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Promoting Telecommuting During the Gas Dearth?
Oren F. asks: "The President of AeroAstro, Inc., a small aerospace company, has begun promoting his employees to conserve gasoline during these times of high prices by telecommuting to work each day from their homes at least once a week. How is your company responding to the current situation?"
There's no shortage of gas - especially with all the sheep in New Zealand.
..this neat conversion company!
Let's hope there will be more of them soon..
High prices! Sheesh. You should look at the price we pay in the UK (and have done for a while now).
How about everybody stop complaining about the high prices and start looking at ways of saving the environment instead. It will work out cheaper in the long run.
"Forget it"
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
Then expect us to make up the difference in the shorter ammount of time we are at work.
Someone hates these cans.
I would love to work at home, but my boss prefers to have me in the office. If I'm home there's no way he check if I'm playing a game or something and I guess they prefer to see me slack at the office, since I don't have much to do anyway...
If I would have a lot of work to do I might actually not want to be doing that at home anyway. I've done that before and I know I have a way of not getting out of my chair until something is finished which tends to shift my eating/sleeping pattern etc.
Sample this!
I've been cycling to work for the last three months and it has been great. Some days I have to use public transport if the weather is really nasty but I am averaging about 80% of my travel by bicycle. Lots of health benefits, zero emissions, very cheap to run. I cover 12 miles per day, some hills but I hardly notice them any more and it only takes me 35 mins each way.
A quick calculation to show the current price of UK fuel compared with the US:
$3.00 per US gallon (seems about average)
£0.92 per UK litre (at my local Asda)
1 US gallon = 3.79 litres (1 Imperial gallon is 4.54 litres)
£1 = $1.82
therefore, UK price is currently $6.35 per US gallon.
The other day it cost me £5 more to fill my car than it had done three weeks previously when I last filled it prior to a trip to York. I dread to think what people driving big 4x4s are paying when my little 1.6 Alfa Romeo costs £42 to fill.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Obviously some of these are not always applicable , but where they are then they can be very useful . Both for your cash flow and the environment .. not to mention your health in some cases
:get some exercise whilst saving money and the environment
:not as good as walking , but when you're not in a position to walk to work this can help your cash flow and the environment
1: Walk or cycle to work
2: Share a car (Car pool)
3: public transportation : pretty much the same reasons as sharing a car.
4: working from home : The story does mention this , It is a great idea . You save the environment and money .
The Petrol prices here in Germany make me wish I had your Dearth . I always walk to work as if i didn't i would start creating a huge hole in my wallet .
People should be doing these things anyway , but a huge hike in Oil prices is a great way to kick it off .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I ride a bike these days, but I envision a future in which me with my billions will build a castle to house my company and all my employees.
That would kinda kick ass.
Direct away from face when opening.
How is your company responding to the current situation?
They're making me stay at the company itself.
Banu
Sadly we can't all work in computers. But that's half the reason I do.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
IANAE (I am not an economist)
<Begin simplistic economic rant>
This is a problem I have with a market based economy, conservation issues are only addressed during times when people take a personal financial hit. At all other times its "I don't care if my vehical gets 2 gallons to the mile, as I can afford it".
We should be aware at all times as to how much non renewable resources we are consuming in our day to day lives, and how much of an effect that consumption has on the world around us.
Note that I am not saying we should go ultra green an everyone telecommute, or ride a bike to work, or sleep under your desk. But I believe a more overall solution to to things such as transportation is preferrable to a private market based one.
In the case of transportation such an approach would help with:
1) Getting better public transport, which reduces private car usage
2) Construction of communities that actually have sidewalks, and hence allow people to walk places (I think that the lack of sidewalks is more a USA phenom)
3) Reduction of vehicle sizes with an aim for improving fuel economy.
4) Reducing the idea that a car is an extension of your psyche, so that you don't feel like you have to have your own personal car, and instead can share cars amongst people. This can mean either less cars per household, or more car pooling.
All of the above are just some things off the top of my head that I think could develop better with a central system of planning, rather than with a market based system.
Now you could argue that the market based system will act to implement all of the above points just as well as a planned system. However I will posit that the market based system is NOT the best way to handle things such as high gas prices.
