January 9 within the DC Beltway

Something extraordinary is happening, and you have an opportunity to tap into it at the University of Maryland on Saturday, January 9, 2016. ATRA will have its annual technical information exchange (dubbed Technix) structured to engage you to Envision Advanced Transit (EAT). A modest registration covers breakfast, lunch and materials. The fellowship, learning and networking are free.

What is your concept of a mobility hub anchoring an urban neighborhood?

What do driverless cars mean to us? What are connected cars? What urban infrastructure do they need? Can they operate on streets and special guideways? When and where? What are the planning dimensions? The costs? Most importantly, how can we identify the benefits?

A new USDOT Smart City initiative is raising the intensity of discussions around such questions. Interest and investment have been stimulated by the upsurge in technology-enabled mobility -- Uber, Lyft, Bridj, Vulog, etc. Millions of dollars are pouring into such smart undertakings, overwhemling the tradition outlooks of transportation policy-makers. As former Pennsylvania DOT Director Biehler recently put it, "Ten years ago we could forecast travel demand out 20-25 years with some confidence. Today, we can't."

Trends are reversing. Never-ending suburban out-growth has slowed, and infill in older urban districts is on the rise. Young people are trending away from car ownership. The reality of Climate Change are bringing new pressures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions such as vehicles burning fossil fuels.

On January 9, Technix Teams will engage in solutions in a variety of specific urban settings. People with different backgrounds and outlooks with exchange civic and professional views. ATRA invites you to come EAT with them. Visit www.advancedtransit.org for more information and to register.

BIG OIL OWES US

According to the Wall Street Journal, CEOs of big oil companies averaged almost $14 million in 2010. That’s “total direct compensation” for each one. Not bad for a day job. In 2013 Marathon blessed its Executive Chair with $22.5 million. He probably felt no guilt.

For the rest of us, this is obscenely unjust. Big Oil is sucking up huge profits while Big Carbon is intensifying the Earth’s weather system to increasingly destructive levels. This is happening today. What will happen when Greenland and Antarctica ice caps break off, lifting ocean levels a meter or two?

How do we get carbon numbers down?
It's a little like lowering high blood pressure.

It makes sense for oil executives to deny the scientific reality of climate change. They are accumulating huge profits. How easy for them to subsidize dubious research to deny the problem and delay corrective actions. This explosive situation will all come to a head in Paris at the COP21 talks to be held by the UN in December.

Transport Numbers

Podcars are but one tool for governmental policies and programs to reverse course to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the USA, transportation (all modes) accounts for 27 percent of GHG emissions. Industrial uses are a bit more at 28%. Residential and commercial consumption are 17% each.

Forty-three percent of the transportation carbon volumes come from cars, 22% trucks, 18% light trucks, 8% aircraft and 3% boats. Urban mobility is a big chuck of the whole. How much can be shifted to green modes -- walking, biking, rail, electric buses and podcars? Traditional rail won’t go away. In fact, it will be fortified by sound podcar interfacing.

These numbers can be questioned, but the ballpark that emerges is the same. In the long run, a 50% carbon reduction from transport is possible if strong climate protection measures are taken around the world.  Podcars can be key in a 13 percent reduction of the world’s carbon problem.  But that if is a BIG if.

The spacious control center at the
privately built pod system
 in Las Colinas outside Dallas.

Such as shift will hit Big Oil hard. No wonder oil CEOs and managers need huge salaries. They’re saving up for the difficult years ahead.

Exxon Exhortation

It recently came to light that ExxonMobil executives knew of causal links from carbon emissions to climate stability and public welfare back in the 1970s. Influential environmentalist Bill McKibben got himself arrested at an Exxon gas station in Vermont last week to call media attention to it.

The disclosure is being compared to corporate memos in the 1990s that forced Big Tobacco to pay out big - financially and politically. What can we expect from Exxon, Shell, BP and other carbon-pushers when McKibben and friends work it through our courts?

Elaborate are the ramps at this station of the Morgantown PRT.
Shouldn't Exxon be assessing this 1970 gem for a greener future?

Given Big Oil cash flows, assigning a faction of a percent to sustainable mobility infrastructure would do a lot to jumpstart the podcar industry. Come explore the possibilities at PCC9 in two weeks.

METRO DYSFUNCTION

BRT in twenty years -- or maybe ten if we get funds from DC.

Metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) across the USA propose LRT or BRT for long-term infrastructure development. Heavy rail is too expensive and fits only in exceptional places like Manhattan and Honolulu. Elsewhere in areas of more modest size and easier geography -- Albany, Northwest Arkansas, Austin to start and all the way through Zanesville -- BRT/LRT plans are out there in irrelevant isolation.

MPOs are searching for relief in all the wrong places.

“It just won’t do it as an answer,” argues Fred Payne of Greenville SC. He seeks relief from growing highway congestion -- with all the accidents, pollution, noise and avoidable health problems of who seldom walk.  We need to encourage pedestrian and cycling, but better mobility options are needed.

Why don’t MPOs produce creative solutions? Well, truth is that MPOs across the US should be really called MCOs. They aren’t set up to produce creative plans for the future. Their primary function is to coordinate the needs and desires of dozens of governments into a coherent whole. They really are metropolitan coordinating organizations.

A Norfolk Nightmare

The stupidity of MPO dysfunction is coming into focus in southeast Virginia - the Hampton region that includes Norfolk, Newport News, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach sprawled around waterfronts with historic military importance. Norfolk spent about $300 million on a 12km (7mi) LRT dubbed The Tide that opened in 2011. An abandoned railroad now owned by Virginia Beach runs straight and level some 25km through a sparsely developed corridor that ends in the dense coastal stretch of beach hotels and resort properties that is Virginia Beach.

Does a fast, reliable transit connection make sense? Do VB residents and visitors want to mix with Norfolk types? Do they want to go to Norfolk? Do people in Norfolk want easier access to VB? One option is an extension of Norfolk’s LRT. This had gelled into a plan to extend it some 5km (3.1mi) to a growing development hub known as Town Center. Cost is estimated about $250 million.

At-grade LRT can run into accidents.

Why don’t they let PRT promisers come in to establish a PPP to build a whole self-financing network in return for long-term income streams from fares, ads and development around stations?

For now, two VB City Councilors recently voted against spending Virginia DOT funds to buy LRT vehicles (somehow jointly with Minneapolis: details are not clear). The price for four is reportedly $17.2 million! How gilded can a $4.3 million vehicle be? Former VB Treasurer John Atkinson ran ads against these LRT absurdities and has set up a fund to fight them.

What does the MPO say? What might a MCO recommend?

HOLY PODCARS

The Pope recently raised global consciousness to respond to the intensifying climate threats that science tells us are real. This month international Muslim group declared that there are serious flaws in way we use natural resources.  This should be helpful in gaining support for podcars from mosques and churches -- synagogues and temples too.  

Cities are living organisms.  
- courtesy of Ethel Vrana of Ithaca NY

With more than half of humankind now urban, increasingly concentrated in huge metro, regions, the Pope admonishes city planners and transport policy makers: Awkwardly translated from Latin, here is a quote from Pope Francis’s Laudato Si:

The quality of life in cities has much to do with systems of transport, which are often a source of much suffering... Many cars, used by one or more people, circulate in cities. … This makes it necessary to build more roads and parking areas which spoil the urban landscape. Many specialists agree on the need to give priority to public transportation.Yet some measures needed will not prove easily acceptable to society unless substantial improvements are made in the systems themselves.

Papal Perspectives

Those who see civilization in terms of millennia, not centuries know that mass ownership of cars, trucks and planes is new. Abraham, Moses, Zoroaster, Jesus and Mohammad didn’t have to deal with highway issues. This came as the 20^th century began. Car culture became widespread after World War-II. It became global as that century closed. This and other factors -- aviation, power generation and sloppy agriculture -- have made Mother Earth quite sick.

Will Sikh leaders now embrace a PRT
proposed in Amritsar, India?

Billions of carbon-emitting vehicles operating daily have adversely affected our climate. They kill and maim millions of people every year. They poison our lungs. The Pope, the Dalai Lama and countless other religious leaders around the world have declared this -- if not criminal -- immoral.

Deeply feeling the pain to the poor, the Pope goes beyond good words. Last month he invited sixty mayors from around the world to Rome. One of the eight from the USA was Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges. She had an epiphany there, stunned that outside the USA climate issues are actionable.

