holy said:
"IT IS VERY GOOD; church can be an opinion leader.
in Germany some churches have big roofs for solar..." [read]
SteveC said:
"While one might think this is a waste of time, money and resources, so is a Bugatti Veyron. But both have been designed specifically to show that t..." [read]
Duane said:
"As to the question in the title "Will the Greenies Take Fireworks Away From Us?", the bad news answer is yes. Yes they will. The good news is tha..." [read]
LT said:
"I again repeat my comment from previous posts about poorly designed objects that design students should have some real world practical experience b..." [read]
Harrison Wills said:
"This is a beautiful quote by Mother Teresa that expresses the need to Do Good and Make Progress even when it's not appreciated. Love and Creat anyw..." [read]
Jesse said:
"I also agree for most families out there the recipies have to have a convertable property. I myself eat limited meat, aka fish, for some additional..." [read]
Rock n roll meets integrated transport hubs
Who'd have thought that one of the best songs I've heard all year would be about sustainable urban transportation systems?
I've said it before, but I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Rob Hopkins of the Transition Towns Movement - not just for inspiring one of the most important community-led responses to environmental crisis there is - but also for giving me stuff to write about. His Transition Culture blog is a constant source of inspiration and news on everything from communal nut tree plantings to alternative local currencies. Now we can add rock n roll to the mix - because thanks to Rob I have come across the best (and possibly only!) rock n roll song ever that is taking a stand for trams as a vital part of integrated transportation hubs. And who'd have thought it would be so catchy (at least if you are a fan of mass transportation AND weird Welsh/Germanic spacepop).
As a native of South Carolina, sharing the road with golf carts is nothing new. With the highest number of golf courses per capita in the United States, we’ve taken our golf carts off-course for ages. Now the rest of the country is finally catching on.
Sonoma County, CA is preparing to install 200 new ChargePoint electric vehicle charging stations throughout the county. The infrastructure is being installed in preparation of electric vehicles being sold like hot cakes starting over the next few years, but the plan hinges on a little thing called funding.
Fuel Subsidies Punish Virtue
The Chinese government has recently decided to raise fuel prices by about 10%, the third increase in the past few months, following a 6-7% increase on June 1st, and a 3-5% increase in March. The stated goal is to bring the price of fuel in China closer to what the market price is. From a green point of view, this is good because subsidized fossil fuels only encourages waste, over-consumption, and the buying of vehicles that aren't fuel efficient. It also artificially reduces the competitiveness of technologies that aren't based on fossil fuels, slowing down their adoption.
Dangerous intersection reclaimed as public space
One of my favorite things about the folks at StreetFilms is that they don't just report on innovative projects for livable streets - they deconstruct what has been done so we can all learn from it. It's like they are building a sense of collective literacy around planning and public space. Whether it's physically separated bike lanes or Bogota's comprehensive approach to transport planning, their short videos show us inspiring examples of real change, and they explain how and why they really work. The same goes for their latest offering - a short film about a temporary park created on a dangerous intersection in the Castro district of San Francisco. We get an understanding of the history, a breakdown of what has been done and why, and of course we get to see how the ever flamboyant residents of San Francisco are putting their new park to use.
Sakarya University students with their hydrogen-powered car. Photo via SAİTEM.
Gas prices in Turkey are among the highest -- if not the highest -- in the world, a fact I was rudely awakened to last summer when some friends and I rented a car to drive from Istanbul to Edirne, a round-trip of around 500 kilometers, to watch the oil-wrestling championships. (A story in and of itself.) We paid about $100 for the gas alone, some 38 liters of it. If we'd been driving the SAHİMO, a car invented by Turkish university students, we could have gone all the way across the country -- more than three times farther -- on just three liters of fuel.
Car designer Harsha Vardhan suggests that this two-wheeler concept is the car of the future.
His Transporter TW (Twin Wheel) is a single-seater electric vehicle that uses magnetic fields for driving the car. The two gianormous wheels, suspended over a superconducting fluid, are propelled by those shifting magnetic fields. Thus the power generation, and motion of the car, is a nice noiseless and smooth ride.