In my view the market based system is a feedback system, while the planned system is a feedforward system. (In a very simplistic description) With a feedback system, in order to respond to a change in conditions, the system must allow a disturbance to occur in the controlled system before feedback can bring the things back to equillibrium. With a feedforward system, the change in conditions is anticipated and compensated for, before the disturbance has occurred, and hence the disturbance never occurs.
In terms of transportation, a feedback system allows the price of gas to go sky high, which hurts peoples pockets and forces people to find alternatives. With a feedforward model, people are organised ahead of time to avoid using excessive amounts of gas prior to the rise in prices, so that when the rise does occur, no-one notices it. In both cases the end result is people get to travel where they need to, but in the case of feedback, the have gone through the un-necessary pain of paying high prices.
Another more timely example is New Orleans, for the sake of not having funding in the 10's of millions in order to shore up levies, the authorities now have to shell out billions to repair the damage. Shoring up the levies is feedforward, repairing the damage is feedback.
</end simplistic economic rant>
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
A prius does not cost $50,000. My mom bought one a few years ago and it was just a tad over $20,000.
At the time though, I thought it was a silly purchase from an economical perspective as she only drives 7,000 miles a year. Even now, with the gas prices going up, it's questionable whether the cost differential between that and a nice corolla and the increased risk of abnormal maintenance needs is worth the gas savings. 7000Mi/y / 30 MPG = 233 G. The Prius @45MPG could cover the same distance in 156 G... so you only save 77 G. $144 ($2/G) then, $231 ($3/G) now per year. If you keep the car for 8 years and gas prices remain constant, your only looking at around $1000-2000 in gas savings over the life of the car with low mileage driving patterns.
That said, many people drive 20,000 miles per year, and for them, the 3x ($3000-6000) savings may be worth it or at least around the break even point.
I think my mom bought the car for its environmental friendliness and its coolness factor rather than any perceived economical savings. There are probably other much cheaper more effective ways to help out the environment, but one can hardly argue with the coolness factor.
If you are thinking about doing an engine mod to save money, you should run the numbers before investing $10,000 into your car. In particular, look at the expected lifetime of the car and your cost savings per year. Also, it might not be a bad idea to take into account the interest you could earn on that $10,000 over the lifetime of the car. Eg, if the life of the car is 8 years, and you invest 10K at the beginning, well, that 10K earning 10% interest could pay for $1,000 worth of gass per year ($1,000/yr / $3/G * 30Mi/G = 10,000 Mi/yr... and you get to keep the $10,000.
At least with telecommuting there is a definite, tangible energy savings, unlike questionable tactics such as extending Daylight Saving Time.
It would make so much more sense for an "Energy Policy Act" from the US government to provide assistance (via tax breaks or assistance) to companies to lessen the weekly energy consumption of their employees.
Allow companies to let their employees telecommute one day a week, for example. Or, help companies move to a 4 day week (10 hour work day, not every employee would have the same day "off").
These are simple actions with an instant benefit of 20% savings in energy.
Beyond that, the government could have linked federal dollars to adoption of "Dark Sky" ordinances at the state and local level. This would shave a few more percent off the US energy budget by getting rid of over-lighting, trespass lighting (light that unnecessarily spills over to a different property), and useless lighting (light that doesn't actually light anything - ie, heads out to space).
http://www.zapworld.com/
They sell electric cars as well as modified cars for fairly decent prices.
Pay for my internet connection and get me an equivalently spec'd computer for home that I use for work, and I will work from home.
As a software developer, I don't need to be in the office much of the time, although it is handy when large issues arrise that require multiple developers to deal with.
Just don't ask me to invest thousands to setup the same environment at home as I have at work. I try to program at work, but with a much slower computer, less comfortable chair, and only 1 screen ( I use multiple monitors at work ), it is less productive and confortable.
Asside from that, while the gas prices are high, they are not really that expensive, we spend more money getting our daily coffee, donuts, cigarettes, alcohol, cola, bottled water, junk food, fast food and other extraneous "necessities", even taking public transportation is more expensive, spending $0.30/litre more for gas and filling up once every few weeks isn't outrageous, just cut back on one of your other libations and you can afford to drive to work.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I keep reading and hearing complaints that people live too far away from their work to bicycle.
