Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Commuting sucks, no two ways about it. It’s a slog, and a lot of us are saying to hell with it. A study of eight industrialized countries shows passenger travel appears to have peaked in 2003.

The study suggests demand for travel and automobile ownership has reached a saturation point despite predictions, by the International Energy Agency, of 1.5 percent annual growth through 2030. The researchers concede the findings are not conclusive but say they could mean projections of fuel consumption and CO2 emissions will be lower than previously believed.

“A major factor behind increasing energy use and carbon dioxide emissions since the 1970s has ceased its rise, at least for the time being,” Lee Schipper, one of the study’s two authors, told Miller-McCune. “If it is a truly permanent change, then future projections of carbon dioxide emissions and fuel demand should be scaled back.”

Schipper is a researcher at Global Metro Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and at the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center at Stanford University. He was joined in the research by Adam Millard-Ball, a doctoral candidate at Stanford. They analyzed travel trends between 1970 and 2008 in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden, France, Germany, Japan, and Australia. In each case they plotted the distance traveled per capita per year by car, pickup, bus, airplane, train, light rail, streetcar, and subway. Then they compared the data to the country’s gross domestic product per capita.

They found a correlation between rising prosperity and passenger travel from 1970 to 2003. But passenger travel stopped growing after 2003 even as GDP per capita continued to rise. Motorized travel has plateaued at about 16,155 miles per year per person in the United States, 6,213 miles in Japan and between 8,077 and 10,563 miles in the other countries.

“Since 2003, motorized travel demand has leveled out or even declined in most of the countries studied, and travel in private vehicles has declined,” the authors wrote in their study. “Car ownership has continued to rise, but these cars are being driven less.”

More than rising fuel prices are at work here, as the researchers say. They did not delve too deeply into the reasons why motorized travel has plateaued, but they speculate on several factors:

• Saturation in vehicle ownership. There are about 700 cars per 1,000 people in the United States, which is more cars than licensed drivers. The figure is about 500 cars per 1,000 people in most of the other countries. Car ownership in the U.S. has declined since 2007 due to the recession.
• Rising fuel costs.
• An aging population that doesn’t commute as often or as far.
• Traffic congestion. People spend an average of 1.1 hours per day traveling. Schipper told Miller-McCune, “My basic thesis is, ‘There ain’t room on the road.’”

The authors note that if passenger travel remains the same even as automobiles become more fuel efficient, reducing transportation emissions may not be as daunting as previously believed. They concede the findings are by no means conclusive and more research is needed but their findings should not be dismissed.

“The assumption of continued, steady growth in travel demand, which is inherent in many transport models and energy use projections, is one that planners and policy makers should treat with extreme caution,” they write.

Photo of Atlanta traffic: jandclindenbaum photos / Flickr

You no longer have to buy a General Motors vehicle to have OnStar in your car. If you drive one of the 20 most popular cars on the road today, you can slap an OnStar mirror on your windshield and put the famous “blue button” at your fingertips.

The $299 gadget provides all of OnStar’s core services, including automatic crash response, turn-by-turn navi, stolen vehicle location assistance, one-button access to emergency assistance and hands-free calling. It’s a brilliant move because several automakers are scrambling to offer in-car connectivity similar to what OnStar and Ford’s Sync have offered for years. This week alone we’ve seen Toyota and Hyundai announce their own riffs on those two successful systems.

OnStar enjoys excellent brand recognition, and 80 percent of consumers who buy a GM vehicle cite OnStar as a reason. But OnStar is trying to catch up with Sync, which has been hugely successful as Ford goes nuts with in-car connectivity. Beyond expanding its reach to other brands, the OnStar mirror allows General Motors to easily retrofit its older vehicles, something customers have long requested.

“This move into the consumer electronics space represents the biggest development in our business model since introducing OnStar as standard across all GM products several years ago,” said Chris Preuss, OnStar president, said. “It represents a quantum leap forward in our plans to grow our business and provide a strong new revenue base for GM and OnStar from which we can further develop our core offerings in the factory-equipped market.”