This is a Big Deal
A Californian regulation mandating that all ocean-going vessels within 24 miles of the state's coast must use cleaner burning low-sulfur diesel fuel is now in effect. This will have a big impact on air quality (big cargo ships have terrible emissions, and we too often overlook them and focus on cars & trucks), reducing smog and saving an estimated 3,600 people from premature deaths between 2009 and 2015. "The requirement, adopted in 2008, will annually affect nearly 2,000 ocean-going vessels, both U.S. flagged and foreign-flagged, visiting California." Read on for more details.
When in France recently I rarely saw a bicycle helmet, ce n'est pas chic. But designers Caroline Journaux & Adrien Guerin are working on one that can fold up and be put away in your pocket or purse. That makes a lot of sense if you ride a Vélo bike in Paris, since you only have a bike when you need it and would otherwise be carrying a helmet around a lot. I don't know if it would pass a Snell test but I like the idea....
Charge points, Coulomb Technologies.
Image credit:City of San Francisco, CalCars
Research & Markets is projecting $200 million dollars in annual US electric vehicle charging sales by 2015. Let's assume that's a reasonable estimate. Compared to existing gasoline sales in the US, which approaches $2 billion/year, it's obvious that we have a long way to go before plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles, together, make a serious dent in gasoline markets.
Any significant impact in the USA will be long after President Obama's second term has come to end.
R&M also projects that "Bidirectional smart vehicle-to-grid charging will remain a niche application for the foreseeable future..." See Who Revived The Electric Car? for details on two-way vehicle to grid interactions will work....
Most of us agree that cycling is one of the most eco-friendly and healthy ways of transportation, although it can also be dangerous, even if you use bike lanes. Motorbikes swishing past, doors opening, parked cars that need driving around into the car lanes, are but a few nasty surprises you can come across even if you stay on the bike path. Most people agree that bike lanes should be separated from traffic. To make sure traffic also respects those bike lanes, Spanish designer Curro Claret (whose Hat Light was one of the very early posts on TreeHugger) designed the ZEBRA bicycle lane divider, made from recycled plastic....
Photo: Flickr, CC
What a Concept! Bikes in Parks!
I was reading this post about how Copenhagen now allows cycling in parks, and it seemed like such a good and obvious idea, I wondered "why not everywhere?" Of course, some parks already allow it and even have bike paths, but in many parts of the world, you are supposed to actually walk your bike (though not everybody does it). What do you think? Should cities allow cycling in their parks?...
Photo: Michael Graham Richard
This Loophole Seriously Reduces Incentives for Production Electric CarsPlug In America (we recently wrote about their EV & plug in hybrid tracker) is asking the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to modify its regulations concerning zero emission vehicles in California. The problem is that their requirement that automakers put 7,500 ZEVs on the roads of California doesn't specify a minimum timeframe for compliance. This means that BMW is getting the same credit for converting 500 MINIs into EVs and leasing them (for $850/month!) for a year as another automaker would get for actually selling production electric cars. This could also lead to a repeat of the EV1 story... And we know how that ended....
Photo: Photos by keki & subtilen"Surface is very smooth hydroisolation coating, so perfect for riding."
A lot of us treehuggers are cyclists, and I bet most of us have a dream place they wish they could ride in. For some, it might be the quiet Scottish countryside during the summer... and for others it might be the empty accumulation pool of a hydroelectric pumped storage power station!...
Photo: Flickr, CC
I Love the Smell of Car-Free Roads in the Morning!
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, along with NYC DOT commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, has announced that the Summer Streets initiative is coming back to the streets of NYC this August. Last year was a great success, with over 50,000 people joining the fun on each of the 3 days, and this year promises to be even better with 1,500 free activities and 13 new locations also closing streets over the summer (check out the Weekend Walks brochure (pdf)). Read on for more details and a video....
