On Friday, June 19, America 2050 will be co-hosting the next “Rebuilding and Renewing America” forum, focused on infrastructure strategies for the Southwest Megaregion, encompassing Southern California, the Las Vegas metropolitan area and Baja California.    The forum will aim to build support for a national infrastructure plan needed for America to respond to the big challenges of rapid population growth, our dependence on foreign oil, climate change, global competitiveness, and deteriorating infrastructure, and identify the major transportation, energy and water infrastructure priorities in the Southwest Megaregion that are issues of national significance. 

Likewise, we hope to find common ground among metropolitan areas in the Southwest Megaregion on programs and policies that would help regions and subregions meet their core infrastructure challenges.  The forum marks the first major convening of the west coast office of America 2050, housed at the USC Bedrosian Center. The forum aims to establish a network of business, civic, government and academic organizations through the America 2050 west coast office who will continue to work on building the Southwest Megaregion and pushing its collective agenda.    

The forum will take place at the Davidson Conference Center on the campus of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles on Friday, June 19 from 8:00am to 3:30pm. There is a fee of $25.00 to attend.  Register online here.

(Source: The Brookings Institution)

The Obama administration’s move to increase vehicle fuel economy standards and reduce greenhouse gas emissions addresses the source of one-third of U.S. CO2 emissions—transportation. In this report, the authors analyze the current state of carbon emissions by metropolitan area, listing the places that emit the least per capita and proposing policy avenues to move the entire nation toward reduced climate impact.   

America’s Challenge

The nation’s carbon footprint has a distinct geography not well understood or often discussed. This report quantifies transportation and residential carbon emissions for the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, finding that metro area residents have smaller carbon footprints than the average American, although metro footprints vary widely. Residential density and the availability of public transit are important to understanding carbon footprints, as are the carbon intensity of electricity generation, electricity prices, and weather. 

Limitations of Existing Federal Policy
Numerous market and policy distortions inhibit metropolitan actors from more aggressively addressing the nation’s climate challenge. Economy-wide problems include underpriced energy, underfunded energy research, missing federal standards, distorted utility regulations, and inadequate information. Policy impediments include a bias against public transit, inadequate federal leadership on freight and land-use planning, failure to encourage energy- and location-efficient housing decisions, and the fragmentation of federal transportation, housing, energy, and environmental policies. 

A New Federal Approach
Federal policy could play a powerful role in helping metropolitan areas—and so the nation—shrink their carbon footprint further. In addition to economy-wide policies to motivate action, five targeted policies are particularly important within metro areas and for the nation as a whole:

• Promote more transportation choices to expand transit and compact development options
• Introduce more energy-efficient freight operations with regional freight planning
• Require home energy cost disclosure when selling and “on-bill” financing to stimulate and scale up energy-efficient retrofitting of residential housing
• Use federal housing policy to create incentives for energy- and location-efficient decisions
• Issue a metropolitan challenge to develop innovative solutions that integrate multiple policy areas

Click here to Read/Download Full Report

(Source: The Infrastructurist)

Our friends at The Infrastructurist compiled the national results from that study and compare them with the demographics of transit systems in three U.S. cities: Washington, D.C., Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco (well, the Bay Area). The snapshot offers an intriguing insight into which Americans choose not to drive to work.

If FTA can spend a bunch of money on such a compilation for the entire US,  that would greatly benefit many of our professionals engaged in transportation planning & policy research.  An analysis on the issue of social equity and its underpinning to transportation alternatives would be very helpful to say the least as the country’s demographics has undergone a signficiant shift in the past decade or two.

(Source: earth2tech via Reuters)

Cities have thrown down the gauntlet for electric car charging in recent months, and utilities are increasingly eager to tout infrastructure efforts. Among automakers, the Renault-Nissan Alliance has been out in front working to coordinate governments, utilities and charge station companies to develop regional networks of hardware and services that drivers will need to make the automakers’ upcoming electric cars practical for daily use. But what steps follow a big partnership announcement, after a utility, a vendor or an automaker says it’s done a deal to ready the power grid for an EV rollout?

For at least one of the 26 partners that the Renault-Nissan Alliance has lined up so far — utility San Diego Gas & Electric — the vision for how to support plug-in vehicles at even a pilot scale is just beginning to take shape. In an interview last week, SDG&E’s Clean Transportation manager, Bill Zobel, gave us a glimpse of what the utility has accomplished so far, and what it has in the works.

At this point, Zobel said, the company is still in the process of assembling its internal team for the project. When that group is fully established next month, it will help develop milestones and oversee outreach to customers and “integration across the broader utility.” By September, SDG&E aims to have commitments from fleet operators in the San Diego area to trial at least 100 electric cars coming from Nissan next year. Zobel said the University of California, San Diego is “ecstatic” about the program. The city and county of San Diego, several nearby cities and the U.S. military may also sign up to try the vehicles. SDG&E plans to have at least 15 of the cars in its own fleet.

(Source: Autobloggreen)

With rising gas prices and often limited mass transit options in the United States, car pooling is often an excellent option for many urban commuters. However, finding people to car pool with can be problematic as can sharing costs fairly. The “creepiness” factor has often played against the willingness of many interested commuters to consider this as a viable option, at least until now.

Image Courtesy: Carbuddy

That’s where CarBuddy.com comes into play. When you sign up with CarBuddy, you enter information about your start and end points and whether you prefer to ride, drive or both. CarBuddy matches you up with ride partners that you can select from.

