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eBay moves to green shipping
Although eBay's most visible contribution to the world these days, Meg Whitman, is no friend of the environment, the online auction giant will launch a positive contribution to the environment next month: a shipping container for buyers and sellers to use — and re-use. The box is made of sustainably forested wood pulp and water-based dyes, requires minimal tape to close and can be used up to five times. The company says a single box could save nearly 4,000 trees and enough energy to power almost 50 homes for a year.
What's also nifty is that you can track your box's whereabouts on the internet.
The idea originated in a contest the company holds for innovative ideas from employees. If the the box's benefits come anywhere close to the company's estimates, it will be a winning idea indeed. Elbows at its former CEO aside, eBay's other green initiatives include early adoption of the Bloom Energy fuel cell and a green data center.
| September 08 2010 at 11:34 AM
60-mile traffic jam in China takes 3 days to navigate
While I'm sure your morning commute is no fun, it could definitely be worse: A 62-mile traffic standstill on a road leading to Beijing is now in its ninth day, with individual drivers caught in it for as long as three days. The cause of the jam — beyond the skyrocketing number of drivers in China — is heavy use of the route, the Beijing-Tibet expressway, by trucks bringing construction supplies into Beijing. The trucks don't just add to traffic; they also damage the road, necessitating repair crews.
The roadway is also a major artery for transporting produce, coal and other basic supplies into Beijing — meaning, ironically, that the city's ill-planned growth could choke off its economy. Drivers stuck in the traffic, according to international reports, are taking it in stride, but with roadside vendors quadrupling their prices for food and other goods, the prospect of civil unrest looms near.
In our compact, usually economically prosperous region, stories like this are a reminder that while paying to use the carpool lane is hard to swallow, there's a real reason that regional transportation authorities are urging people out of cars and into mass transit.
| August 23 2010 at 11:25 AM
Scots make biofuel from whiskey
There's a saying that the cure for everything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the ocean. It's a nice sentiment, but let's be honest: There are some things that only whiskey can fix. And one of those is, apparently, the climate crisis.
Shutterstock
Scottish researchers have devised a way to make biofuel from whiskey — but fear not, the fuel doesn't waste the precious liquid, but instead uses byproducts of its manufacture: "draff," the used grains, and "pot ale," the liquid from the copper stills. Scotland produces copious amounts of both as part of its $6-billion whiskey industry.
The fuel produced is butanol, which produces 30 percent more energy per gallon than ethanol.
Best of all, the biofuel could go straight into your car's tank, with no rejiggering required. It could eventually be used as jet fuel as well. The Edinburgh Napier University researchers are creating a company to commercialize their findings and expect enough of it to be available at European pumps by 2020 to contribute to that year's EU biofuel requirements of 10 percent.
I'll drink to that!
| August 18 2010 at 10:23 AM
Colorado Tea Party candidate calls bike-sharing a U.N. plot
This spring, Denver launched the first large-scale bike-sharing program in any U.S. city. They've got 40 stations around the city, and you pay by the hour to use the cycles. The program is run by an American company called B-cycle.
Sinister plot?
But the likely Republican candidate for governor of the state, Tea Party darling Dan Maes, thinks the bike sharing program is the first step to a sinister U.N. takeover, according to comments reported in the Denver Post.
Well, maybe not the bike program in particular, but the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, of which Denver — and 15 other Colorado cities, and hundreds of U.S. cities — is a member.
Maes said that Denver mayor John Hickenlooper — his likely Democratic opponent in November — was "converting Denver into a United Nations community":
"At first, I thought, 'Gosh, ... what's wrong with people parking their cars and riding their bikes?' But if you do your homework and research, you realize ICLEI is part of a greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty."
He added, "This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms."
The U.N. program began in 1992, more than a decade before Hickenlooper became mayor. If its goal is to convert the hundreds of U.S. cities like San Antonio, Tex., and Nashville, Tenn., into United Nations communities, it sure hasn't been very effective.
The only thing I can think of that Maes might actually, you know, mean is that bike-sharing and bike-and pedestrian-friendliness make Denver more like Copenhagen, where the U.N. climate talks were held last winter. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Denmark ranks first in the world in happiness ratings, while the U.S. doesn't even make the top 10.
| August 06 2010 at 06:31 AM
How to fix Muni in four easy steps
A new study of New York's transit system has a lesson for San Franciscans — and especially those who back the Central Subway boondoggle: Buses can be as efficient as subways. And we can get them there quickly and cheaply.
