Not on a bus.

In a bit of a twist, this entry is about where Adam’s iPod is not, it is not on a bus. Out of curiosity, I checked to see if it was possible to take a bus to work. My commute is about 16 miles one way, but like a lot of people it is from one suburb to another. Buses in my metro area tend to go from suburb to the center of the city. Those of us that have more lateral commutes, suburb to suburb, tend to be out of luck if we want to ride a bus. I don’t really want to; I just wanted to know if it was possible.

Let me first clarify that I have nothing against buses. Oh sure, like most drivers I’d prefer not to drive behind one. But aside from that they’re fine; I even rode them about a fourth of the time (five times a month on days I just didn’t feel like driving) when I worked in the center of the city. Aside from commuting to the middle of the city for people sick of traffic and crazy expensive parking, buses do tend to be a mode of transportation that most people use because they don’t have a better option. In these days of increasing fuel costs they also tend to be marketed as an option that conservation-minded and congestion-annoyed people should consider. So I considered them.

I noticed a bus each day going home, so I knew the route number that went near work. I’ve also seen the buses in my home suburb, so I knew the route number there too. Plugging these into the local metro transit website I came up with a commute that was shocking. I’d have to leave home before I usually wake up and the commute, about 40 minutes in a car (including a stop for coffee) would take over an hour and a half by bus, involve one transfer, and still require about a 10 to 15 minute walk at each end of the commute. The cost would be $4 round trip by bus, versus about $5.76 that I pay for gas (based on the .18 per mile my car costs to drive with gas at about 3.25 a gallon). So I’d save about $1.75 per day and loose over an hour and a half of my day to the commute, not counting walking and waiting time. Even if gas cost $5 per gallon, the savings of riding the bus is less than the cost of that cup of coffee I stop for. Given the route the bus takes, it would also travel much farther than my direct commute. Given a diesel bus I’d hope it gets better mileage than my gasoline powered ride, but factor in pollution differences and I’d call the ecological impact a wash. There are very few people who would choose this trade off.

In my musings on energy saving I also checked into what a scooter would do for me. I was impressed with how many people I saw using them to zip around Rome, at a time when gas there was over $5 a gallon (conversion rate applied) and there didn’t appear to be any place to park. They look like fun too. The smallest models (50cc engine, legally a moped in my state) cost $1,800 here and get about 95 miles per gallon. But those small models also have a top speed of 30 miles per hour (doubtful given my observations, maybe downhill with a tailwind). But doing a suburb to suburb commute would require some segment of highway driving in my neck of the woods and a 30 MPH top speed isn’t going to cut it (or even be legal if connecting to an Interstate). Larger models that can attain safe highway speeds cost over $6,000 and require a motorcycle license. No problem, except for in the rain and winter. Clearly this is an occasional solution at best.

So put a door and roof on that bigger scooter, add two more tires and you have a Smart Car. I saw these zipping around Rome too and they look like a lot of fun as well. If the US website is to be believed, the cars sell for $15,000 and get 35 MPG city mileage. Disappointing. My car gets about 18 MPG in traffic, with the air conditioning turned on. That means I’d save about 7 cents per mile in a smart car, and it would take over 200,000 miles for me to recoup my investment in the car at those rates. Put another way, that works out to 17 years of commuting to work if I worked 7 days per week. I don’t.

I guess I should feel good about all this. Clearly I’m doing about the best I can in terms of balancing energy efficiency, time, and money. I suspect there are a lot of us, and those are probably the folks I see on the road every day, doing exactly what I’m doing, driving to work.

Click here to Apply for Graduation

Just a quick update on the MBA.  Final grades have been posted and I have applied for graduation!  The most common question I’ve gotten this week: “You have to apply to graduate?”  The answer: yes.

For those interested in numbers, my final GPA was 3.86.  The entire MBA process took 76 weeks.  The most popular blog post in this MBA topic has been “Why does Wealth Maximization Sound like a Dirty Word?”.  The oddest search that found this blog (I think it is odd anyway) is “Fire trucks”.  The searches for fire trucks that end up at this blog are hitting a reference to the Washington D.C. trip when Adam’s iPod came about as close to burning up in a hotel fire as it is ever likely to get.

OK, if you are wondering; no, the hotel did not start on fire.  Yes, fire trucks were summoned.  Yes, we “escaped” down the stairs in the middle of the night— stairs that had been painted that day so everyone made cute little green footprints across the marble lobby floor.  We found out later that smoke was being pulled into the hotel’s ventilation system from a fire in a neighboring building.  Surprisingly, no one seemed too horribly concerned that the neighboring building was apparently on fire.  Even more surprising, the hotel opened the bar for some free drinks as a sort of amends for the inconvenience and (this is the surprising bit) there were very few takers.

Elevator Pitch, Last Paper, and Burning the Curtain

Technology Management Seminar in Decision Outcomes – Week 6 Weekly Summary

The class wrapped up with a couple discussion questions on elevator pitches and how best to communicate project strengths and weaknesses.  Elevator pitches are an interesting concept that is not embraced by nearly enough people.  The idea is simple; have a canned answer to the question of what project you are working so if you are asked you can answer.  The name comes from the fictional elevator ride; you find yourself on the elevator with the CEO of your company, you have his or her undivided attention for the duration of the ride.  What would you say?  The odds of that happening and you getting to use your elevator pitch is small, but the process of preparing one can be very helpful to gaining an understanding of a project.  Going one step further, internalizing the message of an elevator pitch can be a good personal test as to if you believe your project is really helping the business.  If you can’t even stomach your own elevator pitch, why would anyone else?  If that happens, it is time to find a new project to work on.

The last paper of the class pulled together elements from several previous papers, creating a big picture view of a project.  This paper focused on answering some fundamentals such as why, how, and what does it cost.  The “why”-section discussed the value of the project being proposed.  In a real world situation, this may be used to compare two (or more) projects that were competing for the same dollars.  The “how” section was a delicate balance of just enough information to make the project understandable while not going into too many details that would not be of interest to the intended audience.  The “what does it cost” section offered information about financing alternatives, hopefully enough to quiet nay-sayers who may agree with the concept but be pessimistic about the financing.

So the class ends.  The program ends too.  Now it’ll take a week or so for grades to post, then I can apply for graduation.  In the meantime I can take care of some of the side effects of putting off home projects for a year and a half because there was always homework to do (I think I’ll just burn my shower curtain), plan some home improvements (buy a new shower curtain), read a book (*NOT* a textbook), play a video game (or finish the one I started a year ago but felt too guilty about playing instead of doing homework), balance my household budget (no more pizza listed as an ‘educational expense’ because I didn’t have time to cook), and ultimately decide where Adam’s IPod should go next.

Thanks for playing!