Posts Tagged ‘Transport’
Getting Produce to Market: Transport “Innovation”
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on August 23rd, 2010
Source: Nourishing the Planet: Worldwatch Institute
From “Innovation of the Week: Getting to the Market” by Molly Theobald:
For many farmers, an abundant harvest is only the first step toward feeding their families and earning an income. Vegetables ripening in the field—or even harvested and stored nearby—are still a long way from the market where they can be sold for a profit.
One farmer in Sudan’s Kebkabyia province, Abdall Omer Saeedo, has to travel 10 kilometres twice a week to the nearest market to sell his vegetables and green fodder. Without a cart, truck, or other means of transporting a large amount of goods efficiently, he couldn’t make enough money to cover his production and packing costs, let alone the cost of seeds for the next season, education for his children, and other household needs. And after making it to market with his 10 sacks and five bags of produce on the back of his donkey, he was still at risk for loss if he wasn’t able to sell it all. Instead of dealing with the hassle of trying to pack it back home again, he would throw away whatever wasn’t sold.
Saeedo sought the help of Practical Action, a development non-profit that uses technology to help people gain access to basic services like clean water and sanitation in order to improve food production and incomes. Working with local metal workers, the organisation designed a donkey cart for him. Now, Saeedo is not only able to cart his produce to market twice a week, he can also easily bring back whatever he is unable to sell. His income has increased along with the quality and quantity of his product, which is no longer lost or destroyed by travel time and conditions.
Practical Action’s transportation innovations are helping to improve farmer livelihoods throughout sub-Saharan Africa and around the world. In Kenya, the organisation introduced bicycle taxis as a way for people to earn a living, as well as an energy-efficient means to transport people from place to place. In Nepal, Practical Action’s bicycle ambulances help carry sick or injured people from remote areas to hospitals safely and comfortably. And in Sri Lanka, the group’s bicycle trailers—capable of carrying loads of up to 200 kilograms—are used to transport goods to market, people to hospitals, and even books to local communities.
Read the full article by Molly Theobald.
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Concentrated Cleaners: Reducing Impact
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on August 5th, 2010
Source: Springwise
Forward-thinking manufacturers are working to decrease the amount of packaging used for their products. Some offer concentrated formulas, others sell refills in bags instead of containers. Now, a Canadian startup has come up with an innovative solution we hadn’t yet spotted: refill cartridges that consumers dilute at home, with tap water.
Developed by Planet People, the iQ line of household cleaning products features small cartridges of plant-based concentrate. Consumers fill a spray bottle with ordinary tap water and pop in a cartridge. The coloured concentrate visibly mixes with the water, and voila: a full bottle of cleaner. iQ comes in four varieties: glass, bathroom, floor and all-purpose cleaner. All made with non-toxic and environmentally sustainable ingredients.
Besides reducing packaging and plastic waste, the system obviously cuts down on transportation, reducing fuel consumption and vehicle emissions. And—appealing to people’s wallets as much as their conscience—iQ passes on packaging and transportation savings to its customers. iQ starter kits, which include a spray bottle full of solution and a first refill cartridge, retail for approximately CAD 6.49, while cartridges are approximately CAD 2.79.
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Bike Assembly Station at Portland Airport
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on August 2nd, 2010
Source: Port of Portland via Springwise
Cyclists traveling to and from Portland International Airport have a new tool for at least one leg of their journey. A new bike assembly station on the lower terminal roadway will enable people traveling with bicycles to more easily assemble and disassemble their bikes before and after flights. With many travelers visiting Oregon and southwest Washington to take advantage of bike tourism and to participate in the region’s many bicycle events, the new station will help cyclists more quickly prepare their bikes for travel, whether it’s away from the airport on the PDX bike path or for a return flight home. The station is also available to airport employees who bike to work.
As an extra resource, Travel Oregon and the Port of Portland have basic bike tools available for check-out by cyclists assembling or disassembling their bikes. Cyclists can stop by State Welcome Center, located near bag claim carousels five and six, to borrow a pedal wrench, air pump, or just to peruse literature about bicycling resources in the region.
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EV Recharge Stations: Re-purposed Phone Booths
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on July 7th, 2010
From “Phone booths repurposed to charge electric vehicles“:
Now that mobile phones are ubiquitous, public phone booths are fast becoming obsolete. In a bid to find a viable new use for its 13,500 phone booths around the country, Telekom Austria has begun converting them into battery recharging stations for electric cars, scooters and motorbikes. Unveiling its first phone booth-turned-recharging station in front of the company’s Vienna headquarters in May, Telekom Austria announced plans to convert an additional 29 phone booths by the end of this year. During the initial trial period, recharging is free. The company eventually plans to charge a single-digit euro sum for the recharging service, with payments to be made via mobile phone.
