In earlier posts I've talked about the infamous "Seattle freeze" that every transplant to the area seems to experience and then starts bitching about to anyone who'll listen. You've heard the mantra before: Seattleites are tirelessly "polite" and "nice" to new people on the surface level, but instantly shut down and reject social advances the second you try to actually "befriend" one of us. We're a collection of people who move here to escape wherever it is that we're from, so we isolate ourselves from genuine social interaction as much as possible. Seattle is a place full of awkward only-children, who don't quite get how to branch out and meet new people in non-ironic ways. We're a city of the mind, a city of nerdy blogger-types who sit in Starbucks silently plugging away because we're just...that....edgy, man :)
Well, in celebration of our city's reputation for bitchy cold-shoulderness, I dedicate this post to a very funny, very spot-on op-ed from Crosscut. I think this manifesto just about covers it!
Since I believe one good manifesto deserves another, I hereby offer my own: David Guterson and other figures on Bainbridge Island like to talk about the countryside as being the only real place to live. We know better. These are our values:
We value diverse workplaces and gatherings. Upscale white men alongside upscale white women — and even upscale white gays.
Yet we also admire African-Americans, preferably if they are both musical and dead.
We champion the institution of public education, as long as our own kids can get into a private school.
We celebrate people's expressions of sexuality, provided they're not too, you know, sexual.
We strive toward progressive, inclusive laws and policies except when they would inconvenience business.
We take pride in our urban identity, as we build more huge edifices and monuments to desperately prove how world class we are.
We support the arts, particularly when that support doesn't stick us in the same room with unkempt artists.
We value regional planning and cooperation, even with those mouth-breathing hicks out there.
We protect and enhance the environment, particularly those environments we drive 40 miles or more to hike in.
We love a strong, vital music scene that's in someone else's neighborhood.
We appreciate our heritage. We moan about how everything in this town sucks; then, years later, we claim it was great back then but all sucks now.
We value a strong, independent news media, regularly alerting us to the city's 103 Best Podiatrists.
We admire innovation and original ideas, especially if they're just like something from New York or San Francisco.
We support locally based businesses, until they get too big.
President Barack Obama has advocated "the fierce urgency of now." Mr. President, the people of Seattle will get around to it once they've finished playing "Halo: Reach."
Electric cars are certain to remain a green novelty/luxury item if there isn't a readily accessible network of charging stations to refuel them. On the other hand, no government will be willing to make the massive infrastructure investments needed to make charging stations as ubiquitous as the corner store if they believe no one will buy electric cars. Is it the chicken or the egg?
This is the dilemma that planners are facing as they develop an electric highway of 15 charging stations along I-5 in Washington State. Two charging stations will be located at either end of the Washington State border, including the highly-trafficked US-Canada crossing at Blaine.
The chargers will take 15-30 minutes for a complete charge and will be located on the private property of a for-profit business, replicating the experience of driving into any gas station - food, drinks, shopping, and car servicing could be part of the package.
The project is administered by WSDOT and a $1.3 million US Dept of Energy grant, and is part of the West Coast Green Highway program that one day hopes to extend from Canada to Mexico along I-5. Washington could become a springboard for other, more advanced EV infrastructure if this initial spur - the first of the WCGH - is a success. Not slow to follow suit, the State of Oregon has recently secured a $2 million federal TIGER II grant to do a project of the same scale within its borders.
Unfortunately, the program is far from a complete solution to the problem of lack of EV infrastructure.
There are currently no plans to create any EV options for East-West highway traffic. So any EV drivers attempting to Seattle from Spokane or Idaho (which has exactly zero charging stations in the entire state) would be shit outta luck.
Hawaii was originally conceived as the poster child for EV infrastructural success, as it is an island where no single car trips could possibly exceed the battery range of the vehicle. However, news coming out of Hawaii after four EV charging stations were installed there is hardly encouraging:
To date, four public charging stations have opened in Hawaii. “It's pretty sad,” Leone said. “Nobody wants to install them because the cars aren't here, and people are reluctant to buy the cars because the infrastructure isn't there yet.”
San Francisco-based Better Place's revolutionary battery-swapping technology was briefly considered as a solution to the impediment of having to wait 15-30 minutes for a full battery charge. However, WSDOT turned this option down, allegedly due to problems with the standardization of battery models in the more popular EVs on the market today: the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, and electric Ford Focus.
According to the project manager,
“In theory, it seems like a good idea, and it might work” in countries smaller than the United States, such Israel and Denmark, where swapping programs are in fact underway and technologies are more homogeneous. "
Until these technical issues are resolved, it may be that the I-5 electric highway will end up being about as useful as the Seattle Center monorail or the South Lake Union Trolley (SLUT) - expensive, privately-financed toys that are flashy, high-tech, and contribute about zero to getting us out of our gas-guzzlers.
The online news forum Crosscut has recently published an article exploring the possibility of facilitating electric bike infrastructure in major urban areas of the Pacific Northwest.
While China has a long-established mass culture of bicycle transportation (though it has certainly waned in recent years), cities such as Seattle and Portland and elsewhere in the United States have a long way to go to make electric bicycles a part of the everyday American commute.
