Category Archives: Transportation

Republican Alternative Energy: Coal, Oil, & Nuclear Power

“The Republican Road to Recovery”  according to John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mike Pence, Thaddeus McCotter, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, John R. Carter, Pete Sessions, Kevin McCarthy, David Dreier, Roy Blunt, who signed it, “Keeps Energy and Fuel Costs Low.” It mentions wind and solar, but focuses on coal, oil, oil shale, offshore drilling, and nuclear power.

The document says “Republicans want energy independence with increased development of all natural resources, including renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar.” It doesn’t mention “global warming.” It mentions the term “greenhouse gases” once, stating, incorrectly, that nuclear power doesn’t produce greenhouse gases. Mining, processing, and transporting nuclear fuel, and managing radioactive wastes, produces tremendous amounts of greenhouse gases.

It points out that “Senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry … have long fought a renewable wind project in waters off of Massachusetts…. Cape Wind, would provide 75 percent of the electricity demand for Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket island. “

The document focuses on coal, oil, and nuclear power. These are not clean, renewable, sustainable energy sources.  Ultimately, therefore, it attempts to “greenwash” coal, oil, and nuclear power.

the Administration has already taken steps to hinder the leasing of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) which is estimated to hold at least 19 billion barrels of oil, and Democrats have long championed the prohibition on drilling in the Arctic Coastal Plain – which is estimated to hold 10.4 billion barrels of oil. Furthormore, Democrats continue to block the procurement of advanced alternative fuels from sources such as oil shale, tar sands, and coal-to-liquid technology. U.S. Oil shale alone could provide about 2.5 million barrels of oil per day.

Republicans also support opening the Arctic Coastal Plain to energy exploration and development.

And despite expert agreement that nuclear power is reliable, clean, and affordable without producing air pollution or greenhouse gases, Democrats continue to block its development.

Republicans realize that there are better solutions to restore freedom and security in our energy market.  Republicans recognize the importance of exploring for American oil and gas in an envionronmentally-sound manner and support immediately leasing oil and gas resources in the OCS through an an expedited and streamlined procedure.

Republicans support removing government barriers to new nuclear reactors as long as they meet strict security and safety criteria.

Americans realize that the future of energy is in alternative and renewable sources. In order to promote the development of renewable and alternative energy, Republicans support promoting the leasing of federal lands which contain alternative energy such as oil shale. … spurring a market by using fuels derived from oil shale, tar sands, and coal.

Pratik Mhatres Urban Planning Blog

Pratik Mhatre’s Urban Planning Blog

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus ipod is an outstanding blog, on the order of Inhabitat or The Pump Handle. Excellent recent articles include:

Time Spent Sitting In Traffic, including this infographic:

Disaster Preparedness and Voter Response [PDF link], an economist at Loyola Marymount University concludes that “on average, every $1 spent on disaster mitigation prevents roughly $8 of disaster damage over the following five years” but voters tend to reward disaster response and recovery efforts more as compared to disaster preparedness leading to governments underpreparing for disasters.

Green Aviation

Micheline Maynard reports for the Times from the Farnborough Airshow (official link to show here) that aviation manufacturers are trying to show their green credentials. It’s all well and good for Boeing to tell us that they’re working on algae as a jet fuel – but even without comparative energy figures (energy per passenger mile

From “The Wild Green Yonder“:

“It’s a matter for survival,” Giovanni Bisignani, director general of the International Air Transport Association, said at an environmental conference Wednesday.

With global air traffic expected to swell in coming years, government regulators, including the European Commission, are applying pressure to make planes quieter, cleaner and more efficient, and threatening penalties if they fall short.

“Our customers are under hellish pressures to come up with improvements,” said Tom Williams, an Airbus executive vice president.

There are no cheap or easy solutions. Lighter materials, new fuels and other innovations that promise to make planes more environmentally friendly mean more expense and development time. That includes the billions that engine makers are spending to develop new products.

All that could make it hard for the manufacturers to offer the discounts that their big customers have come to expect, potentially wiping out the savings that such planes might offer.

“It’s a bitter split,” said Mr. Williams of Airbus.

