Bike Sharing in the US

New York Times
April 27, 2008
Bicycle-Sharing Program to Be First of Kind in U.S.
By BERNIE BECKER
WASHINGTON — Starting next month, people here will be able to rent a bicycle day and night with the swipe of a membership card.
A new public-private venture called SmartBike DC will make 120 bicycles available at 10 spots in central locations in the city. The automated program, which district officials say is the first of its kind in the nation, will operate in a similar fashion to car-sharing programs like Zipcar.
The district has teamed up with an advertiser, Clear Channel Outdoor, to put the bikes on the streets.
“There’s a lot of stress on our transit systems currently,” said Jim Sebastian, who manages bicycle and pedestrian programs for Washington’s Transportation Department. Offering another option, Mr. Sebastian said, “will help us reduce congestion and pollution,” as well as parking problems.
In the deal, Clear Channel will have exclusive advertising rights in the city’s bus shelters. The company has reached a similar deal with San Francisco. Chicago and Portland, Ore., are also considering proposals from advertisers.
For a $40 annual membership fee, SmartBike users can check out three-speed bicycles for three hours at a time. The program will not provide helmets but does encourage their use.
Similar programs have proved successful in Europe. The Vélib program in Paris and Bicing in Barcelona, Spain, both started around a year ago and already offer thousands of bicycles.
Mr. Sebastian, who started trying to bring bike-sharing to Washington even before its success in Paris and Barcelona, said he believed that the program could grow within a year and hoped that it would eventually offer 1,000 bicycles.
While automated bike-sharing programs are new to the United States, the idea of bike-sharing is hardly novel. Milan, Amsterdam and Portland have all had lower-tech free bike-sharing programs in the past, with Amsterdam’s dating to the 1960s.
But “studies showed that many bikes would get stolen in a day, or within a few weeks,” said Paul DeMaio, a Washington-area bike-sharing consultant. “In Amsterdam, they would often find them in the canals.”
Improved technology allows programs to better protect bicycles. In Washington, SmartBike subscribers who keep bicycles longer than the three-hour maximum will receive demerits and could eventually lose renting privileges. Bicycles gone for more than 48 hours will be deemed lost, with the last user charged a $200 replacement fee.
That technology comes with a price, which is one reason cities and advertisers started joining forces to offer bike-sharing. The European programs would cost cities about $4,500 per bike if sponsors did not step in, Mr. DeMaio said.
Cities realize “they literally have to spend no money on designing, marketing or maintaining” a bike-sharing program, said Martina Schmidt of Clear Channel Outdoor. Washington will keep the revenue generated by the program.
Bike-sharing has become a “public service subsidized by advertising,” said Bernard Parisot, the president and co-chief executive officer of JCDecaux North America, an outdoor advertiser that made a proposal to bring bike-sharing to Chicago.
But, Mr. Parisot added, if users had to pay all of the costs for bike-sharing, “they would probably just take a cab.”
The low cost could be one of the program’s major selling points.
At George Washington University in Foggy Bottom, one of the program’s 10 locations, students were unsure how often they would use SmartBike, but said its price made it worth a try.
“I’d probably use it more in the summer than winter,” said Dewey Archer, a senior. “But for $40? That’s cheaper than gas.”

Carbon Neutrality at Middlebury College

This is an extensive report on how a campus might try to reach carbon neutrality.

http://community.middlebury.edu/~cneutral/

Moving Forward

Does anybody have the access to the Sustainability Matrix that we viewed last week? And also, the contact information for the team leaders? If anyone has found this out, please let me know by posting on the blog or emailing me directly. Thanks.

UC's Worldfest Celebration Goes Green

http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.asp?id=8181
UC's Worldfest is from April 25 to May 4 and has at least one green-themed event just about every day, along with a lot of other interesting events. A good way to get the students involved!

There's more on the website but I'll mention a couple of the events here.
Monday : Keep Cincinnati Beautiful workshop. By the local nonprofit Keep Cincinnati Beautiful.
Tuesday: Sustainable and Organic Agriculture workshop. By the local organic farm, Turner Farm.
Wednesday: Eco-entrepreneurship workshop. By local business Park+Vine.
Thursday: Fair Trade workshop. By Ten Thousand Villages.
Friday: "Brave New World" workshop. By local urban nature preserve, Imago.
and “Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability and Peace.” lecture by environmentalist/eco-feminist Vandana Shiva.

