(Source: Huffington Post; The Independent)

The only passenger rail link between Britain and the rest of Europe has been shut down indefinitely, Eurostar said Sunday, promising more travel misery for thousands of stranded passengers just before Christmas.

Services have been suspended since late Friday, when a series of glitches stranded five trains inside the Channel Tunnel and trapped more than 2,000 passengers for hours in stuffy and claustrophobic conditions. More than 55,000 passengers overall have been affected.

A Bloomberg news report says Eurostar Group Ltd., operator of high-speed trains through the Channel Tunnel will resume a limited service tomorrow after its trains stopped working in snowy weather, causing three days of cancellations.

The disruption will prove “very expensive,” Eurostar said today at a briefing in Paris, while declining to give an estimate of the likely cost.

Some panicked passengers stayed underground for more than 15 hours without food or water, or any clear idea of what was going on – prompting outrage from travelers and a promise from Eurostar that no passenger train would enter the tunnel until the issue had been identified and fixed.

Eurostar runs services between England, France and Belgium. The company said Sunday it had traced the problem to “acute weather conditions in northern France,” which has seen its worst winter weather in years.  The company noted that its problem with the trains this weekend has been to do with the changes between the sub-zero temperatures outside the tunnel and the 25C (77F) heat within the tunnel.

The breakdown was probably caused after cold air sucked through intakes on the locomotives was quickly warmed on entry to the tunnel, resulting in condensation that shorted out electrical circuits, Eurostar has said.

The problem represents a “new mode of failure” not encountered before in Eurostar’s 15-year history, Brown said. After 15 years of comparatively trouble-free operations, high-speed train company Eurostar is now facing huge challenges.  There have been numerous cold snaps in that time, with the trains running from London through Kent – one of the UK’s snowiest counties.

The company’s bosses must get to the bottom of a cold weather malfunction of trains that appears baffling – even to rail experts.

And they must then win back the trust of the travelling public -a trust which will have been eroded by all the tales of travel misery that emerged this weekend after the train failures within the Channel Tunnel.

Eurostar has suffered two serious in-tunnel fires during its 15-years of operation. But despite those setbacks it has become the way to travel between London and Paris and Brussels.

Already popular, the service was given a further boost when the 68-mile London to Folkestone Channel Tunnel high-speed rail link – now known as HS1 – was completed in 2007.

This enabled passengers to travel to Paris from London in two hours 15 minutes, while London-Brussels journey times came down to one hour 51 minutes.

(Sources: Green Car Congress, Red Orbit, & Reuters)

Jean-Louis Borloo, France’s Minister for Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and the Sea, presented a national 14-point plan designed to accelerate the development and subsequent commercialization of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids in France.

France will invest 2.5 billion euros ($3.6 billion) over 10 years in research, subsidies and infrastructure development for electric cars as automakers race to get the vehicles on the road, its energy minister said.  Speaking at a presentation of the government’s plans for electric vehicles on Thursday, minister Borloo said the investment would be split between pilot projects, battery production and bonuses for carmakers building green cars.

The investment would also cover the biggest cost, namely adapting the electricity grid to allow for the creation of a million charging points by 2015 and over 4 million by 2020.  Borloo said around half the charging points would be in private homes, with almost as many in offices, as well as 75,000 “back-up” charging points in streets and car parks.

The 14 elements of the plan are:

1. ADEME (the French Environment and Energy Management Agency) will launch in early 2010 a new call for projects on infrastructure costs, to support plug-in demonstrators and trials combining infrastructure, applications and target territories, and to validate the functioning of the ecosystem of rechargeable vehicles. Budget: €70 million (US$102 million).
2. ADEME will establish early in 2010 a roadmap for specific new mobility solutions, dealing with developments in transportation of people or goods, based both on technology (new vehicles, dissemination of renewable energy, electric traction, etc.) and service (Vélib, Carsharing, Carpool, etc.) ADEME will then launch a new call for projects, with a budget of €25 million (US$36 million).
3. Renault will establish a Li-ion battery factory in Flins, in partnership with CEA (France’s Atomic Energy Commission), at an investment of €625 million. This site may produce more than 100,000 batteries per year. Bolloré, Dassault and Saft are also conducting parallel projects.
4. A group of large companies and associations of local and state officials are committing to purchase electric vehicles with a range of at least 150 km. The public tenders and private joint purchasing will target a market fleet of 100,000 vehicles by 2015. The first 50,000 are already identified. Led by La Poste, the group includes EPA, Air France, Areva, Bouygues, Darty, EDF, Eiffage, France Telecom, GDF SUEZ, SNCF, SPIE, UGAP, Veolia, Vinci, associations and communities represented by Association of Urban Communities of France and the Association of Regions of France.
5. A €5,000 grant for the purchase of vehicles with CO₂ emissions less than or equal to 60 g/km until 2012. Hybrids with CO₂ emissions are less than or equal to 135 g may receive a bonus of €2,000, as will LPG or natural gas vehicles.
6. Availability of a standard outlet to charge the cars outside of the home. Specifically, no charge should be needed at home.
7. By 2012 the construction of buildings (offices and homes) with compulsory integration of charging systems.
8. Supporting the installation of charging systems in condominiums.
9. Compulsory charge points in parking for office buildings by 2015.
10. Agreement on common European charging standards.
11. Municipalities to receive support to deploy the public recharging infrastructure.
12. Organize the operational deployment of the network. €1.5 billion for public infrastructure.
13. Maximize the use of low-carbon or renewable electricity for recharging vehicles.
14. Giving batteries and battery materials a second life after their vehicular applications, either through reuse (in grid storage, for example), or recycling.

