Dubious Eco-Promoter

Businessman offering financing for eco-infrastructure misrepresents connection with PRT company

©MMXI, MMXII, MMXIII The PRT NewsCenter

Major 'sustainable,' 'eco' and 'green' projects take place in the spheres of business and finance, so it has to be expected that the field is going to see its share of hustlers. Luckily, we are in an era of information-at-your-fingertips, so it is somewhat easy to catch them out.

Graham Cockroft is notable for his ubiquity in recent weeks, promoting his MaglevMovers.com site on Facebook, and of late on Twitter. Maglev Movers is trying to interest city governments in "social housing," waste-to-energy, wind and solar energy systems, maglev trains, and Personal Rapid Transit. But in at least one case Cockroft has misrepresented his business connections.

How not to advocate for Pod Transit

This is the You Tube page for a video called "Personal Rapid Transport System," and it reflects a really unfortunate attempt at messaging in support of pod transit.

(I will replace this video with a still when the video gets taken down which, I anticipate, will be quite soon.)

Visionless

The worst local news of the past week pertaining to urban livability comes from Seattle City Hall, where City Councilmembers thanked citizens for reelecting some of them by proposing to eliminate from the city budget the $1.5 million for planning streetcars and light rail requested Mayor McGinn.

Local planning is a prerequisite for federal grant applications. Therefore, applying for federal support to expand the rail network would be delayed by whatever amount of time it would take to marshal the will to fund and carry out such studies.

Seattle streetcar deal

It means jobs. Will it expand the official vision of which technologies belong in which corridors? Let's hope so.

Streetcar Network: Keep going

I just had an in-person gander at Sound Transit's Link presentation of its North Corridor plans, courtesy of the agency's public meeting at Ingraham High School. Nice job by the staff.

Now I want readers to weigh-in in favor of the (CLICK! >) L2 Main (solid line) Alternative option. Then I want you to think how to connect it to the Seattle Streetcar Network. I dare you to not get excited about the possibilities.

Turn out tonight to back Highway 99 light rail - UPDATE 1

Sound Transit is holding a public meeting TONIGHT on the next stage of light rail between Northgate and Lynnwood.

The meeting will be at 6pm at the Embassy Suites on 44th Avenue West in Lynnwood.

The agency's preferred options are I-5 (option L1) and Aurora/Highway 99 (options L2 and L3) --

"Two 'most promising' options"

L2 is mixed elevated and surface, while L3 is elevated.

Route K9

Before I got my dog, one of the things I hadn't considered was that as a transit user, I would be taking him along on the bus.  But I've discovered a wide disparity in how different public transit agencies treat man's best friend:

• King County Metro buses & Seattle streetcars: Dogs* allowed, must be on leash
• Sound Transit buses & rail: Dogs* must be in carriers
• Washington State Ferries: Dogs* must be in carriers
• Community Transit (Snohomish County): Dogs* must be muzzled

One word: Microplastics

More evidence for people still not convinced that our plastics get into the oceans:

American researchers study microplastic debris in Clayoquot
By Yasmin Aboelsaud, Special to the Westerly News September 22, 2011

University of Washington Tacoma researchers collecting microplastic debris in Clayoqout Sound found more polystyrene in the surface of the water compared to areas in Puget Sound, Washington.
...

Music On Rails!

This week the news again comes from south of the big river. Yesterday evening Portland celebrated a decade of streetcars in the Rose City, with a mobile music festival of eight bands. Hey, Seattle should do that too -- except each set would be over in about 10 minutes. We have to pay for more miles of track if we're serious, Seattle.

Think before spraying

Even in environmentally-conscious Seattle, there are still chances to witness bonehead moves. My turn came today while passing by this block near Carkeek Park:


View Larger Map

These are known as Outcomes

The esteemed emeritus Prof. Jerry Schneider recently posted a link in the Transport-Innovators group to a piece by the editorial board of the Oregonian newspaper in Portland. Here it is in full:

September 05, 2011
Binding the community together

The doors open. We step inside, a little groggy, newspaper tucked under an elbow, latte in hand.

Celebrate this fact, Portland: After 25 years, the MAX light-rail system is so integral to our lives that we don't stop and think about it very much.

We don't have to stop and think about it very much. That's the beauty of it. MAX is just there, moving quietly in the background from 3:30 a.m. to 2 a.m. -- 22.5 hours a day.

Statistics For Luddites

How does a range of 95-99.999% become a flat 95%? Find out, over at our sister-blog, the Luddite-specific "PRT is a Joke IS A JOKE"!

Bac To School

Judging by the arrangement of Back To School products in many stores right now, it's clear the American (western?) preoccupation with germs continues unabated.

Anti-bacterial soaps and hand sanitizers can be found alongside school supplies at your finest drugstores, discounters and big boxes.

Smooth Move, Ex-Lax

Includes a dialog with The Offender

With friends like these, who needs enemas?