Telekom Austria’s forward-thinking scheme comes at a time when, of the total 4.36 million cars on Austrian roads, there are only 223 electric cars and 3,559 hybrid cars registered -the Austrian motor vehicle association, VOeC, predicts that the number of electric vehicles in Austria will rise to 405,000 by 2020.
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The Real Value of Cycling: Evidence-based report
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on June 1st, 2010
Source: vicstig Sustainable Transport Interest Group
From “Benefits of bike network far outweigh cost, says study” by Matthew Moore:
AN INNER-CITY network of bike paths would deliver economic benefits more than triple the cost of building it, according to the first full economic appraisal of cycleways in Australia. The report, commissioned by the City of Sydney and to be released today {14-05-10}, says the 293-kilometre network proposed by 15 councils would deliver $506 million in economic benefits to the community over 30 years, $3.88 for every dollar spent.
The report, produced by the economic research firm AECOM, seeks to quantify the cost and likely benefits of building 160 kilometres of cycleways separated from general traffic and a further 70 kilometres of shared paths running from Kogarah to Chatswood and from Watsons Bay to Rhodes. Even if building costs were higher that expected, the benefits of the network would far outweigh the costs, with quicker trips delivering savings of $211 million, or 30.9 per cent of the total, health benefits after deductions for injuries estimated at $147 million and decongestion benefits at $98 million, the report says.
It says one of the biggest economic benefits would come from improved ”journey ambience”, or cycling free from the fear of being hit by cars, a pleasure it says is worth $139 million, or nearly 20 per cent of all savings. AECOM’s principal economist, Katie Feeney, who is one of the report’s authors, said the ”journey ambience” benefit was an attempt to put a value on an economic benefit that was hard to quantify and was calculated by working out what people would be prepared to pay for the improved experience. ”It’s best practice internationally to assign a value to the improved travelling experience of separated cycleways,” Ms Feeney said.
Read the full article by Matthew Moore.
Read the AECOM report on scribd.
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Lift Out Rechargeable Scooter Battery
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on May 5th, 2010
Source: Springwise
Electric scooters may be increasingly popular as an emissions-free transportation option, but charging them can be a hassle. With that in mind, UK-based Econogo has come up with the Yogo, a scooter whose battery is designed to be removed for easier charging.
Most electric scooters are powered by built-in batteries. One result of that fact is that recharging them typically involves running a cable from a building to wherever the vehicle is parked and then waiting several hours for a full charge. That may work fine for those with easy access to a garage; for urbanites and apartment-dwellers, not so much. Econogo’s newly launched solution: a scooter with a Lithium battery that can be simply lifted out, brought inside and charged within an hour. With a top speed of 30 miles per hour and a battery life of 22 miles, the Yogo is priced at GBP 1,999.
Read the article on Springwise.
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Transport as SocioCultural Force
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on April 23rd, 2010
Source: Going Solar Transport Newsletter
From Mutual Benefits and Close Connections: Baseball and America’s Streetcars in the 19th Century, TR News, January-February 2010.
In the late 19th century, public transit via streetcars regularly intersected with baseball, with mutual benefits. Unlike many other enterprises, streetcars served a practical purpose for baseball—delivering large numbers of people to the games easily, quickly, and cheaply. Collaboration between baseball and streetcars therefore was consequential for both. [...]
Baseball became an important way of filling streetcars with “happy-faced occupants.” The comparatively young sport had mushroomed in popularity, and streetcar companies grasped that providing access to the games could enhance their own business. One streetcar executive commented that it was important “to keep in with the baseball people”. Earlier in the century, railroads had established a pivotal relationship with baseball. Trains made it possible for teams to travel hundreds of miles to compete and to bring the games to an expanding pool of spectators. Streetcars, however, could offer a transportation benefit that steam locomotives could not, by carrying spectators directly to the ballparks, further expanding the fan base for games. [...]
The streetcar industry, and the role of streetcars in taking fans to baseball games, would continue to grow in the early decades of the 20th century. Eventually many of the vehicles would be supplanted by other mass-transit options, like subways and motorized buses. Still in its infancy in the late 19th century, the automobile likewise would become a formidable competitor.
Nonetheless, the streetcar deserves recognition as the forerunner of those more modern modes and for its crucial contribution to bringing previously far-flung locales closer together. For baseball, streetcars played an important role in diversifying the attendance at games. In addition, hefty investments of money and infrastructure by streetcar executives contributed in the long term to establishing ballparks as permanent fixtures on the American landscape.
