Recently I heard a
fascinating fact on the radio: a train can carry a one pound head of lettuce 3,000
miles from where it is grown in California to New Jersey on 3 tablespoons of
oil. I checked this with my chemist
friend George, a real railroad buff, and he says that’s about right. So what else can you do with 3 tablespoons of
oil?
What if that train had to
carry you along with the lettuce. Instead of 1 pound that’s 101-201 pounds,
which means you would only get 15 – 30 miles, so you wouldn’t get out of
California on that little oil.
What if the train had to take
your car along too, now you’re up to 3,101 – 6,201 pounds which means you would
only get ½ - 1 mile, so you wouldn’t even get out of the lettuce field.
If you go to the store in
your car to pick up the 1 pound head of lettuce, 3 tablespoons of oil would
only get you ¼ mile, so your car wouldn’t even get out of the grocery store parking
lot where you bought the lettuce. By the way, my Chevy Volt would get me over a mile on that little oil. J
So we can do 12,000 times better
than your automobile. Isn’t that enough to get you excited about looking at new
transportation systems? It certainly convinced me to push ahead, and I hope you
will join me.
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