Canada to Offer Rebates For Scrapping Old Cars

Bruce Perens

Thu Jun 05 21:20:34 -0700 2008

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OK, I'd better work on that code tomorrow. I was a bit too burned out (another short Europe trip, 9 time zones each way) to do it today.

California also pays you to junk your old car.

Canada to Offer Rebates For Scrapping Old Cars

TykeClone

Thu Jun 05 21:36:05 -0700 2008

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1996 isn't _that_ old for a vehicle!

My main vehicle is a 1996 s10 blazer and it has less than 100K miles on it and it should go quite a ways yet before it is time to put it out to pasture.

cars

zogger

Fri Jun 06 06:57:31 -0700 2008

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96 is also our *newest* vehicle here, an olds that gets 25 mpg and seats six with some squeezing and has a decent trunk. Of course, this is Georgia, meaning no salt rust from salting roads in the winter. I imagine in Canuckistan cars de-evolve quicker.

cars

TykeClone

Fri Jun 06 07:15:59 -0700 2008

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Most vehicles built from the mid-80's on seem to take the road salt better than older cars, but winter is very harsh on vehicles even in the midwest.

Deer are very harsh on vehicles too.  I'm teaching the oldest kid driving now, and always make a point to point out the "deer danger zones" in the area - there are many.

Canada to Offer Rebates For Scrapping Old Cars

Alan

Thu Jun 05 23:33:49 -0700 2008

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As a non-car-owner, I can't help but feel pissed off that car owners, after decades of polluting the air, are rewarded with a cash bonus, which they will put towards their next gas guzzling machine, while I, on my bicycle, face multiple physical and legal obstacles, and sometimes am physically threatened should I dare to use my bike to commute.

Just tax the polluting vehicles off the road. I hope Canadian cyclists are happy to be subsidising this.

Not all are car-owners by choice

Julian Brookes

Fri Jun 06 05:15:45 -0700 2008

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Maybe instead they can provide a job to those who would like to be non-car-owners but aren't lucky enough to be able to find work that doesn't require a car.

Not all are car-owners by choice

Alan

Fri Jun 06 06:25:54 -0700 2008

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Maybe instead they can provide a job to those who would like to be non-car-owners but aren't lucky enough to be able to find work that doesn't require a car.

You have a choice, certainly almost everyone who lives and works in a city does. You are free to buy and drive a car. I choose not to. I DO mind paying money to subsidise auto owners to fuck up the neighbourhood, the country and the planet. Everyone who commutes by car does their little bit to make public tranport less viable, cycling more dangerous, the planet more poisoned and their country more dependent on an unstable foreign cabal.

subsidy

zogger

Fri Jun 06 07:24:01 -0700 2008

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Note: I own bicycles, used to own a bicycle store, was one of the first (of a small handful) of prototypers for what are now called "mountain bikes" and am sympathetic towards bicycle transport. With that said, all the roads you ride on are subsidized by cars and the fuel tax, as far as I know, bicyclists pay zero towards road maintenance or construction. And we just need motorized transport, all the tangible "stuff" we use, city or country dweller, moves on rails or roads or by ship (we could get by without air transport just fine, that is truly a luxury for the most part). Trying to haul everything and produce everything with pedaling people power or animal power would set us back two centuries, it really couldn't be done to any scale. The amish can pull it off because of the infrastructure around them and by owning land going way back. City people can pull it of because of all the infrastructure around them that uses fuel err..fueled deliveries of goods. In fact, were it nor for fueled transport and a huge amount of people needed to keep that going, large cities as we know them could not exist, it woulkd be impossible to support them, you'd have to move back out into the country and be closer to the land and where 'stuff" comes from. There simply does not exist the pasturage to support the amount of draft animals that would be needed to go back to all oxen/horses/mules bulk transport for civilization in general, we simply don't have the land, it slap doesn't exist. Ex: It takes a minimum of five acres to support one non-working cow, if that beaste is expected to "do work" by being used as a truck or tractor you need to double that plus have adequate grains for energy. On pasturage they can get some of their grain requirements by eating seed heads off the grass and whatnot, but they can strip a field of that real fast, i am watching them do that right now in our fields, stroll around grazing just the grassheads. That will be gone soon, it isn't year round.

