Smart Cars and Traffic

Hey! Hannah, again, giving YOU the latest from the Team Chiron Research Lab: Rebecca found some cool facts on Smart Cars and How Much Would It Cost To Drive Into NYC.

(Source 1) http://auto.howstuffworks.com/smart-car2.htm

"The Smart Fortwo seats two with enough room in back for some groceries. It comes in a coupe version with a solid roof and a cabrio version with a retractable canvas roof. Each body style comes in three different models: Pure, Pulse and Passion. These reflect an increase in luxury features such as a leather-covered steering wheel, a glass roof, air conditioning and a better stereo system. Only the Pure, the low-end model, is available with a 50-horsepower engine. All three are available with a 61-horsepower engine. The Pure and the Pulse are equipped with the Softip transmission system. While technically a manual transmission, the clutch isn't required. Drivers shift with a tap of the shift lever, although some reports indicate this system creates lag between shifts. The Passion comes equipped with the Softouch system, an automatic transmission......Both the 50- and 61-hp engines [on the Smart Fortwo] are three cylinder engines, with cooled turbochargers. According to Smart, the 61-hp engine can go from zero to 60 mph in about 15 seconds, while top speed is electronically limited to 84 mph for the driver's safety. (Cars as small and light as the Fortwo become very unstable at high speeds.) In city driving, the Fortwo gets a reported 46.3 mpg, while highway driving is an even more impressive 68.9 mpg. The 50-hp engine accelerates more slowly, but the electronic speed limit is the same, and the mpg ratings are the same as well..."

(Source 2) http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/blogs/cars-transportation/smart-car-review-460318

"My daughters and I watched the Smart Center being built, because it's just down the street from one of the world's best pizza joints, Pepe's. A two-story car dealership with the showroom on the second floor? What were they thinking? It turns out the place has an elevator, and only a car as small as the two-seater, environmentally friendly Smart would fit into it...Curly-haired salesman Dave Koczak (actually a "brand specialist" who doubles as a college student) wandered over and told us some salient Smart facts. They're exempt from sales tax in my [Jim Motavalli] state (Connecticut). The fuel economy is 33 in the city and 41 on the highway. Smarts are ultra-low emission vehicles (ULEVs) by the California definition, but the window sticker is confusing on this point. The cars' plastic body panels are exchangeable and recyclable. The base model starts at just $11,590, but as displayed with options it was $14,410. The tricked-out yellow Cabriolet we also tried out starts at $16,590 ($18,085 as displayed).
It was pouring rain, but Koczak took me for a ride in a Cabriolet. It's no rocket: zero to 60 is promised in 12.8 seconds, and it feels even slower off the line than that suggests. Once underway it's sprightly enough, with nicely weighted steering, and there was plenty of elbow room for Dave and I. From the wheel, it feels bigger than it is, too, though getting squashed by a big truck was the primary concern of some of the would-be buyers we engaged.
Back from the cruise, the girls and I talked briefly to manager Emily Williams, a former event planner who has to be one of the very few women in their 20s running car dealerships in this sometimes-sexist business. "The cars are on the road now and they're living billboards for us," she says. "We're getting a lot of foot traffic. We just did a survey and 84 percent of the people on the waiting list [each paid $99] still want their cars, seven percent say they're not sure and another seven percent say they don't want to proceed."
This Smart Center will get 400 cars this year and undoubtedly sell them all quickly. With $3.30-a-gallon gasoline, hip fuel-sippers like the Smart are a hot commodity..."

(Source 3) http://articles.latimes.com/2005/mar/02/business/fi-zap2

OK, the Smart car isn't that smart.
The federal agency's fuel economy estimate for the Smart car isn't 60 miles per gallon -- it's 37, sort of like a Honda Civic.
At 37 mpg, the Smart would have the ninth-best rating in the EPA's rankings for 2005.
It would be in league with the much bigger Toyota Echo and certain models of the Toyota Corolla and Honda Civic and behind the 50-mpg gas-electric hybrids sold by Honda Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp.

(Source 4) http://www.evworld.com/news.cfm?newsid=16829#

Smart Car Demonstrates Hybrid-Like Fuel Efficiency


Source: Star Phoenix/Canada
Class: SYNDICATED NEWS

"...Because of its uber fuel efficiency, the non-hybrid Smart will most likely be eligible for a further $2,000 rebate from the federal government as part of the ecoAUTO program to encourage the purchase of very fuel-efficient vehicles..."


"...The new 2008 Smart fortwo is poised to pull off the automotive equivalent of a hat trick. Its first crown is for being the most fuel-efficient non-hybrid car. Its second distinction is, at 2.69 metres long, it is the smallest new car on the road in Canada. To complete the hat trick, the Fortwo is poised to lay claim to the title of least-expensive new car sold in Canada.
The first two have been in place for the last three years. But this year, Mercedes-Benz has dropped the price of the basic model to $14,990, a whopping $1,700 reduction from last year. The move might be in recognition of the strength of the dollar or the fact the smart will finally be available south of the border..."

