Promoting Telecommuting During the Gas Dearth? 138
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?"
It's petrol, not gas... (Score:2, Funny)
Let me bring to your attention.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's hope there will be more of them soon..
Re:Let me bring to your attention.. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Let me bring to your attention.. (Score:2)
How do you figure? Liquid hydrogen has to be stored at cryogenic temperatures or under extremely high pressure. It also lacks the energy density to make transport by any method besides pipeline very expensive.
Re:Let me bring to your attention.. (Score:2)
The problem is not about the availability of energy, but the ability to exploit that energy in an efficient way. With fossile fuels we have to put in about 1 unit of energy to get 30 units back. But with many alternative sources of energy the numbers are quite different. Often it is more like putting in 1 unit of energy, and getting back only 1.5 unit over an extended period of time. In some cases we even haven't reached the break-even point. Often a
Re: (Score:2)
Why hydrogen (Score:2)
Re:Let me bring to your attention.. (Score:2)
It's not a solution to the energy crisis because there is no energy crisis. We have plenty of energy, and will do for many millenia. There's an oil crisis, of sorts, and that's what this is a solution to.
No energy crisis? Is that why the cost of my natural gas has doubled in the last two years?
Re: (Score:2)
High! (Score:2)
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.
Re:High! (Score:2)
I have worked at home for 6 of the past 10 years, and been able to telecommute for some part of those other 4 years. I am enjoying the limited impact this has on my expenses as compared to years ago when I was driving 62-miles one-way to work. For the last 6 months or so of that (in 2000) I was getting 30-31mpg in my vehicle.
Re:High! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:High! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:High! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:High! (Score:2)
Re:High! (Score:2)
Re:High! (Score:2)
No. They've not noticeably reduced suburban sprawl (planning regulations & the "greenbelt" do that to some extent). As for mass transit, the last time it saw the necessary investment was roughly when Queen Victoria was still alive
Re:High! (Score:2)
The reason for your prices is not the same. If we in the US had to pay the huge taxes you do, i'd wager our prices would be even higher.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:High! (Score:2)
High costs (Score:2)
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...
Our company has a more traditional approach (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Our company has a more traditional approach (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Our company has a more traditional approach (Score:1)
Re:Our company has a more traditional approach (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Our company has a more traditional approach (Score:2)
They send us home without pay. (Score:3)
Maybe I won't be so productive (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Use a bike (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Use a bike (Score:3, Interesting)
Last week it was even 1.50 euro for a litre.
3.79 * 1.50 euro = 5,685 euro/U.S. gallon
1 euro = 1.22 U.S. dollars,
so I payed almost 7 dollars (6,94) for a US gallon.
I have to refuel my (small) volkswagen car at least once a week, currently I pay 96 dollars to fill it up (55 litres).
Bleh!
Re:Use a bike (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll never do it.
The highway, while straight, level, and well paved, is heavily travelled (to the point of congestion) by annoying suburbanites driving their SUVs and talking on their cell phones instead of paying attention to the road.
At speed lane changes with no turn signals used, no checks in the mirrors, no looking out the side windows. Stopping short at lights, making right (or left) turns from the wrong lane because they forgot to get into the turn lane, etc... I've seen it all on my daily commute.
It's dangerous enough in a car. I'd be nuts to try it on a bicycle.
Re:Use a bike (Score:1)
Could you take a slightly longer route through residential streets?
My commute is a wonderful 3 mile bicycle ride and my employer pays me for not using a parking space. I love bicycling to work, even in the rain.
Re:Use a bike (Score:1)
I moved to be within bike distance of my office, but it's really only feasable during "dry" season.
Cooler then anyhow. I'm not real interested in being sweaty when I
Re:Use a bike (Score:2)
Re:Use a bike (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Use a bike (Score:2)
Re:Use a bike (Score:2, Informative)
I live all of 5 miles from my office. I'd love to ride my bike (and have, two weeks last year and just finished about 3 weeks last month) but the "last mile" is the problem! It's all residential and pleasant until I get right near my office. I have tried every side route I could think of, and can literally see my office building 1/4 mile away across a field from the nearest side road. But between the tall grass, stickers and railroad ri
Re:Use a bike (Score:2)
Re:Get with your road commission to add a bike pat (Score:2, Informative)
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 p
Re: Use a bike (Score:2)
I'm pleased a bike works out for you, but it's not practical for everyone. Luckily, I can do my bit for the environment (and my peace of mind) by taking the train to work. Not everyone can do that, either, though. So cars are justified in some circumstances.