It is estimated that while 100 million Chinese use electric bikes as part of their daily commute, only about 58,000 Americans do. Major factors for this enormous discrepancy include the lack of electric vehicle charging infrastructure in most American cities, the lack of shoulders and bike lanes on most arterials, longer commuting distances and lower densities of urban neighborhoods that make bicycle transportation impractical.
Alan Durning of the Sightline Institute, a prominent Seattle think tank has recently published a series outlining the promises and struggles of creating an electric bike culture in the Northwest.
Three primary trends favor the rise of electric bikes as part of the low-carbon, "green" transportation infrastructure of the future, thanks in large part to the large amounts of the stimulus funding now available for such projects.
Technical innovation keeps improving electric bikes. To give one example, the Japanese firm Sanyo has designed the Eneloop eletric assist bike which promises to change the electric bike market in the US permanently. The bikes are sleek and cost-competitive, available for $2,300 at Best Buy. American manufacturer Trek has also introduced a competitive electric model, the Ride+.
2. Electric bikes are catching on like wildfire not only in China, where 120 million users are expected by late 2010 (a massive increase from just 56,000 in 1998) but in Northern Europe, India, and New York City. Although the American market numbers less than 200,000, according to David Goodman's article in the New York Times the number is projected to rise in the coming years. Two types of electric bikes are emerging as contending popular models. The first, most popular in the US and Europe, is similar to a typical manual-powered bicycle with an auxiliary motor that can be engaged on command or when the cyclist pedals.
By contrast, in China, electric bicycles have evolved into bigger machines that resemble Vespa scooters. They have small, wide-set pedals that most cyclists do not use as they travel entirely on battery power. The bikes move at up to 30 miles an hour, with a range of 50 miles on a fully charged battery.
Best Buy has recently released electric bike models for sale at many of its outlets in the Seattle and Portland metro areas, some for as little as $899.
3. Electric bikes are more energy-efficient and easier to charge than electric cars. According to the Sightline Institute's Durning,
Simple physics favor e-bikes over e-cars. Bicycles, even ones loaded with batteries, weigh less than their riders. Electric cars, in contrast, weigh many multiples as much as their drivers. Consequently, most of e-bikes’ battery charge can be spent moving the mass of the rider, but most of electric cars’ charge must be spent moving the bulk of the car itself. What’s more, part of e-bikes’ energy comes from leg muscles, again reducing the required battery power. In auto parlance, e-bikes have human-electric hybrid drives.
Despite these trends that favor an explosion of electric bike production in the urban US (some estimates predict sales of 1 million e-bikes annually by 2016), there are four obstacles that stand in the way of a truly viable electric bike culture.
Immature Technology - relative to electric cars, e-bikes still have a long way to go before the technology of installing, charging, and cleaning the bicycles' batteries is seamlessly integrated and convenient for consumers, as DL Byron pointed out on the e-bike blog Bike Hugger.
Bike Culture - In Asian and Northern European cities, bikes are ubiquitous forms of transportation, nearly as commonplace as automobiles in many. However, in North America, bicycles are seldom used for purposes other than recreation. Especially in the urban Northwest, the local bike culture has defined itself in opposition to the automobile, and its point of pride is that bicycles are "trendy" because they are hard work to commute with using only muscle energy. The individualism and identity that come with car ownership in American culture also work heavily against electric bikes.
Inefficient Distribution - There is a very segregated bicycle sales market in the US - the high end that sells racing and commuter bikes, comprising 25% of all sales, and the low end selling primarily childrens and recreational or mountain bikes, comprising the other 75%. Neither sector has adapted to the rise of e-bike technology, and as such very few American bike shops today have the technology or expertise to help customers with their electric bikes.
Safety - Few American cities have provided the bicycle infrastructure needed to make e-bikes a viable option for most commuters. According to Jonathan Maus of the Portland bike blog BikePortland, “Our current lack of a connected, separated, and comfortable bike network makes many people afraid to even try biking — and simply giving them motors won’t change their minds.”
According to the Sightline Institute's Durning, the market contexts of electric bikes are very different in China and the US, and therefore expanding the American market and its associated infrastructure has very different policy implications.
The economic context of e-bikes is radically different in China than in the Northwest. In China, most buyers of electric bikes are stepping up in vehicular speed and comfort from heavy, low-performance bicycles. They are opting for electric bikes not in place of cars but in place of bicycles, motorcycles, or scooters. In the North America, e-bike buyers are stepping down in vehicular speed and comfort from the automobile. (Actually, they’re mostly buying an additional vehicle, to use in place of their car some off the time.)
Electric bikes, as the forerunners of electric cars and trucks, have tremendous potential, but they’re unlikely to win more than a toe-hold in a marketplace long dominated by petroleum-powered vehicles. Unless public policy makes petroleum-powered vehicles far less attractive, as China did for motorcycles. Petroleum is just too phenomenally effective and (still) cheap. Electric bikes will inch upward in market share in the Northwest, becoming less like novelties and more like regular bikes in their prevalence. But they will not sweep through the population as they have in China, unless we act through public policy to make their fossil-fueled competitors less competitive and cycling in general much more attractive. Specifically, we can:
Enact climate policies that put a price on carbon through a carbon tax or a fair cap and trade system.
Make dramatic progress in threading a complete network of continuous, separate, named, signed, and lighted bikeways through our communities, so that cyclists (pedal and electric) are shielded from auto traffic.