Although I really do need to do something along those lines myself for backup transpo, been sorta looking around for a combo buggy/wagon hauler and small woods working horse or mule. They are spendy especially trained. We have a large donkey but he was never trained to do anything but hangout and be some sort of pet. Right now he is the alleged "guard" for the herd against wild canid predators. Alleged.

I think this problem with pollution, etc, is being solved as we can see with the advances with hybrids and pure electrics. The fast oil price rises are spurring this on, it isn't pie in the sky anymore, and the techniques are "there". Right now today it is feasible to have an electric vehicle of some sort (home made from a kit most likely, off the shelf are still way expensive) and keep it powered via solar PV for instance for the individual owner, that and with renewable biofuels, especially if they can get that algae based stuff working well.

subsidy

Alan

Fri Jun 06 09:29:46 -0700 2008

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trying to haul everything and produce everything with pedaling people power or animal power ....

I didn't suggest that. I was talking about urban commuting. Don't put silly extreme arguments in my mouth.

you put the extreme there

zogger

Sat Jun 07 11:30:53 -0700 2008

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Including swearing at drivers/car owners. I was just saying some commuting is inevitable, and where it is practical, we *do* have mass transit and people using bicycles. Heck, I used MARTA off an on for 15 years in atlanta, I certainly did my share there, but sometimes I couldn't, just too many tools to tote to the job. That public transport or just using bicycles or walking can't be everything and everybody though, and you were painting with a pretty broad brush there. Your urban all bicycle existence is *heavily* dependent on a huge stack of other folks who all have to drive, and no sense denying it either. We can't all live in the city and drive bicycles, it just isn't possible. And some people have to work in the cities, and adequate housing for them all does not exist either, and that will just make the congestion worse even if it did, eventually even just all bicycles would be so much traffic jams the bikers would be the "road hogs" and "wasters of resources", just to build the bikes, as compared to a pair of shoes.

This urban utopia/mass transit/bicycles argument I hear all the time-it's in every single slashdot thread dealing with transportation and energy as well, it is a common misconception- is just not possible in modern sosciety and have any quality of living. Some people can do it, because a whole lot of other people *don't*, they get the heavy work done. All work does not consist of SSHing into some server from your laptop, as shocking as that might seem. I could go on at length to point out why, but it is easier if you just mentally figure out where just one of the things you use on a daily basis really comes from,how many other people and how much infrastructure and fuel it takes to support it. Just take bare necessities, your water, electricity, food. Extrapolate. No matter how you slice it, you still wind up with people having to commute somehow, we can't all live at work or a few miles away, just ain't happening, insisting it is possible is ludicrous.

Now I am the first to admit and have pointed out here many times that a lot of the commuting is stupid, because it is for office tower workers who type up various stuff for a living and quite easily could work at home over an internet connection. You'll have to take it up with the corporate bosses who seem to need those huge architectural ego towers with their logos blazing at night to the space aliens, I have no clue why they still waste so much time and energy on those urban energy hog buildings that are mostly unnecessary in the internet age, and insist their drones travel both ways 5-7 days a week to go sit in some cubicle or office and do the same stuff they could be doing at home, and saving a ton of resources and energy and causing a lot less pollution in the bargain.

No, I'm not an extremist.

Alan

Sun Jun 08 03:42:55 -0700 2008

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I was just saying some commuting is inevitable

I did not disagree with that. But now, in most cities, it's not "some" but over 90%.

is just not possible in modern sosciety

If you're talking about eliminating automobiles, yes that would be hard. (And again, you are arguing with an exaggerated extremist viewpoint that I don't advocate.)

But now, especially in the US, many cities' transport is almost 100% private automobiles. That is not sustainable. From the viewpoint of oil supply, air pollution, global warming, urban environment. If you don't start changing now, it's going to be harder every year.

