To consolidate, disseminate, and gather information concerning the 710 expansion into our San Rafael neighborhood and into our surrounding neighborhoods. If you have an item that you would like posted on this blog, please e-mail the item to Peggy Drouet at pdrouet@earthlink.net
Incoming LADOT General Manager Seleta Reynolds (right) goes for a walk in downtown L.A. with out-of-towner Janette Sadik-Khan.
Should Mayor Eric Garcetti have hired someone with more Los Angeles
experience to run Los Angeles’ Department of Transportation? With San Francisco’s Seleta Reynolds chosen as the incoming department head, there’s been a small buzz
that only someone with direct experience with our region can handle
making L.A. a better place to live. It has to be someone with local
experience, they say.
As someone who is not from the area originally, and was only an
Angeleno for six months when I became the first editor of Streetsblog
Los Angeles, allow me to say that idea is complete hogwash.
For some reason, people that live and drive in Los Angeles have sat
through so many traffic jams that they have come to believe that idling
in endless traffic is a natural phenomenon. They also believe a harmful
corollary: that things that have worked in other areas to make people’s
commutes better will not work in Los Angeles. Because “this is Los
Angeles.”
It’s the reverse of exceptionalism.
Because over the last six and a half years, we’ve heard that Los
Angeles, and Angelenos are so enamored with our vehicles that we will
never be able to walk, much less ride a bike or ride transit, even though wild dogs can learn to ride transit.
Following the passage of Measure R, many are starting to accept that
transit is a viable option in Los Angeles, although the anti-transit
theory it still pops up in some cities on the Westside.
By reaching outside of LADOT and Metro staff to find a new department
head, Eric Garcetti is signaling the end of the pessimism and reverse
exceptionalism that have marked our transportation discussions over the
past years, decades, and even generations.
It is a new day, and Seleta Reynolds is a new leader.
This is not to say that there are not plenty of good, capable leaders
from Greater Los Angeles that would have done a great job as the
General Manager of LADOT.
The affable Zaki Mustafa at LADOT comes to mind. Long Beach’s bike
visionary and grant master Sumi Gant could do the job. So could
consultant Ryan Snyder who seems to have written half of the bicycle and
pedestrian plans for cities throughout Southern California.
But by tapping an expert on street safety and bicycle share from
outside the area, Mayor Garcetti is sending a message. Not only is he
creating a safe and equitable transportation network for all road users a
priority, so is ending the era of Los Angeles’ reverse-exceptionalism
when it comes to transportation.
Will Reynolds succeed? Will she be Los Angeles’ Janette Sadik-Khan?
Only time will tell. But not starting with a vision limited by years of
hearing about what won’t work in Los Angeles gives Reynolds an
advantage. By seeing Los Angeles through fresh eyes will help her see it
for what it is, and what it can be, instead of being paralyzed by false
fears of what it can not be and what we can not do.
Today is the House of
Representatives’ last day in session before departing for an August
recess full of photo ops and electioneering in their districts. The
Senate will stick around DC for one more day before going home. Before
that happens, the two houses have to come together on a plan to keep the
Highway Trust Fund going. If not, U.S. DOT will have to take drastic measures.
Republican Sen. Bob Corker disagrees with the House GOP on when the bill should expire and how to pay for a new one.
Both the House and the Senate
have voted on not entirely dissimilar plans to keep the fund going. But
the differences between them have set up a high-stakes showdown that
has to be resolved by tomorrow.
Here are the key points:
The timing: The House is expected to vote on the
Senate bill today at about 3:00 p.m. and is expected to refuse to budge.
Then they’ll leave town, meaning the Senate can either cave or be
blamed as the Highway Trust Fund goes dry before August recess ends and
transportation works grind to a halt. Meanwhile, Sec. Anthony Foxx has warned state DOTs that federal payments will slow down August 1 — that’s tomorrow — if Congress doesn’t take action to keep the Fund from going insolvent.
The numbers: The House is gloating
that the Senate’s bill contains a $2 billion technical error — which is
true; it comes up with just $5.18 billion of the $7.13 billion needed —
but Senate Democrats say it can be easily fixed.
The urgency: Since summer is the high season for
construction, the real pressure on the Highway Trust Fund is between now
and the end of the year, when states will need to get reimbursed for
the work that’s going on now. That’s why there’s not a huge monetary
difference between the House proposal that lasts till May and the Senate
proposal that ends in December. There’s just not a lot of cash going
out the door at U.S. DOT between January and May.
The conflict: The House and Senate disagree on what budget gimmicks to use to “pay for” the transfer into the trust fund, but more fundamentally they disagree about how long the patch should be. As we’ve reported before,
Boxer prefers a December deadline, saying it’s unfair for this Congress
to fail to fix a problem that occurred on its watch and instead kick it
to the next Congress. What she means is that she wants her six-year bill
to pass and that won’t happen after the end of this year if the GOP
wins a majority in the Senate and she loses the chairmanship of the EPW
Committee. That’s precisely why the House is gunning for a May deadline.
The breakdown: The Senate Republicans aren’t as
enthusiastic as the House about having to take this up when they’re in
charge. Thirteen Rs joined the Ds in pushing for a December sunset,
including Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), who wants to raise the gas tax and be
done already. “Wouldn’t it be great to finish 2014 actually solving one
issue; taking one issue off the plate next year?” he said yesterday
at a WSJ press breakfast. Only one Democrat, Jeanne Shaheen of New
Hampshire, voted no on Boxer’s date-change amendment. Notably, David
Vitter, the ranking member on the EPW Committee, who has shown great
bipartisan unity with Boxer, broke with her on this and voted to
essentially flush their six-year-bill down the toilet. His predecessor,
James Inhofe, voted in favor of Boxer’s December 19 deadline.
The fallout: If the GOP does win the Senate in
2014, the conventional wisdom says they’ll lose it again in 2016. Will
the Republicans really want to take on a tax increase of any kind during
the only two years when they’ll get the lion’s share of the blame? Of
course not. The prognosis is that if there’s no long-term bill this
term, it’ll be another three years. Three more years of patchwork
funding gimmicks is nothing to look forward to.
Next week, Missouri voters will decide on Amendment 7 — a
three-quarter-cent sales tax hike to pay for transportation projects
that would be the largest tax increase in the state’s
history. Construction industry groups have poured millions into
convincing Missourians to pay $5.4 billion over the next 10 years. Will
they bite?
