Category Archives: Environmental

MARTA Rider

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The secret to enjoying MARTA, or most any transit system is to learn how it works and to accept that you are not in control. Once you accept that Marta runs on time tables, it’s actually a GREAT public transit system.

Midtown Station, A Marta Stop

My Station

Now that I am familiar with the system and have Google Maps (which is 75% accurate) and ride the same routes every day, Marta is super convenient for me (as long as I am on time) and I’ve even found that driving doesn’t make my trip to work much short, and almost always makes it longer.

At work (Lenox Station) the train comes every 15 minutes on the hour during commuting hours. After 7pm, it switches to 20 after. The train on the Buckhead line is set to reach Lindbergh 3 minutes before the the Gold line after commuting hours, etc.

Every year, the legislature and Marta advisory board hold meetings trying to use their limited budget, which basically always results in a price increase around the first of September. The prices aren’t bad – especially coming from me w/ employer paid and discounted passes – but until this upcoming fee hike, I can travel to and from work in ~8 minutes (station to station) for the cost of a parking pass.

What I have found very interesting though, is that Marta has their KPIs available on their web site. So we can see exactly what the target and actual costs per rider trip on a train and bus are. Trains are very cheap and busses are a bit more expensive. Here are some charts / stats from the recent month and more can be seen at http://itsmarta.com/kpi-home.aspx

Train Cost Per Passenger Trip

This is frustrating then, that they are increasing the “per trip” cost for trains from $57 / month  (or $2 a trip ) to $92 / month (or $2.50 a trip) as I take 40 total trips every month. This means that my per trip payment will literally be completely covering my short trip and subsidizing some of the bus ridership. All of this combined means that Marta should not have non capital expenses that aren’t covered by budget IF an equal number of people ride the train as the bus.

My experience also suggests that more people ride the trains than the bus. Everybody that I work with that rides Marta rides the train for their trips. One guy that has experimented with Marta road a short bus trip. When I started, I would ride the bus for 13 miles and then  ride another 13 by train. [ That bus was very much on time and often connected well with the train]

Marta Bus Cost per Trip KPI

Marta Bus Cost per Trip KPI

In the past 6 months, I have both hosted and stayed in the San Francisco Metropolitan area, this provides for some interesting comparisons.

  • Marta is cheaper – Going down a tunnel costs almost the same as driving in San Francisco!
  • Marta trips are standardized at $2 a trip ($2.50) San Francisco Bus trips are standard, train trips are not. [Ironic because the variable costs of bus trips vary more]
  • Marta data is better available online – despite Bart bragging about their API access and being in the valley – their usefulness on the train was limited.
  • Marta is Smaller, but easier to figure out. Two (and a half) lines seem to make it easier to navigate in Atlanta.
  • BART has express trains! I hope Atlanta will consider something for this.
  • BART has signal repeaters in their stations so that I had full 3g access all of the time on the train.

My First ZipCar Experience

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Zip Car

On Friday, I needed a car, so I used my recently acquired zip car membership. I had actually chosen a luxurious BMW 328 for my trip on Friday afternoon, but then…

My Car Was Gone

I was kind of afraid that this would happen if I used this service, and they have a pretty stern late policy ($50 in cost) and I had places to be and things to do! Instead I got a different car, parked across the street, a Ford Escape. [They also comped me a little extra time for my delay]

New Cars Are Weird

They’re so plastic, and cheap plastic. Thats barely broken in. Every time you try to adjust the radio you’re afraid that the button is so brittle and ceramic coated that it’s going to break. Also, I’m not a big fan of an automatic transmission, being able to actually control a car and feel a car is something I need. Yeah, I know, zip car isn’t for that.

No Android Support

I know, I’m counter hipster, but if you’re not going to support my phone with an app, at least let me access your web site (Though, I could get to it on my phone when I originally looked it up) so I had to call the number, OLD SCHOOL WAY, by actually calling.

Overall A Good Experience (4/5)

I extended my reservation quickly while I was enjoying a dinner – with a simple phone call that took all of 30 seconds. It got me where I needed to go, and really trouble free (and I had no worries about what Libya’s done to gas prices.) I think that I’m going to try my next trips in one of these. (When I can’t carpool and save the environment of course?)

Nissan leaf driving event

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Nissan Leaf Battery Platform

This morning, I got to be one of the first in Atlanta to test drive the all electric Nissan Leaf and it seems like a great car for the average Atlanta driver (even to forsyth county.)

480 Volt Charging

One new thing that I hadn’t heard about is 480v charging systems at major transportation / rest areas (applicable to me because I can’t drive to visit my brother in birmingham without 150 miles.)

