By Bill Sullivan

It’s another night on the beat in Addison, Texas, and Officer Michael Murphy is getting ready for work. But, instead of checking out a squad car and patrolling the streets, Murphy straps on a helmet, climbs aboard a Segway “personal transporter,” and is off to survey the scene in nearby Addison Circle Park.

In a matter of minutes, he pursues a pair of scofflaw skateboarders, answers a few questions about his curious mode of transportation from a passerby, and engages two small children in a quick race: All in a different kind of night’s work aboard a vehicle on the cutting edge of law enforcement.

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You can debate whether certain off-road vehicle incursions into wild areas are eco-friendly, but you can’t really argue with Polaris’s decision to make a greener All-Terrain Vehicle.

The new RANGER EV, a side-by-side that operates on a battery pack, trumps gas-fueled ATVs when it comes to cleaning up emissions.

And, Polaris reports in a news release, the vehicle has the longest range of any electric midsize vehicle (50 miles), which at top speed (25 mph) would provide two hours of riding time between charges.

It is also cheaper to operate, costing an estimated 3 cents per mile to run compared to 9 cents per mile for a comparable gas vehicle, according to Polaris.

The Minneapolis-based company hope the new model appeals to those wanting alternative-powered off-road vehicles, and will be marketing the RANGER EV as a no-compromises potential greener replacement for similar gas-powered ATVs, able to scout tough territory.

Notes Polaris in a statement: “A common misconception of electric vehicles is the consumer has to give up performance or work-ability in exchange for economy. Polaris set out to prove this wrong by giving the RANGER EV a 500 lb. cargo box with 1,250 lb. towing and 1,000 lb. total payload to ensure the vehicle had a strong work ethic. The unit also features three modes; High for speed, Low for towing and hauling, and Max for maximum range.”

The Ranger, suitable also for tooling around planned communities and certain types of neighborhoods (where allowed) will retail for $10,699. It will be sold at Polaris dealerships nationwide. The company, one of the largest manufacturers of off-road vehicles in the world, makes Victory motorcycles and snowmobiles in addition to ATVs.

Myers Motors LLC, the Ohio company that makes a unique one-person electric vehicle, is getting a $250,000 investment from JumpStart Ventures.

The company, based in Tallmadge, Ohio, builds the NmG (”No more Gas”), which is classified as a motorcycle according to the Department of Transportation because of its three wheels. The all-electric vehicle, which sells for $29,995, goes 60 miles on one charge and is recharged using the same alternating current (AC) available in household outlets. The NmG can be used on highways, where it reaches speeds of up to 75 miles per hour.

Myers says the NmG meets the needs of the 80 percent of Americans who commute to and from work alone, and accommodates nearly half of Americans’ travel needs beyond work, which include errands and other day-to-day activities done solo as well.

Myers Motors was formed in 2004 by CEO Dana Myers, when he purchased the assets of a California-based motor company. Over the past few years, Myers has been collaborating with the University of Akron to further develop the battery technology and battery management system (BMS) used to power the vehicle. Myers Motors is enhancing its BMS to be more efficient and cheaper than systems used in other electric vehicles. Since working on the technology, the company has already doubled the travel range of the vehicle per charge, from 30 to 60 miles.

JumpStart Inc. is a Northeast Ohio venture development organization that accelerates the progress of high growth early-stage businesses. Myers said it plans on using JumpStart’s investment to build out its two-seat prototype vehicle and develop its intellectual property strategy.

JumpStart Venture Partner Mark Smith will be working with the company and is excited about its position in the market. “There is a race underway to create cost competitive all-electric vehicles and the Myers Motors team has an incredible head start,” said Smith. “Not only did they inherit a legacy of market knowledge and design from the predecessor company, they are already producing and selling vehicles. And the two-passenger vehicle (called NmG2) currently under development will provide Myers Motors with a significant competitive advantage in this quickly emerging market.”

“Our battery system is the next step toward realizing the dream of electric vehicles: inexpensive travel that avoids the geo-political and environmental ravages inherent in America’s dependence upon oil for its transportation needs,” said CEO Myers.

Most of us would love to find a car that got 75 miles per gallon. 150 mpg would make us think we’d died and gone to high-efficiency heaven. But thousands of miles per gallon?