Cincinnati Climate Protection Action Plan Approved

Media Release
From Mayor Mark Mallory
City of Cincinnati
For Immediate Release: April 24, 2008
Contact: Jason Barron, 513-352-5356, 614-554-5952 (cell)

Mayor Mallory’s Climate Protection Action Plan Unanimously Recommended by Steering Committee

Cincinnati – Mayor Mallory’s Climate Protection Steering Committee voted unanimously today to endorse a proposed Climate Protection Action Plan and send the recommendations to the Mayor for review. As part of his Green Cincinnati initiative, Mayor Mallory appointed a Climate Protection Steering Committee last November to develop a regional Climate Protection Action Plan. The Mayor will now review the recommendations and advance the plan to City Council. The recommended plan will help to limit the damage caused by global climate change.

“The Committee has provided an aggressive roadmap for how Cincinnati can become a national leader in addressing global climate change and make Cincinnati a healthier place to live,” Mayor Mallory said. “I want to thank the Steering Committee members for their dedication and expertise in crafting a thorough and visionary plan that will produce results.”

The Climate Protection Action Plan does the following:
Identifies 80 specific recommendations for how to reduce contributions to global climate change. The recommended actions generally share several characteristics:
effectively reducing green house gas emissions
reducing dependence on non-renewable energy sources
saving more money than the recommended actions cost
supporting local job creation and the local economy
helping clean Cincinnati’s air, land, and water
improving public health
relying on voluntary rather than regulatory approaches
Quantifies annual contributions to global climate change at 8.5 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) for the City of Cincinnati, and 432,000 tons of CO2e for Cincinnati City Government. At 25.5 tons per person, Cincinnati is slightly above the national average of 24.5 tons per person.
Establishes green house gas emission reduction goals of 8% within 4 years, 40% within 20 years, and 84% by 2050 (42 years).
Presents a strategy to implement the Plan’s recommendations.

The Climate Protection Action Plan has been developed over the last 6 months by over 150 Cincinnati professionals and concerned citizens who volunteered their time to the project, led by a Steering Committee appointed by Mayor Mark Mallory and chaired by Vice Mayor David Crowley. Steering Committee Members who endorsed the Plan today include: Sandra Meyer, President of Duke Energy of Ohio and Kentucky; Brad Mank, Chair of the City’s Environmental Advisory Council; Hamilton County Commissioner David Pepper; as well as representatives of the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati USA Chamber of Commerce, the Sierra Club, the U.S. Green Building Council, GE Aviation, the American Institute of Architects; the National Technical Association, and citizen representatives.

The full text of the Climate Protection Action Plan can be viewed on the City’s website at: http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/cmgr/downloads/cmgr_pdf18280.pdf

Proposed Climate Protection Action Plan for Cincinnati

See the Proposed Climate Protection Action Plan for Cincinnati, which is being voted on today by the City Climate Protection Steering Committee.

WHEN: Thursday, April 24, 2008, 3:30 – 5:30 p.m.

WHERE: City Hall Room 115
801 Plum Street, 1st Floor
Cincinnati, OH 45202

WHO: Vice Mayor David Crowley
Office of Environmental Quality
Climate Protection Steering Committee Members

The Proposed Climate Protection Action Plan can be viewed at http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/cmgr/downloads/cmgr_pdf18280.pdf

Questions that I want to ask Joe Harrell, Maury DuPont, Beth McGrew, and/or Tim Spaeth

Hi everyone, yesterday we had talked about perhaps posting up questions that we were interested in finding answers to so that we can coordinate contacting people.  So here are the questions that I would like answered (and a little bit about why I want them answered).

1) Is it possible to obtain a breakdown of electricity and HVAC use for each building on UC's campus (it seems the first step to find the "low hanging fruit" is to see which buildings might be easily retrofitted to decrease energy use, for example I suspect that McMicken Hall doesn't have particularly good insulation and perhaps doing something as simple as replacing windows there might cut heating and cooling needed)?

2) Which buildings currently have lighting retrofits or were built with electricity efficiency in mind?  (Again, it seems that replacing light ballasts might be an easy way to squeak out a bit of energy efficiency)

3) I'd also like to know a little bit more about the proposed technologies/measures to decrease power use in lab buildings (e.g. I'd like to learn about the sensor systems they're planning to use, whether they are asking people to close the sashes in fume hoods when labs aren't in use, etc).

4) I'd also like to get information about the initiatives that the people on the various committees on the chart that Beth McGrew put on the board are working on.

I think those are the four questions that I'm most interested in finding answers for.  If I think of more questions, I'll post them here.

More UC Contacts

Contacts given to the GHG Emissions Team by Rick Wiggins. Feel free to use them as necessary.

Budget - Office of Budget Management 556-0192
Enrollment - University Registrar 556-9930
Physical Size - Space Management Andy Porter 556-2176
Energy, Cogen, Fuels - Maury DuPont 556-1537
Fleet Vehicles - Greg Mendell 556-4424
Air Transportation - ???
Fertilizer - Bob Bauer 556-4147
Solid Waste -Bill Duncan 556-9159
Refrigeration/CFC - Mary McCann 556-0299 --

What energy use means to me.