Well, maybe we don't all need to own a house and have yard. Maybe a condo with a nearby park would also fit your needs and you could live close enough to work to *gasp* walk to work.
Our idea of the american dream has pushed the market to create huge sprawling cities with inadequate public transportation. How much will that house in the outer suburbs be worth when gasoline is $6/gallon? Could fuel prices go higher than that?
I am living my american dream. I bicycle to work in 10 minutes, I don't even own a car anymore, and tomorrow I set off on 280 mile bicycle ride that includes a little over 4000 feet of climb in 3 days. Bicycling has given me a new sense of freedom. I lost 40 lbs in the first 4 months of bicycling and have kept it off over the following 6 months...how many SUV drivers would kill for that much weight loss?
By the way, how much does it cost for you to fill up that tank these days?
I keep forgetting to look at the gas prices.
you insensitive clod!
I write code.
They try to make peolpe carpool more. They encourage this by saying "go ahead, carpool. If someday you're the passenger and the driver has to leave early/later than usual, we'll issue you a cab ticket worth 20$ so you can return home".
But hey, I work for an environmentally-friendly company... We don't all have the same chance.
What do you mean during petrol shortage. Prices won't be going down significantly until demand drops. Here is a good explaination of the problems with oil supply and energy exploration more generally.
What kind of circumstances do you think will cause a drop in demand significant enough to cause petrol prices to drop to the levels they were at the turn of the century?
"...we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that." B.Spears 2003
Some of the European posters have commented about options such as walking, bicycle, or public transportation. If you live in a metropolis here in USA, then those are viable options.
I live in one suburb of a small city and work in a different suburb of the small city. My commute is about 25 miles one way, 95% highway, which burns about 1 gallon of fuel.
Walking or cycling are not options, neither is public transportation (doesn't go where I go).
The only other option is car pooling, which is nearly impossible with a variable schedule including meetings at other locations that require a drive, picking up kids at day care, etc.
There's also a growing trend here in the states of people moving further away from cities into rural farming areas.
So keep in mind that some Americans have vastly different circumstances. That isn't an excuse to drive some monstrosity that gets 10 MPG though.
Because of complaints about the high cost of gas, the CEO asked my manager to draft a work-from-home policy. He's a butt-in-seat manager that doesn't trust anyone. His new policy? You can work from home for a maximum of half of the day.
I work at a university which is pretty liberal about this sort of thing, but I can make a recommendation to any private companies that want to encourage it.
Assign a work-at-home day. If everyone picks their own day then you'll never have a day where everyone is at work.
Make the work-at-home day Thursday. My experience suggests this is the day that you'll get the most productivity at home. Definitely don't do it on Monday or Friday or work-at-home day will just be a 3-day weekend! (what do you think this is, France?)
Have an online meeting at about 10:30. Set everyone up with cheap web cams and just spend 30 minutes to an hour on an informal, "here's what we did this week" meeting. Those kinds of informal meetings are good for small groups anyway.
Use an IM client. It's much better than email or phone calls for quickie questions: "hey bob, tell me again what the param list is."
Require a followup email at 5:00. Even if it's just to say, "I've been working on this all day but I'm not done yet."
On the technical side, obviously you're going to need to let employees set up a secure tunnel into a VPN - not the main company network. They need to be able to get to shares on file servers for example, and to hit their machines via remote desktop, but they shouldn't be able to hit shares on their local machines.
All of that said, I really prefer to be at work. My chair and desk here are more comfortable. I'm also one of the lucky ones who lives close to work and I try to ride my bike at least once a week.
I work for a big telecom that encourages customers to get DSL service so they can telecommute.
Our own telecommute policy? We're not allowed to telecommute. Yeah, we suck that way.
For a while I drove 59 miles each way to a contract position, and most of it was on a rural interstate that explicitly prohibits unmotorized traffic for at least part of the way.
:-)
A bike would have been possible, but impractical.
Right now, I commute eight miles each way, but the roads in question are (1) lacking shoulders and (2) populated with Atlanta drivers. #2 in particular makes me scared enough to not want to bike.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
that they're going to close my building and make 1200 people commute an extra 90 miles a day.
