a hybrid vehicle, which has both an electric motor and a gasoline-powered internal-combustion engine. When I say electric car, I mean 100 percent electric.

And here’s one of my favorite things about the electric car. As I’ve mentioned, I have solar panels on the roof of my house. The rooftop is a perfect place to gather energy, and that energy then gets stored in a battery system in my garage.

If you charge your electric car using any kind of green power—by using solar panels like I have on my roof, or by buying green power from your utility company (more on that in Chapter 4, “Energy”)—then your electric car can be a true, 100 percent zero-emissions vehicle.

Now technically, by definition, a zero-emissions vehicle creates zero pollution while it’s in use. (As in all things, there’s still pollution created in building the vehicle and in transporting it to the dealership, and so on.) But a zero-emissions vehicle, or ZEV, creates zero pollution while you own and drive it because it produces

• zero tailpipe emissions

• zero evaporative emissions (gasoline can escape from various parts of an internal-combustion-engine vehicle’s fuel system and evaporate into the atmosphere)

• zero emissions as the result of the gasoline refining process

• zero emissions as the result of the transport and sale of gasoline

Plus, an electric car doesn’t even have—or need—an onboard emissions-control system, which can go bad over time and allow further polluting emissions into the atmosphere.

So when we’re talking about green cars, an electric car is the greenest of the green. That’s why I’m a longtime believer in this technology. I bought my first electric car in 1970. Of course, electric cars have come a long way since then.

                  You know how dependent we are on our cars, especially in L.A.? Well, when Ed and I started dating, he would not get into a gasoline-powered vehicle, or only in the most dire of circumstances.

He did have an electric vehicle, but back then electric vehicles were not as reliable as they are today—and that’s putting it mildly! I remember going out and then running out of electricity many times. One time, we were going down the hill on Laurel Canyon and the car caught fire!

And then there was the time when I was in labor with our daughter, Hayden. Ed wanted to drive me to the hospital in his electric car; I said, “Oh no, we are not taking an electric car today.” It probably would have made it fine, but just the thought of running out of electricity with me in labor—no way was I going to take that risk.

Today, things are really different. Now, when we go out we always take Ed’s car. This electric car is great. I love it, especially now that gas is over $3 a gallon, ’cause we have solar power, so it’s like we’re not really paying to fuel the car.

I charge my Phoenix Motorcars sport utility truck using my home’s solar power.

AREN’T YOU JUST MOVING THE POLLUTION TO THE POWER PLANT?

Of course, not everyone has a solar power system that can charge their electric car. Most