That’s the goal of a group of students at Halifax, Nova Scotia’s Dalhousie University, who have already cruised hundreds of miles on a single gallon of juice. Of course, they’re not driving sedans: The mechanical engineering team led by Matthew Harding have built sleek, Kevlar-coated shells that can barely carry a full-sized human being, much less two sacks of groceries and a car seat for your kid.

Their latest design, which they call the “Maritime Mileage Machine,” is an entry in a contest held by Shell Oil: The Eco-Marathon Americas will take place this April in California, bestowing a $5,000 grand prize on the team that can “design, build and drive the farthest using the least amount of energy.” (Insert your own ironic comment here about such a contest being sponsored by a company whose considerable fortunes have thus far been derived from fossil fuels.)

Dalhousie’s Harding admits his team’s car isn’t going to take the Road & Track crowd by storm: “It’s basically a big weed whacker,” he says of the vehicle’s 35-cc engine. But then, a muscle-car looks just as puny, efficiency-wise, when compared to his: the team’s current mileage record is 420 kilometers per liter (remember, we’re talking about Canadian engineers here), compared to the average car’s rating of around 13 km/l.

(Translation: The car would get more than 68 miles per gallon.)

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

New York City taxi cab owners and drivers are finally closer to being on the same page in the debate over hybrid vehicles.

At a press conference Friday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced an incentive program designed to create an entirely green fleet of cabs by 2012.

Financial incentives will be awarded to taxi fleet owners who buy hybrid vehicles, and financial disincentives for those who continue to use non-hybrids. Hybrid cars work on a mixture of gasoline and electricity from batteries.

The mayor’s announcement follows an Oct. 31 court order that prevented the city from adopting a previous hybrid cab proposal, part of the mayor’s PlaNYC package to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution by 2030. Mayor Bloomberg has been a longtime advocate for green living throughout the city.

On the eve of the taxi proposal, a federal judge ruled on behalf of the taxi fleet owners that fuel economy and vehicle emissions standards were the domain of the federal government and could not be imposed by city or state mandates.

At the time, Mayor Bloomberg spoke out against the judge’s decision:

“The decision is not a ruling against hybrid cabs, rather a ruling that archaic Washington regulations are applicable and therefore New York City, and all other cities, are prevented from choosing to create cleaner air and a healthier place to live.”

The taxicab fleet owners argued that the smaller hybrid cars were a safety issue. They said that because of the many miles a cab travels as well as its 24-7 usage, the lightweight hybrids are not sturdy enough. They also said that the interiors were too small and might endanger the passengers in an accident.

More to the point, the issue had to do with money.

The fleet owners were concerned about losing money by using all hybrid cars, as the vehicles can be more expensive. The cab drivers, on the other hand, stood to profit since they would not need to use as much gas.

Joining the existing array of programs addressing school bus pollution this fall (the EPA’s Clean School Bus USA, for example) is a new effort bringing the Texas Parent Teacher Association together with the state’s Commission on Environmental Quality.

The project, announced earlier this month, will supply funds to the PTA for bus pollution-control improvements. In a nice “let the punishment fit the crime” twist, those funds are coming from fines assessed to polluters, and will generally be used near the site of the pollution that provoked the fine.

That’s because this is one of TCEQ’s “Supplemental Environmental Projects”, in which (as the commission’s web site puts it) “a respondent in an enforcement matter can choose to invest penalty dollars in improving the environment, rather than paying into the Texas General Revenue Fund.”

Andrea Morrow, a TCEQ spokesperson, says that “funds in this program can be used to retrofit buses that are over 5 years old with control technologies approved by EPA or the California Air Resources Board to reduce particulate matter, hydrocarbon emissions and, where possible, emissions of nitrogen oxides.” School districts whose buses were made before 1991 will have the option of scrapping them and replacing them with 2007 or newer models. That swap-out, TCEQ says, would result in “a reduction in particulate matter emissions of up to 90 percent or more.”

The amount of money available to the PTA has a cap of $5 million per year, which only sounds like a lot until you consider an assertion on the informational page of the Clean School Bus Program that a third of Texas’s school buses are over a decade old, and therefore have plenty of room for improvement.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Let’s face it: Solo car commuters increase both traffic congestion and a city’s carbon footprint.