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
A safer option would be a separate bike path. (Note, a bike path if possible, not just a bike lane. There are lots of good examples in the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden if a study visit is needed.)
Get together with some of the more articulate and polite bicyclists in your area, summarize the benefits based on research, wrap yourselves in a flag ;) and then contact you local road or transportation commission. It may take 3 - 5 years to get a bike path parallel to the highway, but it can be done. Anyone with more than a few brain cells can see that we're in for higher prices for petroleum-based fuels.
You'll have to call around to find the best contact people and may have to cultivate contacts on the zoning commission as well.
You'll want to point out the economic value to the region, including "quality of life" which makes the area more desirable. reducing traffic congestion, pollution, and traffic accidents are tangible benefits. Improved fitness of commuters reduces illnesses and increases their productivity both at work and in free time.
Be patient. It may be necessary to build up in many small increments. It's not a fast process, but once the gears are turning, progress will occur.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Being self-employed combined with the fact that my shopping cart uses no fuel whatsoever, I'm not affected -- although, the stuff in dumpsters is looking more like actual trash these days.
"You can drive out Nature with a pitchfork, but It always comes roaring back again." - Tom Waits
Get a better (more economic) car -- mine (GM Celta 1.0) makes 17 km/l (40mi/gallon) in the highway. Or, even better, if you only have one kid, a motorcycle: a Honda 250cc makes 29 km/l (70mi/gallon), which would triple your mileage with the same budget.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
...and look at the cost of a house... property... and a good many other things. How about the monentary values or wages?
Costs are not directly comparable between countries without factoring in such things... $3/L might actually seem reasonable in a country with where a happy meal costs $15, and the minimum wage is above that...
You live in a deeply silly community. The modern suburb takes the worst parts of city dwelling (the constant presence of other people, the absence of unspoiled nature) with the worst parts of rural dwelling (isolation from shops, impossibility of public transportation, impossibility of walking).
Suburbs have only been the dominant form of living for about fifty years. Before that, people did the sensible thing and lived in neighborhoods. One neighborhood alone was called a small town. A few neighborhoods next to each other was called a small city. Many neighborhoods together was called a large city.
Traditional neighborhoods still exist, either in isolation or stacked together. You can live in these places entirely without a car, and your quality of life is dramatically improved from suburban living.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism
http://kunstler.org
http://www.kunstler.com/
I would, but it is a bad neighborhood. If I lived in the same city I work in, my neighbors would not allow me to put up a clothsline. I would not be allowed to keep my classic car on blocks in the driveway while I rebuilt the engine in the garrage. In fact I wouldn't be allowed to keep my regular car in the driveway overnight (I wouldn't need it often, but something needs to get me to church or whatever)
My favorite trees would not be allowed in my yard (even though it is native to the state, while some of the allowed trees are not). They restrice my garden to useless flowers. (As anyone who has tried it knows, you cannot buy tomatoes or sweet corn, you have to grow it yourself).
Thus I live in an area what I can live a reasonable life, and work whereever I can find a job.
... you insensitive clod!
to work everyday really doesn't have a DAMN thing to do with the TELECOMMUTING question, now does it...
i'm pretty sure its lpg (propane iirc ) not natural gas (methane). Presumablly for safety reasons.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Banks don't pay 10% interest, but banks are a lousy place to invest your money. Mutual Funds tend to be a relatively safe investment which usually yield higher returns... of course there are no guarantees. My friend's family is investing in real estate. They just put down a $40,000 down payment and renters are meeting their mortgage + tax + insurance. This translates into $1200 per month straight into their equity and because of their set up, they're probably not going to have too many overhead expenses. So $1200 * 12 = $14,000 per year on a $40,000 investment... and that's not even counting the increasing value of the property. Higher risk, higher reward.
The best bank rates I see are close to 5%. That's long term cds. If you just put your money in a normal savings account, you're probably actually losing money because very few savings accounts pay interest matching the rate of inflation.
Seriously, if you're interested in investing, you should be looking into work options like 401Ks, maximizing your Roth or Traditional IRA contributions and in general maximizing your pre-tax investments. I think a book like Wealthy Barber is a good place to start. It's an easy read covering basics and it can be read in a couple of hours.