A coalition of pro-transit forces is urging them not to. Thomas
Shrout, a long-time St. Louis transit advocate, is heading the
opposition, a group called Missourians for Better Transportation
Solutions. Shrout says the tax fails on a number of levels.
For one, 85 percent of the money would be spent on roads. Only 7
percent would go to transit and a small portion would go toward local
governments.
“It’s just out of proportion,” said Shrout.
Highway capacity in slow-growing Missouri is already abundant. Compared to other American cities, Kansas City and St. Louis rank near the top in highway miles per capita. Driving has been declining nationwide and Missouri’s population grew less than 1 percent over the last 13 years.
So why the push to raise taxes to build new roads? Follow the money.
“Just about every major [engineering and construction] firm in the
country has given to the Yes campaign,” Shrout told Streetsblog.
Driving has been declining in Missouri, so why does the state need billions more for roads? Graph: NextSTL
Even if Missouri’s project list wasn’t larded with highways, raising
the gas tax would be a far fairer revenue source. But state legislators
have instead settled on the regressive sales tax model.
That means, if Amendment 7 passes, the state’s poorest residents —
whether they drive or not — will pay a larger share of their income than
the state’s affluent residents. A study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found
that the poorest 20 percent of Missouri residents spend 5.9 percent of
their income on sales and excise taxes. Meanwhile the richest 1 percent
pay just 0.9 percent.
Gasoline and diesel purchases don’t carry a sales tax. Neither do
truck sales, meaning even though trucks cause the most damage to roads,
businesses that use trucks would be exempt from paying for those roads
in Missouri.
A provision of the amendment would also forbid the state from raising
the gas tax or issuing new tolls while the tax is in place.
Missouri’s sales tax rate is already the 14th highest
in the country. A significant increase could potentially undermine
consumer spending and hurt the state’s economy. It could also hurt
transit projects, which are usually funded by local sales taxes. If
Amendment 7 passes, it would raise the sales tax to 9.5 percent in St.
Louis. That could jeopardize any future attempt to expand light rail,
for example, by raising the sales tax.
The editorial board of
the St. Louis Post Dispatch has called the tax proposal “an
abomination” and “the wrong tax at the wrong time and in some ways, for
the wrong purposes.” The paper noted that the proposed sales tax hike
follows an income tax decrease that will slash services and
disproportionately benefit the state’s wealthiest.
“If Amendment 7 passes, Missourians can drive better roads to crummier schools,” they wrote.
Even so, some active transportation groups — but not all — have lined
up behind the proposal, because of some promises the state has made to
fund specific projects. The Missouri Bike Federation came
out in favor because it would represent the state’s first dedicated
funding for biking and walking, and the state promised funding for a
number of trail projects. Meanwhile, TrailNet in St. Louis, a fairly
large trails advocacy group, is opposed.
It remains to be seen how opposition efforts will play out against
the $2.5 million the construction industry has already poured into
convincing voters the new tax will create jobs and improve safety. (They
have an additional $1.7 million remaining in their coffers for the
“final push,” the Associated Press reports.)
Missourians for Better Transportation Solutions has raised only $26,000
— enough for a single mailer. Even so, a number of politicians,
including a large portion of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, have
allied themselves with the opposition.
In the Kansas City Star this week, State Senator John Lamping called the proposal a “grab” by “special interest groups.”
“The tax is cynical,” he said. “The proponents assume you’re not paying attention.”
With the world’s largest TBM idle in the ground following
the well-publicized failure of the bearing seals that protect its main
bearing, a high-level delegation from the project’s contractor team of
Dragados and Tutor Perini (Seattle Tunnel Partners), journeyed to Japan
for urgent talks with senior representatives of the machine’s
manufacturer, Hitachi Zosen.
Project Manager Chris Dixon (STP)
Among those present at the talks were STP Project Manager Chris Dixon, who spoke in detail to TunnelTalk
about the nature of the repairs being carried out, the “aggressive”
repair schedule, enhancements that are to be made to the machine, and
the sealing of a deal that will see Hitachi Zosen bearing the cost of
TBM repairs for the time being. STP, for its part, will assume
responsibility for costs associated with excavation of the recovery
shaft through which access will be gained to the 17.48m diameter
machine’s cutterhead, main bearing, bearing block and ruptured sealing
system.
Dixon also answers questions relating to STP’s claim
request against the client, Washington State Department of
Transportation (WSDOT), for US$125 million of extra contractual charges
associated with the repair of the machine under the provisions of a
“change order” clause in the design-build contract. WSDOT has strongly
rejected this claim, though STP is likely to contest this further down
the line.
An effort to repair the giant tunneling machine stuck under downtown Seattle is going more slowly than expected.
The
state Transportation Department said Monday it had been informed by the
contractor, Seattle Tunnel Partners, that it's taking longer than
expected to construct an underground shaft that will allow crews to
reach the machine's damaged cutter head.
The DOT says it's "no
easy task" to build a concrete ring that's 80 feet wide and 120 feet
deep. Work on the shaft was expected to be done this month, but could
take until the end of August. After the pit is finished, crews will use a
massive crane to lift the head of the machine to the surface to repair
seals and bearings.
The contractor still expects to resume digging next March and hopes to have the tunnel open in November 2016.
There is yet another delay for the Seattle tunnel project in the repair
timeline. KIRO Radio's Dori Monson doesn't think the tunnel will ever be
built.
We're hearing this week there is yet another delay for the Seattle
tunnel. This is something that affects everybody who is listening
because everybody in the state is going to be on the hook for this
thing.
On Monday, we got an update on the delay, and according to Chris Dixon,
the project manager for Seattle Tunnel Partners, it's going to be
another month before they can even start this repair.
"Originally, we were going to finish the secant piles by the end of
July. Now, they're going to finish next month and that puts us about one
month later."
When they first released the extensive drawings and schematics for the repair plans, I said the complexity of the plans made me even more confident that my billion-dollar overrun estimate is conservative.
Now, I am just a dumb guy from Ballard with zero engineering and zero
geology background, so how is it that here on this show we were able to
say there is no way they're going to be able to make these repairs on
the timetable they've proposed? It was just such an obviously massive
job. How is it that the gut from a dumb guy from Ballard at a glance was
more accurate than the people running this program?
