For what it is worth, a confession. I deleted this app with the intent to never use it again, and then I switched to this one. That felt good. Then last week I was up in the mountains of Escazu, in Costa Rica, and I had to change my mind. At 3:30 a.m. a local taxi driver who was supposed to pick me up to take me to the airport did not show up. After a few minutes I finally relented and downloaded the app I had deleted. And something unexpected, something very good happened. Continue reading
When I decided to delete that app it was without hesitation. I wanted to avoid sanctimony, but the point of making a show of my resolve was a simple message, i.e. that manners matter. Even though that app had been extremely useful to me over the past year, it was not so useful that I could ignore its founder’s behavior once I finally paid attention.
So now I am paying attention, and need a new app. And where better to start looking? I liked the message of that story, for reasons akin to my boyhood preference for Bjorn Borg over John McEnroe. I believe in disruption and I believe in winning, but if one is going to develop new rules of the game, then they should definitely be better rules that lead to better behavior. Continue reading
INGO MECKMANN/PIAGGIO FAST FORWARD
Sometimes it makes more sense to look at a design rather than read about it. This story is in itself interesting (thanks to Wired) and that is because of the combination of the history of Piaggio and the character at the center of the design story:
IN THE SUMMER months of 2015, Jeffrey Schnapp and a few of his colleagues started collecting rideables. The hoverboard craze was in full swing, and OneWheels and Boosteds were showing up on roads and sidewalks. Schnapp and his co-founders rode, drove, and crashed everything they could find. For Schnapp, a Harvard professor and longtime technologist with a shaved head, pointy goatee, and a distinct Ben Kingsley vibe, this was market research. Continue reading
This latest post in our common bicycle theme is not about any novel designs or materials being used to make the pedal-powered machines, but rather a feature from The New Yorker website on the new bicycle manufacturing scene in the US, particularly in Detroit, where a crashed automobile industry left a city in dire need of revival. Omar Mouallem writes:
In 1896, the Detroit Wheelmen opened an ornate new clubhouse, complete with an auditorium and a bowling alley. The Detroit Free Press called it “the most modern club house of any cycling organization in the west.” Its forty-thousand-dollar cost (about $1.1 million today) was paid for by the club’s four hundred and fifty members, who included John and Horace Dodge, the co-owners of Evans & Dodge Bicycle Company, one of more than three hundred U.S. manufacturers during the bike boom of the eighteen-nineties.
Source: Conservation Magazine
If you have ever considered buying an electric car but haven’t done so in fear of the car battery dying before getting to a charging station – which is known as “range anxiety” – fear no more. A new study shows that most American drivers do not go beyond the distance that today’s electric cars can go in a single battery charge in one day.
87 percent of the vehicles on the road could be replaced by low-cost EVs on the market today even if they were only charged overnight, say the MIT researchers who conducted the study published in Nature Energy.
If this large-scale swap were to happen, it would lead to roughly 30 percent less carbon emissions even—if the electricity were coming from carbon-emitting power plants.
Image via car2go.com
I’ve never owned a car myself, because friends and family have always had one. While a student at Cornell, a couple of my friends used the Zipcar service, and that’s something I’d have used if I didn’t have the opportunity to borrow a car or share a ride with housemates for grocery shopping every other week (when I didn’t bike or bus to the store instead). But you don’t need to do any math to realize that a car-sharing service is almost certainly going to result in a reduction of carbon dioxide output, even if it’s not as environmentally friendly as biking or taking public transportation. Conservation Magazine reports on a new study quantifying the use of the Car2go service in five cities over three years:
Car-sharing is quickly gaining popularity in cities around the world. Proponents say that it’s a green way to get around town. In a report published in July, researchers calculated car-sharing’s precise impact by analyzing the car-share service car2go in five North American cities. Each car2go eliminated up to 11 privately-owned vehicles from the roads and prevented 10 to 14 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, they found.