Minnesota Leadership

Minnesota has a long and deep history in PRT technologies -- from the 1970s, off and on over the decades.  It is home to Ed Anderson’s PRT International and the independent Taxi 2000 led by Mike Lester. It is also home to PRT Minnesota and Jpods. Twin Cities debated PRT, and PRT issues sparked into state party politics spawning virulent attacks from a Luddite blogger. Mayor Hodges last year won with a platform to bring 21^st century solutions to create a 21^st century city.

Highways make for ugly walkways.

So far Hodges is not known to favor PRT projects. Will her new climate transformation launch a round of podcar initiatives? With calls for modern mobility being voiced in Austin, Greenville, Ithaca, Los Angeles and now Minneapolis, a podcar breakthrough is looking eminently real.

Power brokers in Boston, New York and Washington are taking note. They're collecting beans to count. Many will come to PCC9 in Silicon Valley Nov 4-6.

WHO ARE THE CARBON PIGS?

According to UN data, the most profligate producers of carbon dioxide are in oil-rich Trinidad. Annual emissions there work out to almost 38 tons per person. That’s more than double the US rate of 17.5. Of course there are 320 million people in the USA compared to 1.3 million in this Caribbean island nation. France annually produces less than 6 tons of carbon dioxide per person.

CARBON DIOXIDE  per capital (2010)
Country		Tons/year/person
Trinidad-Tobago		37.8
Kuwait		34.2
UAE		22.3
Luxembourg		21.3
USA		17.5
Saudi Arabia		16.9
Germany		9.1
UK		8.0
France		5.8
Source:  cotap.org                            (UN data)

Also at the high end of carbon pigfulness are other oil producing countries Kuwait (34) and the UAE (22). Saudi Arabia is sixth with 17 tons per year. All these figures are per person.

Weighing in the Total

If we look at total volumes of carbon dioxide that are responsible for heating up our one-and-only planet, we get a very different perspective. Because there are so few living in Trinidad, Kuwait and the UAE, they don’t weigh in too big in the global picture. Considering only the top ten world carbon emitters, the World Resource Institute informs us that the USA (in WRI data closer to 20) and Canada (close to 25) clearly have the highest per capital rates, with Russia a distant third.

WRI says North America is in the lead in destroying our ecology.

North America gets the Pigland award!  Canada and the USA carbon-pollute at more than twice the rate of the next four -- Japan, Europe, Indonesia, China and Brazil -- all hovering between 7 and 9.

Transportation accounts for 20-25% of carbon emissions. We have our work cut out for us. Podcars, if nothing else, will be electric. We can make a difference.

WILL THE POPE LIKE PODCARS?

News of the 180-page papal encyclical about “ecological sin” is swirling in the media. The New York Times reports that industrialists are “fuming” with reactions as rude as “Who the hell is he?”.  On the green side, EcoWatch has gushed that this Vatican leader is “laudable”.

"We have a right to pollute,"
 spew out some.

The Pope has added moral force to the scientific evidence of climate change. He has cast an intense spotlight on profiteering carbon peddlers -- Big Oil, Auto and Highway industries, who want to keep patching the roads that sustain our oil addictions. The new Catholic challenge is about much more than transportation: it defends the poor as the most impacted and looks to the rich to carry the burden.

How we get ourselves and our things around in cities is a large part of human life. Engineers and corporate profit makers are not trained to be sensitive to spiritual flows. The smart ones, however, understand that their energy can be dazzingly powerful.

How will the American Establishment react?

In the US, WASPs, Jews and millions of atheists and agnostics are gasping as the leader of world Catholics gets intense media attention. How will they respond? Will Texas-based Joel Osteen lift his sight from personal issues to ecological ones? Will the California Interfaith Power and Light now get a larger audience?

Will God bless America?

The Pope’s encyclical does not focus on specific projects or technologies. How will the College of Cardinals hundreds of bishops and thousands of local parishes devise specific actions? And how will they pressure secular governments that set policy?

Should we subsidize cars for 4 billion people who can’t afford them? Or engender policies to reduce street and highway traffic and encourage green means of getting around by foot, bike and the many forms of public transport and mobility sharing?

Certainly sin-free Catholic street vehicles will be electric and get power without belching billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Beyond technology are ownership issues. Who pays for what and how?  

Maybe we should call podcars by a new name --  pope-cars!