I just remembered that we were supposed to post what we thought that our various research areas are about.  I had gotten assigned to looking up stuff regarding energy use, so here's what energy use means to me:

- how could UC adapt existing infrastructure to decrease electricity use? (e.g. converting to compact fluorescents, using energy star electronics/appliances, updating lab equipment, etc)

- how could UC adapt existing infrastructure to decrease the strain on HVAC systems? (e.g. installing better insulation, replacing windows, installing extra sets of doors to prevent heat/AC loss at entrance ways, etc)

- what should UC keep in mind for future infrastructure (e.g. what sort of efficiency requirements should UC hold architects to in the designing of potential new buildings and stuff)

- perhaps infringing on behaviors: how could UC adapt operations/change various protocols/policies to engender energy efficiency

Posted in the wiki

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to let you know that I posted a short write-up of what I found regarding how other universities assessed proposals regarding sustainability.

UC Dining Services Celebrates Earth Day

In celebration of Earth Day (April 22), UC's Dining Services organized several week-long programs. Each program is meant to reduce waste and energy use while also raising awareness within the student community.  This shows some great collaboration between the university and ARAMARK.

During next week, Dining Services will:

• Eliminate trays from two dining halls for one week (less food is wasted and more water and energy are conserved)
  
• Dim or turn off lights at the MarketPointe Dining Center
• Weigh the waste from lunch and dinner
• Highlight local and environmentally-friendly menu options
• Encourage that students purchase reusable, insulated mugs
• Provide tips for conservation and recycling

Click here to read more details about these great programs!

Recycling at UC

UC's Department of Facilities Management has some great information describing our university's recycling programs. 

Read about UC's mission, how you can help, and where to buy recycled products on campus:

Click Here

Check out a description of recycling efforts and detailed statistics:

Click Here

You'll find details about the history of recycling at UC, educational materials, recycling locations, annual statistics (reported since 1996), and details about other programs and environmental activities. This is a great starting point for further research.

Energy Sources

For energy sources the options used at UC are most likely electricity generated by various means, directly-burned natural gas and a tiny bit of solar.

UC generates some of its own electricity, but probably buys most from the local utility, Duke Energy. In its co-generation plant, UC has the potential to generate more electricity on campus, but reportedly is not using it. This is reportedly because the natural gas burned in the co-gen plant, while cleaner than the coal-produced electricity available locally, is more expensive.

Some natural gas, also probably obtained from Duke, is most likely burned directly to produce heat for cooking, laboratory experiments, and possibly other purposes.

There is also a (likely) small amount of energy produced on campus from solar power, in the solar house on the lawn between McMicken and Tangeman Halls. At least some of the solar energy is used to directly heat water, while some may be used to produce electricity.

The first task of my research will be to bring some certainty, rather than all the "probably, maybe, may, most likely" qualifiers above.

The next task will be to find the amounts used of all the above sources. Once I've determined that, it's a matter of brief research and simple arithmetic to determine the greenhouse gases produced by UC's energy sources.

I should also be able to give some good estimates of alternatives to reduce the GHG emissions, just from the source perspective. GHG reductions possible from using the co-gen plant instead of powerline electricity would be an easy calculation, and are probably already calculated somewhere. Solar electricity production rates should also be readily available, as should some good estimate of potential installation area. Calculations for direct use of solar energy would probably be more difficult, but may be available from Solar House records. Finally, it might be interesting to see if it's possible to determine some rough estimate of available wind energy - UC's campus layout seems to be particularly good at focusing wind.

Behavior Research

Kurt,
I was thinking that a good place for us to begin wading through the behavior section would be to sort out what each of us will cover. For example, I will be looking at available classes, awareness activities, etc. It would be great if we could brainstorm a bit to make sure we are being efficient with our research, i.e. no overlap. Let me know what you have say.

Dave

Day of Climate Change Solutions

A plethora of technologies offer the promise of combating climate change by enabling the United States to dramatically reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases while continuing robust economic growth. But what are these technologies and when are others likely to reach the market? Please join Ohio's Tomorrow, Oberlin College, Environmental Defense Fund, the Cleveland Foundation and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History on April 18th for Climate Change Solutions in the Buckeye State and Beyond: A Symposium. We will highlight new and emerging low-carbon solutions, with a particular emphasis on those relevant in Ohio. Experts on a range of alternative energy sources as well as efficiency, fuels, and vehicles will describe technologies that are already available and quickly emerging and how they can create jobs in Ohio. In addition, Ohio policymakers and leaders will speak on topics such as wind, solar and low-carbon coal technologies, the role of the Midwest in climate change solutions and creating jobs while solving climate change issues.