The unveiling of the so-called “battle of the electric cars” plan follows hard on the heels of another scheme announced just two weeks ago that the French government would invest some seven billion euros ($10 billion USD) in the development of a modern freight-transporting railway system in an effort to reduce congestion on the nation’s roads and highways.

French President Sarkozy also announced his plans for a new carbon tax on businesses and private households that is set to go into effect next year. All three interventions are critical elements of Sarkozy’s “green plan” with which he hopes to drive down France’s dependence on carbon-based fuel and lower its emission of greenhouse gases.

Borloo says that nearly two thirds of the 1.5 billion euros ($2.2 billion USD) needed to fund the program will be procured through state loans set be started next year.

Included in the electric car plan is the construction of roughly a million battery-charging facilities by 2015, some 90 percent of which will be in private homes, while the other ten percent will be installed in car parks and at roadside stations.

Additionally, beginning in 2012, all new apartment buildings with parking lots will come equipped with battery-charging stations. By 2020, the plan’s architects say they hope to have some four million charging points throughout the country—or nearly two per electric car.

The ecology ministry stated in the meeting that the emissions-free sector of the French automobile industry should be worth a whopping 15 billion euros ($21 billion USD) by the year 2030 and constitute an estimated 27 percent of the total market for vehicles.

Click here to read the entire article.

Note: A big heartfelt thanks to our friends at Green Car Congress who made a concerted effort to provide the readers with an English Translation of this 14 point plan.  For those who wonder, this plan and every other material on the Ministry’s website is only available in French.  What’s up with a Government website only published in French? What were these egalitarian and patriotic Frenchies thinking about non-French speakers when they made the decision that things will get published only in French?  Damn, these folks are very biased in that aspect compared to the Americans.  BTW, I wonder what would Glenn Beck say about the French plan if he found out that Sarkozy is spending more money than Obama on improving/modernizing his  country’s transportation infrastructure?

(Source: Green Inc, NY Times)

Eurostar,  the high-speed rail link between Paris, London and Brussels, says it met its carbon-dioxide reduction goals three years ahead of schedule .  In 2007, EuroStar annoucned that it would aim to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by 25 percent per passenger journey over then-current levels — and do so by 2012. 

Previously, half of the energy in the tunnel came from Britain, which relies more heavily on coal and gas-fired power.

France generates about 80 percent of its electricity from a fleet of nearly 60 nuclear reactors — which produce little CO2. The company said the speedier-than-expected reductions could be attributed to a number of factors — from more efficient train driving and turning off half of all on-board lights, to increasing the number of people riding each train.

But the vast majority of reductions were achieved by switching to France as the primary provider of electricity for trains traveling the undersea tunnel between Britain and Paris, according to a spokesman, Richard Holligan.  

Not content with its progress, Eurostar is now moving ahead to raise its target to further cut emissions because it had already reached its original goals.  The new target: reducing CO2 emissions by 35 percent per passenger journey by 2012.

I plans to achieve its new reduction target by improving the efficiency of its air-conditioning and heating systems, further reducing the energy consumption of its lighting systems, and introducing more tools to assist drivers to drive the trains efficiently.

Note: Europeans are leading by example in the fight against global warming by switching to technologies that yield “green” power, while folks in the US are still bickering over “clean coal”.   We have a long way to go!

(Source:  Treehugger & ManiacWorld)

We’re big advocates for all things human-powered, but we really really like to see this particular efficiency put to use for transportation. Enter with a flash “Rollerblade Man” who’s keeping all his options open by covering his entire body with a suit of wheels allowing one to travel up to 60 miles-per-hour while maintaining any position found in the Kama Sutra. Note: As always, please wear a helet if you are to attempt anything on rollerblades.  He’s wearing a helmet in the video below.

(Source: Examiner via Tree Hugger); Logo courtesy:  SmartBikeDc.com

(Source: The Transport Politic); Photo Courtesy: The Infrastructurist)

(Source: Autobloggreen)

Do you live in Paris and want to buy a two-wheeled EV? If so, you are eligible to receive €400 (or up to 25 percent of the purchase price) for an all-electric scooter. You might wonder which electric scooter models are currently available in France. There’s the neo-retro eSolex, a few EVTs and many more that qualify for the money, as long as they don’t go faster than 50 km/h (30 mph). The city has proudly announced that your new ride can be recharged at any of the 40 charging stations distributed around Paris, and the recharge is free!

Click here to read more.

(Source: StreetsBlog)

We want mass transit in American cities, right? Right. So how are we going to pay for it?