The Next Level of Support (Part 1)

Please welcome back Greg Kushmerek for another installment in his series on bicycle commuting. He contributes every second Wednesday, and you can read his previous posts here and here.

[Image Credit: Flickr]

I’ve spent time so far discussing general issues that affect anyone considering using a bike for transportation. Today I want to think about issues of infrastructure development that support cycle commuting specifically.

Why cycle commuting? Most Americans commute by car, and increasingly those car trips are by solo drivers. Anyone familiar with rush hour traffic knows all of that stop and go is bad for gas mileage. In other words, we have plenty of people spending time creeping through traffic on a daily basis burning hydrocarbons when they could be on a bike instead. Put more commuters on a bike, and I think you’ll have a greater number of healthy (and less-stressed) people breathing cleaner air.

What helps support cycle commuters? If your bike commute is short, your interests include parking. When I lived and worked in The Netherlands, my company had two large bike racks right out front with overhead cover. Think about these attributes: these commuter bicycles were not relegated to the back corner behind a dumpster where vandals and thieves can prey in privacy during work hours. Access from the rack and the front door was just as quick as for any car in the lot, and a rainstorm, a daily guarantee, would not mean a wet seat awaited you for the ride home.

Don’t underestimate the need for a place to park. A friend of mine gave up his daily 3-mile cycle commute because the management company of his Kendall Square firm wouldn’t let him park his bike inside. It didn’t matter that there was space in his office and his company was OK with it; the lease said no and the bike had to go. There wasn’t any nice bike rack out front either. If he wanted to bike in, he faced leaving a theft magnet locked to a parking meter.

Just one mile away, anyone visiting the Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston’s Longwood medical center can park their bike for free at one of the many racks in the parking garage. Your bike is by the attendent collecting cash from car drivers exiting the garage and right next to the main door in to the facility. These racks are heavily used during the day: free parking, a protected space, easy access to the door. Many companies could provide the same at a minimum of cost. Convert a few spaces in a parking garage into bike racks. Put those racks in a decently trafficked area. The same happened when Boston Healthcare for the Homeless built a new facility at the Boston Medical Center. The parking structure was created with cyclists in mind. Bike in there, and you have a protected bike spot in a highly visible area. Many of the staff converted to cycle commuters so they wouldn’t have to park in overflow a half mile away.

Is crime a concern? Some companies have bike lockers where four people share the space, limiting the list of suspects if something goes awry. This is a feature people are even willing to pay for if the traffic density is high enough. I’ve heard of waiting lists to get into these kinds of setups.

My favorite idea along these lines is one I first saw pop up in Chicago: the McDonald’s Cycle Center, a secure bike parking center that provides indoor storage and a locker/shower facility for yourself. I’ve been inside: it’s clean and well-located. Bike in, change, and either walk to work in your nearby downtown office or hop the L and go. The center even offers an on-site bike mechanic — and any cycle commuter worth his or her salt knows where the bike shops are on the way into work and when they open. These types of places are perfect for existing high-density cities.

Do you think your city has enough density to support a facility like the McDonald’s Cycle Center? Has your employer ever considered converting car spaces to bike spaces in a garage? Have you asked?

Extreme Efficiency: Secrets Behind Miserly Solar Cars Part I

[Image Credit: MIT]

Recently I wrote about my visit to the MIT solar car team; this post is the first in a follow-up series that addresses the phenomenal efficiency of solar cars, and how innovative vehicle design techniques used in solar car development might influence design of future production cars.

Solar cars are amazingly efficient. The have to be if they are to drive continuously, powered only by the sun. If they have no other power source, solar cars must operate on only they power they can collect from their solar arrays (which is pretty limited). Let’s look at some rough numbers. When conditions are good, a horizontal square meter of ground receives about 1000 Watts of power from the sun. Photovoltaic cells are semiconductors that harness the sun’s radiation and convert it directly to electricity. The cells used on the MIT solar car are 21% efficient. That means 21% of the sun’s energy hitting the solar array is converted to electricity. Suppose we have a car with a solar array that has six square meters of area pointed directly at the sun. This array then has 6 m² x 1000 W/m² = 6000 Watts of solar radiation hitting it, and produces 0.21 x 6000 W = 1260 Watts of electrical power available to power the car. This is not much at all (about as much power as a hairdryer uses). 1260 Watts is best-case scenario as well; clouds or low sun angles early or late in the day reduce power production significantly. For comparison, a typical 150 horsepower car engine produces almost 112,000 Watts, or almost ninety times the peak power of our 6 m² solar array. A solar car needs to squeeze every last bit of efficiency it can from all its systems to make it possible to run a car on such little power.

So how solar car designers develop a car that drives at freeway speeds with less than one horsepower? We will look at five main factors in vehicle energy consumption: air resistance, tire rolling resistance, vehicle mass, powertrain efficiency, and system design. I’ll explore the differences between solar cars and conventional cars along these five dimensions in a series of upcoming posts. While it’s impractical to start building production passenger cars the way solar cars are built, we can incorporate many elements of solar car design in future vehicle designs.

Have any of you seen a solar car? On the road? Or even better, have you actually driven one?

