Petrol Gate

Nigel Garrage wrote:

Did you really just claim that cars are the enabler of violence against women? 😆

It was likely a reference to https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/market-exploration-tackling-e...

Nigel Garrage wrote:

Finally a note on petrol - note the churlish "remain" nonsense, but where are the panic-stricken selfish areas? Oh surprise! London.

I wouldn't put too much stock in the reports that shortages at the pumps have been caused by panic buyers. There's only so much fuel a vehicle can take - and the panic buyers will have filled up their talks a week ago already.  Sure, some people will be filling up jerry cans, but most filling stations only permit 2 x 5L cans to be filled. The main difference with London, is that a much higher proportion of motorists will be taxi/uber drivers, delivery drivers etc, who probably use a tank of fuel every couple of days - most people in London don't own a motor vehicle.

jh2727 wrote:

I wouldn't put too much stock in the reports that shortages at the pumps have been caused by panic buyers. 

30 million cars in the UK, with an average tank of 60litres, lets assume at any one point these tanks are on average 55% full. (some competely full, some nearly empty, others equally distributed somewhere in between.)

Now if everyone goes out and fills up over one weekend thats 990million litres of fuel.

assuming those cars do an average 15000 miles per year at 9 miles per litre on average, the normal weekly consumption is 770million litres per week. So if everyone went out and filled up 'just in case' (aka panic buying) then double the normal weekly amount of petrol will be sold.

If in a normal week the same amount of petrol is delivered to petrol stations as is used, how long will it take the tankers to replace that 990million litres of fuel as people continue keep their cars topped up? As supply and demand is close to being equal in normal times it seems like it will take a very long time to recover. In fact recovery can only happen as people revert to filling their cars up once empty, instead of maintaining their tank as close to full as possible.

It would happen even quicker if people would reduce their unnecesary journeys.

incidentally the total capacity of all petrol stations in the country is smaller than the total volume of all car fuel tanks, so if petrol stations were on average 60% full, then everyone topping up over a weekend will cause all petrol stations to be empty.

But the biggest indication that it is fuel hoarding causing the queues and closed petrol stations is that traffic levels are not significantly changed despite the fact it is hard to get petrol. While in the fuel protests of 2000 roads were essentially empty.

Pedantry corner: if they're 55% full (on average), you can only put 45% of a tank in to them (on average). That makes 0.45 x 60l x 30m = 810m litres, not 990m litres. You seem to be putting 55% of a tank into cars that are already 55% full.

Also not really sure how you get to 990m litres being double 770m litres?

Quote:

recovery can only happen as people revert to filling their cars up once empty, instead of maintaining their tank as close to full as possible.

Well, recovery can happen as you reach the point where everone's tanks are full, because then, by necessity, they will go back to only taking as much fuel from the pump as they're using. The problem is that, as you point out, reaching the point where everyone has a full tank requires several re-fills of the pumps.

mdavidford wrote:

Pedantry corner: if they're 55% full (on average), you can only put 45% of a tank in to them (on average). That makes 0.45 x 60l x 30m = 810m litres, not 990m litres. You seem to be putting 55% of a tank into cars that are already 55% full.

Yes, that was an error, trying to concenrate on two things at once

mdavidford wrote:

Also not really sure how you get to 990m litres being double 770m litres?

Quote:

recovery can only happen as people revert to filling their cars up once empty, instead of maintaining their tank as close to full as possible.

Well, recovery can happen as you reach the point where everone's tanks are full, because then, by necessity, they will go back to only taking as much fuel from the pump as they're using. The problem is that, as you point out, reaching the point where everyone has a full tank requires several re-fills of the pumps.

I was assuing all the normal sales would occur (because people are obviously still driving around using fuel), and then additionally enough fuel would be sold to fill the typical empty space in tanks. so 760m + 810m (except where limited by fuel avaialbility)

Everyone's tanks are full, but they continue to use the 760m litres a week, and therefore buy everything that can be delivered, so instead of petrol stations being on average 60% full, they are now on average 10% full, which means a lot of empty fuel stations.