The Transport Innovators online discussion group is nothing if not a bubbling cauldron of problematica^®, so it's good to see it is still capable of eliciting a good-old-fashioned spit take:

Seattle Times throws bus drivers, riders under the bus

The Seattle Times' editorial position on the $20 car tab tax for King County Metro transit service is really quite shocking.

Here it is, a vital public infrastructure component, just as vital as water, electricity and sewers, but transit is something the Times has decided ought to be starved ( http://bit.ly/pcYZ8X ). The paper:

Baby gets bad welcome gift

The most important regional environmental news of the past week was the arrival of a new Orca baby in Puget Sound, K-44 (http://goo.gl/9S9xs). Welcome baby boy!

However, the good news is balanced by an item from the previous week, concerning the results of last month's tabletop oil spill response drill:

"The drill showed procedures introducing oil dispersants on a spill need improving." (http://goo.gl/Yw1mg)

We ought to be alarmed state and federal authorities are talking about dispersants at all. First, as we now know from the aftermath of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, dispersants don't remove the oil, they only make the oil invisible. Second, dispersants kill phytoplankton and bacteria in the food chain.

And third: DISPERSANTS ARE ILLEGAL in Puget Sound (http://goo.gl/G6GMP).

Republican debaters mention the environment

In case any doubts remain, here is the only explicit mention of the environment (that I heard) in tonight's debate among Republican candidates for president:

"What we need is the mother of all repeal bills," Bachmann said, promising to get rid of Obama's national health-care law and new regulations on the financial industry and to rename the Environmental Protection Agency the "Job Killing Agency of America." (http://goo.gl/o88td)

Rick Santorum inadvertently took an implicitly pro-environment position, in mentioning his opposition to ethanol subsidies. I guess ethanol must not work in lubricants.

The 6 Surrenders Of Vukan R. Vuchic

Something the pro-transit environmental movement has been advocating for decades is the idea of the intermodal transit system of trains and buses. Some of us would like to add Personal Rapid Transit to that short list.

Such a system, if pervasive enough, would allow people to travel around cities without driving. And if deployed in conjunction with thoughtful land use planning, redevelopment, and urban growth boundaries, the transit system could assist in correcting decades of sprawl made possible by, and in service of, the automobile -- or as I call it, the Private Travel Appliance.

New NMFS contact policy on orcas compromises good science

The good news is that boaters will now be required to stay at least 200 yards distant from Puget Sound orca whales, under new rules issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service.

However, NMFS decided to not make the waters west of San Juan Island a no-go area in summer time, bowing to local objections including marine dependent businesses. In other words, not having a no-go was based on commerce, not science.

Fate of Masdar PRT Not Yet Final

©MMXI Get On Board PRT!NewsCenter

We knew it was coming. Last October the news broke that the Masdar City project -- already retreating from ambitious goals of zero-carbon, zero-waste and producing all energy onsite -- had decided against installing Personal Rapid Transit throughout the 2.3 square mile 'eco-city.' The news came just as the inauguration of the pilot section of the PRT system, 'Phase IA,' was imminent.

And so we were not surprised when the wave of news items arrived. Environmental journalists attending January's World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi on the one hand wrote in giddy prose of riding the driverless pods, while on the other hand chuckling at the brevity of the 2-station route. It sounds so small when you say the stations are "a mere 800m" apart. That's half a mile to Americans.

Taxing argument

'Dumb criminal' stories tend to litter the pages of the daily newspapers, but on those publications' websites the most popular subject is, I submit to you, the bashing of bicyclists.

Today brought two such letters in the Seattle Times, one typical and one not.

...Automobile registration, and a license to drive one, does not also qualify a person to drive a semi-truck, school bus, motor coach, motorcycle -- or a bicycle -- on public streets. That’s the favorite ploy of freebie bike advocates to suggest that taxes paid for operating a motor vehicle provides a free pass for pedaling around on a motorless vehicle as well... Ride a bike -- ante up! Dean Trier, Redmond

New oil spill bill looks stronger

Representatives Christine Rolfes and Zack Hudgins are the lead sponsors of HB1186, a bill now in the news that would improve preparations to respond to oil spills in Puget Sound.  The roundup:

• Morning News Tribune, Jan. 12
• Joel Connelly, Seattle P-I Jan. 12
• AP video- Presidential panel's report "rekindles push for reform," Jan. 11

If enacted, HB1186 would

Warm water species shows up in Puget Sound

The Seattle Times is reporting sightings of bottlenose, Flipper-style dolphins in Puget Sound:

The wayward bottlenose dolphin seen recently in Puget Sound is the region's fourth tropical marine visitor in a year.

Another bottlenose dolphin and two Bryde's whales, all native to warmer climes, appeared in Washington's inland waters last year, said John Calambokidis, of Cascadia Research. The three animals perished in Puget Sound.

Source