when will it be our turn in LA to return freeways to parks?
Read the full article here…
In Madrid’s Heart, Park Blooms Where a Freeway Once Blighted
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Sunday, April 29th – Ride the Rails in Style!
railLA has set the event date for Dapper Day on the Subway – our first annual event where we take to the rails in our finest attire to celebrate the history, culture, and future of Los Angeles and its rail lines.
Imagine stepping off a train to find a string quartet playing in the middle of a train platform, a musical performed on a subway car, a special tour of a historic Frank Lloyd Wright house, or an impromptu art exhibit! If you would like to offer an event, performance, or promotional offer to those who ‘dress dapper’ on April 29th, please let us know by visiting our website and contacting our events team!
Website: http://dapperday.railla.org
How Do You Wean People Off Cars? By Rebranding Bikes And Buses
How Do You Wean People Off Cars? By Rebranding Bikes And Buses
WRITTEN BY: Skibsted Ideation
THE ONLY WAY TO GET CONSUMERS TO CHOOSE CHEAPER, MORE EFFICIENT TRANSPORTATION IS TO MAKE IT THE COOL OPTION.
More than half the global population now lives in urban environments, and that number will only grow: By 2050, an estimated 80% will live in cities. This means that in the next 40 years we will need to build the same amount of urban infrastructure as we have in the last 4,000 years. This trend will also have an impact on global warming: Between 1990 and 2007, transportation-related emissions increased by a third, while emissions from other sectors decreased. Regardless of our political views, we can’t afford to perpetuate the car-centric model. It’s time to brand alternative forms of transportation in a way that convinces consumers to opt for higher-efficiency modes over the traditional automobile.
It’s widely accepted and understood that consumer decisions are as much influenced by emotional attachments to a product or service as by the hard facts such as price and performance. So why is it that when it comes to most aspects of human transportation, the world still seems to believe people are rational machines?
Take the spectacular failure of Tata’s ambitious low-cost car, the Nano. In many ways, the Nano seemed like a real game-changer–a car that would do for the auto industry what Ikea did for furniture, Amazon for book retail, and Netflix for video rentals. The vision for the car, as articulated by Ratan Tata, the chairman of the hugely successful Tata Group, was inspiring: Make a luxury car available to the average Indian (and eventually everyone in the world) for about $2,500.
Tata followed the disruptive innovation script to a T. The company innovated all aspects of the value chain to slash the cost of production, building a car with fewer components of less expensive materials while maintaining fantastic fuel efficiency. Even the distribution model was upended: The Nano was to be sold at large supermarkets and electronics stores. On top of that, Tata had devised a contemporary launch plan leveraging social media instead of the expensive TV ads most other car brands adhere to.
With more than a billion people, a hugely growing middle class, and one of the fastest growing car markets in the world, India seemed like the ideal place to make this vision fly. But things haven’t gone as planned. Nano sales never met even its most conservative sales targets and is far from the 20,000 cars it needs to sell per month to break even. The failure of the Nano stands in stark contrast to Tata’s other brands, especially their premium brands such as Land Rover and Jaguar.
So what went wrong with the Nano? An Indian consumer study by a brand strategist from Venturethree, Sandeep Dighe, came to a clear conclusion: Indian consumers don’t want a cheap car; they want a car to flaunt. For Indians, as for people in all other countries, a car is as much about status and identity as it is about transport. Positioning the Nano as the world’s cheapest car was, in other words, a dramatic mistake and a startling reminder that transport is as much an emotional decision as buying soap, maybe even more so.
Other car manufacturers looking to capture the low-end car market better take note. Unfortunately, Tata’s mistake isn’t unique in the world of transportation. When it comes to devising urban mobility schemes, engineers and planners rule. Most collective transport schemes are based on a false assumption that if given a cheap and effective option, people will use it.
Urban mobility is a massive global challenge. The world needs people to shift from big, heavy, fuel-consuming cars to collective transport, including bikes and other low-energy forms of mass transportation. But as the Tata example shows, the challenge is as much emotional as functional. Taking the bus, riding a bike, or driving a cheap lightweight electric car must be perceived as cool, a symbol of status even in places like China and India, where buying a Mercedes is seen as almost a life goal in itself. Here, brands like Tesla and Biomega have shown a way to create aspirational change rather than a functionalistic approach to building more infrastructure.