A piezoelectric pad on the Shibuya subway station in Tokyo. Image © Vimeo
We’re always on the lookout for alternative energy options, especially those that are linked with big carbon producers like transportation. But unlike many of the options we’ve shared about before, piezoelectric crystals generate power from mechanical stress, and they can be installed in roads or walkways, as they already have been elsewhere in the world. Now, California is looking to take a step in the same direction with a pilot program, Laura Goldman reports for care2.com:
Energy conservation is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think about freeways jammed with idling vehicles.
But in California, which has some of the most congested freeways in the country, that’s about to change. The California Energy Commission (CEC) has approved a pilot program in which piezoelectric crystals will be installed on several freeways.
The density of transportation infrastructure in Europe. Credit: Marina Pinilla.
We enjoy a good drive as much as anyone, but we also have seen the impact they have over time in wilderness areas, and here is some unsurprising science from already developed regions to back up the concern:
IN EUROPE YOU CAN’T GET VERY FAR FROM ROADS—AND NEITHER CAN WILDLIFE
Roads and railway lines are so ubiquitous across the European continent that it is becoming impossible to measure their ecological effects, according to a study published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In the study, researchers calculated the distances to the nearest paved road or railway line throughout 36 European countries, the first time that such calculations have been made comprehensively across the entire continent.
Nearly one-quarter of the land in Europe is within 500 meters of transportation infrastructure, half is within 1.5 kilometers, and virtually all is within 10 kilometers, they found. Continue reading
Wrightspeed’s new range-extended electric powertrain can be installed as a retrofit to a standard diesel garbage truck, more than doubling mileage and lowering carbon dioxide emissions up to 68 percent.
We are all fans of electric vehicles and what they represent for a transition away from fossil fuel dependence in daily life, drastically reducing carbon emissions with transportation, and lower noise pollution. Cheryl Katz reports for GreenBiz.com about a shift to electric vehicles — not for consumer use, but commercial:
The clang of garbage cans still probably will wake people way too early in the morning. But in Santa Rosa, California, at least, the roaring diesel engine will be quiet, replaced by a silent, electric motor.
The electric garbage trucks scheduled to begin rolling there this summer may be less alluring than the sporty vehicles that engineer Ian Wright helped design as co-founder of Tesla Motors. But Wright, who left the high-end electric car company to start Wrightspeed, maker of electric powertrains for medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicles, is on a campaign to force large, carbon-belching engines off the road.
A Google self-driving car. Photo © Grendelkhan / Wikimedia through a Creative Commons license
From Cool Green Science:
Why Driverless Cars May Make Cities Sprawl Even More
For “baby boomers” the concept of car pooling is a standard one – and not just for over-scheduled kids being taken to after school soccer, dance and music classes. In the mid-20th century fewer people owned a car, and if they did it was one per family, so it was a common occurrence for friends or neighbors to coordinate their morning commutes. Augmented by public transportation, those trips were part of the community fabric.
As the now global Uber app continues to both expand and adapt to the market’s changing demands and needs, it’s possible that UberPool may have both social and environmental impacts.
Unlike a standard Uber ride, in which a single rider starts a one-time trip, UberPool works like a party line for cars. Travis Kalanick, Uber’s co-founder and chief executive, describes it as the future of his company — and thus the future of transportation in America.
Call up the app, specify your destination, and in exchange for a significant discount, UberPool matches you with other riders going the same way. The service might create a ride just for you, but just as often, it puts you in a ride that began long ago — one that has spanned several drop-offs and pickups, a kind of instant bus line created from collective urban demand…
…Mr. Kalanick said it was likely that soon, in big cities and even in many suburbs, most Uber rides will be pooled, meaning each Uber car will be serving more than one rider most of the time.