Introducing Green FAIL

Last week I posted a photo of a rather unusual license plate:

I had the thought a few days ago that this might be considered a Green FAIL (in the spirit of FAILblog). I’ve decided to add Green FAIL as a new category to Design Impact. Occasionally I come across things like this. Some are just funny, like this license plate, but others have more serious implications. I would love to see Green FAILs that you encounter. Please submit them to Design Impact, and I will publish as many as I can. What are some examples of Green FAILs?

• Green oxy morons, such as using a Hummer to promote sustainability.
• A company trying to capitalize on public concern for sustainability by marketing ‘green’ products or services, which in reality either don’t help much, or actually harm the environment.
• Over-the-top efficiency or other sustainability-related claims. Some may be legitimate, but I’ve come across claims that would violate the laws of physics, or are very misleading. (If something seems too good to be true …)
• Humorously unsustainable activities or choices.

I’m sure you can think of many other things that would qualify as Green FAILs (and perhaps some green WINs). We can have fun, but please keep submissions family friendly and workplace appropriate.

World Environment Day 2009

In case you didn’t know, today is World Environment Day. Here is a blurb from the UNEP website:

World Environment Day (WED) was established by the UN General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.

Commemorated yearly on 5 June, WED is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action. The day’s agenda is to:

1. Give a human face to environmental issues;
2. Empower people to become active agents of sustainable and equitable development;
3. Promote an understanding that communities are pivotal to changing attitudes towards environmental issues;
4. Advocate partnership which will ensure all nations and peoples enjoy a safer and more prosperous future.

The theme for WED 2009 is ‘Your Planet Needs You-UNite to Combat Climate Change’. It reflects the urgency for nations to agree on a new deal at the crucial climate convention meeting in Copenhagen some 180 days later in the year, and the links with overcoming poverty and improved management of forests.

This year’s host is Mexico which reflects the growing role of the Latin American country in the fight against climate change, including its growing participation in the carbon markets.

Mexico is also a leading partner in UNEP’s Billion Tree Campaign. The country, with the support of its President and people, has spearheaded the pledging and planting of some 25 per cent of the trees under the campaign. Accounting for around 1.5 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, the country is demonstrating its commitment to climate change on several fronts.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon states that the WED celebration will “further underline Mexico’s determination to manage natural resources and deal with the most demanding challenge of the 21st century – climate change.”

Earth Day is certainly more well-known that WED. I like the comments above on helping people become ‘active agents of sustainable and equitable development’, and the need to unify to have the sort of impact that we need. The impact of individual green decisions can be noticeable, but what we really need is the synergistic effect of a unified effort. See my post on Earth Decade for some more thoughts on this topic.

Renaissance Scientists, Renaissance Engineers, Renaissance People

A lot of people (including me) are talking about the need to innovate, the need to develop new technology and systems to help solve some pretty important problems right now. In addition to addressing energy and environmental issues, innovation is essential for economic growth and quality of life for society. There is actually recent evidence that a lull in innovation over the last ten years or so has contributed to the current economic crisis.

What can we do to help accelerate innovation? One obvious action is to boost R&D funding (both from government and private sources). We have had some recent boosts to U.S. research and education programs, and a recent Forbes article provided an interesting perspective on what needs to happen for that money to translate into innovation. Forbes pointed out that our current research and educational infrastructure is based on narrowly defined disciples of study, while innovation typically requires the synthesis of ideas from a variety of disciplines. Forbes suggests that we need scientists (and engineers I might add) who can think with both sides of the brain if we want to accelerate innovation (i.e., renaissance scientists and engineers). Forbes also points out that research grants often require very narrowly defined research results, and that we need to support more “flexibility and exploration” in research. We certainly need to endorse expanded curiosity-driven research (in addition to results-driven research) if we are to accelerate innovation, as well as move toward a more open research infrastructure where interdisciplinary collaboration is more commonplace. This would require a myriad of changes, including how research grants are awarded and managed, and improving the balance of funding sources (the share of results-focused industry grants has increased significantly over the years).

The Forbes article points out that some undergraduate programs allow the kind of curricular customization that aids both left and right brain development, but that we need graduate programs that also offer a ‘whole brain experience’. There are actually some vanguard graduate programs that cross disciplinary boundaries (and sides of the brain), recognizing that solving societies toughest problems requires integration of knowledge from many fields of study. Consider, for example, the interdisciplinary Design Science program at the University of Michigan. It breaks away from traditional disciplinary boundaries to address design as a standalone research topic, integrating diverse fields of study, such as engineering, business, and psychology. The Design Science website explains how this field of study differs from established science disciplines: “Traditional science studies the world as we found it; design science studies the world as we make it”.

One of the things I love most about design is getting to focus on an important problem, and integrating knowledge and resources from a variety of disciplines into a complete, creative solution. Design as a discipline really knows no boundaries. I’m glad to see that some are recognizing the importance of linking traditional science and engineering ‘left-brained’ expertise with other disciplines. We would not only benefit from scientists and engineers learning more about right-brained subjects, but by bringing people together from diverse disciplines to tackle tough design problems. Progress in innovation could achieve new heights by linking the skills of engineers with the complementary insights of others. We don’t just need renaissance scientists and engineers, but renaissance people. I hope interest in design expands, and a broader part of our society begins to contribute their ideas and expertise to creating the next generation of energy, transportation, and agricultural systems that will move us toward sustainability.