Actually, in many cases there is plenty of infrastructure already in place; it’s just poorly designed and relatively unbranded compared to cars. Despite an adequate interstate network, traveling by bus is considered in itself deplorable in the U.S. at large, whereas buses in the U.K. have been well-branded.
This is an area where the right design, branding, and marketing could make a huge difference to the world and future generations. These changes might even be one of the huge opportunities out there. Together, cities are already bigger than any individual market or alliance. And urban populations are becoming increasingly uniform as a consequence of globalization. The rise of a large urban market and the need to reduce CO2 emissions is an opportunity ripe for new urban-mobility solutions.
Written by Jens Martin Skibsted and Rasmus Bech Hansen.
Rasmus Bech Hansen is London-based strategy director at Venturethree, a global brand consultancy. He writes on how brands can do well by doing good and has helped to relaunch the United Nations Global Compact brand, the world’s most successful CSR initiative.
[Images: James R. Martin, Jim Hughes, and PB Photo via Shutterstock]
Original Article: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669023/how-do-you-ween-people-off-cars-by-rebranding-bikes-and-buses
THE COPHENHAGEN WHEEL
THE COPHENHAGEN WHEEL
Smart, responsive and elegant, the Copenhagen Wheel is a new emblem for urban mobility. It transforms ordinary bicycles quickly into hybrid e-bikes that also function as mobile sensing units. The Copenhagen Wheel allows you to capture the energy dissipated while cycling and braking and save it for when you need a bit of a boost. It also maps pollution levels, traffic congestion, and road conditions in real-time.
How dense: Tea Party rages over smart growth
BY TIM DE CHANT
31 AUG 2011 8:48 AM
Not content with bringing the gears of government to a grinding halt or holding the global economy hostage, the Tea Party now aims its sights on another target: regional planning commissions.
Three years ago California passed SB 375, a bill which calls on cities and metropolitan regions to reduce vehicle emissions by fostering denser urban areas, linking transit systems, and coordinating land use. As you might imagine, this made many Tea Partiers both apoplectic with rage and filled with fear. The rage comes from the government trying to do anything productive; the fear comes from a United Nations effort that encourages sustainable development, otherwise known as Agenda 21….
read the full post here
Confucius Town Gets Makeover From Bullet-Train Philosophy
Found this article this morning… I think it makes an incredibly compelling economic statement about High Speed Rail infrastructure.
June 30 (Bloomberg) — China’s newest high-speed railway is transforming the rural town where the philosopher Confucius was born more than 2,500 years ago.
Qufu built Confucius Avenue linking downtown to its train station, added a bus terminal nearby and won investment from Shangri-La Asia Ltd. for the city’s first luxury hotel before today’s opening of the 221 billion yuan ($34 billion) Beijing- Shanghai high-speed railway. The line, which passes through Qufu, will slash the 550-kilometer (340-mile) train journey from Beijing to two hours from about seven hours.
“Everyone is talking about the arrival of the bullet train,” said Zhang Mingzhe, a city government spokesman. “They all want to see how it will boost investments, job opportunities and property prices.”
New houses, offices and hotels have been built along the 1,318 kilometer-long Beijing-Shanghai line as high-speed trains make once isolated towns convenient destinations for weekend getaways or possible homes for commuters wanting to live outside big cities. The government is looking for similar effects nationwide as it spends 2 trillion yuan on high-speed railways to help spread growth beyond coastal regions.
“One of the reasons we built the line was to help boost economic development and business in provinces along the route,” said Zhao Guotang, deputy general manager of state- controlled Beijing-Shanghai High Speed Railway Co.
Qufu, home to 640,000 people, had per capita gross domestic product of 36,718 yuan last year, based on government data. That compares with about 89,000 yuan in Shanghai and 70,000 yuan in Beijing.
300 KPH Trains
A Beijing-to-Qufu trip costs 245 yuan in coach class on a 300 kilometer-per-hour train, the quickest service. There are also two premium classes. A ride from Beijing to Shanghai, which takes less than five hours, costs from 555 yuan.