Flickr user tom h
On Monday, New Yorkers riding the subway to work were met with a costlier spin of the turnstile: a 12 percent increase in their fares, from $2 to $2.25, as the Metropolitan Transit Authority copes with a severe $2 billion deficit.
But how does the new, much-bemoaned cost of admission to the country's biggest subway (and bus) network stack up against fares in other world-class cities? And how well in general does the New York City subway, well, fare?...
The annual Royal College of Art Graduate Summer Show is the place to look for innovation. The College has a department of Vehicle Design which is "pioneering new approaches for our mobile futures." This year several students presented prototypes for sustainable automobiles. They were thinking about the future and what green consumers and car enthusiasts would be looking for.
Jonathon Henshall's entry is concerned with sustainability and what a green vehicle should look like. He thinks that car manufacturers and consumers want a car that projects a green image and he was examining how to communicate this green-ness. His light and airy car consists of 4 strips of wood and fabric surrounding an electric motor. ...
Photo: Setagaya Ward, Tokyo
Global market research firm Synovate has released a study showing that six in ten people "would choose to buy a green car over a dream car, even if money was no object."
Synovate surveyed more than 13,500 people across 18 markets about issues such as green cars, vehicle ownership, intent to buy in the next year and attitudes towards cars, traffic, public transport and more. While we might argue that no car is better than any car, at least the figures are encouraging. 37% of respondents said a "green car" would be their preferred purchase and a further 22% claimed that "my dream car is a green car" - meaning that 59% showed the desire to go green. ...
The Bus-Only Lane is Maxed Out
Every day, 315,000 (!) people commute to New York City by bus via the Lincoln Tunnel, the Holland Tunnel, and the George Washington Bridge, reducing the number of cars on the road by about 200,000. Half of those go through the Lincoln tunnel, yet that tunnel hasn't had any increase in transit capacity since Richard Nixon was president. The video above by our friends at StreetFilms (hi Elizabeth!) argues very convincingly for that to change (at least during rush hour). Check it out, it's really well made (kudos to Hugh Gran and Carly Park for the animation and design)....
Photos: Flickr, CC & Flickr, CC
Add it to Asthma, High Blood Pressure, and Cardiovascular Diseases
Did we need one more reason to to fight against smog? I don't think so, but we got one anyway thanks to a study to be published in Environmental Health Perspectives and covered by Discovery News. A team from the University of California, Irvine, has shown that pregnant women living within 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) of a major roadway in Los Angeles are 128% more at risk of giving birth prematurely. "Moms-to-be were also between 33 and 42 percent more likely to develop preeclampsia, an affliction characterized by high blood pressure that often forces doctors to induce premature birth in order to save mothers' lives." More details below....
Photo: Honda
They Really Didn't Like It...Consumer Reports is highly respected and used by many car buyers to decide which models to even consider. So it's a pretty big blow to the Honda Insight hybrid that CR is publishing a pretty negative review, ranking the Insight hybrid 21st out of 22 small hatchbacks and wagons. Why is the Insight getting a thumb down? Read on to find out....
I loved the idea of Lightlane when I wrote You Shall Have Bike Lanes Wherever You Go, but thought of it more as a conceptual project rather than a real product. No more; the response was so terrific that they are putting it into production....
In Rusay's vision, recycled-product bike bridges held up by "dirigibles" - via Design21.
It is an undisputed truth that the majority of American cities have incomplete bicycling infrastructures. This is perhaps especially true in Los Angeles, where 300+ sunny days annually should equal bike commute paradise. Designer Christopher Rusay hopes his design for an elevated lego-like cycleway, put together of recycled polyethylene pieces and recycled aluminum struts attached to existing lamp and electricity poles could help cities create and extend cyclist networks (and simultaneously, perhaps, reduce tension between autoworld and bikeworld). Solar-powered LED night lighting completes the eCycleway. Way out there? Absolutely. But also innovative and just plain wonderful to see designers thinking about this type of sustainable transport solutions....