These contributions underscore the lasting impact of streetcars on baseball’s growth as a socio-cultural force, even though the clang and clatter of a trolley is no longer instantly and widely associated with the crack of a bat and the cheers of a crowd rooting for the home team.
The study of streetcars in the 19th century illustrates transportation’s time-honored influence not just on destinations, such as ballparks, but on everyday life.
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Glasgow Tram Freighter Plan
Posted in Movements by Kate Archdeacon on April 16th, 2010
Source: Going Solar Transport Newsletter
“A new plan for sustainable transport in Glasgow includes a proposal to run trams in the city centre for freight as well as passengers. A similar scheme was attempted in Amsterdam (City Cargo) but failed last year, and the plan’s authors have suggested that this was because there were too few restrictions on road lorries in the Dutch capital to give trams a competitive edge. The plan, ‘Sustainable Glasgow‘, has been produced jointly by Glasgow City Council and the University of Strathclyde. It covers many environmental topics in a bid to deal with the effects of a changing climate, but its transport proposals include a city centre tramway linked to a dedicated bus route along the Clyde Waterfront which could also be later converted to light rail. It is, however, the suggestion that city centre trams could be used to replace lorries making deliveries which is unusual. Urban tramways have not been used to carry freight in Britain for many years, although the former Glasgow Corporation Tramways, which closed in 1962, were among those that did, sometimes using standard railway wagons. The report says: ‘The potential for a mixed use passenger and freight tram system in the centre of Glasgow should be explored. This would initially operate primarily in the pedestrianised areas of the city – thus reducing traffic disruption during the installation of the system, and providing a transport link between Queen Street and Central stations’.” Ref: Railnews (UK), 9/2/10
From Going Solar’s Transport Newsletter #149
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The Future of Personal Transportation in Megacities of the World: Study
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on March 29th, 2010
Source: University of Michigan Transport Research Institute via Going Solar Transport Newsletter
Image: Real-time Bus Map by kecko via flickr CC
From “The future of personal transportation in megacities of the world” by Luoma, J., Sivak, M., Zielinski, S.
Summary:
This study examined the future personal transportation in megacities of the world. Of particular interest was the future role of personal vehicles. To span ranges of geographical, political, and economic factors, the following 15 megacities were included in the analysis: Chicago, New York, London, Moscow, Paris, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Sa?o Paulo, Bangalore, Calcutta, Delphi, Mumbai, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. The current and future values of the following factors were considered: population, wealth, level of motorization, public transportation, and modal split. Also discussed were selected urban transportation plans and strategies.
Based on the analysis, projections through 2025 were made for each megacity for changes in ownership of personal vehicles; distance traveled per capita by personal vehicle within inner core, for commuting, and for leisure; and for number of road fatalities per capita. The forecasts include the following:
• The largest increases in personal vehicle ownership will occur in the four Indian megacities and Shanghai.
• There will be no increase in the use of personal vehicles for inner-core transportation in any of the megacities.
• No increases are expected in the use of personal vehicles for commuting. • The largest increases in the use of personal vehicles for leisure traveling (and the largest increases in road fatalities) will take place in Shanghai, followed by the four megacities in India, Rio de Janeiro, and Sa?o Paulo. Overall, no substantial decrease in the reliance on personal vehicles is foreseen in the next 15 years anywhere in the examined megacities. To the contrary, an increased role of personal vehicles is forecasted for the megacities in India, China, and Brazil.
The above trends are based on treating the different transportation modes as independent and exclusive options. However, there is growing implementation and use of new mobility networks—integrated networks that provide a variety of connected and IT-enhanced transportation options door-to-door. Although such networks are expected to reduce the reliance on personal vehicles, the magnitude and nature of this effect remain to be ascertained.
Japanese Bike Parking Station
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on January 24th, 2010
Source: Treehugger
Image: guardian.co.uk
From “Tokyo’s High Tech Bike Parking Revisited” by Sami Grover.
From solar-powered bike parking pods to the Indian-designed vertical bike tree, TreeHugger is not short on neat concepts for better bike storage. But it was Tokyo’s automated bike parking that really got us excited. Now the Guardian has created a short English-language video piece on how the system works. Essentially, bikes are fitted with a small sensor strip, and as the bike is rolled into the machine—it scans the identity and ensures you have a fully paid membership.
Membership, incidentally, costs the equivalent of about 15USD a month. And just check out the speed at which the bike is returned to the user—almost exactly 30 seconds from arrival at the unit and inputting your membership details, your bike is returned and you can pedal away. Impressive stuff.
Read the full article by Sami Grover.