Mr. Bisignani said the industry was late to realize it needed to do more to stress its environmental credentials, leaving it open for attacks from environmental groups and threats of new taxes from Europe and elsewhere.

Read further – and you’ll find that aviation manufacturers are concerned that they’re being unfairly treated as other-than-green.

FuturePundit has a good analysis of comparative transportation fuel-efficiency – which relies in part on Jeff Radtke’s comparative table on Neodymics, “A Green Ride.“

No question that we’re going to have airplanes, no question that they need to be more efficient. But our objective needs to be to conserve energy and protect the ecosystem – not protect inefficient industries.

Patrick McGeehan, NYT: A Bikes-Only Parking Lot in Midtown?

Patrick McGeehan

of the Times City Room Blog

reports that

A few business executives have dreamed up a private-sector solution to the problem of secure bicycle parking in New York: the city’s first bikes-only parking lot. They have a space on West 33rd Street. All they need is a corporation willing to pay as much as $200,000 a year to sponsor it.

“We’re really looking for a big number to build something quite spectacular,” said Daniel A. Biederman, president of the 34th Street Partnership. “We want this to be the premier bike parking facility in the country.”

Already, the group has cleared one high hurdle: Stonehenge Management, a developer, has offered a 2,600-square-foot lot next to an apartment building it owns on the north side of 33rd Street between Eighth Avenue and Ninth Avenue, Mr. Biederman said.

The partnership, which is financed by businesses and property owners in a 31-block section of Midtown, has developed a preliminary design for the lot and has ordered up a prototype of the racks it would contain, Mr. Biederman said. At first, it would hold 100 bikes, with room to expand if there is more demand, he said.

A Bikes-Only Parking Lot in Midtown?

 

 

Hungarian hybrid, planned for 2012 production, gets 150 mpg

Jorge Chapa, writing in Inhabitat, reports that the Hungarian prototype for the Antro Solo, production planned for 2012, gets 150 mpg, and here’s how:

  • The hybrid electric/fossil fuel engine, familiar now to most of us – which captures energy while braking, thus recharging the electric batteries;
  • an exceptionally light carbon composite frame;
  • solar panels on the roof which can provide power for a 15 – 25 km trip (the post doesn’t specify how long that charge takes);
  • The two passenger seats (it’s a three-seater) come with bicycle pedals, which can offset the car’s energy consumption;
  • So if it’s dark, the battery is exhausted, you and your passengers are exhausted, what’s the last option?

Trick question: two options – a dual-fuel petrol/ethanol engine. Sound like an easy fit for a “station car,” if there’s any light at all. TRANSPORTATION TUESDAY: Antro Solo gets 150mpg at Inhabitat, in turn viaAutoFiends. [singlepic=261,288,216,,right]

If this technology, and others like it, become competitive – whoever has developed it stands to make a lot of money – and contribute to a gradual drip-drip of oil company profits. (Today’s Times has a comment from a Saudi official, who articulated some anxiety that current price shock and anger might result in people remembering the current state of affairs, and reducing long-term demand for petroleum; we’ll try to post about this later – but – you read it here first – at least some of the Saudi leadership think’s we’re intelligent and adaptive. Flattery).

US Bike Sales Rising With Gas Prices | BikeRadar.com

Richard Peace of Bike Radar reports:

Numerous bike retailers in the United States are reporting a spike in sales on the back of the seemingly inexorable rise of gas prices at the pumps throughout the country.

In particular bike retailers are reportedly noticing a strong rise in commuter cycling queries — unusual in a market that is regarded as primarily a leisure and sports-based one. Recently the price at the pumps hit $3.60 a gallon and the net is full of reports from bike shops across the US noting the price squeeze effect on customers coming through their doors.

“We’re getting more and more customers that are buying bikes to commute in lieu of gas prices,” said Jarvis Polvado of the Texoma Cycling Centre in Wichita Falls, Texas. “Where I’ve seen the biggest increase is people buying bikes to go to work.”

“Everyone that comes in the shop is talking about the gas prices,” said Barry Dahl of Barry’s Bikes in Bismarck, North Dakota.

“People are using their bikes a lot more today for transportation purposes,” added Ken Hartley, owner of Hartley’s Cycle Shop in Hinsdale, Illinois. “We’re selling more racks, we’re selling more fenders, we’re seeing a lot of interest in locks to lock their bikes at the train stations.”