I really don't understand how with all the experts, all the engineers,
all the technology, all the computer modeling, how they are so
consistently wrong on everything they do with this project.
Let me also refer you to something we exclusively broke
on this show a few months ago. We went undercover and had reporters
follow four guys, four higher-ups in the Seattle tunnel project, who
were several times a week taking an hour-and-a-half out of their days to
go to the driving range at Interbay Golf Course.
After we busted them on the air, amazingly they went back to Interbay in
the same vehicles, but they had removed the Seattle Tunnel Partners
logo so they could continue golfing on a regular basis.
There were a lot of people who said Monson, you're really scraping the
bottom of the barrel now, who cares if they go golfing on their lunch
break. What I said was if they're telling us that getting this tunnel
built on time and on budget has been a top priority, you don't have an
extra couple of hours a day to go golfing.
I don't take hour and half lunch breaks. I don't have time to do that.
And if you're managing a multi-billion dollar project that has been a
disaster, you don't have time to go golfing three, four days a week.
Golfing was apparently more important to them than serving the public.
Todd Trepanier, with the Washington State Department of Transportation,
says apparently this one month delay doesn't mean they're off schedule
to begin digging again in March.
"That has increased our concern in their ability to be able to resume
mining at the end of March, but we look to STP to give us updated
schedules. They're communicating to us just as you've heard them
communicate to you of the March date still being good from their
standpoint from what they know."
Explain to me how if the repairs right now are a month behind schedule,
you still meet a deadline that is seven months away on time? We are
being sold a bill of goods here gang.
We need a leader, we need Jay Inslee, Ed Murray, Lynn Peterson, somebody
to say, look we blew a couple billion dollars, this thing is not going
to be built, it's an impossibility, we're going to cut our losses, we're
going to save the taxpayers money.
We need a leader to save us from what is coming.
And what is coming is a
big dig multi-billion dollar overrun, that'll be multiple years behind
schedule, and in the end, I don't think the tunnel is ever going to get
built.
This is going to end up costing every single one of us who lives in this
state thousands, maybe tens of thousands of dollars. They are stealing
this money from us and nobody besides this show is willing to sound that
alarm. We need a leader who is going to prioritize you and me above the
big developers, the labor unions, and those who might profit off this,
but they refuse to do that.
Water gushed into the Central Artery's northbound tunnel for hours from a
small breach in the eastern wall, backing up afternoon rush-hour
traffic for miles. (Boston Globe, 9/16/04)
Big Dig found riddled with leaks
Engineers investigating the cause of the massive Big Dig tunnel leak
discovered the project is riddled with hundreds of fissures pouring
millions of gallons of water into the tunnel system. (Boston Globe, 11/10/04)
Use of slurry walls may have spawned leaks
Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff's decision to use a pair of massive slurry
walls as a lone barrier in the Big Dig project may have led to the
hundreds of cracks in the tunnel walls. (Boston Globe, 12/19/04)
On Sept. 15, 2004, water spewed through fissures in the Central Artery tunnel.
(Evan Richman / Globe Staff Photo)
Leakage in Big Dig tunnel rises
Almost three years after state managers vowed to close thousands of
leaks in the Big Dig tunnels, nearly 2 million gallons of water flow
each month through the O'Neill Tunnel, an 18 percent increase over last
year, a Globe analysis shows. (Boston Globe, 7/1/07)
Leaks still plague tunnel
Water is still leaking steadily into the Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. Tunnel
with no signs of abating and continued uncertainty about where it is all
coming from, according to a new state analysis, which flatly
contradicts Massachusetts Turnpike Authority officials' claim that they
have the problem under control. ()
With a Big Dig flaw now responsible for a death, state officials rushed
to contain an unprecedented crisis of public confidence in the project. (Boston Globe, 7/12/06)
Workmanship and design are called into question
Investigators should focus on some basic, troubling questions about the
way the tunnel ceiling was built, civil engineers and highway
construction specialists said. (Boston Globe, 7/12/06)
Concrete falls, and a couple's joy is destroyed
Angel Del Valle was driving through the Interstate 90 connector at
about 10:45 Monday night, his wife, Milena, at his side, to pick up his
brother at Logan International Airport. Suddenly, in front of him, the
ceiling began to give way. (Boston Globe, 7/12/06)
A yearlong Globe investigation determined that at least $1.1 billion in
Big Dig construction cost overruns, or two-thirds of the cost growth to
date, are tied to Bechtel mistakes. (4/28/03)
Project poses a test for privatization
Officials and industry sources say Bechtel has instilled a chilling
effect over a project in which some believe it has a conflict of
interest (Boston Globe, 9/12/94)
2003 January: Matthew Amorello, chairman and chief executive
officer of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, hires retired probate
court judge Edward M. Ginsburg to lead the agency's cost-recovery
efforts.
2004 January: Icy road conditions inside the northbound
tunnel of Interstate 93 force the closing of one lane, and traffic
backs up into Milton. March: On evidence obtained from Ginsburg's team, the
state sues Bechtel Corp. and Parsons Brinckerhoff for $146 million,
alleging the firms made inaccurate cost estimates in public, to
continue lucrative contracts. September: Water gushes into the Central Artery's northbound tunnel for hours, backing up afternoon rush-hour traffic for miles. Nov. 11: A report says engineers discovered that the
project is riddled with hundreds of leaks and that Bechtel managers were
aware that the wall was deficient from the moment it was built in the
late 1990s, yet did not order it replaced and did not inform state
officials of the situation. Nov. 12: Governor Mitt Romney calls on Amorello to resign.
2005 Jan. 13: Amorello announces an agreement with Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly to turn over cost-recovery responsibilities. Jan. 25: Romney again asks Amorello to step down, when
a new report on Big Dig managers accuses them of impeding the
investigation into tunnel leaks. March: Chunks of melting snow and ice fall from the
cables of the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge and force the
temporary closing of four traffic lanes on I-93. April 4: A Federal Highway Administration report says
that tunnels are safe, but that the state must develop an aggressive
tunnel-inspection program. April 5: A day after the FHA declares the tunnels
safe, rocks and other debris rain down from an overhead vent in the
I-93 southbound tunnel and damage five vehicles. May 26: Big Dig officials say two leaks have been
spewing 20 to 30 gallons of water a minute into the Fort Point Channel
section of the Interstate 90 tunnel since last winter. July: An inspection finds a 1,500-foot stretch of the
tunnel near the North End to be the most problem-plagued area of the
project, with weaknesses in the tunnel walls that exceed those in the
section of tunnel that had a gushing leak in 2004. December: The Globe discloses that Amorello
interviewed in the fall for a top position to manage all construction at
the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, but was passed over for another
candidate.