OnStar will sell the 23-ounce mirror through BestBuy (installation will run you $75 to $100) this spring and offer a range of services starting at $18.95 a month or $199 annually. GM says the mirror will work on 99 percent of the top-20 best-selling non-General Motors vehicles sold during the past decade, from the Accord and Altima to the Tacoma and Town & Country. GM says that includes about 55 million cars and trucks, and more models will be added soon.

OnStar currently has more than 6 million customers and expanded into China a little more than a year ago. It also has expanded services to include features like Pandora and Stitcher in an effort to keep pace with Sync.

Photo: OnStar. Chris Preuss with the OnStar mirror at CES.

Lots of buzz today about RSS (dying or not dying).

If you’re not using it, can I strongly suggest you give it a try? I use Newsfire. Not sure the particular readers matters, though.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. It’s not particularly difficult to keep up with 200 blogs you care about in less than hour using an RSS reader.
2. RSS provides home delivery. Instead of remembering where to click, or waiting for a post to get all buzzy and hot, the good stuff comes to you. Automatically and free.
3. Subscribing to a blog is easy. Just click here for my blog, for example. In Newsfire, you can paste the URL of any blog and it automatically finds the RSS feed for you.

RSS is quiet and fast and professional and largely hype-free. Perhaps that’s why it’s not the flavor of the day.

Just when you thought the folks at Smart couldn’t get any more insufferably highbrow, with their pop-up art galleries and commissioned canvases, they’ve debuted a new iPad app that encourages users to debate “a history of great visions and visionaries.”

The “Ideas In Motion” eBook is part wiki, part 17th century Parisian salon. It features stories of visionary people and revolutionary events in 17 key areas, from fashion and architecture to politics and technology. Users can edit the eBook to share their own opinions, debate with other users or start a flame war.

The app is just another example of how Smart has appealed to intellectuals and bohemians (and those who wish they were). Two years ago, Smart created a pop-up art gallery in São Paulo, Brazil. Last January, Smart hosted an online art contest where users competed for the best high-concept paintjob. Our favorite example of “Smart art” came from Berlin artist Nils Voelker, who turned the Smart into a giant Logo turtle that drew out the sound waves from the car’s acceleration using it’s own motor oil. Meta.

Having sponsored the tastemakers of the present and future, Smart is looking back to evaluate the great achievements of the past. If they’re as passionate about world events as their cars, Smart owners may be the ideal participants in this endeavor: Only among Ron Paul supporters have we encountered similar zealotry.

“We want to use the new smart iPad app to create a platform where people can examine the world in a creative way, write down their views and share and discuss them with others,” said Smart boss Dr. Annette Winkler. “This will create a unique kaleidoscope which reflects the diversity of people and their ideas.”

Sounds great — but somehow, we doubt that diversity of ideas will include the Prius as a revolutionary idea in mobility.

Images: Smart

While it might be more fun to rant about broken online forms and systems, we can learn a lot from sites that aren’t broken as well.

Consider the Ibex store. Here are five things they do that make them successful online:

1. They sell a product you can’t buy at the local store. This is easily overlooked and critically important. Because it’s unique, it’s worth seeking out and talking about. Just because you built a site doesn’t mean I care. At all. But if you build a product I love, I’ll help you.
2. They understand that online pictures are free. Unlike a print catalog, extra pictures don’t cost much. Make them big. Let me see the nubbiness or the zipper or the way you make things.
3. They use smart copy (but not too much).
4. They are obsessed with permission. Once you sign up, you’ll get really good coupons and discounts by email. Not too often, but often enough that my guess is that they make most of their sales this way. 25% discount on a product just like a product you love–just before Valentine’s day? Sign me up.
5. They aren’t afraid to post reviews. Even critical ones.

No site is perfect, of course, and I hesitate to tell you that this one is. I’m sure there are glitches and your mileage may vary. But the checkout is simple and the customer service, while not trying to be Zappos, is pretty good too.

Penguin Magic, I just realized, follows all five of these rules as well. While the site is very different in look and feel (and has a different audience), they’re using the same principles.

The amazing thing to me is that none of this is particularly difficult to do, yet it’s rare. The state of the art of online retailing is moving very very slowly.