Image credit: YuneecElectric Aircraft Makes Successful Test Flight
There are plenty of fancy electric super cars out there proving that battery-powered does not have to mean boring. But is the world ready for electric aviation? THere's actually more prototypes out there than you might think - from the SkySpark electric plane to the jaw-dropping, alp-crossing Sunseeker solar plane (video). Heck, there's so much hope for battery-powered flight that there is even an Electric Plane Symposium, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has hinted at supersonic electric flight. In the meantime, another electric plane has taken flight - and this one might be on the market sooner than you'd think. Click below the fold for video footage of the maiden flight. ...
You won't need this any more. And neither will baby need a sunscreen.
Image credit:Alohakine.com, window sun shade.
This past spring California Air Resources Board (CARB) was actively considering a regulation that required new vehicles to be painted with coatings formulated to reduce absorption of the sun's heat, lowering the vehicle's air conditioning load, and thereby improving vehicle efficiency. (Opposition to the paint rule was strong for technical and for political reasons; but, it's still under consideration.) See Cool Cars: Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Efficiency for details. In its latest move to control heat input to cars, CARB has now approved a proposed requirement for solar gain-reducing windows. Besides boosting mileage, heat controlling windows would make cars a lot more comfortable on hot days. However, some argue that the technology will 'interfere with wireless communications'. Read on for details.
...
Image: Original Beans
A few months ago I posted about Original Beans and the true cost of chocolate. The company is has committed to planting a tree in the country of origin for every bar sold. And now, Original Beans is celebrating a partnership with mountain biking legend Hans Rey's Wheels4Life foundation, that will allow cacao farmers in the Congo much needed mobility. ...
Video via Russ Roca @ BikeCommuters.com.
You would think that car drivers would be happy that cyclists reduce the number of vehicles they have to grapple with, but it just ain't so. The more bikes on the road, the safer it is for cyclists, but also the more an "us versus them" situation that builds up between car drivers and bicyclists, and also it must be said, between scofflaw cyclists going too fast and hapless pedestrians. The result of this pressure is seen in Boulder County, Colorado, where anti-cycle activists are planning to blockade a portion of the Sunrise Century ride using their cars as the obstructionist devices; meanwhile in Long Beach the first bright green sharrows have some residents up in arms (the video shows an irate citizen starting the bike/car 'dialogue') and lastly, nearly four years of anti-cycling activism in San Francisco comes to a head today....
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the weekly archive if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
on 07. 4.09
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When in France recently I rarely saw a bicycle helmet, ce n'est pas chic. But designers Caroline Journaux & Adrien Guerin are working on one that can fold up and be put away in your pocket or purse. That makes a lot of sense if you ride a Vélo bike in Paris, since you only have a bike when you need it and would otherwise be carrying a helmet around a lot. I don't know if it would pass a
Most of us agree that cycling is one of the most eco-friendly and healthy ways of transportation, although it can also be dangerous, even if you use bike lanes. Motorbikes swishing past, doors opening, parked cars that need driving around into the car lanes, are but a few nasty surprises you can come across even if you stay on the bike path. Most people agree that 
Photo: 
Photo: Michael Graham Richard
This Loophole Seriously Reduces Incentives for Production Electric Cars
Photo: Photos by 
Photo: 
Flickr user 
Cycling may be safer than gardening, but what about sheep herding? Image credit: Sami
Cyclists find safety in numbers
Lloyd has noted before that it is 
The annual Royal College of Art Graduate Summer Show is the place to look for innovation. The College has a department of Vehicle Design which is "pioneering new approaches for our mobile futures." This year several students presented prototypes for sustainable automobiles. They were thinking about the future and what green consumers and car enthusiasts would be looking for.
Photo: 
Photos: 
Photo: Honda
They Really Didn't Like It...
I loved the idea of Lightlane when I wrote 
In Rusay's vision, recycled-product bike bridges held up by "dirigibles" - via 
Image credit: 
You won't need this any more. And neither will baby need a sunscreen.
Image credit:
Image: Original Beans
A few months ago I posted about 
