Transportation – Page 44 – Things Are Good

Companies Reward Cyclists For Choosing Bikes Instead of Cars

Despite the fact that Toronto’s politicians want to make the city more dangerous for cyclists (by encouraging more car use and removing bike-focused infrastructure) the people of Toronto are loving bike riding more and more every year. Companies have caught on to this and some are now giving employee some rewards for opting to ride a bicycle instead of using a car.

It helps keep staff healthy and active, and â€œI actually think it saves money for customers,â€ he said.
If a consultant has to drive from the suburbs to a client downtown, the client gets charged 50 cents per kilometer, plus $25 for parking. That can add up to a $45 charge for the client.
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Toronto Environmental Office director Lawson Oates agrees. Cycling rewards increasingly resonate with younger workers and employers, he said.
â€œItâ€™s the wave of the future. (Companies) want to attract and retain topnotch employees,â€ and these people donâ€™t necessarily function in â€œthe old 9-5 mould,â€ he said.

A Promising Biofuel

UC Berkeley chemical engineers have used an old way to make explosives to make biofuels more efficiently. They are using a technique that can turn sugar-rich plants (like corn and some grasses) into a liquid that acts like gasoline does know by providing a tiny explosive force when ignited. The process was used in mass production for explosives in WWI which means that with UC Berkley’s new advances it’s not impractical to mass produce today.

The resulting substance burns as well as petroleum-based fuel and contains more energy per gallon than ethanol, according to the study. It can be produced using a variety of renewable starches and sugars that can be grown in crops.

“You can take a wide variety of sugar sources – from corn, sugar cane, molasses to woody biomass or plant biomass – and turn it into a diesel product using this fermentation process,” said Blanch, adding that about 90 percent of the raw material remains in the finished product, reducing the loss of carbon. “Grasses are also a possible source. Eucalyptus could also be used. Anything that’s fast-growing.”

On Solving Traffic Jams

Cities around the world have problems with vehicular traffic moving slowly. Slow moving cars negatively impact air quality and the ability for road-based mass transit. So what do we do? Jonas Eliasson, who hails from Stockholm where they’ve implemented congestion charges six years ago, provides some insight how cities can deal with too much car traffic.

Urban Density Decreases Car Use

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It’s well established that people living in urban areas use cars less frequently than their suburban and rural counterparts. Some argue that it is thanks to better transit services that urbanites don’t drive but there is another reason for success. Population density alone can make a striking impact on how often people drive!

Holtzclaw concluded that even in areas with minimal transit service, density affected VMT [vehicle miles travelled]. For example, in an area with only two buses per hour, a census tract with 20 households per acre drove about 40 percent less per household than one with two units per acre (15,374 per year as opposed to 27,339). But VMT did not stop dropping at the 20 households per acre level. An area with 100 households per acre drove 1/3 fewer miles than the 20-per-acre neighborhood (10,028 VMT per household) and one with 500 households per acre drove 40 percent less than the area witih 100 households per acre (5781).

Futuristic Things That Became Reality Last Year

It seems that most ideas in the realm of Science Fiction stay as fiction but it’s not too rare that “out there” ideas from Sci-Fi can become real. At the Sci-Fi blog IO9 they have complied a list of some seemingly crazy things that turned out to become real last year. The list range from the really cool to the more banal that can occur everyday.

9. An Electric Car is the Year’s Best

If anyone ever doubted that electric cars were the future, those concerns were officially laid to rest in 2012. Tesla’s luxury Sedan, the Model S, captured one of the auto industry’s most prestigious awards by taking home Motor Trend’s Car of the Year honors. It marked the first time that an electric car has taken the top prize â€” a vehicle that doesn’t run on gas or have an internal combustion engine.