Johns Hopkins: Narrow Lanes Save Lives

- Adam Clare Leave a comment

Johns Hopkins has reached a conclusion: to protect lives we need to narrow lives. Cars kill. Cars (and the people driving them) are more likely to cause death when they move fast and wide lanes encourage speeding. A logical step to curb reckless driving by car drivers is to limit the space they have to drive cars, and make the space they drive in more interesting. By narrowing lanes there are many benefits to be had by society at large. It’s good to see an institution like Johns Hopkins has figure out that car focussed design is not a good thing – streets are for people.

  • Narrower lanes did not increase the risk of accidents. When comparing 9- and 11-foot lanes, we found no evidence of increased car crashes. Yet, increasing to 12-foot lanes did increase the risk of crashes, most likely due to drivers increasing their speed and driving more carelessly when they have room to make mistakes.
  • Speed limit plays a key role in travel width safety. In lanes at 20-25 mph speeds, lane width did not affect safety. However, in lanes at 30-35 mph speeds, wider lanes resulted in significantly higher number of crashes than 9-foot lanes.
  • Narrower lanes help address critical environmental issues. They accommodate more users in less space, use less asphalt pavement, with less land consumption and smaller impervious surface areas.
  • Narrowing travel lanes could positively impact the economy. This includes raising property values, boosting business operation along streets and developing new design projects.

Read more.

YOLO: Throw Away Your Phone

- Adam Clare Leave a comment

We only have one life so use it wisely. It feels like a lot of pressure, but maybe we should focus on the small wins like using out mobile phones less. If you’re one of those people with new year’s resolutions than you may want to consider reducing your phone usage to help you achieve your goals. Go ahead and try whatever technique you want to reduce your phone usage as one of them is going to work, of course, it’s worth noting that the act of using your phone isn’t the problem it’s what you are using it for.

The consequences, from a global level, are shocking. As Harris writes: “Never before have a handful of tech designers had such control over the way billions of us think, act and live our lives.”

What’s more, we’ve become so conditioned, thanks to dopamine, to believe that checking our phones is a behavior worth repeating that when we can’t check our phones, we often feel anxious, and start to experience Fomo, the “fear of missing out”. Anxiety is, of course, unpleasant, and so what do we do to alleviate it? We check our phones. And when we do, we encounter a dopamine trigger, which reinforces the idea that checking phones is a behavior worth repeating. And the cycle continues.

Read more.

Wind Turbines & Birds, Ok; Gas & Birds, Not Ok

- Adam Clare Leave a comment

industry

People opposed to a clean economy argue that birds get killed by wind turbines so therefore we shouldn’t build wind farms. Of course, those same people would argue that we should stick to planet-killing fossil fuels instead; somehow, in their minds using fossil fuels is better than renewables when it comes to protecting nature. To hopefully put this ridiculous debate to bed The Economist has stepped in. The magazine that is trapped in the last century agrees that when it comes to power generation and protecting nature that renewable energy is best.

But Dr Katovich did not confine his analysis to wind power alone. He also examined oil-and-gas extraction. Like wind power, this has boomed in America over the past couple of decades, with the rise of shale gas produced by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of rocks. Production rose from 37m cubic metres in 2007 to 740m cubic metres in 2020.

Comparing bird populations to the locations of new gas wells revealed an average 15% drop in bird numbers when new wells were drilled, probably due to a combination of noise, air pollution and the disturbance of rivers and ponds that many birds rely upon. When drilling happened in places designated by the National Audubon Society as “important bird areas”, bird numbers instead dropped by 25%. Such places are typically migration hubs, feeding grounds or breeding locations.

Read more.

In Winnipeg the Electric Past is the Future

- Adam Clare Leave a comment
Broadway looking east, 1914.
Archives of Manitoba, Wpg/Streets/Broadway 11

The city of Winnipeg was once a leader in sustainable transit then along came the automobile and the city is now known for the worst intersection in Canada (it’s so bad they ban pedestrians from using it). Winnipeg was home to one the largest electric trolley network and the city was built along the transit lines with large bueatgul streets. Today, the city is dominated by cars. The future of transit in the city will return to its former glory days slowly but surely. Winnipeg is looking to electrify their public transit network and they can serve as a model city for other Canadian communities that want to return to friendly transit.

And though it wasn’t a priority, Winnipeg was an early adopter of emissions-free transit. “You didn’t think of the environment or anything like that back then,” Agnew says. Today, of course, things have changed. Winnipeg is just one of many cities planning a cleaner, lower emissions transportation network.

In a twist of fate, local company New Flyer Industries — which manufactured Winnipeg’s first diesel buses under the name Western Flyer in 1967 — secured a contract in 2022 to produce up to 166 battery-electric and hydrogen fuel cell buses for the city over the next four years. With electric bus technology will come a new era of electric transit infrastructure, including charging stations, hydrogen production capacity and a re-configuration of the transit network.

Read more.

Hawaiian Battery Better Than Coal

- Adam Clare Leave a comment

Hawaii just became an even better place to live thanks to cleaner air. The state recently decommissioned their coal power plant and replaced it with a much nicer looking battery complex. The battery system had to be designed with potential disasters in mind due to the risks of earthquakes, volcanoes, and more. Despite the local challenges the battery system is working effectively and if Hawaii can replace coal with batteries than all the other states can do it too.

Hawaiian Electric’s modeling suggests it can reduce curtailment of renewables by an estimated 69% for the first five years thanks to Kapolei Energy Storage, allowing surplus clean electricity that would otherwise go to waste to get onto the grid.

The utility also requested ?“black-start capability.” If a disaster, like a cyclone or earthquake, knocks out the grid completely, Hawaiian Electric needs a power source to restart it. The Kapolei batteries are programmed to hold some energy in reserve for that purpose. Plus Power located the project near a substation connected to three other power plants so the battery ?“can be AAA to jump-start those other plants,” Keefe said.

Read more.

Scroll To Top