Industrialized Cyclist Notepad


House transportation bill eliminates Safe Routes to School funding

Kaiser’s Scott Gee in SF Gate, playing the health angle:

U.S. House wrongly eliminated Safe Routes funding.



China’s electric-bicycle boom

Manufacturers believe exports will grow quickly, especially to Europe and North America, which accounted for more than 70% of the nearly 1m bikes sent abroad in 2009. One in every eight bicycles sold in the Netherlands these days is electric. Better yet, Chinese manufacturers secured an average price of $377 per exported bike, compared with less than $100 three years ago and just $46 for a pedal bike.

via China's electric-bicycle boom: Pedals of fire | The Economist.

The electric bike: Inherits almost all of the disadvantages of a regular bike, and jettisons the health effect. Most of the danger of a motorcycle, without the health benefit of a bicycle.

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“Green cars” will not solve the whole greenhouse gas thing

The impossibility of “green cars” must be apparent at this point. EVen to people at websites called “Green Car Congress:” http://www.greencarcongress.com/2012/02/mashayekh-20120212.html

After considering a wide range of possible strategies to reduce light-duty vehicle greenhouse gas emissions, a team from Carnegie Mellon University, RAND Corporation and the University of Toronto has concluded that no one strategy will be sufficient to meet GHG emissions reduction goals to avoid climate change. Strategies considered included fuel and vehicle options; low-carbon and renewable power; travel demand management; and land use changes.

However, they also found that many of these changes have positive combinatorial effects, “so the best strategy is to pursue combinations of transportation GHG reduction strategies to meet reduction goals.” As a result, they recommended that agencies need to broaden their agendas to incorporate such combinations in their planning. Their policy paper is published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology.

So, if we still want to drive around everywhere , we’re left with all these non-effective strategies for reducing emissions. Solution? Implement all these non-effective strategies at the same time!