Free Charge?

One concept is that vendors might give me kwh in turn for shopping at their store… but I shop at their store now and they charge me to park there…

Interior

My number one complaint about the leaf ( and Toyota Prius) is how much they try to reinvent the controls. The shifter looks like a can of coke and is not as obvious. I’m also not a big fan of one touch start.

The Q&A session included a great talk about sound dampening and reducing as much noise as possible. Without engine noise you notice a lot of things, aka wiper motors, wind from the mirrors.

That being said it was pretty comfortable. Not sport car bolstered seat, super leg support comfortable, but pretty comfortable.

The radio and navigation unit looked and felt pretty cheap. I’d much prefer rubberized plastic than hard shiny plastic.  It basically seemed hard to read and hard to use.

Why It Would Work For Me

As a waterski coach, it is awesome that half of a charge is to Cartersville, because that means I can get back and forth to the lake.

It would also be great for weekends, getting to the Highlands, visiting friends in Dundwoody or visiting some of my family up in Roswell.

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The Inside

Why does it not work for me?

So, while it would work for me 95% of the time really easily to have a 100 mile range; my < 100 miles trips are pretty low in volume too (aka, I drive my car about once a week, sometimes 2 weeks) and I want something extra in my car if I own it – like it being a good track car.

The ultimate in Green Hipster is still a big lifestyle commitment (living within walk / bike range of public transit and having work, city points in that range.)

Effectively, Zip Car should still be the green decision for last mile transportation.

And the advantage that my car has (that I can go to the beach one weekend or to visit my brother)[trips where I consider renting]  would be lost on the leaf.

Performance

They wanted to tout the torque, so yes, I floored it and squealed the tires some,  I also went heavy on the brakes and tried going lock to lock. The steering is about what your typical commuter car is, and the throttle is effectively the same. I really don’t like front wheel drive so it didn’t really turn right for me.

Also, like other cars, you almost have to activate the regenerative braking more than just letting it happen.

The other thing that annoys me about automatic tranmission cars that the leaf definitely did, is move without any gas.

The test drive

I felt kind of rushed to get in the car and get it going. While the co-driver did note to put a seatbelt on, by the time they explained the shifter to me it was time to go… and we ended up going on the road, so I needed to have adjusted the mirrors. Perhaps the worst part was the close spacing making it hard for me to actually test the brakes or accelerate really hard.

Netbooks :: All That You Need

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This is one of those simple allowance lessons that our parents taught us (what you want versus what you need) but also in reality much more useful than that because very few of us realize just how little computing power we actually need. This topic is inspired by a reddit post Am I the only one that is sick of seeing some company\’s new \”cheap linux notebook\”. I don\’t use Linux because it\’s cheap, I use it because it\’s powerful and I want a powerful notebook to go with it. regarding Linux referred to as a cheap solution when compared to Windows when in actuality, most of the same tasks are accomplished.

In fairness, Microsoft is pointing out that an operating system (design of the system) does not matter nearly as much as the cost and physical features of a laptop, which is my Microsoft laptop of choice is a netbook, because I have a realistic evaluation of my computing needs. See the Microsoft laptop commercial here. Microsoft Laptop Commercial on Youtube

So this should have you all thinking by now, what exactly do I use my computer for? Granted there are exceptions for those people who game, encode video all day with intense effects (and intense image editing), but for the most part, I think that most people use the following when using a computer:

  • Browse the internet
  • Email
  • IM/Chat (optional Video)
  • Office (Documents, Spreadsheets, Accounting)
  • Some audio / video to watch/hear news and entertainment

Now, I have news for you, older computers, computers more than 5 years old, should be able to do any of the things that I listed and I can prove it. My p3 732mhz (sometimes I speed it up to 1.13ghz or allow ondemand) can do all of those activities with hardly a hiccup… the most caused by Adobe\’s Flash that manages to use up all of the processing power it can get on my laptop and my desktop.

Here are the things that I want in a laptop… and those that I love most about my rugged IBM T23

  • Long battery life (I get 2 hours out of a 6 year old computer)
  • Easy to work on in the dark (I have an LED that lights the keyboard)
  • Lightweight
  • Ability to run Web/Email/IM/(Apache and MySQL for Dev Work)/audio/video
  • A Pointer style mouse (touch pads annoy the daylights out of me)

See, not too complex, and it does everything, with only a little bit of processor/video lag when multi-tasking!