(SUVs are justified in far fewer, of course.)
Heh. (Score:2)
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.
Re:Use a bike (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
First of all, I currently drive my car maybe 5 miles a week, as i'm able to use the DC subway and bus system to get to work every day. Worth it in terms of saving on gas/insurance/car wear, but it does mean my commute time is probably at least twice what it would be if I just drove.
That said, it's gr
Congrats, However, you peddaling your ass... (Score:2)
Re:Congrats, However, you peddaling your ass... (Score:2)
I believe the question was "How is your company responding to the current situation?". Telecommuting is one way of dealing with the situation but you do lose the direct interaction with collegues. If you really must be at the office the most environmentally friendly and least reliant on fuel prices is a bicycle. Some companies even give their employees benefits to encourage the use of bicycles.
The sad thing about all this
A few simple suggestions (Score:3, Insightful)
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 .
Re:A few simple suggestions (Score:2)
Walk or cycle to work :get some exercise whilst saving money and the environment
PEDESTRIANS, BICYCLES, MOTORIZED BICYCLES, NON-MOTORIZED TRAFFIC PROHIBITED
public transportation : pretty much the same reasons as sharing a car.
Citlink Buses DO NOT OPERATE at night, on Sundays, or on federal holidays. Besides, sometimes the only affordable real estate is nowhere near a bus route.
Medieval (Score:2)
That would kinda kick ass.
Telecommuting? (Score:2)
How is your company responding to the current situation?
They're making me stay at the company itself.
Location is a meat game (Score:1)
Wy only during high gas/petrol prices? (Score:2)
<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 a
Re:Wy only during high gas/petrol prices? (Score:2)
Re:Wy only during high gas/petrol prices? (Score:2)
But that mad me also think, what is the plan that the planners are trying to follow? Using gas prices, are they trying to minimise fuel usage, or minimise fuel cost, or maximise fuel company profits?
As you said, planners are influenced by things such as voters, and as people are more selfish than not, they would vote to minimise fuel cost before fuel usage. Hence you ha
Re:Wy only during high gas/petrol prices? (Score:2)
If you want better planning should you increase federal control or increase state/local control. I would argue that a local government can effectivly plan for efficieny of the system better than the federal governement. Of course given commuting as an example of a problem, the local government would never waste its time with buses etc that l
Re:Wy only during high gas/petrol prices? (Score:2)
I'd agree about less local and more state control, not sure about more/less federal control as I am only newly living here.
But as to local control I was in Pittsbu
Re:Wy only during high gas/petrol prices? (Score:1, Troll)
It's not the planners who are morons; they are far smarter than that, because they are able to do their job within the restricted budgetary framework that is imposed by the morons who are voted into office by a greater bunch of morons who don't want too high taxes and who are, for the most part, a bunch of crying NIMBYES.
Re:Wy only during high gas/petrol prices? (Score:2)
More accurate (and descriptive) terms are "reactive" and "proactive".
Re:Wy only during high gas/petrol prices? (Score:2)
Re:Wy only during high gas/petrol prices? (Score:2)
At the risk of going way off topic (it's never stopped me before) I would just observe that men do whatever they have to do in order to appear cool for women. Most men feel they have to buy a car because most women will think they are losers if they don't.
Obviously, the
Re:Wy only during high gas/petrol prices? (Score:2)
It's no mystery why the typical gas-guzzler is referred to as a "penis extender" by car salesmen.
Re:Wy only during high gas/petrol prices? (Score:2)
In your "feedforward" system, you mention that "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.". This will then result in the following:
Joe: Wow, riding my bike sure is great, I don't have to worry about oil prices! And my new hybrid car runs very smooth.
Bob: But hybrid
Re:Wy only during high gas/petrol prices? (Score:2)
Reduction of vehicle sizes with an aim for improving fuel economy.
It's an arms race. What happens in a collision between your compact car and a drunk driver's SUV?
Better than messing with DST (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Re:Better than messing with DST (Score:2)
If you call Bob and pester him to give you an answer or solution, guess what - it's no longer his day off. The same goes for meetings when you c
Fine, then (Score:1)
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
Re:Fine, then (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't the point of all this that you save money on gas? Why should your employer buy you a computer so that you can save money?? It's like if your employer says, "on friday you can wear jeans to work if you want to but obviously you don't have to." And then you cross your arms and stomp your feet and say, "FINE, THEN YOU BUY ME A PAIR OF JEANS!"
