It's also the cheapest route to drive, as it's optimizing for lower fuel consumption: With insights from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab, we’re building a new routing model that optimizes for lower fuel consumption based on factors like road incline and traffic congestion. Provided that the few extra minutes aren't critical to one's wallet, it's a cost savings. For me those extra minutes…
> If I could, I'd usually choose the lowest stress route! Apple Maps sometimes features alternate routes that are "simpler" or with "fewer turns", which I think is a very nice feature. I'd rather not cut through small side streets just to save 1-2 minutes.
I've started to noticed "no through traffic" signs around my town on the side streets Google Maps likes to send people down. I'm not sure if Google Maps has updated itself yet, but I find that rather interesting.
The important paragraph that most people probably care about: Soon, Google Maps will default to the route with the lowest carbon footprint when it has approximately the same ETA as the fastest route. In cases where the eco-friendly route could significantly increase your ETA, we’ll let you compare the relative CO2 impact between routes so you can choose. Always want the fastest route? That’s OK too — simply adjust yo…
If I say to hell with the CO2 emissions and pick the fastest route always, will YouTube and Search direct me toward more climate change-oriented content? :-D
If we've learned anything from all of this it seems pretty clear that it'll start suggesting coal rolling videos and ads for a carbon fiber empty tube to replace your muffler.
>>I don't use Maps to express my environmental values Actually, you do. Your environmental values happen to be efficiency (Km/hour) trumps efficiency (Km/gram of CO2). You wish the software to continue to express only your environmental values. It is an activist stance nonetheless.
What percentage of the limited time in your life is worth what level of impact on climate change? Do something much more likely to be useful: implement a reasonable, even revenue-neutral carbon tax and stop with this non-sense.
This is complex and will vary significantly by person. But for anyone the answer is almost certainly non-zero. Even if only marginally. And the trend seems to be increasing.
The second part of your comment, seems to assume only one kind of action is possible. Others might say, great let's do both.
So they'll default to showing directions for biking, walking, and transit?
A pet peeve of mine is that google maps doesn't show most transit routes on the map. There is a transit layer you can enable, but it only shows metro and light rail, not buses, brt, trams, ferries, etc.
This is a problem with GTFS. Firstly, that GTFS has separate enumerators for trains vs. buses, and only shows stuff that identifies itself as trains, but also because most agencies do not provide route shapes that are good enough to display. Often the routes run right down the centerlines of roads, cut through buildings at corners, etc. There would have to be a revolution in local government agency GIS quality control before it works right.
How is the fastest route not the least carbon footprint?
It looks like part of the carbon footprint model is based on road inclines and traffic congestion. For example, a super-fast route that's up an extremely-steep incline on the way may technically be faster from point A to B, but would be less carbon efficient than taking a slightly-longer route that is flatter.
Driving a Chevy Volt (with an 18 kWh battery) makes you very aware of the different fuel-costs of different routes -- I very often have a choice of driving "over" or "around" small mountains (~hundreds of feet of elevation change, not ~thousands), and you can easily see the battery drop as you go up, up, up and it doesn't always recover much going down, down, down.
Google also explicitly says that it only does it when the ETAs are very close, so realistically, it will still be doing what you want. It feels pretty extreme to write such an angry comment about maybe getting a route than 1-2% slower.
Wasn't intended to be angry. It's more frustration that I used to love Google Maps, but over the years it just gets less and less useful. I can't see street names like I used to, for instance. Now I have to have the overhead of choosing a route, when I used to know that the default is the fastest. Sure, I can turn it off in settings. But at what point does this get to be Windows Explorer, where the first thing I do o…
The important paragraph that most people probably care about: Soon, Google Maps will default to the route with the lowest carbon footprint when it has approximately the same ETA as the fastest route. In cases where the eco-friendly route could significantly increase your ETA, we’ll let you compare the relative CO2 impact between routes so you can choose. Always want the fastest route? That’s OK too — simply adjust yo…
I get that you're being flippant, but I did have a coworker who calculated the carbon footprint of his commute for various modes of transport, including walking. He came to the conclusion that, given the average amount of CO2 produced per calorie consumed, riding an e-bike was actually the lowest-impact way.
I have read that cyclists who only eat beef generate more CO2 per mile than a hybrid car, though that presumably that ignores all the carbon cost of building cars and car infrastructure. Bikes are still better in pretty much every way. https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/are-meat-eating-cyc...
Even if this is true (I think it's absurd because drivers eat meat too), it doesn't account for the fact that bicycles are slower than cars, so people who commute by bike will travel (much) fewer miles per day than the average car commuter.
A carbon tax. If addressing climate change relies on people changing habits against their selfish interests, then we are doomed. The externality should be internalised with a carbon tax. It's the simple, most obvious solution and it will cause selfish interest and ethical choices to align when it comes to carbon emission.
I prefer a "green credit" to a "carbon tax". A tax will always be passed on to the consumer, even if the govt taxes Ford, it will just make the car more expensive. Using game theory, a question could be "how do we get Ford to make more electric cars, improve efficiency of electric car production, and incentivize them to advertise electric cars?" My take is that businesses drive change, not consumers. On the whole, co…
This is not making sense. Credit is necesarily coming from some place, that is in most likely tax revenue, so it is mostly in same as a tax but with more steps and smaller direct impact. Also not correct, some tax can often be absorb by producer. You are making wrong question: goal is for to reduce carbon not producing more electric cars. This is possibly meaning different mode of transport, some things maybe remote, bicycles, trains, others. Carbon tax is enabling persons to make decision about best outcome and create the minimal of economic damage. Our needed outcome is createing tax for cost of carbon capture for every ton made of carbon in atomosphere. In ideal, this become a method for which any business can starting carbon capture, can receiving a simpel certification. Any person is then capable of finding any other person for to do his carbon capture and then producing appropriate credit form for government. This has making of capture all carbon in eventually and also creating lowest price with insentive for new developing technology.