In San Francisco, those gas-hogging lone drivers soon will be get a clear message to switch to greener forms of transportation, such as buses, train transit and van pools. Earlier this month, the city preliminarily approved a commuter measure requiring medium- and large-size city employers to promote — or even pay for — public transit or vanpools for their commuting employees.

It’s likely that many more American cities will follow San Francisco’s lead, particularly those cities that have signed on to the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement (USCPA), and pledged to reduce global warming pollution in their cities by 7 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2012. They will likely be scrambling to usher commuters from their cars and SUV’s and onto mass transit lines, an immediate and proven way of reducing urban smog.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom was an early adopter of the USCPA and the city has an ambitious climate action plan, so it’s no surprise that on August 5, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a commuter measure that would require many city employers to promote public transit or vanpools for their commuting employees. The Commuter Benefits ordinance, introduced by Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, would give San Francisco employers with more than 20 workers three options: pay for employees’ transit passes or vanpools; provide door-to-door shuttle or vanpools, or tap into the federal Commuter Checks program, which allows employees to create pretax commuter accounts.

San Francisco Chamber of Commerce senior vice president Jim Lazarus said the chamber is not always in favor of city-imposed mandates on businesses, but said it backs the latest commuter proposal. “The good thing about the mandate is that it has a net no-cost alternative for employers,” he said. Employers would save on their payroll taxes by implementing option three of the proposal, pre-tax employee commuter accounts. “There’s flexibility and that’s a positive thing,” Lazarus said.

The Commuter Benefits plan aims to extend the same mass transit benefit that most municipal employees receive through programs like the federal Commuter Checks to the private sector, Mirkarimi said. Municipal employees can already avail themselves of employer-subsidized transit discounts, and the Commerce’s Lazarus said many do.

A city-mandated downtown plan for 55 new high rise buildings requiring employers to educate employees about non-car transit options resulted in 92% worker participation in Commuter Checks: 3,000 employees traveling to work in some way other than a single-occupancy vehicle.

But the federal pretax benefits program is “not well utilized in the private sector,” Mirkarimi said. “Our city’s workforce use of this benefit pales in comparison to how many could be using it.”

With gas averaging well over $4 in San Francisco, the potential numbers of transit benefits users could be big. Jared Blumenfeld, who heads the city’s Department of Environment, estimates another 50,000 to 75,000 transit riders may enroll for commuter benefits.

The federal program works like this: The employer buys Commuter Checks – vouchers used to pay for public transit or vanpooling – and either gives them to employees free of charge as an employee benefit, or allows employees to purchase them using a pre-tax payroll deduction. Because the amount employees spend on transit or vanpooling, up to $115 a month, can be deducted from their paychecks before taxes, their yearly taxable income is reduced by the value of vouchers purchased. That can translate to a savings of up to 40% on transit costs.

Mass transit commuters save even more than that, however, through the direct and immediate savings on gasoline and car maintenance. The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) estimates that with a gallon of gasoline at $3.90, a person can save about $8,000 a year by switching to mass transit, according to a July report by the APTA.

And that’s not even accounting for greenhouse gas savings.

”It really goes beyond saving a few dollars for employers and employees; it’s a city response to an energy crisis and also to the global environmental crisis,” San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said. The measure was approved by a final vote of the board yesterday but must be signed by the mayor to take effect.

Employers don’t have to wait for a mandate to offer commuter benefits to their workers. Businesses nationwide are taking initiative to offer sometimes-innovative commuting options. Siegel and Strain, an Emeryville, California architecture firm, reimburses its employees at the current federal automobile rate of 58.5 cents per mile for bicycling to off-site meetings.

Compare that to the state of California rate of 4 cents per mile for state workers who bike on government business, or even The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s suggested 10 cents per mile reimbursement rate, and you have a nice incentive, and even “a scone at the bakery on the way back to recharge,” said Siegel and Strain associate Marjorie Smith.

