Green A City

Bike Capital of the World?

We repost Warren's June 14th article from WorldChanging this week. -Editor

The Future of Carbon-Free Transport: Groningen, Netherlands

The future of carbon-free transport lives strong in Groningen. This Dutch city of 185,000 proves that bicycle transportation can reign supreme: people there make about 150,000 trips by bicycle every day.

Bicycles and pedestrians entirely rule the medieval-era city hub, cruising along on car-free dedicated pathways and short cuts with no traffic signals in some instances. But people also commute on bikes in large numbers from suburban housing spread out around the city to downtown jobs, via a ring-and-spoke network of paths. Overall, 37 percent of area commutes are made on bikes.

Boasting an official town bicycle planner, Groningen has created an infrastructure it refers to "continuous and integral," which includes massive surface and underground bicycle parking facilities, dedicated bike paths, and two-way bike lanes even on one-way auto streets.

Since the early 1980s, 30 city bicycle parking facilities have been developed, including one underground facility at the central train station that sells bikes, repairs bikes and offers valet and secure parking for more than 4,000 bikes. Parking is financed through a low-cost annual membership program that costs $50 a year, while bike valet positions create significant numbers of jobs at the public parking facilities and also at 15 local schools.

Bike parking and paths, however, are only the physical manifestation of the careful cycling cultural nourishment that has been provided by city leaders collaborating with citizens. In 1986 Groningen developed what is believed to be Europe’s first dedicated bike policy document, which focused on a broad spectrum of bike transportation and awareness programs. Educational programs now include teaching the health and economic benefits of cycling.

"We think we can boost the numbers of cyclists even higher," said bicycle planner Cor van der Klaauw on Josh Hart’s Car Free Blog. "We have programs to introduce new immigrants to cycling. Many of them came from places where the car is the ultimate status symbol. We need to show them that in Holland, they can get around very easily by bicycle, status symbols aside."

Groningen's bicycle planning has not occurred in a vacuum, but rather complements an integrated scheme that includes low-priced parking facilities for cars, strong public transport and careful public transit linkages between car parking areas and centers for employment and education. With these amenities, cars use, especially in the city center, was successfully restricted without impacting local business.

Other so-called northern European "cycling cities" may be more known (Amsterdam; Copenhagen, Denmark; and Ghent, Belgium) but none can match Groningen for its complete vision and high rate of daily velocipedic participation.

The Netherlands averages a 26 percent national cycling rate, Denmark scores just under 20 percent and Germany achieves about 10 percent, according to a report published by Dutch research group Fietsberaad (Number 7).

While bicycles in the US currently comprise only 0.4 percent of all commuter trips, some North American cities are actively promoting bicycle transportation--through planning dedicated mapped routes and facilities--as a way of reducing global climate change-causing carbon emissions. San Francisco, for instance, has announced a goal of having bicycle trips make up 10 percent of all city trips by 2010.

What’s behind the high rates in Europe, besides the history of bicycle use and culture? According to Fietsbaraad: "Accepting the cyclist as a 'normal' traffic participant with equal rights in the '50s and '60s has been a crucial factor; (so has) the realization of a motor car infrastructure (that) is not at the expense of the cyclist….”

Warren Karlenzig is Chief Strategy Officer at SustainLane, where he directs the company’s US city rankings, and SustainLane Government, an open-source best practices sustainability knowledgebase for state and local government officials and their constituents. Warren is lead author of the newly released How Green Is Your City? The SustainLane U.S. City Rankings (New Society Publishers). His blog is www.greenacity.com

San Francisco Moves Toward Renewable Power Majority

A significant step toward having the nation’s first renewable-powered city was taken yesterday by the city and county of San Francisco. Its board of supervisors went forward with a request for the public utility commission to study a plan’s feasibility that would develop more than half the city's total electric power from renewables.

“It’s high time for San Francisco to chart its own energy future,” Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi told the board.

