Sean Daily, Green Living Ideas’ Editor-In-Chief, talks about electric cars, car kits, and new battery technologies with Steve Heckeroth, electric vehicles expert and owner of Renewables.
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Sustainablog editor Jeff McIntire Strasburg did a great series last year on Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s “move to a greener business model” and I’ve followed up recently with posts on their addition of “hybrid branches” and the expansion of the Enterprise Ridesahare program in Atlanta. Not to inundate our readers with news from one organization, but if the news is continually positive, I think we should report it! Of particular note today is the opt-in carbon offset program started last year in partnership with TerraPass.
In the year since Enterprise started the program along with sister companies Alamo and National, more than 175,000 customers have opted to pay a $1.25 premium on their rental fee, generating $220,000 to help fund certified offset programs and making it the most popular customer opt-in carbon offset program in the country. With the company’s commitment to match those contributions dollar-for-dollar up to $ 1 million, the total contribution to the various offset programs has totaled $440,000.
“We believe this is the most popular consumer opt-in offset program in the travel industry and quite possibly any industry,” said Erik Blachford, chief executive officer of TerraPass. “It’s certainly the most popular program we’ve seen, and participation continues to grow.”
With two seats, two wheels, and a maximum range of 25-35 miles (at 25-35 mph), the P.U.M.A. (which stands for Personal Urban Mobility & Accessibility) won’t work for your next road trip. But this new concept vehicle, a joint project of GM and Segway, may be just the ticket for the driving most of us do on a daily basis.
The vehicle was introduced to the media on Tuesday at the New York Auto Show, and Segway CEO Jim Norrod described the P.U.M.A. as “…a dramatically different approach to urban mobility”:
Editor’s note: This post was originally published on the Clean Fleet Report on April 7, 2009.
Intermodal solutions allow people to effectively navigate major cities such as New York, Washington D.C., Paris, Madrid, and Tokyo. Subway and light-rail are especially effective, but expensive to build. As cities grow, change, and morph, not every potential route can be served with subway and light-rail. Bus rapid transit is a cost effective way to duplicate some of the benefits of light-rail, at a fraction of the capital expenditure. Buses, taxis, car sharing, bicycling, and walking are all parts of the solution. For many, cars are their preferred way to get around, yet if all transportation were cars then cities would be frozen in gridlock.
High-speed rail integrates all these systems together and moves people from city to city at high-speed. When the distance is only a few hundred miles, high-speed rail coupled with city transit beats airplane and car every time.
Now an 800 mile high-speed rail network is being started in California. Because it depends on local and public-private partnership funding, as well as state and federal funding, it will be built in sections. First online are likely to be areas that are currently overwhelmed with passenger vehicles crawling on freeways that should be renamed “slowways.” Likely to be among the first in service are the Orange County - Los Angeles section and the San Jose - San Francisco section.
San Jose provides an example of current transportation problems as well as the future promise of high-speed rail integrated with intermodal solutions. Currently, during rush hour, cars crawl from all directions into San Jose, the self-proclaimed capital of Silicon Valley. Vehicles overload some of the nation’s busiest highways - 680, 880, 101, 280, 87, and 17.
Beijing authorities have announced that driving restrictions will be extended another year, as part of the city’s overall strategy to reduce airborne pollution and traffic congestion, according to reports from China’s state-run media. The plan hopes to take 930,000, or roughly 20%, of Beijing’s over 3.6 million vehicles off the road each weekday.Starting Monday, April 13, cars will be banned from metro roads one day per working week, depending on the last digit of their license plate. There will be no restriction on weekend driving.
This measure represents the most strict action taken since lifting a ban that was put in place one month prior to and during the Olympics, wherein vehicles were prohibited from driving in Beijing every other day, as officials scrambled to achieve decent air quality and clear roadways for the competing athletes and attendees. Read the rest of this entry »
Clearly Atlanta is a perfect opportunity to employ all efforts available to reduce traffic. Heather Pastrick, from Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s Atlanta operation, recently explained how one important component of those efforts consists of the 110 vanpools (and growing) provided by the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Rideshare program throughout the greater Atlanta metropolitan area.
If you don’t eat for a day, you know it. If you stay inside all day, you feel it and it makes a strong impression on the character of the day. These are two critical parts of our day — what we eat and where we go.
If we want to be Green, if we want to make a decision to help the environment, these daily issues are about as big as it gets. If we buy a green product — an organic cotton t-shirt, a hemp bag or wallet, a recycled chair — we are, basically, doing one environmental action. If we decide to make our eating and transportation habits environmentally friendly, however, we are make several environmental actions everyday.
We see many figures showing us that transportation and food are the largest contributors to the global warming crisis and to many other environmental issues (water quality, air quality, etc.), but do we take this home and say, “this is what I need to change”?
Here are three or four ways to make that change we have been waiting for.
Read the rest of this entry »
Last year, I practically waxed poetic about my public transportation trip into Philadelphia for GreenFest Philly. Yesterday, I again took the same public transportation into the Philadelphia, this time for the Go Green Expo, and there is no waxing poetic. Just a bunch of frustration.I pulled into the parking lot of my local Patco station to find that parking is no longer free on weekends. Most of the lots require a Freedom Pass to enter - something that someone who has never ridden the train or rides very infrequently would not have. There were signs pointing me to other lots where you could use coins or cash to pay. I drove to one of them. There was no cash option - just an exact change option that I didn’t have.
I finally found off street parking and hoofed it over to the train station.
I went to buy my ticket. I could only use a credit card to purchase one of their Freedom Passes or to put more money on the Freedom Pass. For a one-time round trip ticket, I had to use cash. The directions on the machine were very confusing. I was given my change in $1 coins (I had used a $20 for a $4.65 ticket - that’s a lot of $1 coins). I was also not offered a receipt - something that I need for tax purposes.
Just as I grabbed the last coin out of the machine, I heard my train pull up and leave! I had given myself plenty of time to catch it, but the parking problem made me late. I had to wait 25 minutes for the next train.
In a rare admission of China’s strategic petroleum reserve capacity, a senior industry executive acknowledged that all four state-owned emergency oil reserve tanks – holding a total 100 million barrels – are filled to the brim.Revealing that China’s current stockpiles have already exceeded the capacity of the first phase of facilities, which the government built over the last two years, China Shipping Group President Li Shaode urged the government to use foreign exchange reserves to finance floating storage capacity in the short term.
Li’s comments come after a string of recent oil- and gas-related events in China. Within the last few months, China has entered into natural gas supply agreements with Myanmar, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and has already begun construction on needed pipelines. Just yesterday, China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) signed a 25 year gas supply agreement with Qatar.
A Segway may seem a little tame for a professional slalom skateboarder, but for 2003 Slalom-Cross world champion Richard de Losada, his Segway has become the transportation mode of choice for short errands and trips to the beach (as well as playing Segway polo).A resident of eco-community and tourist destination the Sea Ranch in Northern California, de Losada certainly thought his Segway was the perfect choice for the green lifestyle promoted by the community.
He found out differently on Feb 24, 2007, when the Sea Ranch Association gave him a ticket for a covenants, conditions, and restrictions (CC&R) violation for riding his Segway.
Richard, who had moved his family of five kids to the community for the “good clean environment,” limited his Segway use, even though the community’s CC&R didn’t specifically mention such vehicles. He didn’t ride it around the community, but continued to use the Segway for other trips. “I could ride 4-5 miles on 10-20 cents of energy,” said Losada, “so it seemed like a no-brainer. But I observed the rules at the Sea Ranch.”
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