Smith said that while it’s nice to be reimbursed for wear and tear on the bike and calories expended, what she really likes about the program is that it institutionalizes bicycling as transportation. “Having the support of the organization behind it acknowledges that bicycling is a valid way to get around,” she said.

This type of program is a win-win for both employers and employees looking to reduce their environmental impact and improve their health. “We’ve been looking at ways to further green our business,” said Nancy Malone, a principal at the firm. “One of things we’ve been looking at is transportation. The idea came from someone relatively new who asked if we reimbursed for bicycle riding to the job site.” The firm decided to go with the auto reimbursement rate because the distances ridden “won’t be huge”, and if employees drove, the firm would have had to pay the same amount.

“Most of the people that ride their bikes really are dedicated to it and really enjoy it. If people are happier doing that it’s certainly a plus for everybody,” Malone said.

Siegel and Strain, with 18 employees, will make a relatively small impact on the planet by supporting carbon-free travel. But the trend includes much bigger companies too. The League of American Bicyclists, which recognizes municipalities for actively supporting bicycling, has a new plan to give awards to bicycle-friendly businesses. The applications are still being reviewed, but director Bill Nesper mentioned a couple of companies in the running:

• Calvert -- The Washington, D.C. investment company reimburses up to $500 for the (one time) purchase of a bicycle and reimburses up to $120 annually for the purchase of shoes for those employees who walk to work.

• Google – Provides on-site bike repair, a fleet of company bicycles for on-campus and off-site meeting commuting on its Mountain View, CA campus, and, free, company-branded bikes for some employees in its Europe, Middle East, and Africa offices. The company also makes a donation to charity for every day that an employee gets to work under his or her own power (biking, skateboarding etc.) A Google spokesperson says that more than 2,500 employees participate in the Self-Powered Commuters (SPC) program worldwide.
  

Many other programs and resources support city-backed climate plans, and public transit and bicycle commuting, including:

• Cool Cities — In this Sierra Club-Sponsored program, Cool Cities are cities that have made a commitment to stopping global warming by signing the U.S. Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement. Begun in 2005, the Cool Cities campaign empowers city residents and local leaders to join and encourage their cities to start smart energy solutions to save money and build a cleaner, safer future.

• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Best Workplaces for Commuters — As it says, this is a list of employers with commuter-friendly policies.

• Seattle Climate Action Plan — Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels initiated the U.S. Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement, and Seattle’s Climate plan is the model for cities nationwide. The campaign provides online tools and tips for getting started on climate action.

• The City of Seattle website provides a good explanation of commuter benefit programs and also offers a page of links to transportation resources for those who want to find carpool programs or find out more about city bus and train options across the country.

• American Public Transportation Association’s Public Transportation Savings Calculator lets you see for yourself how taking transport saves you money.

• San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Employers Commuting Guide helps employers decide which commuting options they could offer, based on location, number of employees and other factors.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Not long ago, a City of Austin crew spent the day installing new “No Parking” signs along the streets of my neighborhood. Two big Ford F450 trucks sat outside my home-office window for hours while the men dug holes and planted posts — and their engines ran the entire time.

Not wanting to be the block’s eco-scold, I said nothing as the trucks rumbled. But the waste of fuel nagged at me even after the noise was gone, and I eventually called the city to find out why workers would be allowed to run their engines like that. Surely the city didn’t approve of polluting the air all morning just so the truck would be pre-air-conditioned when workers took a coffee break?

After calls to three or four city departments, I found a public works supervisor with some answers. All work trucks keep their engines running, she told me, because of the LED arrow boards mounted on them which warn drivers to keep their distance. “You can’t turn the engine off and keep the arrows going, because your battery will die down,” she said.

It was easy to see how a safety-based practice might serve as an excuse to keep the cab cooled off, even when running the arrow was unnecessary: In my case, the truck was parked on a dead-end block where no traffic could approach from behind it. The woman I spoke with agreed that conserving fuel wasn’t the easiest topic to raise with work crews. “They’ve been here a while,” she said, “and when I mention this they kind of get, ‘Well, fine, what do you want us to do for safety?’”

With any luck, Austin street crews won’t have that excuse much longer. Jennifer Wells, a deputy fleet officer, says the city has “recently applied for grant money for auxiliary power units, which would power equipment that they’d normally have to use the truck engine to power. We’d run off a battery instead.” (”We’re only buying solar-powered arrow boards from here on out,” she adds.)