So, if everyone rushed out once, and thereafter revert to filling up only when nearly empty, things will get back to normal, probably in around 2 weeks as the time for the average driver to use a tank, BUT if people continue to top up early for fear of not being able to et any later, the present situation will persist as deliveries to fuel stations will only match what is being used, they do not significantly exceed that. Why would they? that would mean drivers and tankers routinely sat around doing nothing sue to lack of demand.

But if consumption is normal, and deliveries are normal, then you get back to the normal state of equilibrium, with the only difference being that everyone's driving around with a full tank. Even if a handful of stations then have issues because of driver shortages, that can't trigger a fresh round of panic buying, because everyone's tank is already full.

Nigel Garrage wrote:

Consumption isn't normal, it's been reduced because people are deferring non-essential car journeys due to fuel anxiety. So your point doubly stands, and something doesn't add up.

ho ho. I have seen no reduction in traffic levels on the roads.

Nigel Garrage wrote:

wycombewheeler wrote:

Nigel Garrage wrote:

Consumption isn't normal, it's been reduced because people are deferring non-essential car journeys due to fuel anxiety. So your point doubly stands, and something doesn't add up.

ho ho. I have seen no reduction in traffic levels on the roads.

From your friends at the Guardian: "The scarcity of fuel has reduced the number of vehicles on the road. Figures showed traffic volume down by six percentage points on Monday compared with the previous week."

Anecdotally, this reduction has been magnified further over the past few days as people are still having difficulty finding fuel.

6%, only 15 weeks to recover the situation then

Nigel Garrage wrote:

"The scarcity of fuel has reduced the number of vehicles on the road. Figures showed traffic volume down by six percentage points on Monday compared with the previous week."

Anecdotally, this reduction has been magnified further over the past few days as people are still having difficulty finding fuel.

Anecdotally this doesn't appear to have been the case on the roads around Shrewsbury. Would be interesting to know what changes people made to their driving patterns.

I had to buy some petrol on Thursday evening (put 20L in my modest 36L tank, the first time in 3 or 4 weeks). At the Shell on the A5 near Oswestry some of the diesel pumps were empty but they had plenty of unleaded. Salesperson said that they had been completely out of diesel briefly earlier in the week, since it is used by all commercial vehicles as well as many private drivers. The BP at the nearby Gledrid roundabout was worse, earlier in the week they had queues long enough to obstruct the roundabout and had to get the police there to manage the traffic.

I can't help thinking that a quota system e.g. £30 per vehicle would have reduced the scale of the problem or perhaps 'flattened the demand curve' somewhat. But it's the forecourt staff who would have to bear the brunt of the aggression and threats that some individuals appear to think is OK.

Simon E wrote:

I can't help thinking that a quota system e.g. £30 per vehicle would have reduced the scale of the problem or perhaps 'flattened the demand curve' somewhat. But it's the forecourt staff who would have to bear the brunt of the aggression and threats that some individuals appear to think is OK.

I'm not convinced this helps. If the rule is £30 only, then drivers will visit petrol stations when they have enough space in the tank to put £30 in, rather than waiting until near empty as normal.To allow petrol station stock to recover we need drivers to rvert to noral fuel levels in car tanks. Drivers will then also need twice as many trips to fill up, increasing the length of the queues. Possibily they will even drive directly between two petrol stations, or even just queue a second time. Last weekend I needed to transport my daughter to Durham uni, as my tank was nearly empty on friday, putting £30 in wasn't going to cut it, so I had to visit two petrol stations to fill up. This does not reduce queues.

Interesting the the aggresion of drivers in response to anything which hinders their ability to drive where they like when they like as fast as they like, is not OK, now it is not being directed at cyclists.

wycombewheeler wrote:

I'm not convinced this helps. If the rule is £30 only, then drivers will visit petrol stations when they have enough space in the tank to put £30 in, rather than waiting until near empty as normal.

Is what they've been doing this week 'normal'? I don't think so.

The cap simply means people can't put £60 in at a time.

wycombewheeler wrote:

Last weekend I needed to transport my daughter to Durham uni, as my tank was nearly empty on friday, putting £30 in wasn't going to cut it, so I had to visit two petrol stations to fill up. This does not reduce queues.

But the majority are not driving anywhere near that far, as discussed already. Many are simply panic buying but while doing so getting as much fuel as possible.