(Source 5) http://auto.howstuffworks.com/smart-car1.htm

"...One of the major problems with very small, light automobiles is that they can be unsafe in a collision. The Smart solution is the Tridion steel safety shell. This hemispherical steel "cage" encloses the interior of the car and also forms the bulk of the Smart's chassis. A small energy-absorbing crumple zone at the front of the car lessens impacts, and the engine lives in the trunk of the car instead of the front. While a 1,500-lb. car will never be as safe for the occupants as a larger vehicle, the Tridion shell holds up remarkably well in crash tests. A 70 mph crash test conducted by British TV show "Top Gear" revealed that the Smart Fortwo's body remained mostly intact when compared to that of a conventional subcompact car. A sudden deceleration from 70 mph will cause injury of the occupants in just about any vehicle.
The Tridion frame also provides a distinct element of style to the Smart Car. Most of the frame shows through to the outside of the car. The rest of the Smart's body comprises replaceable, recyclable body panels. They are so easy to change that Smart owners can quickly change the color of their car when they get tired of one color scheme..."

How driving a car into Manhattan costs $160

(source Traffic 1) http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/07/03/how-driving-a-car-into-manhattan-costs-160/

"...After crunching the numbers, he [Charles Komanoff] calculates that on a weekday, the average car driven into Manhattan south of 60th Street causes a total of 3.26 hours of delays to everybody else. (At weekends, the equivalent number is just over 2 hours.) No one car is likely to suffer excess delays of more than a few seconds, of course, but if you add up all those seconds for the thousands of affected cars and trucks, it comes to a significant amount of time.
Many of those hours are very valuable things, especially when you consider big trucks, staffed with two or three professionals, just idling in traffic. Komanoff calculates (check out the “Value of Time” tab) that the average vehicle has 1.97 people in it, and that the average value of an hour of saved vehicle time south of 60th Street in Manhattan on a weekday is $48.89. Which means, basically, that driving a car into Manhattan on a weekday causes about $160 of negative externalities to everybody else.
Of course there are lots of variables here; for one thing, the externalities associated with driving your car into Manhattan go up with the total amount of traffic in the CBD. If you think there’s 5% less traffic in New York now than there was a year or two ago, for instance, the cost imposed goes down by 14%, from 3.26 hours to 2.79 hours. Or, to put it another way, if you could somehow implement a policy which resulted in 10% fewer vehicles driving into Manhattan, any given vehicle would impose “only” 2.38 hours of externalities — an improvement of about $43 over the base case.
Komanoff, of course, isn’t just analyzing the present, he also has a plan for the future. First of which, necessarily, involves congestion pricing. To drive into Manhattan south of 60th Street, you pay a toll: on weekdays, the toll is $3 at night, then rises to $6 for most of the day, and for peak periods (6am to 10am, and 2pm to 8pm) goes up to $9. At weekends, there’s a similar but smaller toll, at $1/$3/$5 prices.
Then there’s the subway fare: that too changes according to the time of day. At night subways are free; sometimes they’re 50 cents, and most of the time they’re $1. At ultra-peak hours (between 8am and 9am, and between 5pm and 6pm) a subway fare rises to $2, dropping to $1.50 the following hour.
One of the most interesting parts of Komanoff’s plan is the bus fare: always $0, all the time. That speeds up buses considerably, since it basically eliminates long lines at the fare box as people hunt for their MetroCard. In turn that makes buses more attractive, and a lot of people, attracted by the free fare and faster speeds, will start taking the bus rather than driving or taking a taxi or a subway. In-city commuter rail, on Metro-North and the LIRR, also goes free.
Medallion taxis do not pay the congestion charge, but there is a 33% taxi-fare surcharge. One tenth of that (around 3%) goes to the taxi drivers and owners; the rest (30%) goes to the MTA; the taxi surcharge alone raises enough money to make in-city commuter rail free.
Add it all up, and it’s pretty much revenue-neutral, says Komanoff: the biggest line items are that you lose $1.46 billion in transit fares, while gaining $1.31 billion in congestion charges. But total time savings are the biggie: implement this plan and New Yorkers get over $2.5 billion of time back which would otherwise be spent wasted in traffic. Vehicle speeds in general rise about 20%, and as much as 25% between 9am and 10am.
All in all (see the “Cost-Benefit” tab), Komanoff sees $5.3 billion in gains and just $2 billion in losses. Sounds good to me. What’s more, it’s politically more acceptable than the last attempt to introduce congestion pricing into NYC, where the brunt was disproportionately borne by Brooklyn. This plan puts much more of the cost of the plan onto Manhattanites, largely thanks to that taxi surcharge..."

"...Komanoff’s still working on this spreadsheet, but the main message is pretty clear — that smart congestion charging would be great news for New York, and probably for most other dense cities as well..."

(source traffic 2) http://www.helium.com/knowledge/103335-driving-and-parking-in-new-york-city

Driving and parking within Manhattan is an expensive way to get around. Use taxis, car services, buses and subways. Parking rules are complex, paid parking in mid-town starts at $8.50 for 30 minutes. Driving up and down town is usually slower than taking the subway, and traffic barely moves during rush hour. Masses of pedestrians, aggressive cab-drivers from distant places, triple-parked trucks, wrong-way bike messengers and the infamous "gridlock" require nerves of steel. Gas stations are difficult to find in Manhattan. Ride - dont drive - but if you must drive, here are some hints.

Visitors need to have a valid driver's licenses issued by their state or country of residence. International Driver's Licenses are not valid. The age requirement for driving in New York is 16 years. If you plan to become a resident of New York State, you are required to get a New York State Drivers License from the New York State Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
Drivers must carry auto registration or rental contract and proof of automobile insurance at all times. Drivers must have proof of insurance and liability insurance. Coverage must be a minimum of $25,000 for injury, $50,000 for death and $10,000 for property damage arising from an accident.
25mph in residential areas to 35mph on major streets. If not posted, it is 30 mph. Yield to all pedestrians, even if you have a green light.

Smile! :) Hannah