Go to the following website to find out the details of this symposium in Oberlin (you can go see the building if you go) taking place this Friday. http://climatechange.us.com/front/frontLogin.jsp

Individual Transportation

This category includes:

- Transportation modes currently used by students, faculty and staff (METRO, Bearcat Transportation System (BTS), single occupancy vehicles, carpooling, bikes)

- Partnership with METRO (costs and routes available)

- Bearcat Transportation System (BTS) routes and schedules

- Parking on/surrounding campus (fees and location)

- Pedestrian and biking connectivity

- Housing/ development on/surrounding campus

Research will focus on how UC is addressing these issues to reduce the university's transportation-related GHG emissions.

Geothermal Energy in Louisville

Here is a link to the example of GeoExchange heating and cooling used in downtown Louisville. http://www.buildings.com/Articles/detail.aspx?ContentID=662

another category?

As I've been looking through literature, I realized we might not have water conservation on the list.
Watershed protection
Soil and drainage way preservation
Porous paving
Contaminated runoff
Stormwater management
Runoff harvesting
Rainwater harvesting
Graywater systems
Blackwater treatment
Water reclamation/catchment
Indoor water conservation
Outdoor water conservation


Some of these could relate to building design, landscape, education, policy, etc., but others seem to be just about water.... so should we divide them up accordingly or just create a new category for that guy who hasn't come to class yet? ;-)

Solid Waste + Procurement

This category includes the following areas:

- Waste audits

- Waste reduction

- Recycling programs and initiatives

- Waste reduction at special events (e.g. sporting events, conventions, seminars, student events, etc.)

- Procurement activities

- Community building strategies

- Campus awareness strategies

Research will assess UC's current approach in these areas and propose successful programs from other universities. When possible, each of these topics will be considered at the student, faculty/staff and operational levels. 

Construction + Planning + Landscape + Design

This category would include:

New construction and design of buildings
LEED criteria (or additional design guidelines for UC)
Adaptive use and rehabilitation of existing buildings
Sustainability and 'smart growth' planning for expansion/vertical growth
Sustainable landscape design and ecosystem conservation
Architectural interventions to existing buildings (e.i. green roofs, water catchment, solar panels)
Building maintenance
Groundskeeping

Potential Contacts and Offices at UC

This list of offices and contacts, that may be useful to contact with respect to the Climate Protection planning process, was provided by Mary Beth McGrew, who is heading up the Climate Commitment activities at UC.

Recycling Rick Wiggins
Purchasing Tom Guerin
Housekeeping Jamie Toran
Dining Services Steve Sayers
Residential Services Todd Duncan
Admissions, New Student Orientation Tom Canapa
Institute for LifeLong Learning Director of OLLIE
Neighborhood Organizations and Uptown Consortium Gerry Siegert
Student Groups President of Student Government
Grounds Bob Bauer and Len Thomas

Wiki Sites to Look at for Ideas

I have found some PB Wiki sites that have something to do with Climate Change. I am not necessarily recommending the content, but I have the links here for you to see how others have organized and used their wikis.

climatechange.pbwiki.com
focusthenationslo.pbwiki.com
svigs.pbwiki.com
lwvcolumbiaboonecommittees.pbwiki.com
envplan240.pbwiki.com
tufocusthenation.pbwiki.com
u3aclimatestudy.pbwiki.com

Trying out the blog

Hi everyone, I thought I'd post something just to try out the blog.  And, I also had a bit of a suggestion.  We should put together a bit of a tutorial or a page of hints as to how to obtain information that's salient to climate change.  For example, I really have no idea where to look to find out information about energy efficiency at UC, I don't even know what department of the university I need to talk to.  I don't know what websites might contain the information I need.  I bet there are quite a few people interested in being more involved and active but have no idea where to start.  Given that both the blog and the wiki are publicly accessible, it seems worthwhile that we can use them as tools to disseminate information about how people can do more.

Cheers,

HELP in using this Blog

For visual instruction on how to create and use this blog go to:
http://www.youtube.com/BloggerHelp

Using this Blog

We will talk about this in more detail in our Monday meeting. However, it seems that this is a good replacement to sending emails or posting to Blackboard. Though it seems that we can't link to documents that are not web-based -- I think we can only link to websites (if anyone knows differently, let us know). So this will be a good place to give out links, ideas, questions, etc. When we start writing reports and documents we will have to either use the wiki or Blackboard to share. Please feel free to start posting links and so forth on this blog.

Welcome to our UC Climate Protection Planning Blog

I have just set this blog up. Hopefully this will help us document what we find, what we do, and be a place for exchange of ideas.