Participants also provide information about the car being driven and CarBuddy calculates fair costs for the trip being taken. The costs are updated weekly and based on more than fuel prices. CarBuddy also factors in wear and tear and depreciation on the car being driven. Based on distance traveled, a cost is calculated for each participant and passengers are charged each week and drivers reimbursed. CarBuddy takes 8 percent off the top of the transaction to pay for its services. Users can cancel at anytime or even switch car pool partners if they want.

The company will also pay for a cab service up to four times a year in the event a passenger gets stranded.

Blueprint America: Road to the Future, an original documentary part of a PBS multi-platform series on the country’s aging and changing infrastructure, goes to three very different American cities – Denver, New York and Portland, and their surrounding suburbs – to look at each as a microcosm of the challenges and possibilities the country faces as citizens, local and federal officials, and planners struggle to manage a growing America with innovative transportation and sustainable land use policies.

Over the next 40 years, America’s population will grow by more than an estimated 130 million people – most will settle in or near the country’s major population centers. At the same time, an unprecedented multi-billion dollar public works investment has just been made by the federal government to rebuild both the weakened economy and stressed national infrastructure. And, Congress is about to consider a transportation bill that will determine the course of the nation’s highways and transit for years to come.

(Source: Wheels Blog – NY Times & Autoblog)

Asia’s premier auto exhibition, the Tokyo Motor Show, held every other fall at the sprawling Makuhari Messe convention center, is still scheduled to take place Oct. 23-Nov. 4, but the cast of characters shrinks almost daily.  The exhibition has suffered in recent years with sales declines in the Japanese domestic market. Now, automakers around the world are experiencing sales and production slowdowns and are canceling plans for many new models.

Image Courtesy: Tokyo Motor Show

In fact, the display area for the 2009 show will be less than half of what it was in 2007, the last time the show was held. That show, in turn, was substantially smaller than the one in 2005. This year, the show is also being shortened by four days. Canceling the show entirely, J.A.M.A. said, would complicate its ability to revive it in future years.

(Source:  Autobloggreen)

Before you think we’ve gone crazy, let’s make clear that this is a post about a serious report published in Nature Geoscience. According to this report, lead that was expelled to the atmosphere through exhaust gases stimulated the growth of clouds. Larger clouds imply less solar radiation, which has a definitive cool effect. In this EU funded study, investigators from Switzerland, Germany and the U.S. “captured” clouds on some mountains and compared them to artificial ones created in laboratories. Their conclusion: if the air has some lead suspended in it, temperature and humidity didn’t pay as significant a role in cloud formation.

The Notre-Planete observed “the major part of atmospheric lead comes from human activities, the main sources are coal combustion, gasoline lead, small aircraft flying at the altitude where the clouds form and construction that release lead from ground.

Emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause of global warming, but the emission of small particles of substances such as lead may have the opposite effect by interacting with water vapor in the atmosphere to trigger the formation of clouds. Depending on their altitude and the thickness of the clouds can reflect sunlight into space or trap the heat radiated by the Earth.

What’s interesting is that their models show that between 1970 and 1980, before unleaded gasoline became common, most dust on the Earth’s suface had lead particles in it. This might have helped more clouds get created, and that reduced the impact of greenhouse gases accumulation in the atmosphere.  Though research has proved time and again the ill effects of lead on human health, it is surprising to see the “side effect” that has helpedin guarding the environment.

(Source: Autobloggreen & Gizmag) & Mc24.no)

It’s been a little while since we last heard from Suzuki regarding its planned hydrogen fuel cell motorcycle, Crosscage, but apparently the Japanese company has been hard at work getting the machine ready for production. According to Ivar Kvadsheim over at MC24.no, teams from both Suzuki and Intelligent Energy were present at the EVS24 event in Stavanger, Norway, with their fuel cell-powered machines.

Image Courtesy: Autobloggreen

In the ENV and Cross Cage used tl cell to produce electricity to recharge the batteries, which in turn drive electric motor. On the prototype cell gives a power of 1 kW and delivers power to a motor that gives 8 horsepower. The new cell will be used in the production models are lighter and more efficient and delivers 1.8 kW, almost double the output. 

Over the last few years, Intelligent Energy has reportedly managed to increase the output of its fuel cell from 1 kW to 1.8 kW, and both its ENV bike and Suzuki Crosscage will use this same power source. That’s great, but the real issue holding up production is the bike’s hydrogen storage tank. It seems the two companies were planning to use a tank from BMW, but later found out that unit was only approved for automotive use and couldn’t be legally used in a motorcycle.  So we have to go through the entire process to create and get approved a new container, “explains Dennis Hayter of Intelligent Energy. 

This process will probably take about four months. Then both Suzuki and Intelligent Energy to run a few months of testing with an approved container, before they can be put into regular production.

It is expected that both ENV and Cross Cage arrive for sale in the course of next year, probably already in the spring. Bikes will have a range of 160 miles and Hayter estimates a price of around 8000 Euro.

According to Gizmag, Suzuki’s Crosscage will feature a single-sided suspension front AND rear. The brushless electric motor’s mounted inline with the rear wheel, and looks-wise it’s so far out there that it’s on its way back again. It was rumoured that Bridgestone’s even developed a special futuristic-looking tyre to match the bike’s oddly tesselated discs.