Good Prospects in Silicon Valley

Especially over the past three years, the spirits of Ron Swenson, California-based solar entrepreneur and director of the International Institute of Sustainable Transportation (INIST) have been lifted by the incredible dedication and hard work of many folks around the world who are raising the bar to create podcars as a new form of public transportation. He sees them as a safe, efficient, convenient, economical, and solar powered form of urban mobility in a way that only a California dreamer (and doer) can.

Ron Swenson sees mobility breakthroughs.

While technological developments and much media attention are focused on automation for private cars, there is a quiet revolution happening in public transit as well. This transformation may ultimately eclipse the excitement coming from an alliance of vehicle tech centers in Silicon Valley (e.g. Google's driverless cars)with Detroit and other automotive centers around the world. Swenson sees a happier integration of podcar technology and solar power collection. This may well be the driving force that leads to true innovation in urban transportation.

As technological hurdles and societal inertia are overcome, a bold podcar industry is being born. Here are links to the activities sponsored by the non-profit INIST to support this broad international initiative, including student work at San Jose State University. Swenson is working to bring university activities into the world of podcar development.

Swenson relates well to Swedish design visioning and capabilities.

TRIPLING MASS TRANSIT

Mass transit has a role to play in response to the growing consensus that mankind and its growing urban conglomerations must change course to prevent costly climate disruptions. The chant is:  BAU (business as usual) is dead.

Cybertrans creativity  may stir up
APTA's fuzzy visioning.

APTA’s Vision 2050 projects a compelling vision for an efficient, multi-modal future. An on-line video inspires, but offers little in the way of numbers for costs, benefits and, most importantly, the overall impact on mode split. There is no plan, only the plea for public funds and empowerment.

Why no numbers? And why isn’t “mode split” mentioned in ATRA’s propaganda?  The current 2.5% transit share in US cities is pretty anemic. Even tripling it will get us only to 7.5% -- a good bit more like European cities with their historic pedestrian cores..

Miami's driverless Metromover
 complements the line-haul Metro

Based in Europe, UITP -- the international version of APTA -- several years ago embraced a “bold” goal of doubling transit ridership by 2025. With new metros opening around the world, doubling is far too timid a goal in the context of reducing greenhouse gases (GHG).

Fleshing Out a Bold Future

Vision 2050 has no list of New Starts of BRT, LRT. Streetcars, rapid transit and commuter system. Nor is there talk of the significant benefits possible with a program of metro retros -- upgrading ‘classic’ rapid transit to driverless). Nor is there imagination for innovative modal projects -- despite Miami’s MetroMover success. Podcars are not pictured anywhere.

Neither APTA nor FTA has much to say about such matters despite the fact that environmentalists are calling for a major shift to GHG-free modes -- walking, biking, digitized mobility and mass transit.

Turn to Silicon Valley

Will APTA participate in the 9^th Podcar City conference in the Bay Area’s Silicon Valley? ATRA -- the Advanced Transit Association -- is fully involved in PCC9 and has just joined APTA.

Hopes for a breakthrough in Richmond

What contributions can BART make to PCC9 deliberations?  The Bay Area’s metropolitan planning organization is the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. What will MTC have to say about updates to its Plan Bay Area 2040?

At the northern end of the San Francisco Bay is the city of Richmond. Here in collaboration with Cybertran, the municipal government is quietly advancing a breakthrough. You will learn more at PCC9 -- November 4-6 in Mountain View -- home to many Silicon Valley successes.

METRO FEEDERS

           

The Sydney Monorail was conceived as a way to redevelop a waterfront district, not as an efficient transportation addition. It does not distribute from a heavily used regional rail line. After a few decades, it was demolished. Downown Miami's Metromover does interface with stations on the high-capacity Metro, Opened in 1986, it was expanded in the 1990s and is judged by most to be a success.


One of the biggest problems created by a metro station is the very result of its attractiveness. Its traffic exists because people want access to metro stations across the city. They then exit the “system” and walk to their final destination -- or take a bus, taxi, bike or zipcar, or retrieve their car and drive on.

New ways to get to Metro

Metro stations are busy hubs with lots of traffic. The public converges on and leaves them in many ways. There is competition for space that jams up if not regulated. Pedestrians and bikes need safe access and tamed traffic.  Buses, vans and taxis need easy access. Drivers need parking. Retailers need buildings. The busier the station, the more traffic needs to me managed.

