The Oil Drum: Local

There was a PR event yesterday at Union Sq for natural gas powered trucks: http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080410006271&newsLang=en

But Volvo just introduced the first hybrid garbage truck in Sweden, which seems even better suited than CNG to congested environments like NYC. Garbage trucks idle for 60-70% of the time they're in use. But Volvo's hybrid shuts off completely, eliminating pollution and noise. (sorry for the autochannel.com spam...)

And under the fold, if you are needing a little inspiration/thinking, you'll find a brief speech by RFK on GDP and measuring success in America. :)

Eliot Spitzer's historic fall from grace was a blow to many progressives who believed that he would reform New York's dysfunctional state government, but his replacement may be equally transformative, but from a Peak Oil perspective.

David Paterson will be the nation's first legally blind Governor and only the fourth African American governor (New York's first)since Reconstruction ended. As I wrote back in 2006, Lieutenant Governor David Paterson is not only peak oil aware, but willing to make public speeches about it and fairly eloquent on explaining peak oil to ordinary folks.

In part 2 of "what the rest of the world could learn from Bogota, Colombia", here is a good video that gives an overview of how their bus rapid transit system works. In part 1 we looked Ciclovia, a weekly auto-free Sunday on main streets and boulevards opens them to cycling, skating and all sorts of public events. (much more discussion under the fold...)

This is a guest post by Hans Noeldner.

OK, Oil Drummers, it's quiz question time.

Would it make sense to extract crude oil from asphalt? The process for extracting it from tar sands is, after all, very energy- and capital-intensive, not to mention the horrific environmental impact. Meanwhile Earth would be much improved if we-the-people replaced many of our biologically dead highways and parking lots with useful things like forests, wetlands, farms, gardens, and user-friendly habitation for homo pedestrianus. This would give us a lot of torn-up asphalt from which we could harvest energy…

Anyway, here are the quiz questions:

(1) On average, how many barrels of petroleum are there in a ton of asphalt? (Apparently there is about one barrel of oil in two tons of tar sands.)

(2) How many barrels of petroleum are used to asphalt binder per year in the USA? What about other binders like black liquor from papermaking?

(3) Considering highways and parking lots only, what is the total amount of asphalt binder in the USA?

(4) Is a significant percentage of this binder lost (via leaching and evaporation) as asphalt breaks down?

(5) Can the binders used in asphalt be cracked (or whatever) to make the usual range of refined petroleum products – particularly gasoline and diesel?

Another guest post from Hans Noeldner, in the spirit of a new year and a new perspective.

What is your environmental “footprint” on Earth? You can find calculators online and worksheets in study guides, but there is a far simpler, more direct way to comprehend it. Just look at what is below you during your day.

Do you see your feet walking in the grasses and forbs of a meadow, or stepping through the undergrowth of a woodland, or pacing the rows of crops in a farm field?

Do you see a floor, beneath which there is the foundation of a building that precludes natural life and water infiltration? Is the building yours alone, or do you share it with others? Does it extend upwards to accommodate its occupants, or sprawl laterally to maximize the amount of Earth that is suffocated per square foot of interior space?

Do you see a sidewalk or a bike path? Are you alone or amidst a busy throng? Will fifty paces bring you to your next destination? Will 100 revolutions of the pedals fetch you home?

Do you see the floor of a bus or train? Are the other seats mostly full or mostly empty? How many miles of track or lane must the train or bus traverse to convey you to your daily and weekly destinations?

Do you see a runway, and then the whole landscape below wincing from the deafening blast of the engines that thrust you skyward? Can you envision thousands of miles of carbon dioxide contrails in your wake?

Do you see the seat of a car? Do you sit alone or share it with others? Is it a small vehicle, or a big one that projects its mechanized menace far beyond its bumpers? How many lane-miles of asphalt and concrete do you pass over as you go? How many lifeless parking stalls do you occupy when you stop?

If you are going far, going often, and most importantly, going so fast that everything in your way seems an obstacle, stop and ask yourself, “MUST I go where I am going? Can I choose smaller ‘shoes’? Can I occupy smaller spaces? Can I tread shorter, narrower paths?

Can I walk in the footprints of others, and can others walk in mine?

Transit Oriented Development or "Smart Growth" is often cited as one of the potential solutions to dealing with peak oil by reducing suburban sprawl and creating more usage of mass transit and walkable communities. The idea generally is to promote development near existing transit hubs or along transit corridors.

According to TransitOrientedDevelopment.org, the components of TOD are:

-Walkable design with pedestrian as the highest priority
-Train station as prominent feature of town center
-A regional node containing a mixture of uses in close proximity including office, residential, retail, and civic uses
-High density, high-quality development within 10-minute walk circle surrounding train station
-Collector support transit systems including trolleys, streetcars, light rail, and buses, etc
-Designed to include the easy use of bicycles, scooters, and rollerblades as daily support transportation systems
-Reduced and managed parking inside 10-minute walk circle around town center / train station

There's a lot of talk about promoting transit oriented development (the other TOD) in theory, but how much is actually happening around the US?

Another guest post from Hans Noeldner.

Somewhere along the way, we-the-people seem to have reached a consensus that when it comes to allocating natural resources, money should do the talking. In fact many true believers contend money is the only legitimate communicator.

“How much oil should I be able to burn? Every barrel I can afford.”

“How big a house – how many houses – should I be able to buy? Just as many as I can afford.”

“How much CO2 should I be able to emit? Not one damned molecule less than I can afford.”

“And if I want to burn and buy and emit more, then acquiring more money naturally gives me the right to do so.”
If our economy fails to charge us the “true cost” of denying future generations the fossil energy they might need to feed themselves 50 years hence; if our economy suffocates vast swathes of bio-productive land beneath highways and parking lots for our Happy Motoring convenience, if our economy fails to extract “flood money” from us to recompense millions of coastal dwellers for the loss of their ancestral homelands beneath rising oceans; well…perhaps the solution is to internalize those costs somehow.

One place that many of the alternative transportation advocates around the world look to is Bogota, Colombia where a revolution in transportation has occurred over the last ten years. In the face of major complaints of traffic congestion Former Mayor of Bogota, Enrique Penalosa made a critical decision to not widen roads, build more highways or otherwise facilitate automobiles. Instead, the local government implemented a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system and opened a number of bicycle routes. They also started a system of Car-Free Sundays and Holidays to allow local residents to take back their streets and publis spaces from automobiles to enjoy for recreation.

The Streetfilms above shows how Ciclovia works and what the locals think about it and how it adds to their life.

For those not familiar, Randy Cohen writes an advice column for the NY Times magazine on day-to-day ethical issues that people face, like what to do when some local fifth graders destroy your neighborhood organic garden or if you should not order food delivery in dangerous weather conditions.

The Open Planning Project’s Executive Director Mark Gorton recently interviewed Mr. Cohen on the ethics of urban automobility for Streetfilms. The result has been condensed here into a 9 minute talk that touches on a multitude of topics ranging from Congestion Pricing to Parking Policy in NYC. While this focuses on NYC, the discussion could apply to many of urban centers and the conflicts between different users of public space.

As always, TOD:Local is looking for local stories of interest to post here and on the main page. Please send in your articles - complete with video, photos and html is preferred.