You live on a farm, I don't expect you to ride a mule into town. I'm talking about cities. There many more people could easily use other forms of transport. Currently I live in Hong Kong, and only about 5% of people have cars, because there is a very dense urban area with excellent public transport (And it costs a fortune to garage a car, let alone run one.) And before that I lived in the inner suburbs of Melbourne, and travelled by bike, tram and train. There is a huge and very well financed lobby from the auto and oil industries to maintain and even increase auto use. Public transport and bikes however are sneered at and characterised as suitable only for the poor, or counter culture. Cyclists are often simply excluded from many road projects, despite billions in public money spent to build them, for instance.

Including swearing at drivers/car owners.

What is this in reference to?

Though after I've suffered verbal abuse, being spat on, having a horn blast in my ear, having things thrown at me, high-speed brush bys, being forced off the road several times, and other abuse, perhaps it's understandable I'm sometimes not really friendly towards car drivers.

looking at all the angles

zogger

Sun Jun 08 19:53:11 -0700 2008

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I see we agree on some things at least. I am way sympathetic to breaking our oil addiction and for coming up with better ways of transportation, including more use of bicycles, I still like them just swell, but right now, our technological existence is heavily dependent on independently powered vehicles that can carry more than one human and a sack lunch, and are free to adjust when/where they go based on demand. Like I said, mass transit already exists and is being used, when and where it is practical. That, however, is not the bulk of the planet, it is limited to the heavily urbanized areas which constitute a small percentage of the land mass where people live, and those heavy concentrated urban areas are not self sufficient in all the necessities of life, on the contrary, they depend almost entirely on others outside of the mass transit zone to function.

And the solution is not to move more people into the cities, it is to move them and the jobs they can perform now more efficiently back out. We got half way there with the rise of the suburbs, now we can go further if they would just cut loose better with telecommuting. reduce traffic, increase safety for everyone, a win/win no matter mode of travel.

We needed huge cities as centers of trade and commerce back before we had instant communication, we had to have the face to face aspect, now that we have instant communication electronically, the technical "need" for huge cities is dropping. People are *forced* to move to the cities, however, or live nearby and commute somehow, by extra ordinary high level political and business reasons (my giant ego office towers example-BELCHFIRE, INC, lTD!, or all those poor farmers being pushed off their lands to go work in sweatshops to make cheap electronic trinkets because they need a bit more "money" to pay taxes and such like and their small farms just don't quite pay enough, so they reluctantly make the journey to go live in urban squalor), but technically, a lot of that, especially in the more modern societies and areas is supremely artificial and could be done away with.

And there's a human psychological "green" factor, millions of people just do not want to live like in a 24/7 loud and lit up concrete beehive. Some do, it is a fact it is popular, a lot more do not however, they want some space and greenery around them, something a bit more tranqquil, perhaps even *owning* a bit of grass and their own garden and a few trees. In other words, to each their own, there is no one size fits all with living/working and transportation needs or wants.

subsidy

Michael Smith

Fri Jun 06 15:23:54 -0700 2008

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With that said, all the roads you ride on are subsidized by cars and the fuel tax, as far as I know, bicyclists pay zero towards road maintenance or construction.

I hear this a lot in Australia too, but the fact is that most road construction is paid for by normal taxes. Registration and fuel tax doesn't even come close to covering the cost.

I drive a 1994 townace van. It uses a tank of fuel every two months or so. If I owned a Porche I would pay a lot more tax money towards road construction. Should I do that to pay my way?

Looking around where I work I see a lot of people who are in such a bad physical state that they probably would not survive a real oil crisis. These are people who could never walk to the train station. They probably couldn't walk a couple of hundred metres.

Cars have converted a lot of the human bodies in my country into energy consuming blobs. We shouldn't be allowing this to happen.

This is completely uneffective

colin g.

Fri Jun 06 07:31:52 -0700 2008

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Take a breath, if gas prices stay high things will some day work themselves out.  Who knows how much damage we have done the Earth already.

Many cities outside of the US Northeast coast, public transportation may be possible but it is not really practical in any way.  It would take me 2 hours, vs 30 minutes each way going to work on the bus.  I am seriously considering biking, but 10 miles on heavily trafficed streets isn't my idea of fun.  I'm not here to debate the practicality of bikes and public transportation though.