I wouldn't have bought any fuel at all if I hadn't been doing a similarly necessary journey to North Wales. I normally use my car once a week at most.

Simon E wrote:

But the majority are not driving anywhere near that far, as discussed already. Many are simply panic buying but while doing so getting as much fuel as possible.

I think ww's point is that if those people have set out to put £60 in, they're going to put £60 in despite not needing it, even if it means visiting two petrol stations and doubling the amount of queueing they do. Because people aren't rational, particularly in a panic.

Meanwhile, those who do need it are also unnecessarily forced to queue twice.

mdavidford wrote:

I think ww's point is that if those people have set out to put £60 in, they're going to put £60 in despite not needing it, even if it means visiting two petrol stations and doubling the amount of queueing they do.

Some will but not all. Because, despite the panic, plenty will put £30 in today and think "Sod that, I'm not queueing again. I have enough for now". The inconvenience of queueing a second will - for some, not all - outweigh the desire to get £60 worth of fuel. So those who do need it will noit have to queue for as long or find as many pumps empty.

Of course the most ideal option is for as many people as possible to avoid putting themselves in a position where you need to buy £60 of fuel at a time. If there was proper investment in public transport and provision for more people to use alternative methods of transport then this would be a realistic option for may more people.

But while so many bus services are woefully inadequate and expensive, trains similarly extortionate and cycling seen as dangerous then these options are often seen as not realistic.

Edit to add (from 2018): "One in three people regularly use the car for short trips that they admit could be completed just as easily by public transport or on foot."

https://inews.co.uk/essentials/lifestyle/cars/a-third-of-lazy-brits-use-...

mdavidford wrote:

But if consumption is normal, and deliveries are normal, then you get back to the normal state of equilibrium, with the only difference being that everyone's driving around with a full tank. Even if a handful of stations then have issues because of driver shortages, that can't trigger a fresh round of panic buying, because everyone's tank is already full.

if the petrol stations are empty at the begining of the week, and 760m litres are used, 760m litres are bought, and 760m litres delivered, how does the situaiton change?

A fresh round of panic buying should not be triggered because as you say, there is no enough sopace for the fuel to go into. But there will still be a pattern of empty stations.

Yes the cars now have full tanks, but the petrol stations do not.

It was reported that there was a 500% increase in fuel sales over the weekend when the shortages were first announced.

That assumes that there is absolutely no spare delivery capacity, rather than just very marginal. It also assumes that they're locked in to their existing delivery patterns, whereas in reality they will be able to redirect deliveries from areas and stations that aren't experiencing shortages to those that are. You only need to get each station to the point where it has just enough to cover it until the next delivery, not restore it to where it was before all this began.

mdavidford wrote:

That assumes that there is absolutely no spare delivery capacity, rather than just very marginal. It also assumes that they're locked in to their existing delivery patterns, whereas in reality they will be able to redirect deliveries from areas and stations that aren't experiencing shortages to those that are. You only need to get each station to the point where it has just enough to cover it until the next delivery, not restore it to where it was before all this began.

sounds very inefficient sending out part deliveries, just as long to do the travelling and pre delivery safety procedures but less fuel delivered. that will result in less fuel being delivered to the stations by the same number of drivers working the same number of hours.

Even if there is 10% extra capcity in the industry, it would take 10 weeks for petrol stations to be restored to normal as long as drivers keep their tanks full, while only two weeks if everyone reverts to refilling once the light comes on.

wycombewheeler wrote:

sounds very inefficient sending out part deliveries

But I didn't say anything about part deliveries.

wycombewheeler wrote:

Even if there is 10% extra capcity in the industry, it would take 10 weeks for petrol stations to be restored to normal as long as drivers keep their tanks full, while only two weeks if everyone reverts to refilling once the light comes on.

Well, that's kind of my point - the reason that it's persisting is not so much that everybody's driving around with full tanks topping them up the whole time, but that not everybody has managed to fill their tanks yet, and won't manage to for some time, even with more fuel being delivered than normal, so any excess will keep getting sucked in to cars that aren't full yet.

I'm not disputing that a more sensible resolution would be for everyone to go back to refilling only when needed. I'm just saying that a more realistic one is a lengthy period of oversupply to get to the point where no more will fit in to people's tanks. Because people.