2006 February: The attorney general's office demands $108
million in refunds from Big Dig contractors. The demand was made in a
Feb. 7 letter to the lawyer representing Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff,
the private sector manager of the project, and the two- dozen smaller
design firms supervised by the consortium. May: Six managers from Aggregate Industries NE Inc.
are indicted on charges of running a conspiracy that delivered 5,000
truckloads of tainted concrete, 1.2 percent of the concrete used on the
Big Dig over nine years. July 10: A 2 1/2- to 3-ton concrete ceiling panel in the I-90 connector tunnel falls, killing a woman. July 12: Inspectors find at least 60 faulty bolt
fixtures in the ceiling of the tunnel. The attorney general says tests
conducted in 1999 showed that the ceiling bolts had a tendency to come
loose. July 13: Romney announces he is filing emergency
legislation to give him control of inspections in the highway tunnel
network, as well as the final decision on reopening the tunnel.
SOURCE: Boston Globe archives
Kathleen Hennrikus/Globe Staff
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—On a sunny but brisk spring morning near the Charles
River in Cambridge, I took a test ride on the bicycle of the future. No
rockets or lasers (alas), the bicycle of the future looks pretty much
like the bicycle of the present. But with the first pumps of my feet on
the pedals, I felt the difference. The bike wasn't just moving, it was pushing,
adding extra propulsion to my own pedaling, giving me a boost with
every revolution of the pedals. Faster than expected, I reached the end
of a quiet block leaning into a corner. I took a straightaway for a few
blocks and pushed 20 miles an hour without hardly trying. My feet were
putting out a solid paper-route effort, but the bike had me racing in
the Tour de France.
The bike I tested was equipped with the Copenhagen Wheel,
an electric pedal-assist motor fully contained in the oversized red hub
of an otherwise normal back bicycle wheel. Inside that red hub is a
delicately crammed array of computing equipment, sensors, and a
three-phase brushless direct current electric motor that can feel the
torque of my pedaling and add appropriately scaled assistance.
Replace the back wheel of any bike with the Copenhagen Wheel and it's
instantly an electric bike—one that not only assists the rider but
senses the surrounding topography and can even collect and share data
about environmental, traffic, and road conditions. First developed in
2009, through a partnership between MIT's Senseable City Lab
and the City of Copenhagen, the wheel is now in its first stages of
commercial production. By the end of 2014, thousands will be shipped out
to fulfill pre-orders around the world.
With its focus on design and simple application of complex
technology, the Copenhagen Wheel is perhaps the sleekest version of the
electric bike. But it's hardly the only one. Millions of electric
bicycles are being used in cities all over the world, offering cheap and
accessible forms of transportation in developing countries and dense
urban environments. And though bicycling has long been considered
recreation in the United States, the electric bicycle is about to become
the next big thing in urban transportation.
• • • • •
The electric bicycle is a relatively new idea. In its basic form,
it's a battery-powered motorized bike operated either by a manual
throttle on the handle bars or by an automatic system that adds power
when pedaling. About 20 years ago manufacturers began to offer these
lighter and cheaper alternatives to mopeds and motor scooters.
Frank Jamerson has been watching the market evolve since the
beginning. An engineer who helped build the first nuclear submarines at
Westinghouse and who later helped run the EV-1 electric vehicle program
for General Motors, Jamerson started publishing the Electric Bikes World Report,
a bi-annual profile of the global market for electric bikes, in 1995.
Then, as now, China led the way, according to report co-author and
chairman of the Light Electric Vehicle Association, Ed Benjamin.
China was an early adopter of electric bikes and still leads the world in sales, with 32 million in 2013.
Benjamin
and Jamerson estimate that 32 million electric bikes were sold in China
in 2013, though they note that the Chinese bikes are often low-quality,
costing a few hundred dollars on average and only lasting for a year or
two before breaking down. In Europe, the next biggest market, where
most of the electric bikes are higher quality and sell for upwards of
$3,000, Jamerson and Benjamin estimate about 1.4 million sales in 2014.
Japan and India are other major markets, with sales in the hundreds of
thousands.
In the United States, the numbers are smaller but growing. From July
2011 to June 2012, American consumers bought about 100,000 electric
bikes, according to Jamerson's estimates. The next year, sales reached
185,000. By 2016, as more manufacturers and retailers get into the
electric bike market, Jamerson expects annual sales above 400,000.
Within 20 years, he thinks the number could be as high as 2 million, and
that the United States will be one of the top markets for electric
bicycles in the world.
"We've got an ever-expanding population in the world that's moving
more and more to denser and denser cities. Those cities require
transportation solutions much more like a bicycle or an electric
bicycle," says Benjamin. "The fact that the United States is
transitioning a little bit slower than the rest of the world, I don’t
see that as important. It's going to happen. It is happening. It will
continue to happen."
There's certainly no shortage of manufacturers. There are nearly a
hundred brands of electric bikes currently on the market. From Chinese
manufacturers building millions of electric bikes a year to small
garage-based startups, the supply side of electric bikes has developed
rapidly over the past 20 years. And though Chinese manufacturers like Geoby
are leading the global market, much of the U.S. market is led by three
American companies: Pedego, Prodecotech, and Currie Technologies.
Currie,
based in Simi Valley, California, has been building electric bikes
since 1997. The company now offers more than two dozen different types
of electric bikes, ranging from beach cruisers to mountain bikes, as
well as a variety of conversion kits. Currie president Larry Pizzi
concedes that the U.S. market has been slower to develop, but he's also
seen strong recent growth in sales. Without offering specific figures,
he says sales were up 25 percent from 2011 to 2012, and another 25
percent from 2012 to 2013. And the trend is continuing upwards, with
Pizzi saying business with dealers "more than doubled" through the first
quarter of 2014.