I don't usually see sadistic pleasure, just angry frustration that a given driver is impeded and sometimes endangered because he has a bicycle in front of him in his lane.
THe bicycle is going slower than traffic, invariably, and the person stuck behind him is getting passed by people, without himself getting an opportunity to pass the cyclist.
This means the driver behind the cyclist is screwed. Of course he's going to be pissed.
Doesn't help that in my area, there's a cycle trail 15 feet to one side of the road, but most cyclists (not me for damned sure) insist on riding in the street to be "Seen" and to show off their fucking gay spandex suits, complete with fake endosement logos.
Newsflash Lance. If you're commuting to get excercise and save gas, you don't need the attention. Just admit you're showing off, and go drink bleach.
When I ride, I'm getting from point a to point b. I have no interest in becoming a spectical or demonstrating to the masses how healthy and pro-environment I'm being. Give me the lovely bicycle trail that the local government spent so much fucking money on, which I never have to leave to get where I'm going, and I'm happy.
"activist" bicyclists do none of us any good.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
BTW the point of my other response was that even in a situation like mine where I have a fantastic network of trails, some assholes will still insist on riding in the street and causing drivers to consider all of us as a nuisance.
Honestly, why ride in the street when there's a trail running parrallel?
I've heard some guys go "I don't want to stop at every driveway/entrance"
Well golly gee. I thought we were doing this for excercise, at least in part. You're not running the Tour de France, so stop trying to be Lance fucking Armstrong on your way to work. Save it for the weekend when you're actually training for a race. And if you're not training, leave it out.
THat kind of shit helps nooone.
Sorry just frustrated that I live in one of the best locales for cycling via trail, and I have so many narcissistic fuckwads that insist on showing off in the street instead.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
That said, many people drive 20,000 miles per year, and for them, the 3x ($3000-6000) savings may be worth it or at least around the break even point.
Except the the more miles you drive, the more likely they are to be highway miles. If you're driving mostly highway miles you're better off with a fuel efficient regular car rather than a hybrid. On the highway, the hybrid system is just extra weight.
Life is too short to proofread.
It's probably LPG, yes. LPG is easier to handle: it can be stored at lower pressure than methane, and IIRC it requires fewer modifications to the car. It's also easier to get decent range with LPG than with methane.
Its drawback is that LPG is heavier than air (unlike methane) which can cause complications when there's a leak.
LPG became popular because it was a waste product from oil fields, so it's available cheaply.
LPG has been available for dozens of years. Natural gas has only taken off in the past few years.
Just wait a while (maybe 10 years or so) as prices rise and rise and then maybe the answer will be yes.
Hopefully the government will start giving tax breaks to companies that allow their employees to telecommute, since telecommuting helps out local businesses, reduces the amount of traffic on the road, reduces the number of people on public transport and takes a few million tired, possibly drunk froo the night before people off the roads.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
It wasn't too long ago that Auto Bild magazine drove a Lexus RX400 petrol-electric hybrid against a diesel-powered Mercedes-Benz ML320 CDI coast-to-coast across the USA. (http://www.autoblog.com/entry/1234000417056376/)
2 23&tid=133&tid=126)
The diesel proved to be more efficient than the petrol-hybrid, by more than 3mpg.
Perhaps diesel-electric hybrid cars are the way to go. Plus you could run them on dead cats (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/14/2355
And for the record, I work from home, only going into the office on average about 1 day a month. When I do go in, I usually carpool to the park-and-ride, take the bus to catch the ferry and then walk the rest of the way to my office.
Why not ethanol or methane? Both have been used as an alternative fuel for cars. They are much easier to handle then hydrogen, and if I am not mistaken, there are many ways to synthesize these.
- No schedules: all rides are on-demand, when the rider wants to go
- Non-stop, direct to destination: your PRT car takes you to where you want to go
- Grade separated, so no traffic jams, no collisions.
And we all know public transportation has benefits.I have found that over the past few weeks the local Park-N-Ride usage has skyrocketed. Few motivations are greater than one's own pocketbook. Some of them, presumbaly, will stay when the find out buses can be kind of nice.
Gas prices are quickly stabilizing though, not sure how much longer the trend will hold.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley