(Source: Tree Hugger)

Image Courtesy: Bombardier

Image Courtesy: Bombardier

Tree Hugger reports that the estimated $4 billion US (or 2.7 billion euros) is only part of China’s grand $300B dream. Another recent article on  TreeHugger outlined the grand plan to invest over $300 billion in high-speed rail through 2020, in a bid to speed ahead of the rest of the world’s train systems. Here are some excerpts from today’s interesting TreeHugger article.

The Chinese Ministry of Railways has announced that it will buy 80 “very high speed trains” from Bombardier’s Chinese joint ventre Bombardier Sifang to add to China’s fast-growing network of high-speed rail. The ZEFIRO 380 trains are both very efficient (more on that below) and very fast, and should help make transportation in China greener, especially if train trips displace plane trips.

The order is for 20 eight-car trainsets and 60 sixteen-car trainsets, for a total of 1,120 cars.

The ZEFIRO 380 has a maximum operating speed of 380 kilometers per hour (236 miles per hour) and is designed for efficiency:

The Bombardier press release notes ” The new trainsets will be an integral part of an evolving high speed rail capability in China, which is developing more than 6,000 km of new high speed lines to create one of the most advanced high speed rail networks in the world. The trains, with maximum operating speeds of 380 kph, are based on Bombardier’s next-generation ZEFIRO high speed rail technology, and powered by a highly energy efficientBOMBARDIER MITRAC propulsion and control system.

Image Courtesy: Bombardier

The ZEFIRO 380 trainsets will also incorporate Bombardier’s advanced ECO4 energy saving technologies to create best-in-class energy and operating efficiencies. Bombardier launched its ECO4 technology package in 2008 as part of an ongoing focus to extend rail’s position as the most sustainable form of transportation in the world. Bombardier is first in the industry to create a new formula for total train performance with a portfolio that can create substantial overall energy savings of up to 50%.”

The ZEFIRO 380 trains will be manufactured at Bombardier Sifang (Qingdao) Transportation production facilities in Qingdao, China. Engineering will take place in Qingdao and at Bombardier centers in Europe with project management and components provided from sites in Europe and China.

What the heck is USA doing?

If you are wondering what is the status of the US high-speed rail development program, here is your answer.  We are waaaaaaaay behind many of our counterparts that are already engaged in the HSR programs .  The Europeans (French with their TGVs  & Germans with their ICE trains) and the Japanese have been at the forefront of HSR for decades and have built excellent systems that are capable of traveling at ~250MPH speeds.  New comers such as Spain and China have blazed new paths and surged ahead of the US and have embarked on ambitious plans, backed by huge  government funding commitments.  Heck, even the oil-rich Saudi Arabia is forging ahead with its development of brand new HSR lines cutting across the sandy deserts connecting major cities.  Recently, the Russians also got on this track and have quickly sought Spain’s help in building their HSR lines.  While the rest of the world is surging ahead, the US Government is still wrangling over its plans of where to invest the $8Billion funding. The US HSR Association states “Our vision is for a 21^st century, 17,000 mile national high speed rail system built in 4 phases, for completion by 2030″.  Realistically speaking, this goal seems far fetched at this point, especially with the glacial pace of activity at the Federal level.

Click here to read the entire article. Also, click here to see more pictures of these new toys China is buying from Bombardier.

(Source: Tree Hugger)

They did it again!  Our fine folk @ Tree Hugger have once again published something that is worth for the bike-riding masses in our urban jungles (in Europe).  This time around, the publication is focused on some fashionable threads for the urban cyclist with a sense of fashion.  A few of the items listed  below are available locally for folks here in the US of A.  Now off to a quick extract from the Tree Hugger article.

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The whole point with urban cycling is to make it work with whatever your lifestyle and your sense of fashion (or your work clothes requirements) are. If you want to wear Lycra and/or have a long commute that necessitates but padding, then there’s the option of hauling fresh clothes (or at the very least a shirt). But if you want to wear street/work clothes, what have designers been doing to link together bike-friendly with street fashionable? Here is what the Tree Hugger found.  Add your favorite ‘cycle couture’ designers in the comments (i.e., here or on the Tree Hugger site):

• DOYOUVelo Trench Jacket (men’s and women’s) – ~$400 – Available in France

• Rapha Touring Shorts (men’s). – $118 – Available in Britain but also available in Portland, Oregon.

• Hyde Park knitwear cycling top (women’s). – $129 – Available in Britain

• Swrve Jeans and Knickers (men’s and women’s). – $120 – Available in the US

• Outlier pants (men’s). – $180 – Available at Retail locations in US & Japan (and also shipped worldwide??)

Click here to read the entire article, with detailed descritpion/comments for each one of the items above. (Images courtesy of Tree Hugger)

Image Courtesy: Nissan via Tree Hugger

(Source: Tree Hugger)

In the days leading up to the unveiling of its flagship Leaf EV, Nissan also unveiled this contact-free charging technology. At the same demonstration where folks got to test drive the EV platform and took-in the iPhone interface, they got to see a working example of induction charging in action.  Induction charging is already a common technology in products ranging from electric toothbrushes and razors to kitchen cooktops and artificial hearts. Our friends at Tree Hugger have now published a nice article, offering the details of this wireless goodness. Here are some interesting details:

• Wireless charging works on the principal of electromagnetic induction, and when two coils (one on the ground and one under the car) come into proximity, a charge can be transfered from a power supply to the battery.
• It takes a few seconds for the primary and secondary coils to recognize each other, but once they do, the system could charge this small EV in three hours.
• Nissan engineers are certain the charging efficiency is as good or better than plugging in, and that induction charging is simple and cheap.

Earlier Tree Hugger reported that Nissan is not only investigating induction charging for stationary applications such as in a garage or parking spot but is also looking at embedding plates into roadways, so that battery powered cars could charge while driving. Induction charging certainly has a ways to go and many questions to answer: what will it do to other devices, are there health risks from long-term exposure, what if you have an artificial heart (which is also powered by induction), not to mention how much efficiency might be lost in transmission?

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Tree Hugger)

Trivia: New York’s is also the only subway in the world to run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Image courtesy: TreeHugger

Our friends at Treehugger have put together a great, easy to understand compilation of subway/metro train fares for a handful of major cities around the world, with a promise to update the list in the near future.  The article takes a stab at comparing the New York Subway system fares against the rest and goes on to analyze What Makes a Subway Fare Fair? and Why is New York City Raising the Subway Fare? Makes for quite an interesting read.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: TreeHugger)

The mayor of Copenhagen reckons Biking to Work in that city is as commonplace as brushing one’s teeth. But, as was evidenced by Utah’s plan to make cycling fashionable, much of the rest of the western world is well served by awareness-raising events like Bike to Work week. This week! In the US anyway. (In the UK Bike Week is 13 to 21 June and Australia’s Ride to Work Day is 14 October 2009)

But who needs some arbitrary date to get motiviated, huh? Dust off that racer, tourer, MTB or clunker in the garage, dig out the pant’s clips, or just tuck your duds into your socks and get pedalling.

Source: Tree Hugger)

 Is Enthusiasm for High Speed Rail Just Another Speed Addiction?

The world is a confusing place – no sooner do the governments of the world finally start taking high speed rail seriously as an alternative to aviation, and the environmentalists start complaining. First we had Obama’s massive investment in high speed rail, which Jim Kunstler (who else?) described as “perfectly f***ing stupid.”And now UK politicians are limbering up to support a significant upgrade of the country’s rail system – but John Whitelegg over at The Guardian says High Speed Rail is an expensive and counterproductive red herring:

(Source: Tree Hugger & NOLA)

It wasn’t so long ago that we wrote about the Power of One (Xof1) Solar Car breaking a world distance record, and that’s the kind of story we like to write about. But via our friends at Autobloggreen, we learn that someone broke into the solar car’s support vehicle and stole an estimated $10,000 of stuff (including passports). What’s even sadder is that in the video below, you can hear Marcelo da Luz explain how he gave up his job, mortgaged his house, maxed his credit card, etc, to get this project off the ground.

Marcelo da Luz gave up his job, girlfriend and nearly a half-million dollars to build a solar-powered car and drive it all over the Americas, a trek that brought him and several international volunteers, following in a van, to New Orleans early Sunday evening.

But an hour after he parked on a busy, well-lighted French Quarter street, someone broke into the van and stole passports, laptops, credit cards, cash, a digital camera and a portable hard drive.

Despite the estimated $10,000 loss, da Luz seemed in high spirits the next morning, describing the break-in as a “dent” in his ecological barnstorming tour. He insisted that he was still enjoying his first visit to the Crescent City. After discovering the theft, da Luz and an assistant from the Netherlands trotted to a nearby tavern to “drown their sorrows.”

Despite his setback in New Orleans, da Luz plans to continue east to the Atlantic coast of Florida.

“I don’t hope anything bad happens to whoever did this or anything, ” he said. “I just hope their lives turn out better so they don’t need to do this to anyone else.”  

Spoke like a true gentleman, Mr. da Luz!

(Source: Jalopnik, AutoBlog, TreeHugger)

Rumormill: Fiat could step in for GM in Europe, Latin America

…GM, Opel, Vauxhall, FIATForget about letting the ink dry: even while negotiations have been ongoing between Fiat and Chrysler, there have been rumors of potential additional or alternative alliances which the Italian auto group has purportedly been considering. Things may have been put on hold with Chinese automaker Chery and with Nissan, but ta..

One giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50m cars, study finds

(Source: Guardian via Tree Hugger)

The Guardian has a pretty shocking piece about giant cargo ships and the pollution they emit. The title of this post is a line from “confidential data from maritime industry insiders”, and according to them, the low-grade ship bunker fuel that powers cargo ships has up to 2,000 times the sulphur content of diesel fuel used in US, and European automobiles and emission control is practically non-existent.  Here we can see that the primary concern with shipping is air-pollution (“US academic research which showed that pollution from the world’s 90,000 cargo ships leads to 60,000 deaths a year in the US alone and costs up to $330bn per year in health costs from lung and heart diseases”). It does contribute significantly to global warming, but about 5-6 times less than land-based transportation.

Shipping by numbers (From Guardian)The world’s biggest container ships have 109,000 horsepower engines which weigh 2,300 tons.

Each ship expects to operate 24hrs a day for about 280 days a year

There are 90,000 ocean-going cargo ships

Shipping is responsible for 18-30% of all the world’s nitrogen oxide (NOx) pollution and 9% of the global sulphur oxide (SOx) pollution.

One large ship can generate about 5,000 tonnes of sulphur oxide (SOx) pollution in a year

70% of all ship emissions are within 400km of land.

85% of all ship pollution is in the northern hemisphere.

Shipping is responsible for 3.5% to 4% of all climate change emissions

The calculations of ship and car pollution are based on the world’s largest 85,790KW ships’ diesel engines which operate about 280 days a year generating roughly 5,200 tonnes of SOx a year, compared with diesel and petrol cars which drive 15,000km a year and emit approximately 101gm of SO2/SoX a year.

(Source: Tree Hugger & Streetfilms)

You Don’t Even Have to Press a Button…
You’d think that cosswalk technology would be pretty static. How can you improve a crosswalk? Sure you can put blinking lights and signs on each side of the road, but there’s so much visual pollution in cities that these wouldn’t change much. Well, there’s a way! This crosswalk in Seattle takes crosswalks to the next level. Crosswalk 2.0, if you want. Check out the video above by our friends at Streetfilms.  

How does it work:  The folks at Streetflilms explained it in their post:   “As you enter the crosswalk make sure you touch the yellow rectangle on the sidewalk. This activates the lights that line the crosswalk. Drivers stop and it should be safe to begin your adventure: you’ll feel a bit like an airplane coming in for a landing. Frankly, it’s very empowering and a lot of fun! ”  Here is the video of the crosswalk, courtesy of our friends @ Streetfilms.