But retailers have been slow to adopt electrics as a viable
product—especially in the United States. Pizzi says retailers have been
hesitant because electric bikes are "counter-intuitive" to what they
think their customers want. "It's a passionate industry in North
America, and it focuses on the enthusiast core," he says. Think weekend
century rides and skin-tight outfits. "That's all well and good. But
they're not thinking about bikes for transportation."
The shift is happening,
although slowly. Jamerson says that of the roughly 4,000
bicycle-specific retailers in the United States, about 900 sell electric
bikes today. And some of the world's biggest vehicle manufacturers and
technology companies have plans to enter the U.S. market, too. Smart recently began selling pedal-assist electric bicycles in its U.S. car dealerships, as did Ford. The German engineering and electronics company Bosch has made major investments in electric bike drive units,
which are now used by more than 60 different brands. Industry insiders
say General Motors will likely be entering this market soon as well.
• • • • •
The bike of the future I rode in Cambridge, equipped with the
Copenhagen Wheel, also had an iPhone mounted on the handle bars. I
swiped my finger across it to switch from Turbo mode to Regular,
bringing my top speed down to about 15 miles per hour, according to the
phone's display. I pedaled normally, but didn't exert myself. When I
stopped pedaling the motor stopped, too, and I coasted, which also
recharged the battery. Once I started pedaling again the motor almost
instantly kicked back in, boosting me forward with a subtle but
noticeable push of extra power.
Cyclists
using the Copenhagen Wheel can change speeds by swiping a smartphone
fixed to the handlebars. After
riding around for a while, I took this prototype bike back to the
offices of Superpedestrian, the company that's been developing the
commercial version of the Copenhagen Wheel. In a small conference room,
whiteboards and white walls were covered in drawings of gizmo components
and schematic printouts. Next to a hand-drawn sketch of the wheel's
internal parts somebody's scribbled the words "puzzle building."
Assaf Biderman, founder of Superpedestrian and associate director of
the Senseable City Lab, from which he spun off the company, explained
how the original idea for the Copenhagen Wheel emerged. It sprouted in a
class of about 10 students working on ideas related to a partnership
with Copenhagen meant to develop urban solutions. Even with Denmark's
already high rate of cycling, the city was looking for ways to get more
people on bikes by understanding what was holding some of them back. The
major factor was distance.
"We decided instead of thinking about the whole bike, let's think
about where the crux of the matter here is, which is motorizing it and
giving people access," says Biderman.
They finished a prototype of the electric-assist wheel in time to
unveil it at COP 15, the United Nations Climate Change Conference held
in Copenhagen in 2009. Mayors and government officials from around the
world took it for a test ride. "The goal was to send world leaders home
with a message that almost any city in the world could become as
cycling-friendly as Copenhagen," says Biderman. Back at MIT, the
Senseable City Lab continued to develop the wheel, and Biderman licensed
the idea from the university in late 2012. He quietly opened the
Superpedestrian office in Cambridge and stocked it with engineers and
roboticists who'd previously built vehicles like UAVs and the Segway. In
December 2013, they began accepting pre-orders, with the wheel priced
at $699. (It's now selling for $799.)
One of the main principles guiding the design of the Copenhagen Wheel
was that it should be incredibly simple. "The bike should stay a bike,"
says Biderman. Ease of use is certainly part of the appeal. Once
installed, the wheel is operated by a smartphone app via Bluetooth. The
wheel unlocks itself when the user's phone is close by, and the app
includes several speed-assist settings from Turbo to Flatten My City,
which uses sensors in the hub to detect hills. The wheel imitates the
rider, integrating its own propulsion seamlessly as the rider pedals:
pedal more, get more power; pedal less, get less. Braking and coasting
recharges the lithium ion battery, which holds about 30 miles of range.
To facilitate global use, the Copenhagen Wheel's specifications can be
altered to comply with local cycling regulations for wherever it's sent.
From the user perspective, the wheel is simple. But inside it's
literally a robot computer. Many sensors and control algorithms are
working constantly to understand the motion of the bike, its position in
space, the torque of the rider, and the additional torque it must use
to achieve the desired speed. Superpedestrian has also created an open
API, enabling developers to make their own modifications to the app and
its interactions with the wheel. Of the pre-order group, about 20
percent of buyers self-identified as programmers and have volunteered to
provide feedback on how their hacks work with the first iteration of
the wheel.
The Copenhagen Wheel (above, in red) can turn any bike into an electric bike. Initially
the design included a number of other environmental sensors and sharing
capabilities that would turn the wheel itself into a sort of roving
urban sensing unit. Ideas included CO2 and noise sensors, and an option
to collect road condition and traffic data that could be sent to a
database for the city's use in addressing dangerous streets or adding
bicycle infrastructure where ridership is high. For now, that's been set
aside to get the first version finished at an affordable price; more
sensors cost more money, after all.
Biderman says some of that may come later, but it all depends on how
people want to use the wheel. Ultimately, he expects to see some ways of
collecting and sharing data widely (and anonymously), from neighborhood
cycling communities to City Hall.
"I think there's a very exciting future for planners and local
governments when it comes to being able to address demand in a
quantitative way and a rigorous way based on real usage," he says.
• • • • •
Americans have a mental block about bicycling that's mentioned again
and again by industry insiders: While people in places like Europe think
of the bicycle as transportation, people
in the United States largely still think of it as recreation. There's a
long history of urban development patterns and transportation policies
that have led to this perception, and those tendencies are hard to
break. Though there does seem to be a general uptick in cycling in
pockets of the country, the reality is that most U.S. transportation
happens in a car. If the electric bike is to be successful here, it will
have to overcome the national perception of bicycles as playtoys.
Transitioning the bicycle from recreation to transportation could hinge on something as simple as a sweaty armpit.
"For 30 years, I've seen surveys about why people don't ride," says
Andy Clarke, president of the League of American Bicyclists. "They don’t
ride because it's too far or because they get hot and sweaty. And these
are things that electric-assist bikes can help overcome."
A recent survey
of U.S. electric bike owners suggests some progress on the problem of
the stinky commute. John MacArthur of Portland State University found
that 74 percent of 553 respondents said they don't need to shower after
the end of the average trip on their electric bike. But sweat, or lack
thereof, isn't the only thing pushing people onto electric bikes.
According to MacArthur's survey, almost 70 percent of respondents said
they purchased their electric bikes to replace some of their car trips.