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To beat my chest with GNU/Linux, I run Ubuntu on my machine with 512mb of ram. Ubuntu\’s repositories allow me to install and have programs running much more quickly and with fewer problems than other college of computing students and so I could often run things more quickly or more accurately that somebody with more than 4x the processing power and ram.  The other reason this is possible is because I enjoy the fun of compiling things like ffmpeg and my linux kernel, which, by the way, boots in as little as 32 seconds.

I think that having a more energy efficient processor like a multi-core or atom would be awesome, because it would exted my battery life and make switching between programs slightly faster, but in terms of what I need, I\’d really hate giving up my pointer mouse for that little advantage.

On that note, go buy yourself a netbook (with Windows or Linux) (though Windows will succumb to bloatware) because it will do everything that you need, fit in the palm of your hand, and have a long 8 hour battery life. And you\’re really not trading much unless you\’re doing genetic processing.

Of course, if you consider what you need and use less, it will be more environmental too!

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My Love Hate Relationship with Leveraged ETFs

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Leveraged ETFs have been the rage, the the talk of the town since late 2007 and early 2008. They seem to be the primarily tool of want to be day traders, and they can work for you too! But they have a darker side, a side that makes me feel bad about putting money in them, a side that may not be safe for anybody.

What am I talking about?

ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) are financial instruments that were designed by the SEC and various fund managers to provide low cost index following opportunities for investors. This means that management fees are below what a mutual fund would charge with no load and always a present value during market hours (unlike mutual funds that only close you out at the end of the day. ETFs by themselves can provide some layer of diversification in types of investments (but do not guarantee diversification.)

Then, invesco made the short and powershares family of funds that attempt to mimic a short position in the market, or 2x bull or bear the market. Naturally, other fund managers decided to offer similar opportunities and last fall the 3x bull and bear funds by Direxion came out.

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To list a few of these that I\’m active in:

  • FAS/FAZ 3x Bull/Bear of Russel 2k Financials
  • BGU/BGZ 3x Bull/Bear Large Cap Russel 2k
  • SSO/SDS 2x Bull/Bear S&P 500
  • DOG – Short DOW (GT Student Foundation held this for a while)

The Great

If you want to try market trend trading, what I would venture to suggest as a small form of short term trading very close to day trading, new and old users can get in these funds and track the trends. The market is headed up, great! Headed down, I can follow that too.

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But the Ugly

First of all, these are dangerous because they\’re mad volatile. They are even more dangerous to the novice because, they are not priced exactly, and have intraday prices marked the same way a stock does (bid and ask) only to be reconciled at the end of the day. So a 1% market gain could mean a range of 1.8-2.2% action in your ETF.  Then there\’s that volatility, you know, that index that rose through the roof as the market hit bottom last November, the 2% swings at the end of the day!

The Thing I Hate though is that these are effectively driving away the actual idea of investment. Options tracking an index have such a little positive effect on an underlying company that we are now just trading financial instruments that have an effect on the market… meaning companies like GM could be going out of business because they don\’t need capital because all of our investments are in \”financial instruments\” of options so disconnected from actual success. A bank could lose all form of market value because nobody is willing to invest in them instead of just trade their options.

I encourage you to look at your portfolio and consider that you put some of it in actual companies and not just financial instruments. Have a positive effect on capitalism, and hopefully through that, the world as leaders are altruistic with their gains. Or, by all means, consider some regular ETFs that invest in actual companies.

Learn more about these

  • here http://www.direxionshares.com/
  • http://www.invescopowershares.com/


Amtrak Review

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During my Recent visit to the Central West Coast, I had the pleasure to ride Amtrak on one of the most beautiful trips that I could have possibly taken from San Francisco to San Luis Obispo. It was great experience and I recommend that you look into finding a cheap trip near you. First off, my ticket was only $38, which at an expected car cost of $0.50 per mile including maintenance is much cheaper for a 200+ mile journey like the one I took. I met some fun people on train, had a delicious lunch, and got to sit in an all window car for 3 hours.

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The Problems

My train ride was not perfect or fitting for many scenarios. First of all, scheduling was a pain, http://amtrak.com needs to get with google to add the train to google maps. I had to manually figure out which station to station would be the cheapest and quickest on their website and also found out on my ride that there was a quicker alternative without needing to go through San Francisco and Oakland and instead going south on Cal Train from my lodging at Stanford.  The time involved, a three hour trip by car effectively took 5 hours on the Amtrak; trains should be able to go faster than cars (is 80mph really that hard to engineer for?) and not slow down like we did many times – get the schedule right.  There was also some drama on my Train as apparently two guys were cursing a lot and when a man that looked like me asked the conductor to get them to treat the environment with respect I was warned to watch my back by an older woman… I wish I would have told the guys to quiet down, but the whole situation should not occur on the chill train.