Plug-in Strategies

One way to relieve metro-station traffic pressure is with APM or ATN plug-ins. For podcar plug-ins, we have good ideas especially in Sweden. Ultra at Heathrow is an airport-feeder: two parking lots linked to the edge of Terminal 5 at London’s largest airport. 

Several APMs -- fully automated and driverless, but with conventional online stations -- feed metros. The most notable is Miami’s “downtown people mover” now known as Metro-Mover. More than just a cute name, because it does just that. Miami Metro’s busiest station is happily integrated with the DPM, supplied by Westinghouse, now Bombardier. This sophisticated south Florida metropolis has a flare for names. They call the new airport APM MIA-Mover.

Metro stations can accommodate feedeers,

Toronto’s Scarborough line feeds the subway. Singapore has three APMs that feed into metro stations. London’s Docklands started as a metro extender and been flexibly expanded to a network with several metro interfaces.

Good podcar plug-in planning has been done in Sweden -- King’s Curve, Flemingsberg, Uppsala, etc. Come to PCC9 (Nov 4-6, Mountain View, CA) to learn more. 

MOBILITY HOT SPOTS

Potent regenerative impacts for our many urban districts, towns and hamlets can be expected from local policies and programs to designate and nurture “mobility hot spots" (MHS). These governmental actions do not need billions of dollars. A simple change in local attitude will suffice.

MHS is a proposed land use designation for walkable districts that offer public access to zipcars, bike racks and rentals, taxis (within or robocars), bus stops eg Bridj, gathering points for ride-sharing networks, etc. These are all co-located. Each mode of transportation has its own dynamic. Some require government financial support; others can come from existing public works (streets, sidewalks, etc.) budgets but redirected to reinforce MHS objectives. Other modes are profitable.

Government’s critical role is to coordinate and synchronize all this. For example, why not provide free wi-fi access to the public at MHSs?

Pedestrian Is Community-Friendly

The creation and maintenance of MHSs requires cooperation from highway and police authorities. This is not easy, for it challenges long-standing Eisenhower policies that highways are king and road vehicles go right up to and into every facet of our lives. Can local policy create pedestrian friendly, landscaped and maintained districts and tame the traffic therein? 

Swedish (Christer Lindstrom) and Swedish-American (Ron Swenson) thinking collaborated at
PCC8 last September at Stockholm Arlanda Airport.

Who better to help Americans at this re-orientation than Swedish designers -- architects, civic space creators and animators, district managers and transport officials? Dozens of them have already registered for PCC9 -- the 9^th Podcar City conference this fall (Nov 4-6) in Silicon Valley. Learn more at www.podcarcity.org/siliconvalley.

MOBILITY UPHEAVALS

The power of digital connectivity is disrupting old patterns of life midway into the second decade of the 21^st century. Individuals are in touch with the whole world with their increasingly smarter devices. The future of urban mobility doesn’t look much like the past. Uber is making waves.  Today plus ça change, plus ça s’accelère!

Here’s an early sign of upheaval in urban mobility. Taxi drivers fear their livelihoods are being undermined. They see Uber growing by leaps and bounds.  Some are counter-attacking, comparing Uber drivers and their cyberlord to infamous Chicago mobster Al Capone!  Boston’s Carriage News has called taxi owners and drivers to mobilize against Uber founder Travis Kalanick’s “arrogance and contempt” for common people. Uber is not just a bully: it’s a “$40 billion bully” operating “outside the law”!

Taxis. Taxis. Uber-where!

Such words don’t come lightly! Taxi interests are worried: taxi medallion prices are falling.

Long-Term Impacts

Beyond these immediate knee-jerk reactions, forward thinking may make taxi folks happy. John and Jane are getting car-free. That’s getting easier with Uber as another mobility option. If more people are car-free, there will be more demand for taxi trips. Taxi folks should welcome car-free life styles that Uber can bring, as transit operators and fans do.

Car-free voters will push for better mass and extensions into under-served areas.  Violà -- la grande ouverture for podcars. It’s enough to catch investor interest in Berlin, London and Paris as well as Asia. Smart new mobility models are getting serious attention because of identifiable new project where people live comfortably sans voiture.  

The highest density of moneyed digital innovation is in California Silicon Valley.  No coincidence that PCC9 -- the 9^th annual Podcar City conference -- is there. Mark your calendars -- Nov 2-4, 2015 -- somewhere in a cyber-cloud near San Jose!