MacArthur notes that while his survey wasn't the most scientific, it
did reveal some interesting demographics about who is using electric
bicycles. About 45 percent of respondents were 55 or older, and about 30
percent indicated that they have a physical condition that makes riding
a standard bike difficult. He argues that these should be indications
to retailers that the market for electric bicycles isn't just hip
Millennials; older people are interested, too.
"I think the survey alludes to the potential that electric bikes
really can get more people biking and to bike more often," says
MacArthur.
The international nature of the electric bicycle market has posed
some problems, too. Different countries have different standards for how
fast and powerful electric bicycles can be. For example, electric bike
motors in the European Union can be only 250 watts, while they can be up
to 750 watts in the United States. China allows a top speed of about 12
miles per hour; the EU, about 15 miles per hour; the United States and
Canada, 20 miles per hour.
Assaf
Biderman, founder of Superpedestrian, says the goal of electric
wheel-assist design was to make almost any city "as cycling-friendly as
Copenhagen." Much
of the confusion has to do with what, exactly, counts as an electric
bike. Some places consider electric bikes and mopeds with internal
combustion engines to be essentially the same thing, while others draw
strong lines between them. Some places require helmets or registrations,
while others don't.
The United States, for its part, has at least come up with a standard definition (put forth in H.R. 727, an amendment to the Consumer Product Safety Act that became law in 2002). Even
with federal guidance, confusion remains. State and local regulations
of electric bicycles vary widely across the country, especially with
regard to whether they belong in roads or bike lanes (or both). "Some
municipalities and states are more equating electric bikes with the
bicycle, and others are more equating them with a moped or motorized
cycle," says MacArthur. The inconsistency has led to some places
restricting electric bikes from using bike lanes.
Clearing up the regulations will take time, and it may take more
electric bikes on city streets. Though numbers are rising, the main
challenge for electric bike makers and evangelists is to make them
mainstream. Convincing the U.S. market to consider electric bikes as
transportation will be key, according to Benjamin and Jamerson, the
industry trackers. A big way to open the market will be to make them
more affordable. Even more important will be to make them cool.
• • • • •
Superpedestrian has done the first run of production in the workshop
of their Cambridge office, and are working on industrializing the
process for factory production by the thousands later this year. The
project is venture-backed, and Superpedestrian has inked deals with a
few undisclosed major international companies to get even more of the
bikes on the road. The design and idea behind the Copenhagen Wheel has
even inspired some competition. A very similar back wheel pedal-assist
add-on called FlyKly raised $701,239 on Kickstarter in November 2013, and the company expects to ship its first wheels in the fall.
Benjamin, who works as an adviser to many electric bike
manufacturers, says he's happy to see these new players get into the
electric bike market. They're worlds away from the low-quality lead acid
battery bikes he saw in China in the mid-'90s, and he thinks that these
newer, sleeker, simpler electric bikes could finally help transition
the U.S. bike market to start thinking seriously about going electric.
The Copenhagen Wheel is leading the way, he says.
"The Superpedestrian wheel is so far in the lead in terms of the
engineering and coming to market that they are probably going to define
the market entirely," says Benjamin. "I'd say that on my list of
customers that are going to hit a home run, that one's at the top."
But changing perceptions takes time. Jamerson, who's been watching
the electric bike market since it first emerged, says electric bike
makers will have to do all they can to take advantage of America's
cycling momentum. He even suggests one of the oldest tricks in the
marketing playbook: the celebrity endorsement. "We have not had enough
pictures of celebrities riding electric bikes," he says.
He's got some ideas. He says that a few years ago, during a reception
with then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Chinese delegation gave
electric bicycles to Chu and Barack Obama as gifts. If someone could get
Obama to ride his electric bike, says Jamerson, that could really get
them into the hearts and minds of the American public. "If you know
anybody in the White House," he says, "tell them there's an electric
bike somewhere in storage that they ought to pull out."
Late Tuesday, with federal transportation funding set to run dry by the end of the week, the U.S. Senate approved a funding patch
that would stem the tide through mid-December. That stands in contrast
to a House-approved patch that would fund transportation through May.
The Senate hopes the earlier deadline will motivate Congress to craft a
long-term plan this term—a rather optimistic goal, considering it can't
even agree on a short-term fix with a construction shutdown staring it
in the face.
There are a bundle of cynical reasons why Congress has struggled to craft a reasonable long-term transportation plan
in recent years, but there's also a pretty valid one that doesn't get
enough attention: The United States lacks a national infrastructure
agenda.
For decades, the federal government had a clear role in U.S.
transportation—namely, to fund the interstate highway system. The
national interest was obvious in this case, with all Americans
benefitting from improved interstate commerce and mobility, so it made
sense for Congress to take the funding lead. But that system is built
out (and, in some metro areas, overbuilt), and its likeliest successor, a national high-speed rail system, is a complete non-starter to one political party.
That leaves federal lawmakers in unfamiliar territory. For most of
them, the desire to oversee a national transportation program is still
there; on Tuesday, the Senate overwhelmingly rejected a plan that would
gradually devolve responsibility for transportation funding to the states,
69-28. But there's no car to drive, or ship to captain, or plane to
pilot, or train to conduct—whatever your preferred metaphorical
transport vehicle, Congress sees no place at its helm
.
That said, there's a legitimate infrastructure program staring us
(quite literally, unless you've printed this out) right in the face:
digital networks.
A National Internet System,
or whatever it might be called, would seem to be the most logical
modern equivalent to the National Highway System. True, most Americans
can already get online, but as we pointed out last year, a startling
number of rural residents lack minimal broadband access, and service in
major U.S. metros lags behind world-class cities. The F.C.C. recently
estimated that 100 million Americans
don't subscribe to broadband—a third of the population. In other words,
there's potential for interest here from federal officials all along
the political spectrum.
The question then becomes whether you consider broadband to be transportation, per se, and thus eligible to receive federal transportation dollars. In a strict literal sense, your answer might be no,
but it's not really that much of a stretch to think of going online as
the digital version of a road trip. You might not be physically leaving
your seat, but you are, in a way, sending a microscopic envoy on an
errand for information. You are engaging with something or someone that
resides somewhere else.