Buses are certainly cheaper to build and operate than subways — but they're usually not as fast. Traffic is just part of the problem. The other problem is you, you slow poke. A third of all delays, the study found, were attributable to delays in boarding. And, yet, that problem is a cinch to fix. First, have passengers pay on the street (turnstiles and Clipper scanners would do the trick). Second, build lower-to-the ground buses that allow boarding from the front and back.
As for traffic, it's not too hard to surmount, either. Bus-only lanes, which San Francisco already has, simply need to be enforced with cameras. Enforcement would make the city money, to boot. That leaves just one financially significant investment: Buses should be equipped with signal priority technology that tells traffic lights to delay turning red until they can get through.
| July 12 2010 at 06:22 AM
World Cup not so light on its feet carbon-wise
The 2010 World Cup in South Africa — one month of hard-fought matches of the beautiful game — will contribute as much carbon to the atmosphere as a million cars do in a year, according to EU Infrastructure (H/T Inhabitat). The estimated footprint is six times larger than that of the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
South Africa gets most of its energy from coal, whereas Germany uses more renewable sources.
Also unlike Germany, South Africa had to construct most of the stadia that will be used for the event — yet developers largely built green. The gorgeous Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban, which will host one of the semifinal matches, employed materials recycled from an old stadium. It maximizes natural ventilation and daylight and even collects rainwater. The Johannesburg Soccer City Complex that will host the finals is actually a major remodel of an existing stadium.
The bulk of the hulking carbon footprint comes from the travel arrangements of the Cup's largely European fans, as this infographic shows.
| June 11 2010 at 10:28 AM
The hidden costs of driving
If you don't drive, you're heavily subsidizing those who do. And if you do drive, you're paying more for it than you even know.
A recent report from the American Public Health Association identifies hidden costs of car-centric transportation developments. Nationally, vehicles run up an $80-billion tab for health care costs and deaths due to air pollution. Traffic accidents cost the nation $180 billion a year in health care costs, lost wages, travel delay, property damage and legal costs.
The report includes obesity among the health problems caused by road development — which seems reasonable, except there's no way to assess what percent of obesity is caused by the prevalence of driving instead of walking, biking or transit. But if driving accounts for just 10 percent of obesity, the dollar figure would be $14 billion.
In one detailed example, the study identifies five road development projects in San Francisco. Additional accidents from the added traffic, it concludes, would cost $3.4 million.
What's incredible is that, despite these costs and the huge share of the national budget transportation already gets (as you can see in this pie chart), requests for federal funding for road transportation projects get routinely rubber stamped with no requirements to prove cost-effectiveness or comparative advantage over, say, bike and transit projects.
| June 01 2010 at 10:49 AM
Newsom: Not pro-transit
Two rather damning reports have emerged in the last week about Mayor Gavin Newsom's role in Muni's budget woes.
First, a little context. Faced with a massive shortfall, the transit agency has proposed its most draconian service cuts in history, combined with still more fare hikes. SFMTA has insisted on making the cuts, at least temporarily, even after the agency received windfall money from the state.
The current budget battle comes after a hard-fought budget and painful fare hikes a year ago. More cuts and fare hikes lead to fewer riders, which lead to more cuts and fare hikes: TGL is not the only (though it is, ahem, the first) news source to refer to Muni's current route as a "death spiral." On the other hand, making transit better benefits everybody by reducing traffic and giving drivers more options.
During last year's debate over Muni's budget, many raised the point that transit riders were shouldering four times as much of city's shortfall in transportation funding as drivers. Which hardly seems fair since transit riders are generally poorer and drivers can always take the bus, whereas bus riders in many cases don't own cars. The Board of Supervisors finally okayed hits to Muni with the understanding that the transit agency would look seriously at raising parking prices to fix the budget in the future.
But in October, the mayor bailed. At that time, then-communications director Nathan Ballard told Streetsblog that "The Mayor thinks it's the wrong time to make these moves. Right now, with the economy where it is, the burden on ordinary people for city services is already stretched to the max." (By "ordinary people," Newsom evidently meant people rich enough to drive cars.)
Without real leadership, the already failing transit system will continue to fail. Slower buses cost more than faster buses. Emptier buses cost more than fuller buses. Somebody has to stop the death spiral, and Newsom is MIA.
So it's no surprise that we're here again, a year later. Despite two studies, one conducted by the SFMTA itself documenting that extending meter hours to Sundays and possibly weekday evenings, would be a good idea and even helps business, extended metering hours are again missing from budget proposals.