More likely back to the powerstations.   You can assume that 90% of people with an electric car leave home with a "full tank" every morning.

Fortunately given the long lead time for new cars any "electric surge" will  mostly come after the winter is over, gas prices have dropped and the France-UK interconnector fire damage has been repaired.

On the selfish note I was talking to a lady at the weekend who is a friend of the lady who runs one of our local village petrol stations.  She's had fuel on and off all week - albeit with fillups limited to £30.   On Thursday she had so much abuse from drivers that she decided to shut up shop for a couple of days, even though she had petrol left.

This year seems to be bringing out peoples inner arsehole.

hawkinspeter wrote:

Petrol-gate certainly seems to be highlighting some people's selfishness. The slight shortage could easily have been managed if it weren't for panic buying of petrol and of course some people are driving around lots in an attempt to buy petrol.

I wonder if this is going to push more people into getting electric vehicles though that just moves the bottleneck onto electric charge points instead.

Indeed, there was no massive shortage, what there likely was a slight imbalance between delivery capacity and consumption demand.

One reaction would have been for everyone to reconsider each journey and reduce their fuel consumption by 5% leaving enough for fuel for everyone to complete their essential journeys

The other reaction was for drivers to fill up their tanks, immediately hoarding resources they don't need yet, denying those that do.

Guess which option drivers went for, you can only describe the reponse to the situation as a symptom of addiction. As always those most oppressing drivers are in fact other drivers,

not radical enivronmentalists (although I'm not sure preferring to still have a habitable planet in 50 years should be considered radical)

Not the government

and certainly not some cycling illumianti holding significant sway over those in power from behind the scenes.

There is no war on motorists, society is bending over to give drivers as many priviliges as possible despite the known and inevitable consequence on the future of the planet of the current rate of fossil fuel consumption. The debate seems to be around how quickly can we transition to electric cars, rather than can we reduce the modal share of the private car?

And yes I am a driver, so to some extent a hypocrite

I wonder if this is going to push more people into getting electric vehicles though that just moves the bottleneck onto electric charge points instead.

I have noticed these points getting very busy at Motorway services when i drove back from Inverness last month. Cars parked double and others appearing to be waiting. The trouble is most were initially added right next to the main entrances for ease of use and as a "reward" for paying to use them. So now it means cars are badly parked right next to main access for people. 

Why dont they go the whole hog and support drink driving!

Actually that's a good idea - for the road.cc commentariat - a bit like the "defend the indefensible" segment of "Fighting Talk". This could happen once a year or more regularly to liven things up. The rule is that you've got to play against type.  So I hope to see @eburtthebike banging on about why the government is doing a great job and that we should just let the politicians get on with it (Conservative ones ideally), @RendelHarris moaning about immigration and the prevailing "woke" culture, @nicmason trying to bring the temperature down and @nigelgarage decrying entitled motorists and telling everyone it's time to stop being polite and take action. And no squirrels or badgers...

Wait - would that mean I'd have to extol the quality of the research, writing, editing, and proof-reading that's gone in to the articles? Not sure I can get on board with that.

I really like the fact that there are adverts all over the screen (when I'm not logged in) - I think that's a great way to help me see them. It also hides some of the "content" - which is often a good thing as the punctuation and grammar can be a real trigger! No, we're all better off looking at bike accessories (or motorbike and car) adverts...

See - it's easy!

markieteeee wrote:

It feels like the site ought to have a 'like' for forum posts so people can register their approval for an article rather than just being able to like subsequent comments. A thoughtful and well-written piece.

With regards to Sarah Everard, the incident was indeed weaponised by the small but well organised anti-LTN lobby in my borough to argue for more driving privileges; despite, as you say, his car being a vital tool in the crime.  Within hours of it happening, and repeated on subsequent days, there were several similar-sounding comments on the ongoing live consultations making claims that without speeding traffic through residential streets, there would be less witnesses around to prevent attacks on lone women. Many specifically referenced Sarah, it was hard to read. She was literally abducted on a main road by a man in a car. 

Sarah Everard's tragic death was also weaponised by anti-lockdown protesters such as Piers Corbyn and Kirstie Allsop.  It's really depressing how some people have no sense of perspective.

It is indeed.