Uh no, if you don't w
Re:Fine, then (Score:2)
Most companies with telecommuting options actually provide a computer that is specifically for work (and for no other function) just so they know that the work will be done on, and stored in, a machine that they explicitly own. This prevents "misunderstandings" should the employee "find" some of his previous work on his home computer
Has anyone considered moving closer to work? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Has anyone considered moving closer to work? (Score:2)
I consider myself to be very fortunate to have a job that is only 5 miles from where I work. Not only is it a savings on gas, plus wear and tear on the car and a lot of time is freed up for my personal enjoyment rather than spent sitting in a car. Even the auto insurance is lower.
Living close to work is going to be the new American Dream I think. Right now it is hard when you have a job
Re:Has anyone considered moving closer to work? (Score:1)
Re:Has anyone considered moving closer to work? (Score:3, Interesting)
------------------
1.5 Hr time = $20.00
20 miles gas * 40mpg * $3/gal = $1.50
Wear and tear on a car $15000/5 years = $11.54
Daily commute cost = $33.04
Weekly commute cost = $165.19
Yearly commute cost = $8,590.00
$50k mortgage / yearly commute = 5.8 years
$50k mortgage / yearly commute = 14.7 years
Re:Has anyone considered moving closer to work? (Score:2)
Re:Has anyone considered moving closer to work? (Score:1)
But the urban life isn't for all of us, I'd go nuts if I had to live in a big city.
Re:Has anyone considered moving closer to work? (Score:2)
Once I moved from a rural town to a big city, my biggest problem was my frustration at getting stuck in traffic. I stopped driving, started bicycling, and I now I don't get stuck in traffic anymore.
Bad neighborhood (Score:2)
I would, but it is a bad neighborhood. If I lived in the same city I work in, my neighbors would not allow me to put up a clothsline. I would not be allowed to keep my classic car on blocks in the driveway while I rebuilt the engine in the garrage. In fact I wouldn't be allowed to keep my regular car in the driveway overnight (I wouldn't need it often, but something needs to get me to church or whatever)
My favorite trees would not be allowed in my yard (even though it is native to the state, while som
I walk to work... (Score:2)
My company's great (Score:3, Interesting)
They try to make peolpe carpool more. They encourage this by saying "go ahead, carpool. If someday you're the passenger and the driver has to leave early/later than usual, we'll issue you a cab ticket worth 20$ so you can return home".
But hey, I work for an environmentally-friendly company... We don't all have the same chance.
Totally the wrong question. (Score:2, Informative)
What do you mean during petrol shortage. Prices won't be going down significantly until demand drops. Here [caltech.edu] 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?
No Other Options (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:No Other Options (Score:2)
I might suggest that this trend will reverse if prices continue to rise. You're right that back in the days of cheap oil much of Americas infrastructure was designed around the car, but if the energy crisis continues to escalate (and it seems quite possible) more and more people will relocate or demand better public transport/bike facilities.
It will be interesting to see just how much worse th
25 mi/gallon == 10.6 km/l (Score:2)
Re:Car efficiency won't help you. (Score:2)
We're seeing that anyway, with "donut cities" - cities where the urban center is a hole (in more ways than one), but the burbs have the jobs and the people.
Considering that the burbs also have more surface area than the city, it makes sense in terms of long-term development. Cities have reached (and passed) their sustainable limits.
New Policy (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:New Policy (Score:1)
How idiotic.
Re:New Policy (Score:2)
Re:New Policy (Score:2)
Re:New Policy (Score:2)
Re:New Policy (Score:2, Insightful)
Policy Recommendation (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Telecommute? Hah! (Score:4, Funny)
Our own telecommute policy? We're not allowed to telecommute. Yeah, we suck that way.
Re:Telecommute? Hah! (Score:2)
Our largest customers? Big companies with large conference rooms at the office.
And our own telecommuting policy: "No."
Laughable, really.
By annoucing ... (Score:2)
I work for a gas pump manufacturer... (Score:2)
People motivate themselves (Score:2)
Gas prices are quickly stabilizing though, not sure how much longer the trend will hold.
Re:Call me offtopic, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Call me offtopic, but... (Score:2)
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.
Re:Call me offtopic, but... (Score:2)
Re:Call me offtopic, but... (Score:2)
They sell electric cars as well as modified cars for fairly decent prices.
Re:Sun (Score:2)
Re:Sun (Score:2)
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 y