Please describe a domain or an area of opportunity that you’d like to use as the focus for the design of a PRODUCT that supports or promotes sustainable behaviors and practices for INDIVIDUALS in day-to-day use.
For this first design project, focus your thinking on:
- a PRODUCT -- something physical that can be manufactured, distributed, purchased, and potentially held in your hand or carried with you.
Please share your initial thoughts in a few paragraphs below…
The domain that I’d like to focus on is….
Transportation, whether it focuses on specific modes of transportation or infrastructure.
This area is important/interesting to me because….
In the United States, transportation accounted for 29% of 2021 emissions, which made it the largest sector for GHG emissions. It seems that many U.S. cities are built around car-centric infrastructure which causes this high emissions figure. If you think about the number of people that can be transported by different vehicles per amount of fuel required, buses and trains come out on top. Cars, while objectively more efficient when looking at fuel economy numbers, can only carry 5-7 people at a time.
Besides the area around Stanford itself, can you think of any places it’s easy to get to with public transport? I’ve personally tried to use public transport to get around the bay area, but it’s still impractical in its current form, even though California is one of the better places. For example, a 35-ish minute drive from SFO airport has taken me 3 hours by combined bus, train, and walking. On a similar note, I grew up in a very suburban city, Virginia Beach, VA, where practically everyone owns a car and it’s impossible to get around without one. We do have a bus system, but there’s usually a 1 hour interval between buses.
Colin’s Comment: I think about fuel efficiency every time I am on my drive to Stanford. Did you know that most emissions are un-necessary and avoidable? For most petroleum-fueled passenger cars, the most efficient mpg is around 45-55 mph. On highway 280, the speed limit is 65 mph which is just outside that efficiency band, but most cars are going at 70 mph or higher. Then there is stop and go traffic. I would also take a guess that EVs have a maximum efficiency band as well and it may tend to the lower mph such as city driving.
- Yes, I’ve noticed that too from my personal driving experiences. The efficiency speed band you mention seems to be almost always true for every vehicle I’ve driven and we don’t save much time going faster anyways.