Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Today is Day Three of the Transportation Research Board’s annual conference. Interested in pavement composition and performance? There are 200 workshops with your name on them.

Bring transportation officials from your hometown to Copenhagen to gawk at all the "non-fat non-motorists." Photo: Crikey

Interested in bicycling? There’s quite a bit for you too. Yesterday, 13 scholars presented their research on cycling. Here are a few highlights:

Take Your City Engineer to Copenhagen. Cortney Mild of the University of Oregon studied the impact of study trips led by Bikes Belong and FHWA to cycling cities in Europe [PDF], showing policymakers and transportation professionals the potential of better infrastructure. They found that the tour participants were overwhelmed at the sheer number of cyclists and the “normalcy” of it in everyday life, with people of all ages, athletic abilities, genders, and economic statuses getting on bikes.

Dave Cieslewicz, former mayor of Madison, realized that the Netherlands achieved high rates of cycling not just “because the price of gas is so high and the land is flat,” but “by making conscious decisions about bicycle infrastructure and policies.” He said that what “hit [him] over the head” was that the U.S. “can make conscious policy decisions that dramatically change the mode share.”

The most common improvement these participants implemented in their home towns upon returning was colored pavement to call attention to complicated intersections. But they also returned excited about opportunities to build cycle tracks.

Connectivity Does In Fact Boost Mode Share. Jessica Schoner of the University of Minnesota found that bike route connectivity was a significant factor in increasing mode share in the the 74 U.S. cities she studied – but, surprisingly, “fragmentation” is not. I asked if fragmentation wasn’t just the lack of connectivity. She said fragments were “little islands of bike facility everywhere.” The size of the bicycle network was also not a significant factor in mode share, according to her research.

The Mineta Transportation Institute studied this issue recently, looking at high-stress and low-stress streets for biking in San Jose. They found that while 67 percent of the city’s streets were “low-stress,” that didn’t help if, to get between them, you have to risk your hide on wide, arterial streets with speeding traffic.

Schoner also found that households with seniors or children were far less likely to ride bikes. I suppose this isn’t shocking, but it is disheartening. She said parents often have “more complex trip-chaining needs” and she’d hoped greater connectivity would ameliorate that problem some, but it didn’t appear to.

Biking Uphill Is Satisfying. It’s an established fact that cyclists rate their commute as more “satisfying” than others.

Read more…

FYI, 54 degrees Celsius is 129 degrees Farenheit. Image: Wired

Here’s the big news of the day: Autonomous cars are making a big splash at the Consumer Electronics Show right now. Audi is testing its self-driving cars on Nevada roads. Google’s already done it in California. Toyota and Lexus are getting ready too.

Here’s the other big news of the day: The planet’s getting hotter. Australia has had to add a new color to its heat maps. If climate change has an illustrator, it’s the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. If it has a color, it’s pink and purple.

Do these two news items have anything to do with each other? You bet they do, if the driverless car becomes the mass transit of the future (hold the “mass”). This incarnation of personal rapid transit futurism looks to some like a cleaner, safer transportation system. To others, it looks like a senseless replacement of a public transportation system — which, by right, should still have generations of improvement ahead of it — with single-occupancy vehicles. That’s one backward future.

These cars are not fully driverless yet, the carmakers emphasize – Jim Pisz, a Toyota corporate manager, told Wired, “We believe the driver should always be in control of the vehicle.”

Read more…

A study by the government of the Australian state of Victoria highlights the limits of electric cars, in isolation, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Australian government researchers say electric vehicles are no environmental panacea. Photo: The Age

The Victorian government’s ongoing “electric vehicle trial” [PDF] found that electric cars powered by coal may actually produce more carbon emissions than petroleum-fueled cars over the lifetime of the vehicle, from manufacturing to junkyard. This is due in part to the added environmental impacts of the lithium batteries that electric cars require.

This is not to say that EVs won’t improve on internal combustion engines. It all depends on where the electricity comes from. The authors found that, taking into account the full vehicle life-cycle, an electric car powered by 100 percent renewable energy — like wind and solar — can begin outperforming gas-powered cars after two years of use.

In the United States, the cleanest sources of electricity are near the coasts, and EVs in those areas outperform the best hybrids, according to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists released last spring. But in the Midwest and Mountain West, coal-powered energy generation makes EVs dirtier.

Of course, even setting aside the deaths, injuries, chronic diseases, and traffic jams caused by a car-dependent transportation system, vehicle emissions are far from the only environmental cost of cars. To reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, cutting down on the “embedded energy” that comes with sprawling development is absolutely essential. And while cleaner cars can help curb global warming, the wrong incentives for their use can also dump more carbon into the air. To the extent that policies discourage transit, biking, or walking in order to favor electric vehicles, the net effect can actually backfire. Witness Denmark’s incentives to park electric cars in the center city, which undermines the high mode-share for greener modes of travel.

The Australian government has been providing a better incentive, helping gas stations install electric vehicle charging facilities. The city of Melbourne currently has about 30 such stations in the central business district but 10 more are on the way as part of a government trial, reports Melbourne’s The Age.

From the Australian Bicycling Council comes word of a new amenity for bicycling commuters In Brisbane, Australia. Called cycle2city, it provides secure weekday parking and showers for up to 420 members, who will pay between $5 and $7 a day for the privilege of using the facility (that and other figures quoted here are Australian dollars, which are close to even in value with the US dollar these days).

The $7-million bike center in Brisbane's central business district was funded by the Queensland government and the Brisbane City Council, and is operated by a private company. The first of its kind in Australia, it offers swipe-card access and some pretty swank-looking accommodations. The cost of membership is roughly comparable to the local transit fare, depending on what type of ticket one uses.

Local government officials, quoted on OurBrisbane.com, see it as one element in an overall strategy:

State Government and Brisbane City Council have welcomed the centre as part of the battle against traffic congestion. Brisbane City Councillor Jane Prentice said the people of Brisbane now had the perfect reason to ditch the car in favour of more active, healthy and sustainable travel options.

"King George Square Cycle Centre demonstrates our commitment to encouraging people to live a more active, healthy and sustainable lifestyle," said Cr Prentice.

"The more people we get travelling on two wheels or two legs, the more cars we take off the road enabling us to live healthier and greener lifestyles that will contribute to ensuring Brisbane's long-term sustainability."

Transport Minister John Mickel said that, by using the King George Square Cycle Centre, the average commuter could save more than $25 dollars per day.

"The average car commuter can spend up to $33 per day on off-street parking alone when travelling into the CBD," Mr Mickel said.

Think a paid bike commuter facility like this one could fly here in New York, say in Midtown or the Financial District?

Reported on Yahoo news:

Australia's largest city will be plunged into darkness for an hour on Saturday in an attempt at a world first blackout to raise awareness of global warming, organisers say.

A successful switch-off could then be copied by major cities around the world in a drive to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change, according to international conservation group WWF.

A thousand businesses have signed up, including many of the top blue-chip companies on the Australian stock market -- and even McDonald's is going to turn off its "Golden Arches" signs.