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Electric cars on their way

February 15, 2010 / / 0 Comments

The New York Times is reporting that several California cities and companies are preparing for the coming rise in electric car ownership:

  • San Francisco is updating its building code.
  • Silicon Valley companies are ordering equipment for their employees.
  • Local electric utilities are trying to manage demand, either by predicting where ownership will be highest, in order to prepare for increased electricity use, or by asking customers to use “smart meters.”

The Tesla Motors store on Grand Avenue has since opened.

I hope bicycle advocates, cities, and the electric car manufacturers consider the bicycle rider’s point of view: The noise a car makes is helpful for urban riders to evaluate the street and their surroundings. While nothing trumps the utility of being able to see and having facilities that help make bicycling safer, a bicycle rider uses all of their senses to navigate the urban environment.

More from the article:

Tesla Motors, a Silicon Valley company that makes electric cars, says it has already sold 150 of its $109,000 Roadsters in the Bay Area. One customer bought the sleek sports car on the spot after a test drive.

Chicago’s been ready for the “onslaught”

Tesla recently opened a store in Chicago, Illinois, but I haven’t seen one yet. Chicago’s not a stranger to electric car charging ports. The City uses them for its own fleet of electric cars. There are publicly-accessible stations scattered around downtown. A parking garage in River North has plug-in charging ports.

Photo of Greenway Self Park at 60 W Kinzie, featuring a wind-turbine that powers a portion of the night lighting. By Eric Rogers.

Volunteering is up

February 14, 2010 / / 0 Comments

For 8 weeks within December, January and February, I was without employment.

I was temporarily laid off. So I volunteered. As did millions of other people. A report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released on January 26, 2010, puts the overall number of volunteers in September 2009 at 63.4 million people. So far in 2010, I’ve put in 27 hours at a social services organization. Last year, I volunteered 9 hours at two organizations*. My goal last year was to do 20 hours by Labor Day. That didn’t happen so I guess I’m finishing that goal now.

A volunteer at Sunday Parkways (now called Open Streets) in Chicago, Illinois. Photo by Eric Rogers.

Who is the most likely person to volunteer: A white, married woman with a college degree, without children under 18. The number one volunteer category: religious organizations, leading the second category, educational and youth services, by 8 percentage points.

Have you volunteered recently? Do you prefer that your volunteer work benefit you in some way? For example, do you want your time spent volunteering to teach you a new skill, or are you satisfied with just helping out?

Fast Company shows this information on an infographic.

By the way, as this photo makes evident, I am back at work!

*Two of these hours were spent talking to people at Millennium Park about the Burnham Pavilion designed by Ben van Berkel. The people were annoying – a lady asking me why she might want go to Grant Park prompted by “resignation.”

Quotes about transportation equity

February 12, 2010 / / 0 Comments

My master’s project involves a discussion about equity. Equity of bike parking distribution is the main focus of my project.

I picked up some great books at my school’s library. Here are some selected quotes (many of which I’ll use in the project’s paper).

  • “Transportation improvements distribute nonuniformly over space, implying that they affect diverse populations disproportionately” (Berechman).
  • “Geography defines the contours of the equity analysis in two important ways. First, since investment in transportation infrastructure is geographically specific, there is inherent competition and conflict between places” (Hodge).
  • The “costs and benefits of transportation policies may take place in different time periods” (Bae and Mayeres). For example, “mega projects are often built with excess capacity aimed at satisfying future needs. Such a pattern imposes inequitable intergenerational transfers, favoring the future rather than the present generations” (Berechman).
  • “Indirect benefits…represent real impacts that probably benefit some people more than others. It is exceedingly difficult, however, to trace through the benefit stream of these broad impacts” (Hodge).

And my favorite: “Transportation is an unusual public service in that it is not consumed for its own sake but, rather, as a means to another end. Thus, the value of the service depends primarily on how well it provides access to other places” (Hodge).

My professor last semester said the same thing, actually, and then we had a huge discussion trying figure out situations where this isn’t true. The only thing our class (well, the professor himself) could come up with was joyriding (driving aimlessly in a car). But is joyriding really transportation? The trip origin and destination are the same and the trip has no purpose.

I thought of the transportation system at Walt Disney World, but I eventually withdrew my support – although the goal of that system is to make it easy for guests to spend more money, the system has a legitimate role in giving access to places inside and outside the “pay area.”

Sources

Bae, Chang-Hee Christine and Inge Mayeres. “Transportation and Equity.” Donaghy, Kieran P, Stefan Poppelreuter and George Rudinger. Social Dimensions of Sustainable Transport: Transatlantic Perspectives. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2005. 164-192.

Berechman, Joseph. The Evaluation of Transportation Investment Projects. New York City: Routledge, 2009.

Hodge, David C. “My Fair Share: Equity Issues In Urban Transportation.” The Geography of Urban Transportation. Ed. Susan Hanson. Second. New York City: Guilford Press, 1995.

Your city’s Schelling point

February 10, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Not a selling point, but a Thomas Schelling point. Also known as focal point, a segment of game theory. Without communicating, how will two people make the same choice?

To illustrate (based on Thomas Schelling’s own example, and Yuri Artibise, who inspired this post), I ask you this question:

If I called you and asked you to meet me in downtown [your city] in an hour and then my phone’s battery died, where would we meet?

Yuri said “According to Adam [Greenfield], most cities have Schelling points, because, without effective communication between people (i.e., cell phones), meeting places ultimately converge on a couple of high visibility—and usually iconic—destinations.”

Seattleites, might you meet your friend at the Central Library in Seattle, Washington? Photo by Dolan Halbrook.

It seems for New Yorkers, the traditional answer has been at the information booth in the Grand Central Station main hall. Yuri suggests that “there is nothing inherent about Grand Central Station that makes a particularly desirable meeting place.”

Schelling’s theory explains why people might pick the same location. Contributors to the “focal point” article on Wikipedia write this:

Consider a simple example: two people unable to communicate with each other are each shown a panel of four squares and asked to select one; if and only if they both select the sameone, they will each receive a prize. Three of the squares are blue and one is red. Assuming they each know nothing about the other player, but that they each do want to win the prize, then they will, reasonably, both choose the red square. Of course, the red square is not in a sense a better square; they could win by both choosing any square. And it is the “right” square to select only if a player can be sure that the other player has selected it; but by hypothesis neither can. It is the most salient, the most notable square, though, and lacking any other one most people will choose it, and this will in fact (often) work.

The destination choice should change with context. If you were to meet a classmate on campus, you might meet in the building where the class you share meets.

Benefits of bike parking

February 2, 2010 / / 0 Comments

I’m working on my master’s project about bike parking distribution and equity in Chicago and while working on a section in the paper, I decided to get some help from readers. Many transportation projects are measured on predicted changes like trip travel time savings or trip cost savings (I give two examples below the photo).

My question is this: What are a bike parking installation’s measurable benefits to a traveler or a community?

Photo: Portland has installed 40 on-street bike parking “corrals” since 2004. What does a traveler or community gain from this bike rack installation? Photo by Kyle Gradinger.

To figure equity (fairness) for these project types, you measure these impacts for different groups (often high, medium, and low income), either in the alternatives analysis, or project selection phases. So, converting a lane on a highway to charge tolls for the lane’s users will have a certain benefit for many trips: a lower trip time. A new bus route may be convenient enough for some travelers to switch from driving to taking the bus, possibly reducing their trip cost.