“The high-speed railway has great importance in improving transportation, and boosting social and economic development,” Premier Wen Jiabao said in a speech at Beijing’s South Station before boarding the debut service at 3 p.m.
The line, with 24 stops, will offer 90 services a day in each direction, including non-stop shuttles between Beijing and Shanghai, China’s two big cities. The railway will carry about 180,000 passengers a day initially, Rail Vice Minister Hu Yadong said on June 13.
Economic Sea-Change
Xuzhou, a city of 9.6 million people about halfway along the line, is developing a 5.2 square-kilometer business district around its train station. Plans include an office block and four-star hotel being built by closely held Shanghai Greenland Group Co.
“The train will bring a sea-change in Xuzhou’s economic landscape,” said Cai Qianfeng, who headed a high-speed rail project in the city, traditionally a centre for heavy industries. “We can develop more in logistics, business and financial services.”
The new line helped boost property prices in Xuzhou by 17 percent in the past 10 months, based on data from property- researcher SouFun Holdings Ltd. Other stops along the line, including Langfang, Zhenjiang and Wuxi, have also posted jumps of 10 percent of more. By comparison, Beijing has risen 6.6 percent and Shanghai has gained 2.7 percent.
High-speed trains will have the greatest impact on property prices in second and third-tier cities close to major economic regions, said James MacDonald, head of China research for Savills Property Services (Shanghai) Co. A bullet-train link eases travel and boost cities’ profiles by showing that planners consider them to be “significant,” he said.
Big-Home Dream
Bengbu, in northern Anhui province, is developing a satellite town centered on its high-speed train station, which includes universities, parks, government buildings and a residential complex.
“Let the bullet train accelerate your big-home dream!,” Greenland Group writes on a website advertising a property development in the city, a two-hour ride from Shanghai.
Confucius Avenue and the new bus station in Qufu, Shandong province, cost 755 million yuan, the equivalent of 70 percent of the city’s 2010 revenue. The bus and rail station will be able to handle a combined 80 million passengers annually on both regional and intra-city services, Zhang said.
The city and seven others in Shandong formed a group to promote tourist visits using high-speed trains, with packages and services targeting weekend visitors. About 3.8 million tourists went to Qufu last year to see its walled town, the Confucius Mansions and the philosopher’s tomb with its retinue of stone panthers and griffins.
Shangri-La Hotel
Shangri-La is scheduled to open a 491-room hotel in Qufu next year, according to its annual report. The city will be the smallest in China to have a property run by the luxury-hotel chain.
“Shangri-La decided to build the hotel here because of the train and the tourist boom it will bring,” said Qufu’s Zhang. The Hong Kong-based company declined to comment in an e-mailed reply to questions.
While bullet trains can bring visitors in, they also pose a threat to local businesses by making it easier for residents to visit other cities, which may offer a greater range of shops, said Savills’ MacDonald. The new links may also let businesses run regional operations from a central location, enabling them to close offices in other cities, he said.
Cities need to invest in infrastructure to support new bullet-train services to prevent companies from moving to other locations, said Douglas Webster, an urban economist at Arizona State University.
“It’s a very perishable effect,” said Webster, who advised on a development near the new line’s Shanghai terminus. “If you don’t have good connections with the station itself, the effect wears off very quickly.”
Thursday June 30th, Open Forum Meeting!
Can a new downtown stadium cure LA traffic woes? Is it plausible that a stadium might actually make things better? Can AEG and the NFL be the answer for LA’s larger population and transportation woes? Come be heard. Or just listen. But be part of the solution.
Ted Tanner, EVP from AEG will be there to make a short presentation,
then the microphone will be open to the public!
Also at this meeting, we will have Alex Fay, from the mayors office,
speaking about his efforts with CleanTech LA.
Alex Fay is a Senior Director in the Mayor’s Office of Economic and
Business Policy. In this capacity he works to develop a robust clean
technology industry cluster by attracting cleantech companies to Los
Angeles and supporting the growth of local technology firms. Alex also
manages CleanTech Los Angeles, a non-profit organization that brings
together business, government, and academia to grow the cleantech
sector in Los Angeles, and he advises the Mayor in developing policies
to support the creation of green jobs. Alex is the Mayor’s lead staff
for Cleantech Corridor projects including the Cleantech Business
Incubator and the Cleantech Manufacturing Center.