Richard Peace, US Bike Sales Rising With Gas Prices

On Bike Radar.

This is, of course, good news, but we think there are other steps in many communities, certainly here in New York: government support for bicyclists, employer-supplied bike racks, and perhaps tax incentives — like an exemption from sales tax on bicycles and relevant accessories (like racks). In many places, bike lanes don’t yet exist. And — as I believe we’ve reported on other occasions — there’s some evidence that there’s a tipping point of bicycle riders — after which automobile drivers start driving to accommodate them. If prices keep rising at current rates, most of these will be demanded, arranged, or get taken care of.

Thanks to our neighbor Joel Johnson of Boing Boing.

Solar Boats – up to 60 passengers and 11 knots in Europe; NYC ferry service suspended

The Swiss Firm MW Line makes solar boats that are ferrying people around lakes and rivers in Switzerland, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. The only backup power, apparently, is on-shore charging from the grid. They’re also the shipbuilder for the PlanetSolar project which plans to have a solar-only craft in the water ready for a two-person, 120-day around-the-world trip in 2009. bateau-vectoriel.png

isoview1.jpgThe New York Times reported on January 4th that New York Water Taxi, the only operator of Queens/Manhattan and Brooklyn/Manhattan ferry service has cancelled service for the winter – largely because of fuel price increases. That notwithstanding a monthly subsidy from the real estate developers who established Schaefer’s Landing, a high-end project in Williamsburgh. A ferry powered by photovoltaic cells wouldn’t be directly affected, if at all, by petroleum price increases. Given the relatively short distances involved, on-board solar panels and batteries could be supplemented with electricity dockside. If that electricity is generated via wind (often best captured on or near water) or solar, ferry operating costs could be insulated from petroleum price fluctuations.

Death on the Marathon – Risk of dying is twice as high when driving

Marathons may save lives by reducing automobile traffic:

Worried about dropping dead if you run a marathon? Researchers in Canada say you can put your mind at ease. The risk of dying on a marathon course is twice as high if you drive it than if you run it, they find.

In fact, they conclude, marathons may actually save lives: more people would die in traffic accidents if the race course had not been closed to vehicles on marathon day. (Nor was there any spillover of extra deaths on alternative routes.) Their paper is being published Friday in The British Medical Journal.

“For each death in a marathon, two motor-vehicle crash deaths were averted,” said Dr. Donald A. Redelmeier, a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto and the lead author of the new study. “It’s riskier if you decide to drive your car around on a Sunday morning than if you go out and run.”

As might be expected, marathon directors were pleased.

Continue reading →

Gasoline tanker overturns, melts highway overpass, causing collapse

This is the first of what we hope will be a group of articles about the costs of transporting liquid petroleum products (heating oil, gasoline, jet fuel, etc.). We’re going to start with this incident because the reporters and multimedia staff of SFGate.com ((SFGate.com is, we gather, the on-line presence of the San Francisco Chronicle)). did such an excellent job of explaining how this particular incident happened on April 29, 2007. Their multi-media illustration of the events – “How the Crash Happened” can be found here

.

Here’s an excerpt from Demian Bulwa and Peter Fimrite’s piece ((written with assistance fromCarolyn Jones, Michael Cabanatuan, Rick DelVecchio and John Wildermuth, )) published the same day

The single-vehicle crash occurred on the lower roadway when the tanker, loaded with 8,600 gallons of unleaded gasoline and heading from a refinery in Benicia to a gas station on Hegenberger Road in Oakland, hit a guardrail at 3:41 a.m.

Engineers said the green steel frame of the I-580 overpass and the bolts holding the frame together began to melt and bend in the intense heat

— and that movement pulled the roadbed off its supports.

California Highway Patrol spokesman Trent Cross said the driver of the tanker, James Mosqueda, 51, of Woodland (Yolo County), was traveling too fast in a 50 mph zone when his truck overturned and burst into flames.

mark-costantini-sf-chronicle-ba_freewaycollapse_201.jpg

Photograph by Mark Costantini/San Francisco Chronicle. More images here.