Wells says the city is also “putting together a conservation task force” that will write a policy on idling to govern all public vehicles. Currently, the only anti-idling law in Austin applies solely to trucks weighing more than 14,000 pounds.

That’s odd for a town so proud of its other green accomplishments, especially considering the efforts other cities have taken to curb idling. A “Best Practices” report issued by the U.S. Conference of Mayors last year, for instance, notes anti-idling policies in places like Charlotte, NC and Indianapolis, IN; Minneapolis, MN adopted an anti-idling law in June; and the state of New Jersey prohibits all vehicles from idling (with exceptions) for more than three minutes at a time. The EPA has attempted to corral the many laws adopted by states, counties, and local governments here, but it’s a list that keeps growing.

Those laws may sound like window-dressing efforts that won’t be enforced by traffic cops, but anecdotal evidence and articles in trucking-industry magazines suggest otherwise. (This one reports travel-plaza cameras catching idlers in New Jersey and lists fines across the country that range from a hundred bucks to twenty-five grand or prison time.) Of Minneapolis’s new law, spokesperson Matt Laible says, that while the city is initially “focusing on public education” before enforcing its $200 fine, “so far this year, we’ve received 21 calls to our 311 system reporting vehicle idling,” which suggests that cops will have help from green-minded citizens.

Of course, bringing this issue up in the summer may terrify readers who live in places where August heat could almost cook an egg in a car even with the windows rolled down. Even in the most eco-conscious city, a parent dashing into the store for a gallon of milk on a 110-degree day is unlikely to draw ire for leaving the AC running for the kids; the Minneapolis ordinance, for instance, allows that “Vehicles may idle up to 15 minutes in a one hour period if the outside air temperature is less than zero degrees or higher than 90 degrees.”

Many drivers may have the false impression that laws against idling are hurting their cars or pocketbooks in the name of clean air — that turning the engine off and restarting it causes undue engine wear or wastes more gas than it saves. That may have been true for cars a few decades ago, but no longer: From the California Energy Commission (which points out that “for every two minutes a car is idling, it uses about the same amount of fuel it takes to go about one mile”) to the Florida Section of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, those myths have been thoroughly debunked.

The accepted rule of thumb for a modern car is that after ten seconds, idling uses more gas than turning the engine off and then back on; unless you’re in traffic that may resume at a moment’s notice, you should kill the engine. As for excess wear, a Canadian study cited in this Slate
article claims that “obeying the 10-second rule will add roughly $10 to a driver’s annual maintenance bill” while saving (at today’s prices) over thirty bucks’ worth of gas.

Trying to put the issue in perspective, Slate points out that “if every one of the nation’s 196 million licensed drivers reduced their idling by 10 minutes per day,” the reduction in CO2 emissions would only amount to “about 0.2 percent of the carbon dioxide that was emitted in the United States in 2006.”

But as any school crossing-guard can tell you, plenty of parents spend far more than 10 minutes a day idling as they wait to pick kids up — and school buses traditionally have done the same. Recognizing that buses are often among a community’s biggest polluters, and that the kids they carry are particularly vulnerable to polluted air, the EPA runs an awareness campaign on the issue while states and individual school districts have their own programs aimed at replacing older vehicles and greening the ones on the road.

The Environmental Defense Fund matches content to style with a “4R” school bus campaign that echoes the old “reading, writing, ‘rithmatic” mantra and the newer “reduce, reuse, recycle.” Gutsily, they’ve chosen to launch one of their two regional efforts in Texas, where Governor Rick Perry set right-minded heads shaking last year by vetoing a bus-idling ban that seemed to have support even from his old colleague George Bush.

(The ED program offers practice advice for groups wanting to clean up school bus emissions and tamp down on idling, and points to an EPA primer on retrofitting tailpipes to filter emissions. The one pictured here is designed to filter particulate matter from diesel emissions.)