According to several recent reports on SF Streetsblog, the mayor's office is to blame. (The board of SFMTA is hand-picked by the mayor and serves at his pleasure.)
And then there was the article in SFWeekly, which blamed both the union and the mayor alike. It described the mayor's role in budgeting this way:
Now more than ever, the agency is an extension of the mayor's office, which stands by as other city departments siphon millions of dollars from Muni's budget — compounding huge cuts in state funds. Multiple sources confirmed to SF Weekly that not only does Mayor Gavin Newsom's office dictate the agency's budget down to the line item, it also demands Muni fudge its fiscal shortfalls into "politically palatable" deficits.
I decided to ask the mayor's office directly: Does the mayor, or does he not, support extended metering hours? The response I got (after repeated phone calls and wrapped in vitriol) was that Mr. Newsom supports an opt-in program for Sunday metering, in which each supervisor decides whether or not his or her district will participate in the program.
For me, this was the nail in the coffin. You call this leadership? It's an embarrassing abdication of leadership, plain and simple. Metering hours would vary across the city, making it harder for drivers to follow the rules. And, by requiring opt-in, the mayor is basically putting a sign on every meter in the city that says, "Angry about longer meter hours? Blame your supervisor (not the mayor)!" Not to mention that an opt-in program doesn't guarantee that a single quarter will go into Muni's coffers.
Newsom loves to soak up the limelight for San Francisco's green initiatives, but behind the scenes, he appears to be busy trying to curry favor with drivers at the expense of everybody else — probably in the name of a political future in a larger stage, despite the fact this his prospects look ever-more doomed to fail. What's so bizarre is that he seems to think he can keep it secret by bullying reporters and MTA staff into silence.
UPDATE: The same mayoral spokesman who responded to my inquiry — emphasizing the mayor's support for the opt-in Sunday metering program — emphasized the mayor's opposition to evening hours in Matier and Ross's article on the price hike on neighborhood parking permits: "The mayor hates the increases too, but we have to put it in perspective," said Tony Winnicker, spokesman for Mayor Gavin Newsom. "We've held the line on expanding evening parking meter hours, and we're trying to hold the line on further Muni service cuts, but $200 million in state cuts means nobody is going to be happy."
UPDATE 2: Newsom told Rachel Gorden that "he personally doesn't like the idea of Sunday meter operations and is adamantly against nighttime meters." The mayor's office clearly spins his position depending on the venue, but the facts are absolutely clear: Tough decisions are needed to save transit, and Newsom is not willing to make them.
| April 26 2010 at 06:38 AM
Does congestion kill the economy?
When Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood released a policy statement on biking and pedestrian accommodations earlier this month, promising "the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized," he found himself in hot water with road and driver lobbies.
They predicted that traffic would get worse — a line of thinking San Franciscans have seen before. The logic behind that leap has its own challenges (what about the people who stop driving in order to bike?). But the road warriors also claimed that the congestion would put a wet blanket on the already ailing economy.
This second prediction seems more likely to be true — except it's not. Congestion has no statistically significant impact on economic growth, according to an analysis by law professor Michael Lewyn.
For instance, Los Angeles tops the list of worst traffic delays; it's economy shrunk by 3 percent in 2009. San Francisco places fifth, and it's economy shrunk by whopping 10 percent. Nor was there any clear pattern in the order of the two lists overall.
Lewyn also allowed for possible lag time: Congestion last year might cause economic pain this year. That data also showed no relationship.
In fact, nationally, road congestion costs us just 1 percent of the GDP, meaning that making investments in alternative modes of transportation — even if those investments do cause more traffic — has about the same chance of stifling the economy as a lollipop purchase does of sabotaging your monthly budget.
| April 02 2010 at 11:19 AM
Google Map your bike ride
Believe it or not, bike routes are the additional feature most people request on Google Maps.
And, starting today, people in 150 cities — including San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and Mountain View — can get them. The routes will factor in bike lanes, bike-friendly streets and that all-important factor: hills.
Sorry, SFBike, but your PDF map can't compete with this! At least in its current Beta form, the Google tool also includes a link for you to supply new information about the suggested routes.
Google is announcing the new feature today at the National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C.
The tech giant is setting a fascinating example of leveraging corporate brand and technology to advance environmental causes. And it's doing it by way of its basic service: information. Google Earth has been used by numerous environmental groups to document forest loss. And Google Maps first added mass transit and walking routes about a year ago.
Google being Google, there's a YouTube video showing you how to use the new feature. Happy riding.
| March 10 2010 at 02:36 PM
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