Toxic Textbooks, Externalities, and Sustainability

I read about a new movement recently that is bringing to light the effects of traditional (neoclassical) economics curriculum on sustainability (both economic and environmental). Toxic Textbooks points out that most introductory economics textbooks simplify market economics. One important aspect of market economies that is overlooked often is the cost of externalities, that is, the costs of an economic transaction that do not have a direct impact on the parties involved in the transaction.

What do externalities have to do with sustainability? A lot. Understanding externalities is phenomenally important. One of the main reasons we have pollution, disappearing forests, a warming planet, and rapidly depleting oil supplies is that consumers don’t have to pay for all the costs of what they consume. Some of these costs are subsidized (think tax breaks and security for oil companies), and other costs are imposed on others not involved directly in the transaction. What is the real cost of pollution, of using something that can’t be replaced, of climate change, or of importing oil from certain countries? The consumer is not paying for it; the price of their consumption is artificially low. This is an effect of The Tragedy of the Commons, the title of a seminal paper written by Garrett Hardin in 1968. Markets work well when the value of everything behind a product is considered. In many cases, products depend on resources that we do not pay for (non-marketed assets). The cost of products normally do not reflect the value of ‘ecological services‘ provided by the natural environment. These additional resources are the commons, and the tragedy occurs when the commons are exploited to fuel growth in an unsustainable way; the commons are degraded or destroyed as a consequence. Once we start paying the true cost of what we consume, then the market economy will move toward a sustainable state. (See this recent article by Robert Costanza for a great perspective on the role externalities are playing in our current economy).

The only way we are going to shift to new, sustainable ways of doing things on a large enough scale is to provide the right price signals. We don’t need higher taxes overall, just different taxes that help reflect the cost of using common resources, and encourage investment in the right technologies and businesses. Even if some folks don’t buy into global climate change, there are enough other solid reasons (economic, national security, etc.) to justify a change in price signals.

The concept of externalities may be lacking from today’s economic textbooks, which is a problem for sustainability. But would revising all our textbooks solve this issue completely? I believe it extends beyond the classroom. What about those who haven’t learned about economics from a textbook? Many Americans have a pretty good concept of supply and demand. They understand how economic forces push prices up during a shortage, or pull them down when there is a glut. But does conventional economic wisdom include the importance of externalities? I suspect that it doesn’t. If it did, then voters would more universally support gasoline tax hikes, carbon caps, and investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency. Many citizens do support these things, but fewer than we need. We need more people who understand and appreciate externalities. But how do we get there? Perhaps revised textbooks is a start. But what else can we do? What else is being done right now?

Baby Steps, or War-Time Effort?

Today I read two sharply contrasting items. The first was Michael Moore’s vision for what should be done with GM following it’s bankruptcy. The second was Baby Steps to Better Choices, a new blog that (like many others) eases readers into small changes that will help the environment. Baby Steps advocates shunning bottled water to have a ‘huge impact’, while Moore implores us to undertake a wartime effort to remake our transportation system. The Baby Steps approach is less intimidating, perhaps less likely to offend, and may inspire more people to make some change. But this change will be slow, and the impact insufficient. I believe we need to pay attention to both strategies. Let’s do our best to live sustainably as individuals, but not lose sight of the needed large-scale change. Focusing only on small personal changes runs the risk of mollifying us, satisfying our desires to do something, and thereby distracting us from paying attention to the bigger picture. We have a great opportunity right now to remake not only ourselves, but our nation and world.

So what is the bigger picture anyway? What constitutes a ‘huge’ impact exactly? Fifty percent fewer water bottles? Petroleum-free transportation? To make informed decisions, we need to actually look at the numbers behind any choice. This will help us prioritize. We need to get a feeling for what a kilowatt hour of energy is (and a megawatt hour, and a gigawatt hour). That’s great if we have more folks switching to CFLs, driving less, biking more, consuming less and recycling more. We all need to do what we can as individuals, but let’s not lose sight of a holistic, long-term solution. Genuine transition requires more than disconnected individual good choices. We need new systems for living, new ways of doing things. We need compelling incentives and thoughtful policy changes to drive a more unified effort, and to capitalize on the resulting synergy. Moore’s vision for transportation is a good start. It may not be perfect, but his sense of scale is about right. We need better design of systems for producing and consuming energy, agriculture, and other aspects of living, as well as farsighted leadership and insightful policy design that will drive changes in the right direction and at the right pace.

Earlier I advocated declaring an Earth Decade, a time of transition and concerted effort where we get ourselves back on track. Small indivudual changes will help, but the most important thing we can do is help persuade others. We need more citizens who think long-term, who won’t reject a politician’s proposal for higher gasoline and energy taxes (in exchange for lower income taxes). We magnify our influence when our voice is echoed by others and is heard by decision-makers who can set in motion a grand transformation. What a great opportunity to make a better lives for ourselves, and for generations that follow!