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 Special Supplement to the October 2001 issue: A report on the proceedings of the Metropolis West Conference, February 7+8, 2001, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, "Finding the Thread of Sustainability." October 2001
Geoff Wardle: We need to be honest with ourselves about why the car has been so successful before we seek alternative or complementary systems of mobility, and about why so many people have this extraordinary love affair with the car. If the auto industry can redefine itself as a provider of mobility and not a manufacturer of cars, it can begin to ensure that its overall business and profitability can continue to grow, regardless of whether the car remains everyone's favorite mode of transportation.
Telecommuting Sally Applin A lot of great things can happen to a community when people are telecommuting. All of a sudden you can have a coffee shop in a neighborhood that couldn't sustain one before. It increases the daytime population in residential neighborhoods, so homes are not as vulnerable to break-ins. Disabled people have an opportunity to be gainfully employed and work in their own environment, which they have fitted out for themselves. When people are staying put, energy is conserved and air pollution is reduced.
Hotelling is the idea that people have all the information they need: they carry it with them and can use a generic desk in whatever office they work in or can work at home. But there's no sense of home or permanence to their work spaces. Wireless phones make it possible for us to commute and telecommute at the same time. But the following question arises: "Why do people move and talk?" It's important to figure out people's motivations and behaviors to understand whether small electric vehicles are going to work. Do people want to be home and commute short distances within their community? We need good user research to figure out how to design people's relationships to the technology they're using. NEVs Maria Ogrydziak: Most American households need two cars. One will probably be the fast and big one, for the highway. The second car could be an NEV (neighborhood electric vehicle), which could change the way people live in their neighborhoods.
Building codes distinguish an electric vehicle from an NEV. The electric vehicle is defined as an automobile for highway use. The NEV is similar to a golf cart and is slower than an electric car. It cannot go on major highways, but it can go on all neighborhood streets. The NEV is smaller than a typical electric car and can be more readily customized. Its design is more open to the street. The neighborhood would be quieter with NEVs-we could actually begin to see and talk to each other on the street. The NEV can enter the property along a pedestrian pathway rather than a driveway. It can negotiate its way down a side yard where a car might not be able to. An NEV can be stored on the back patio. It doesn't need to go through a garage, it can enter a house through a set of double doors. Architects think a lot about ramps in terms of accessibility, because of the ADA code requirements. In a way, an NEV can be thought of as a big wheelchair. And if we could come up with information about the types of slope and turning radius and landing space required for NEVs, it would give us the tools to begin designing for NEV access. Perhaps you could drive your NEV into your kitchen and unload your groceries. Transit Susan Shaheen: Most car-sharing organizations are neighborhood based. That means you're accessing a vehicle in a lot near your neighborhood and returning it to the same lot after you've used it. Our notion is a bit different. We take the concept of shared use but link it to transit. In this way we can encourage people to shift their mode of transportation make better used of transit, as well as facilitate their access to transit sites. One of the reasons people don't use transit is that they can't get to it. The CarLink I program, in effect in San Francisco between January and November 1998, used 12 compressed natural-gas Honda Civics donated by American Honda. We have 12 cars in the system-two are in reserve and ten assigned to home-based users. They bring the vehicles into the transit station and take transit to work in the city. On the work side, we can have 20 people in the car pool using 10 cars. There are 30 individuals who are commuting, generating 20 new BART trips that were not made previously. The same people are using BART for recreation travel. Each person in the group reduced their vehicle miles by 20 per day. And most excitingly, many of the households had said that if car sharing were a permanent service in the area and there were more parking lots, they would be willing to give up a household vehicle. CarLink II is our new program, in the works for about a year. It has sophisticated technology: navigational systems in the car that help guide you to your destination. GPS and RF signals, Smart Card access to vehicles, real--Time tracking, automatic billing, and an internet-based scheduling system mean convenience for customers and facilitating instant access to transit. In the Silicon Valley area we'll have a fleet of ultra-low emission vehicles provided by Honda, which we will be testing for commercial availability. This is why we have the attention of private industry. They're working with us to develop advanced wireless technology to facilitate the system, as well as equipment manufacturers, and automakers are willing to contribute their vehicles. All these technologies can come together to allow us to make better use of our resources-of our transit system-and make car sharing a new transportation solution in our local community, if not the United States. |