Even more problematic than school buses are the trucks that haul an estimated 85% of America’s goods from producers to retailers. According to the EPA, “truck and locomotive idling consumes over 1 billion gallons of diesel fuel annually.” Almost half of that amount (along with emissions of “11 million tons of carbon dioxide, 180,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, and 5,000 tons of particulate matter annually”) comes from “long-duration truck idling” — a fact of life for truckers who sleep in their cabs and must run engines to keep them air-conditioned or heated.

A trucker recently complained to the New York Times that with rising fuel costs, “It’s to the point where you can get a motel room cheaper than you can idle the truck.” But other alternatives to idling are gaining popularity as well: Add-ons like the Pony Pack and Mack Truck’s hybrid system help electrical systems run without engine power, while some truck stops are installing electric hookups to accomplish the same goal.

One by one, justifications for leaving cars and trucks running are being made obsolete; and bit by bit, a patchwork of laws is making drivers face that fact. Before long, even the time-honored wintertime practice of letting cars warm up for a half-hour in the morning may die a well deserved death — especially with no less an authority than Tom & Ray Magliozzi’s Car Talk explaining that the practice was “bad for the car” even back before people cared how wasteful it was.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

With gas prices pressuring wallets everywhere and climate change warming the planet, people are looking to the sun for some salvation. It’s paradoxical yes, but so sensible. The sun’s energy burns brightly on Earth and is capable of powering our homes and potentially our cars, if that power can be efficiently harvested.

For the current transportation crisis, it would be a dream solution: An ever-present source of energy powering vehicles with zero emissions. In 2008, however, science has yet to figure out how to make solar cars move as quickly as we’d like them to; carry heavy loads and not peter out when the sun goes down.

Fortunately for us hopeful drivers, the top engineers in the world are now focusing on these issues — as are many motivated college students and even a handful of high school kids.

We caught up with some of those aspiring younger solar engineers recently at the Dell-Winston School Solar Car Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas, where they competed to see who could field a car that could successfully run 400 laps on the 1.5 mile track at Texas Motor Speedway.

The competition has been engaging students from all over the country in solar technology for 15 years, producing cars that amaze their creators with how well and how far they can ride on the sun’s energy. In even years, the teams run cars on the NASCAR track and in the odd-years, they run a cross country race. This year’s race saw them running faster cars, with better solar arrays and specially crafted frames from the latest available metals. The race left the students and the teachers buzzing about the possibilities. Watch the video report.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Swedish Energy Agency (SEA) have extended their partnership with Volvo another three years to develop commercial trucks with greater fuel efficiency. The partnership is an extension of a one-year agreement signed by the three groups in June 2007, with the overall objective of creating heavy-duty engines with at least 10 percent greater fuel efficiency then diesel engines.

A total of $48 million will be used to:

• Test and analyze the impact of different biofuels on diesel engines to increase efficiency and fuel economy, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions of new long haul trucks.

• Develop hybrid vehicle technology for heavy-duty engines and coupled with waste heat recovery.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, green house gas emissions from commercial trucks are steadily increasing. Last year’s statistics reveal green house emissions from commercial trucks are up 69 percent, producing more emissions than commercial airliners.

“This partnership is a step in the right direction,” said Volvo CEO Leif Johansson in a statement. “The climate issue and increasing fuel prices make energy use and energy efficiency some of the most important societal issues of our time.”

“The transportation industry has a special responsibility and this research and development co-operation with the U.S. Government is crucial in our efforts to develop the technology required by both our customers and society as a whole.”

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

As a LEED-accredited engineer and leader of the sustainable design initiative for AKF Engineers, Robert Diemer is a believer in the green movement. He helps create greener buildings. He takes public transportation to work.

Recently, Diemer took his commitment to an even higher level by becoming the 50,000th member of PhillyCarShare. With the price of gas topping $4 a gallon, car sharing is a win-win situation for those who need a car just some of the time. PhillyCarShare, like its Boston and D.C. counterparts, GoLoco and Flexcar (both of which merged with Zipcar), PhillyCarShare takes the hassle out of owning a car in the city.

In addition to signing up for himself, Diemer signed up his company as a corporate member.

“My primary motivation,” says Diemer, who lives in nearby Cherry Hill, N.J., “was to provide employees with access to a car while in the office so they could continue to take public transportation to and from work. We use cars a lot for the job.” With the car-sharing arrangement, the the company’s 40 employees can come from their suburban and urban homes without worrying about needing their personal car during the workday, a perk for them as well as a carbon-saving arrangement.