Semantics aside, there's a clear case for treating communication as
transportation in American history. In colonial times, they were one and
the same. The very first roads in this country were postal routes; Article I, Section 8
of the Constitution provides for the establishment of "post offices and
post roads" because the concepts of message and movement were
intertwined then, even if they seem quite distinct today.
And consider that Congress didn't always consider road-building its
job, either. Even by the closing years of the 19th century, many
individual states bristled at the concept of a federal transportation
program, preferring to maintain roads themselves. ("Texas can boast the
best roads, with the least work, of any State in or out of the Union,"
state officials said in response to a federal road push in 1868.) The
first federal road funding doesn't appear until 1893, and even then it
would be years before a true federal road program emerged.
Nor is the idea of a federal infrastructure program based on
broadband mere food for thought among transport historians. Earlier this
month, during a keynote talk at the Open Knowledge Festival in Berlin, Eric Hysen of Google
made an explicit reference to yesterday's transportation with respect
to tomorrow's technology. Hysen compared the digital capabilities of the
modern era with colonial stagecoaches: limited by the second-rate routes they traverse:
We have produced incredible, innovative technologies, but they are
being prevented from achieving maximum impact because we lack necessary
public infrastructure. We don't have good roads to drive our
stagecoaches on.
Hysen went on to say that it's time for countries to build the
digital equivalent of "long-distance highways." He suggests private
companies take the lead— modern-day British Turnpike Trusts—but there's
no reason the federal government couldn't jump in first (or, as well). Building off that line of thought,
Brown historian Jo Guldi challenged private and public entities alike
to build the "material pipes through which information flows":
In the eighteenth century, those pipes were the roads, which carried
state-coaches, which carried mail, parcels, and newspapers, thus
generating an information revolution. In the twenty-first century, those
pipes are broadband cable. Thus far, Google has been content to stand
by while Cox and Comcast monopolize broadband across
America (practically everywhere except Knoxville, TN and Lafayette, LA)
and become pushy in international conversations, thus jeapardizing the
relationship of the entire Global South to an open internet. In
practice, the Cox/Comcast monopoly means profits hand-over-fist for
those who own the pipes, with almost no incentive to lay new pipes to
poor people.
It's precisely that incentive—material pipes for all Americans—that should propel a national public works program. Guldi ends by saying it's "time to think big" about digital infrastructure. She's right. But there are lots of calls
for Congress to think big when it comes to transportation, and few
suggestions as to how. Let a coast-to-coast broadband system start the
discussion. When Congress talks about a national infrastructure
initiative, this is the type of thing it should be talking about.
In a change that’s more procedural than policy-driven, Metro has
slightly postponed its fare increase that had been approved for
September 1. The new fares will take effect on Monday September 15th.
The fare increase was approved at Metro’s May board meeting.
Base bus/train fare will increase 17 percent, going from $1.50 to
$1.75. Senior fares and all daily/montly/weekly passes also increase
25-40 percent. With the new fares, Metro is instituting a new 2-hour
free transfer window, though it only applies to customers paying via TAP
card.
The new September 15th implementation date has not been publicized
yet – though Metro will be getting the word widely by mid-August.
Streetsblog learned of it via this Metro briefing document which was publicized by Twitter user @Calwatch.
Metro spokesperson Rick Jager confirmed the new date, and explained the change as follows:
In approving the new fares, it was always noted on public
hearing notices and press releases that the new fare changes could be
implemented on Sept. 1, 2014 or later. Staff chose the Sept. 15th date
as to not impact sales of the EZ Monthly Pass which is sold to customers
beginning on the 25th of the month through the 10th of the following
month. (Meaning that some customers would pay one price when purchased
at the end of the month vs. another price in the beginning of the
month).
Also in May, the Metro board deferred raising student fares,
freezing them at $1.00 pending further study. In what seems like an
adherence to the letter of the law more than the spirit of the law, the
Metro briefing document makes it clear that the new 2-hour free transfer
will not apply to students paying the reduced fare.
Congestion pricing for freeway capacity
is a hot topic. The basic implementation of price-managed lanes known as
high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes has been rolled out in many cities,
including the new lanes on the Capitol Beltway in Virginia and the
retrofit of existing HOV lanes on the 110 and the 10. These lanes
operate on a simple principle: when traffic increases in the lane,
prices (tolls) are increased to decrease the number of people using the
lane and prevent congestion.
Beyond that, though, a wide range of people have called for congestion pricing on all lanes
of freeways. This ranges from libertarians who favor user fees, like
Randal O’Toole, to urbanists that want to decrease the amount of driving
by increasing costs, to cities and states that see potential revenues.
Theoretically, it is easy to extend the
concept of HOT lanes to the entire freeway. However, it seems to me that
to do so, you have to make a major simplifying assumption about your
freeway network – that there are no capacity mismatches. What does that
mean? It’s probably easiest to show by way of a few examples. Note that
traffic jams on freeways do not necessarily indicate there’s a problem
on the road at that location; rather, they are often acting as a queue
of cars, pointing towards a downstream bottleneck. There are also
questions for long distance trips.
The Off-Ramp Strangler: The 10 at Cloverfield
On weekday mornings, the 10 westbound into Santa Monica backs up starting at the Cloverfield/26th off-ramp. There’s a lot of employment in the area around the future Olympic/26th
Expo Line station, and the local streets can’t handle the traffic
volumes at peak times. The off-ramp acts as storage for cars waiting to
distribute themselves on the local street network, and when the off-ramp
gets full, cars start queuing up on the mainline of the freeway.
If you’re managing an HOT lane, it’s
pretty easy to keep that lane flowing at a reasonable speed. You’d just
charge a higher toll for the lane up to Cloverfield, and then a lower
toll beyond that. The general purpose lanes act as a spillway, soaking
up whatever traffic comes out of the HOT lane.
What would happen in practice if the
whole freeway was tolled? Some people will try to change their travel
patterns by leaving earlier or later, which is the real intent of
congestion pricing. However, some people will just hop out onto the free
local street network. If you charge an arm and a leg to get from Bundy
to Cloverfield, maybe I decide to get off at National, Overland, or
Bundy. That moves the queue of cars trying to get to office parks in
Santa Monica off of the freeway and onto the arterial grid.
Disastrous Lane Drop: The 5 at Norwalk Narrows
Everyone in LA has probably experienced
this at some point: you’re cruising north on the 5 in Orange County,
enjoying some of the world’s finest freeway engineering, and then boom!