If that occurs, and if Uber continues growing at its breakneck pace, it would represent a momentous transformation in how Americans get around. Continue reading
A truck laden with clay pots packed with straw in Cherthala, Kerala
Parade Ground, Fort Kochi
Dashrath Manjhi chipped away at a mountain for 22 years to let his village have access to civilization (and medicine)
Forget reality shows about the subject; the ultimate tale of man vs. nature may be the story of Dashrath Manjhi, who single-handedly carved a road through an entire mountain that had been isolating his village from essential services. Using only a hammer and chisel, Manjhi, a landless farmer, carved a path through a mountain in the Gehlour Hills, Bihar, India, just so that his village could have easier access to medical facilities.
New Zealanders can now run their cars on the same fuel they run themselves on—beer. Brewtroleum is a new biofuel which mixes beer by-products with regular gasoline to power cars. PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons
Madrid’s car-free zone is just under 500 acres. Only people who live in the zone are allowed to take their cars inside. PHOTO: Pictures Dot News
After over a hundred years of living with cars, some cities are slowly starting to realize that the automobile doesn’t make a lot of sense in the urban context. It isn’t just the smog or the traffic deaths; in some cities, cars aren’t even a convenient way to get around. Commuters in L.A. spend 90 hours a year stuck in traffic. A UK study found that drivers spend 106 days of their lives looking for parking spots. A growing number of cities are getting rid of cars in certain neighborhoods through fines, better design, new apps, and, in the case of Milan, even paying commuters to leave their car parked at home and take the train instead.
Hyundai Motor Co’s Tucson fuel cell SUV
Hyundai Motor Co believes hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are the future for eco-friendly cars despite challenges of limited infrastructure and slow sales. South Korea’s largest automaker has sold or leased 273 Tucson fuel cell SUVs since beginning production in 2013, lower than its 1,000 target, mostly in Europe and California. Fuel cell cars represent a bigger opportunity than electric cars because competition is less fierce. Hydrogen-powered cars also give more flexibility to designers. They can be scaled to big vehicles such as buses as well as small cars.
Ather Energy’s e-scooter – S340 – is powered by a battery that charges within an hour
India is the world’s second largest market for two-wheelers, and more than 14 million two-wheelers were sold last year. But electric scooters, so far, aren’t too big a part of that pie. When electric two-wheelers were first introduced nearly a decade ago, companies were betting big. They had a brief honeymoon period between 2008 and 2010, with sales more than doubling during that time. But all that dwindled once the government slashed its Rs22,000 ($346) subsidy for lithium battery packs in 2012. From selling 100,000 units two years ago, sales plunged to 21,000 units by 2014. But Ather Energy is bent on revising the trend.
A new geolocation system is helping people get around in places where the streets have no name. PHOTO: Mapcode
Rely on numbers to get around the neighbourhood? Then this one’s for you. A nonprofit called the Mapcode Foundation, has designed a system that assigns a unique and easily remembered address to any spot on the planet, without reference to landmarks or street names. Mapcodes consist of between four and nine digits and letters, which correspond to a five-square-metre patch on land or sea. Vowels have been eliminated from the system—so that mapcodes would not look like words, and because “O”s and “I”s cause confusion—but the remaining Latin consonants can be replaced with characters from the alphabets of most major languages. And the addresses are largely sequential: take a few steps in any direction and you’re in another square with a similar mapcode.
An upcoming aerial ropeway might be the solution to Kolkata’s traffic congestion issues
No, we are not talking flying here. But the Curvo, the world’s first non-linear aerial ropeway for second tier urban commutation. Pollution and traffic-free, the service, operational on electricity, would be on steel frames spreading at a distance of around 90-100 m running through the existing arterial and other roads to avoid congested streets of the city. There will be elevated stops at every distance of 750 m and the cars would be able to gain speed of about 4.25 m per second (12.5 km/hour) with the ability to carry an estimated 2,000 people every hour. Curvo is expected to be introduced in 18-24 months. The cabins will have an accommodation capacity of 8-10 persons.
Organikos 