Mosqueda, an employee of Sabek Transportation in San Francisco for 10 months, got out of the truck on his own after it overturned and hailed a taxi that took him to Kaiser Hospital in Oakland, witnesses and police said.

He has been transferred to the burn unit at St. Francis Hospital in San Francisco, where his father said he was “doing OK” this afternoon, having sustained burns on his face, neck and hands. The family expected Mosqueda to remain hospitalalized two or three more days.

– snip –

Oakland firefighters, the first public safety workers on the scene, arrived with two engines at 3:55 a.m., Capt. Cedric Price said.

“We didn’t know it was a tanker truck that was involved. As soon as that was established we immediately upgraded to a large scale incident response team and added two more engines and two trucks,” Price said.

Firefighters immediately noticed the upper connector ramp was buckling and seven minutes after they arrived — at 4:02 a.m.– it collapsed, Price said. Now there were no more structures threatened, the firefighters’ approach shifted.

“With no structures or lives in jeopardy and with 8,000 gallons of flammable fuel involved, you’re basically better off letting it burn itself out,” said Price.

Firefighters used only water to control the blaze, which took about two hours, he said. Had there been lives at risk, firefighters would have used foam to fight the blaze, but it would have run off into the nearby Bay water, polluting it.

“That this didn’t happen on a weekday morning might have been the only beauty of it,” said Price.

With the help of protective gear and breathing devices, firefighter exposure to the fumes was minimal, according to Price. A total of 29 Oakland Fire Department personnel were on scene as well as one engine from Emeryville. A smaller crew of Oakland firefighters remained there through the early evening to watch for potential dangers.

“Tanker fire destroys part of MacArthur Maze | 2 freeways closed near Bay Bridge”

We’re trying to learn how many of these incidents there are a year – and how many people get hurt. Apart from the risk to life – the risk to structures seems so great that we’d want to encourage great caution in transporting any form of petroleum fuel.

And take this sort of risk into account when we decide how much of it we’re going to use.

In Copenhagen Bicycles Overtake Cars (via EcoProfile and TreeHugger)

April Streeter has this in yesterday’s Treehugger:

As a result of half a century of planning, Copenhagen has achieved a fabulous cycling goal – during the morning rush hour more bikes and mopeds pound the inner city streets than personal cars and buses. Just a bit more than a third of inhabitants get to work by bike every day – the other two thirds take public transport or a personal car. But the news gets even better – Copenhagen’s municipal government is increasing spending to improve bike lanes and paths and the bike travel experience.According to this survey, Copenhagen is behind places such as Amsterdam (where a claimed 40 percent of traffic moves by bike) and Portland, Oregon in providing the best inner-city biking experience. This may be true, but Copenhagen has got to be the stylish bike capital – especially with the bloggers at copenhagengirlsonbikes and cycleliciousness making it look so cool to ride.

City officials now want to increase cyclists to make up half of all commuters by 2015, as well as increase cyclists’ speeds by 10 percent while reducing the risk of injury. How will they do it? Partly by investing more – they added about 25 million Danish crowns (US$ 3.7 million) in 2007 to the yearly budget of 75 million crowns.

Already in the city, subway stops and other open spaces sport large bicycle parking stalls – the best are the covered double-decker stalls – and the city will build even more of these to encourage cyclists to park away from pedestrian and other traffic. They’ll also widen lanes to accommodate more bikes.

In addition, some heavily-trafficked lanes will sport a new bicycle pictogram to show that they get a special ‘green wave’ – traffic lights will be coordinated so cyclists who maintain speeds of about 20 kilometers/hour can just keep on moving.

Across Öresund in Sweden cyclists are not quite so pampered, but some good things are happening – in Gothenburg cyclists will soon be able to use the same Internet service cars have long had access to to create individual bike destination maps for all locations in the city. Via ::Ecoprofile

In Copenhagen Bicycles Overtake Cars (TreeHugger)

Update: Colville Andersen – of cycleliciousness notes in a comment to TreeHugger:

Great post. Thanks for the big up about our blogs.
One thing, however, the “survey” you link to is not a survey at all… it’s a commercial website writing a opinion piece about bike cities, without any real research.
Love the treehugger world. Keep up the good work.