You pass the 91 and you slam (figuratively, we hope) into gridlock on
the three-lane section of the 5 through Santa Fe Springs and Norwalk.
This is one of the last unreconstructed 1950s-era freeways in LA. It’s
being widened as we speak, but it’s a great example of a capacity
mismatch between adjacent sections of a freeway mainline.
If you’ve got a managed HOT lane here
(and the Orange County section is clearly designed for that
possibility), you can keep it flowing by charging a punitive toll
through the Norwalk Narrows. If the entire freeway is tolled, you’d have
to charge very high tolls to keep things moving on the three-lane
section – so high, that you might not be able to charge anything on the
five-lane section to the south. That results in a very cheap section
leading into a very expensive section.
Again, the incentive is going to be for
people to use the cheap section of the freeway, and then bail out onto
the free local arterial grid.
Alternatives with Issues: The 405 vs North-South Arterials
This one isn’t quite so much about a
freeway capacity mismatch as it is about the amount of existing
congestion on local arterials.
Northbound congestion on the 405 has
several causes. For one, the prolonged steep grade approaching Sepulveda
Pass degrades vehicle performance, resulting in some vehicles slowing
down. At the top of the pass, you have an intense weaving section
leading up to the busiest interchange in the country, the 405 and the
101. Further upstream, you simply have a lot of traffic from Westside
employment centers entering the freeway between the 10 and Wilshire to
head home to the Valley.
Contrary to popular conceptions of LA,
the north-south arterials on the Westside are significantly
underpowered. Sepulveda is the only true through arterial between
Lincoln and Robertson; the rest – Bundy-Centinella, Sawtelle,
Barrington-McLaughlin, Westwood-Overland, Beverly-Beverwil-Castle
Heights – are Frankenroads, incomplete, cobbled together from various
parts, and not even two lanes in each direction. This contributes to a
major lack of north-south mobility on the Westside.
If the 405 were tolled to maintain higher
speeds, some traffic would shift to this free ragtag network of
north-south arterials. Again, this might be an undesired side effect of
tolling all freeway capacity.
Long-Distance Trips
Existing HOT lanes, like the express
lanes on the 110 and the 10, are managed dynamically: prices are
adjusted to respond to real-time traffic conditions. If the lane starts
to get congested, prices are increased to reduce the number of drivers
that decide to enter. Pricing information is conveyed to drivers using
variable message signs. If you’re already in the lane, the price you saw
when you entered is honored for your destination.
This works well for a managed HOT lane in
isolation; no one knows what the toll will be when they enter the
freeway, so the general purpose lanes just soak up whatever traffic
doesn’t want to use the HOT lane. With a network of HOT lanes, this will
still work pretty well. The number of destinations you can reasonably
indicate on a VMS sign is limited, but you’d always have the option to
leave when you reach the next tolling section. Let’s say you’re in the
HOT lane on the 10 east and you hop on the 5 south to go visit the
mouse, and you don’t like the prices. No problem, you just take the free
lanes.
If the entire freeway is dynamically
tolled, this starts to fall apart. What do I do if I get on a freeway
and I’m not willing to pay the going price? For short trips, you could
check before you leave, but for long trips, it would be an issue. If you
get on the 101 in Woodland Hills and you’re going to Anaheim, what
happens if you get on the 5 and the toll is more than you’re willing to
pay? Do you take arterials? Do you just get off and park somewhere,
waiting for prices to go down?
Private Parts
Now, you may have been chomping at the
bit as you read this post, thinking that there are technological
solutions to these problems: use congestion pricing on the arterials as
well as the freeways, and quote people a price for their entire trip
before they start it.
Those ideas are certainly theoretically possible. However, they may prove politically impossible, for some very good reasons.
Tolling arterial capacity, using existing
electronic tolling methods, would prove unreasonably costly. It would
more or less require turning every traffic light into a tolling
location. It would require trying to communicate toll rates on a block
by block basis. Both of these would be impractical. You could do it
without any roadside equipment by requiring every vehicle to be equipped
with GPS, and having the vehicle’s on-board equipment report the GPS
data to a central facility for calculation of tolls.
Getting a price quote for a trip before
you take it is something we’re all familiar with for things like flying,
ferries, tours, and so on. In the case of flying, the details of your
travel are reported to the government in advance. However, flying is
something most people do rarely. Requiring advance requests for auto
travel fees would bring that level of oversight into people’s everyday
lives.
To be blunt, I don’t think many people
would be comfortable with having to tell the government where they’re
going before they leave, and I don’t think many people want their
movements being tracked by GPS. If you don’t like the NSA recording your
phone calls and reading your emails, you should be worried about the
prospect of having the government follow your whereabouts. While this
would obviously still leave walking, biking, and transit as options for
anonymous travel, it would be an imposition on people’s right to freedom
of movement.
Conclusion
This isn’t to say we should give up on
the idea of tolling highway capacity. I would be curious to see research
on detailed modeling of a real road network (freeways and arterials)
under these scenarios. For example, what would happen on the Westside if
the 405 and the 10 were dynamically tolled but the arterials were still
free? Regarding privacy, would people be more comfortable if the
advance price was obtained through a third-party intermediary (such a
car-sharing service) that could make the reservation with the system in
the corporation’s name?
In the meantime, a more realistic option
than real-time dynamic pricing might be managing freeway capacity the
way that street parking is managed in downtown LA. In that model,
utilization of street parking is monitored, and then prices at different
times of day are adjusted up or down to try to optimize utilization.
For freeways, a schedule of prices could be published and updated every
month, so that users would be able to determine prices before they
leave. For example, say that in August 2014 it costs $0.25 to go from
La Cienega to Robertson on the 10 on weekdays at 12:30pm, and the level
of congestion is still too high. The rate for September would be
increased to $0.30 or $0.35.
In the case of capacity mismatches, it
might be desirable to deliberately underprice freeway capacity so that
the amount of traffic diverted to arterials isn’t too large. Many people
would rather have a queue of cars on the freeway, leaving arterials a
little less congested and available for things like local trips and
emergency vehicles.
Congestion pricing has great potential to
improve mobility in urban regions. But the devil’s in the details, and
we don’t have them worked out just yet.