The problem with this proposal is the $300 will go to people who have hunks of junk they rarely drive and don't need.  $300 isn't enough to encourage people to give up cars they use and need.  It is a waste of money to get cars off the road that really aren't there.  If you want to get polluters off the street, give $2000 coupons or tax credits to people who scrap a licensed and running car and also purchase a car newer than 1996.  Heck for the best effect, don't allow the coupon or credit to go to brand new cars (unless maybe it is electric, hybrid, or super fuel efficient).

You may consider this a waste of money, but it would be a highly effective method of pollution reduction.

This is completely uneffective

Alan

Fri Jun 06 09:32:19 -0700 2008

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If you want to get polluters off the street, give $2000 coupons or tax credits to people

Or tax them $2000 a year until they replace them. Or just declare the cars unroadworthy.

This is completely uneffective

colin g.

Fri Jun 06 10:18:33 -0700 2008

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Your way might be most effective in theory, but has virutally no chance of occuring in the US.  I think my way could happen if you have an economically savvy politician.

"almost everyone who lives and works in a city does"

Julian Brookes

Fri Jun 06 10:44:08 -0700 2008

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If you can manage to find both housing and a job in the transit-served core area of a city, and the job doesn't require you to haul stuff (note "must have own reliable car" in many job ads), you are lucky.  Please, let's not penalize those who aren't so lucky.

"almost everyone who lives and works in a city does"

Alan

Fri Jun 06 11:19:56 -0700 2008

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"must have own reliable car" in many job ads

Sure. The other 98% of office workers however don't have that excuse.

Canada to Offer Rebates For Scrapping Old Cars

Altacus

Mon Jun 09 07:56:36 -0700 2008

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I'm pretty sure that the amount of fuel used to scrap an old car and create a new car will negate any effective fuel savings for the world as a whole. 

There are much more effective ways of making a car more fuel efficient while lowering the emissions. O2 fuel capsules, fuel injector cleaners, clean air/fuel filters proper tire pression and conservative driving will do wonders for the wallet.  For the more adventurous do it yourselfer, try swapping in lighter racing parts, using forced air induction, and putting in a more fuel efficient gear box.

Granted, if its time to junk the old car, the new cars do wonders.  Check out a 235 mpg diesel truck.

Canada to Offer Rebates For Scrapping Old Cars

rubycodez

Fri Jun 06 04:33:47 -0700 2008

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anything that rolls is worth over $2000, and no sane person who needs a car to make a living is going to give up such a valuable useful tool for a mere $300.    I drive a ten year old car, it still gets over 33 MPG on the highway (camry with four cylinder and overdrive).  anyone offers me hundreds of bucks for my car is going to be walking away bow-legged from their wad of bills crammed up their tailpipe.........

Canada to Offer Rebates For Scrapping Old Cars

President4242

Fri Jun 06 05:51:34 -0700 2008

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OTOH- if Oregon was to do this, my brother has a huge collection of old pickups and vans he's love to get rid of.  Some running, some not, most haven't been licensed for off-farm use in over a decade.

Canada to Offer Rebates For Scrapping Old Cars

TykeClone

Fri Jun 06 06:25:23 -0700 2008

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With the price of scrap iron, he should be able to get at least $300 for each vehicle at a salvage yard already.

Canada to Offer Rebates For Scrapping Old Cars

President4242

Fri Jun 06 14:24:14 -0700 2008

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Yes, but the problem is in getting them TO the scrap yard.  With the price of gas, not even the charities are willing to tow them away, and they're not legal to drive on the road.

Canada to Offer Rebates For Scrapping Old Cars

TykeClone

Fri Jun 06 19:59:22 -0700 2008

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Throw a couple on a trailer with other scrap metal.  I'm not sure what the standard practices are out west, but when scrap iron prices are good, you'd be surprised how much can be recovered out of farmers' groves.

Canada to Offer Rebates For Scrapping Old Cars

The Baron

Fri Jun 06 05:53:12 -0700 2008

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In some parts of Texas, "Residents may be eligible to receive vouchers for $3,000 toward the purchase of a newer car or truck and $3,500 toward a hybrid vehicle from participating auto dealers. Up to $600 for repair assistance is available."

Income means testing applies.