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I would highly suggest that everybody get more into the train and transportation systems, because it can be a fun and enjoyable journey. I experienced networking opportunities over a soothing ride in a lunch car with two Entrepreneurs and a student studying abroad. One thing that could help this happen is American Maglev trains that solve some problems – check out this new venture http://academicvc.com/2009/03/american-maglev/

I ride Marta around Atlanta a lot because it goes North and South along most of my travels pretty well, but Cal Train and Amtrak were fun new experiences.

I would like to see more trains going more places, with more people on them (hopefully some of this American Stimulus will help) because if people really start trying to enjoy their time they will love watching the scenario go by across from them instead of 10 miles up. Train technologies and conducting companies need to streamline their services though, offer faster service to more people at lower prices to more places. The Mag lev and other new lighter technologies are a positive.

On the other hand, current train systems get around 450mpg at cruising speed based on their momentum conserving ideals. What if the trains used batteries (instead of the dead lead weight that many cars have) to make their hybrid systems actually work a lot more efficiently.

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Saving on Every Day Things – Car Edition

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So as I noted yesterday in my post on Gold, I breezed through Dave Ramsey\’s book. I\’m also pretty familiar with his other financial advice due to members of my family also being very financially acclimated. Dave and Clark Howard both have a group of every day expenditures that they like to call the stupid tax.

Cars

I drive a fancy 20 year old Mazda RX-7, it\’s stylish and I paid for it in full in high school, and I come to the somewhat painful realization on road trips that maybe 1 in 10 cars is close to the age or older than mine. I think that the truth that reflects on societies is that my car is noticeably one of the oldest daily driven cars at most colleges and high schools, where it is typically safe to assume that the driver did not pay for the car outright and probably does not pay for the insurance.

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In his book, Ramsey has done the research that suggests that the average person with a car loan pays $376 a month, every month of their lives. I don\’t know about you, but that is absolutely shocking what people will do for luxury.

In addition to this loan cost, consider your costs of insurance, especially if it\’s an almost dead car worth hardly its value in steel, you will save a ton in not having (your fault) collision insurance. For teens, that can double the insurance premium.

Furthermore, when you finance your brand new car, it loses 60% of its value in the first 4 years as a depreciating asset that is likely to suffer damage and wear.

Dave Ramsey goes on to suggest that you should look at cars that are 2-4 years old and that the majority of millionaires own these older cars as their \”new\” cars. That warranty tends to not be worth it either. As an example, I was looking at cars this December and ran into a premium edition Infiniti G-35 with 50k miles for only $15k (the new ones were right around $30k.) Bringing me to a small and optional point Learn to Drive a stick… you might enjoy it and you will save about $2k on many cars.

The 14-20 year loans that some financing arms offer is the most ridiculous part though! I can\’t think of anybody who buys a new car and plans on driving it for 10 years… and you would still owe most of the loan amount at the point anyway. So when you sell your car 5 years later without GAP insurance you would still be paying for your own car. (By the way, at the Atlanta Boat Show this year there were $200/month terms for $35k boats over 20 years — which is equally as appalling – especially at the 7% interest they wanted to charge)

Market Wise we all know that GM, Chrysler, and Ford (U.S. companies) are having dreadful sales and I think that a lot of it has to do with the car industry overselling their products. The SUV has changed America, but people don\’t need or want to buy a new Suburban, Escalade every two years. And then thing about work trucks, like the F150, most companies keep these trucks for just over four years. But what this means is that there is a limit. GM Sold More cars than they had every sold before in 2007 barely beating Toyota. But there are limits to the  driving need, and unless GM can get that marginal cost down and stop depending on selling infinite  cars in the future then it will never survive in the long run.

I added this to the Environmental category as well because, well, getting more use out of the same 4000lb piece of metal is environmental. My car may not get 35mpg, but it gets slightly above 20 (very comparable to the RX-8), but by not buying another car, I\’m reducing the parts and minerals being used in a new one. I\’m also saving junk yard space.  Reemember – Reduce comes before recycle, so I\’m reducing and encouraging you to do the same.

Finally, I\’m going to make your kids hate me. Don\’t buy them a brand new car. Don\’t give them a car that is worth much or amazingly appealing. I used my dad\’s 1991 pickup form 2002-2005 that was won at auction from a company for a reduced price. It got me around just fine. It was pretty safe, reasonable looking, and I had my first off-roading experiences among with other in it. So, get that junker like they suggest in Transformers and let your kids figure out what kind of car is for them.  And remind them not to complain about something that they\’re getting for free (or on discount.)