Diemer says he’s been a longtime admirer of PhillyCarShare and likes the fact that members have access to different types of vehicles, including pickups and hybrids.

Reducing his carbon footprint is important to Diemer: “As a partner with AKF Engineers, I’m often called on to go to meetings outside the office. With PhillyCarShare I reduce my driving by not taking my car into the city, but I still have access to a car for meetings.”

PhillyCarShare was founded by five University of Pennsylvania grads who eventually all made their homes in the Philadelphia area. Being urban dwellers and concerned about the effects of too many vehicles on the environment, the friends started the nonprofit car service, modeled after CityCarShare in San Francisco. Using San Fran’s technology, the five began their company with just pocket change, says one founder Clayton Lane, who is now the company’s deputy executive director.

“We started with just $25,000 and worked as volunteers out of an apartment in Philadelphia. We did everything from answering the phone at 2 in the morning to changing flat tires and washing the cars,” Lane recalls. The company, which started in November of 2002, had more than 500 members by the end of 2003.

“Once we were able to document that members of PhillyCarShare were driving less and thereby keeping more cars off the road, we took this information and applied for grant money. A couple of years later, we had between 2,000 and 3,000 members, “ says Lane. Currently, there are similar car-sharing services in 15 major markets in the United States, he says.

PhillyCarShare offers some unique aspects to its service that some of the other car service companies do not. Half of their car fleet are hybrids. They’ve also opened eligibility to 18-year-olds. The latter makes a lot of sense, says Lane.

“Next to Boston, Philly has the largest college market. Today’s students have almost everything they need on campus, except for a car. The good part about our company is that a student doesn’t have to own a car at school, instead they can use us.”

Another unique aspect of PhillyCarShare, says Lane, is that “we’re available on almost every block in Philadelphia. As for parking, we can park our cars closer than you can park your own cars.”

What about suburbanites? PhillyCarshare sounds great for the urban dweller, but what about folks who want to reduce their carbon footprint but live 30 to 40 minutes away?
Those people, says Lane, can use public transportation to reach the city and then use a PhillyCarShare to attend to business in or outside of the city, knowing that they’re not adding more miles to their own vehicle, similar to what their 50,000th member, Robert Diemer, is doing. Currently, SEPTA (the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) collaborates with PhillyCarshare by allowing members to use SEPTA for free in order to reach the rental cars.

Lane says his company likes to view car sharing as an extension of public transportation in the Greater Philadelphia area, with a metro population of nearly 6 million. Reservations are booked with a credit card, online or by phone. PhillyCarShare has its own payment system, which Lane describes as a debit account system. Members must pay up front.

“PhillyCarShare is free to join, but you pay to drive,” he says. Rental rates start at $3.90 per hour or $39 per day. Lane adds that the company’s fleet includes close to 500 cars in more than 200 locations.

Members receive a personal electronic key. Upon reaching the rental car, the member holds the electronic key to a reader attached to the car. This allows the member to open the car where they will find a ignition key waiting. If someone were to break into the car, and try to start the engine with that key, the ignition wouldn’t work – it only works unless the car has processed the electronic key info first.

Choice of vehicle is another popular element of PhillyCarShare. As their website states, there’s “a model for your every mood.” Car selections include sporty vehicles such as Mini Coopers and convertibles, utilitarian models such as a pick-up as well as a variety of Prius hybrids, minivans, Volvos, BMWs and even luxury Lexuses.

Car services like PhillyCarShare may not work for everyone’s lifestyle, says Lane. “It does work for folks who can get to work without a car.” And for those willing to go the extra mile for the environment.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Some time in the coming weeks, residents of our nation’s capital will be the first American customers of a service some Europeans have used for a decade, a public/private partnership that adds bicycles to the more familiar array of public transportation options like buses and trains.

The SmartBike DC program will offer subscriptions allowing members to borrow bikes from locations scattered around downtown. Self-service stations will automate the process, making it somewhat reminiscent of the Zipcar program that has simplified short-use auto rental in cities from Boston to Santa Cruz, but (thanks of course to the lower cost and risk factors of the vehicles being rented) SmartBike promises a much simpler system and wider accessibility.