The city’s power currently comes investor-owned utility, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), which also owns the transmission lines along with the power-generating facilities. About 12 percent of the city’s PG&E power now comes from renewable sources, with the remainder coming from large-scale hydroelectric dams, natural gas-fired power plants and nuclear facilities.

California requires 20 percent of all its power to come from renewable sources by 2010 and 33 percent by 2020, but San Francisco is attempting to shoot for the moon with its new approach.

The plan, called “community choice aggregation,” would have San Francisco developing and owning its own power-generating facilities, which it proposes consist of 51 percent renewables such as solar, wind, biomass and small-scale hydroelectric by 2017.

San Franciscan residents or businesses then would be able to “opt-out” of the program if they chose to continue to receive power generated by PG&E, otherwise they would automatically receive the new greener energy from the PG&E lines and would be billed by PG&E, just as always.

Community choice was legislated as an option by the state’s General Assembly (AB 117) in 2002 after rolling power blackouts of 2000-2001 and skyrocketing energy prices--now proven to be influenced by Enron and other out-of-state power companies--spooked the state into action for more energy independence. San Francisco voters also approved a $100 million solar bond in 2001 to back development of renewables, though most of that funding has remained untapped.

Aggregating purchases of energy by a city differs from publicly owned utilities that can be found in cities such as Austin, Texas’ Austin Energy. Fresno and a consortium of other adjacent California Central Valley cities are the furthest along in developing consumer choice aggregation.

PG&E, in apparent opposition to the community choice campaign, has been running an aggressive marketing campaign in San Francisco across buses, billboards and media called “Let’s Green This City,” touting the city’s green potential.

One board supervisor, Michela Alioto, cautioned the board that the city would have a big challenge in developing energy generation sources separate from PG&E—renewable or otherwise—on such a massive scale: “I have not had one conversation with anyone from PG&E...(but) I want you to tell me how this will provide better service at a better price.”

Currently San Francisco is the national leader in city-generated solar power, with about 1 megawatt of solar capacity out of the city’s current 900 daily megawatts of total consumption. The new plan scopes out the need for 360 megawatts of renewable energy to replace a big chunk of the non-renewable portion of PG&E's supply.

Water, Water Everywhere, but...

After hitting this weekend's BALLE conference (Business Alliance for Local living Economies) at UC Berkeley,  there was a question that came up during the Sustainable Cities panel I was on regarding how to implement graywater systems. Graywater is the leftover "dirty water" from clothes washers, sinks and showers. It is not used toilet water, otherwise known as "blackwater."

Image courtesy HomeEnergy.org

 

I answered how I've installed one at our home using water from the washer that flows through a plastic tube out to our lawn and fruit trees via gravity.

Mayor Tom Bates of Berkeley responded that people should "shower with a friend" to conserve water and use a bucket under their shower. 

 

These were not the right answers. The best response would have been to point out innovative cities such as Santa Monica, California that are issuing advice and permits for graywater systems.

Water scarcity is going to be one of the largest bugaboos facing local government as global climate change causes more frequent droughts. Water use will also will be major a contributor to global climate change until we can better figure out how to conserve it. In California, for instance, water pumping is the largest single use of energy in the state, accounting for significant carbon emissions.

 

So any way in which graywater can be used more commonly through city codes in simple systems not requiring lots of fancy pipes, pumps and materials, will be significant advance over the current practices.

Mayor Bates also reported on a more than 8 percent in carbon emissions reduction in Berkeley from 2000-2005, most of which came from increased walking and cycling: the city has one of the highest non-carbon transportation rates in the nation for any city, with about 18 percent riding or walking to work. The only US community I know of with more than that is Burlington, Vermont, with a non-carbon commute transit rate of between 19-20 percent.

All in all the BALLE event, with appearances by Paul Hawken, co-founder Judy Wicks, and organizational muse David Korten, was an amazing web of networking, presentations, workshops and local tours.  Last year the event was held in Burlington--it was inspiring to get a taste of 600 North American small and green business representatives from all over the US and Canada in the Bay Area, and to visit with old friends and mentors.