For a flat fee of forty dollars, members will get a one-year SmartBike subscription that entitles them to use a bike as often as every day. The customer gets a member card which operates electronic readers at any of ten bike stations, which automatically unlock a bike for use. When they’re done, riders simply insert the cycle back into a docking station and wait for a light to signal that it’s safely locked up.

There are some limitations: A bike may be used for a maximum of three hours; strangely, although the rental process is automated, they can only be withdrawn between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. (Ten o’clock is the latest a bike may be unlocked, meaning it would be due back at one in the morning.)

While the lack of late-night availability rules out SmartBike as an option for bar-hoppers seeking a safer (though of course still risky) alternative to driving a car, the three-hour limit isn’t as restrictive as it sounds — upon returning one bike, users can immediately borrow another, and are free to daisy-chain their rentals all day if they like.

According to organizers, the service hours “may be modified, once we have our first usage data.” Karyn Le Blanc, communications director for D.C.’s District Department of Transportation, says the restrictions were ” a matter of accountability, a means of getting all the bikes back into the racks to know that we have them there for users the next day.”

While the cycles have a basic storage rack built in, they’re otherwise no-frills: they don’t come with headlamps or u-locks, and certainly don’t have baby carriers. As the program’s web site notes, “helmets are not provided … but are recommended.”

The program is run by Clear Channel Outdoor, the division of Clear Channel Communications specializing in sales of outdoor advertising plastered on everything from billboards to the tops of taxis. It’s part of a deal the company has made with the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) in exchange for the right to sell ads on bus shelters.

DDOT gets all the revenue from SmartBike subscription fees. “Almost all of our programs are supported by the sale of advertising on street level amenities, such as transit shelters,” says Martina Schmidt, the director of Clear Channel’s SmartBike program, who goes on to note that fees may vary in different cities because contracts arrangements will be different.

Schmidt supplies a quick summary of SmartBike’s history: “Clear Channel Outdoor opened the first computerized, public bicycle rental program in the city of Rennes in France in 1998. We have since then opened programs in several other European cities, such as Oslo, Stockholm, Dijon, Barcelona (pictured here), and others. Just last week, Clear Channel Outdoor was awarded the bike program for Milan, Italy.”

While the basic idea has remained the same, she says, “There have been quite a few technological improvements and developments over the last decade, such as the computerized locking system, an even more ergonomic bike, a new station design and others.”

Why would SmartBike make its American debut in D.C. instead of a more populous city, or one more associated with environmental activism? Simple: The District was the first to extend the invitation.

“Washington D.C. was the first city who asked,” issuing a proposal request in 2004, Schmidt recalls.

The district, which the Brookings Institute ranks as first in the nation for “walkability,” apparently wants to become one of the most “rideable” as well. It is making a push to expand bicycle commuting and has “just hit a milestone of 30 miles of bike lanes in the city,” according to Le Blanc. (The DC Bicycle Master Plan calls for a total of 50 miles of bike lanes.)

“There are many municipalities that have contacted us, which are gathering facts and evaluating their local infrastructure,” Schmidt adds, mentioning contenders both obvious — Portland, Oregon and New York City — and less so, like Albuquerque.

Presumably, planners and transportation chiefs in other cities will be eager to see how SmartBike fares when it starts Washington operations. Le Blanc confirms that the program was set to launch in May but has been delayed a time or two, and is now expected to be running “before the end of summer.”

“It’s a first-time installation, and there were electrical issues with wiring the control units,” she explains.
While the system isn’t yet selling subscription cards and Schmidt admits Clear Channel planners “don’t have projected user numbers,” she states that “from the feedback we have been receiving over the last few weeks, we can say that there is a lot of interest in people wanting to subscribe.”

And, even before the first pedal is pushed, “Clear Channel Outdoor is discussing potential expansion plans with DDOT.”

• For more information on biking for recreation or commuter biking, see the Washington Area Bicyclists Association. Tourists interested in incorporating biking into their visit to the nation’s capital can find info on bike routes and rentals at GoDCGo.

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