He will be focusing on CleanTech LA, which brings together business,
government, and academia to grow the cleantech sector in Los Angeles.
CleanTech LA works to promote sustainability and economic growth by
connecting LA’s cleantech professionals, telling LA’s cleantech story,
and supporting collaborative research, commercialization and job
creation.
The meeting is on Thursday, June 30, 2011 at 7:00pm-9:00pm in the
Ronald F. Deaton Auditorium at the LAPD Police Administration Building
(100 West First Street Los Angeles, CA 9001).
HOPE TO SEE YOU ALL THERE!
Fly Away Home Event
On July 2, Choreographer / Director Sarah Elgart presents a site-specific performance that inhabits and travels through the Van Nuys Flyaway Bus Terminal. “Flyaway Home” will create a reflective, ambient, movement based performance with evocative visual imagery that takes the audience to different areas of the overall space, experiencing scale and calling attention to art and architecture. Large-scale projections on the side of the parking structure by Visual Artists Stephen Glassman and an ambient score by Feltlike will enhance this celebratory experience of alternative transportation in Los Angeles. The work touches on themes of flight, light, and gravity, and the idea that you take your home with you. This is the second in a series of new performance initiatives produced by Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) in collaboration with the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA).
This is a fun event, transit related, and will only be up for a very short amount of time, so make sure you check it out!
Here is some more info, if this seems like something for you…
http://flyawayevent.tumblr.com/
Saturday July 2, 2011 (more details on flyer above)
Moving Docking Platform
This is an idea worth advocating… imagine we’d have this on the CA high speed rail time… it would further cut down the travel time, and nobody else in the world would have it yet either. We’d actually be back in the game with a bang!
Here is the whole article
http://mashable.com/2011/06/23/nonstop-high-speed-trains/
California Mayors in support of High Speed rail….
The Sacramento Bee
Case for high-speed rail grows only stronger
June 7, 2011
By Edwin Lee, Kevin Jonson, Chuck Reed, Ashley Swearengin and
Antonio Villaraigosa
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/06/07/3681606/case-for-high-speed-rail-grows.html
The last time many Californians thought about high-speed rail was
in the voting booth. On that day, Nov. 4, 2008, more than 6 million of us voted
to tell the state to get going, to build high-speed rail in California.
Now, 2 1/2 years later, the second guessing is in full swing. In
recent weeks some have suggested that we should put the project on hold.
We couldn’t disagree more.
California will need high-speed rail in the coming years to do
something about the gridlock on our roads and at our airports. Building it is a
major investment, but the most recent estimates say it would cost twice as much
over the next generation to build new highways and runways just to move the
same number of people. With California expected to grow by 12 million people in
the next 25 years, investment in the state’s transportation system is
inevitable, and high-speed rail is a cost-effective alternative.
In the last 2 1/2 years the case for high-speed rail has gotten
stronger, not weaker. When voters approved the plan, a barrel of oil cost about
$55; today the price is almost $100. Unemployment was around 8 percent back
then, and it is now over 12 percent statewide and even higher in many areas.
Californians need the jobs.
There are bound to be questions with any project of this size. We
welcome the dialogue. Last month the Legislative Analyst’s Office published a
report calling for at least a temporary halt to the project. The report alluded
to a number of concerns about the project:
• The amount and timing of future federal funding are unclear.
• Spending state funds on rail will mean there is less money for
other things.
• We do not yet know how much private investment the system can
attract, or when it will come.
• Starting construction in the Central Valley is “a gamble.”
Let’s take the criticisms one at a time.
First is federal funding. While we don’t know precisely how much
we will get in future years, we’ve competed well up to this point. California’s
project has received the largest slice of federal high-speed rail funds to date
– $3.6 billion out of $10.2 billion. This is in large part due to the extensive
planning already under way at the state level and the ability to leverage
voter-approved Proposition 1A funds. There is no other program where California
competes so well for federal funding. We will continue to encourage additional
investment – both public and private – while promoting efficiencies that allow
us to stretch every dollar in creating jobs and planning for the future growth
of this great state.
Second is state funding. The voters said high-speed rail was a
priority and authorized spending $9 billion in state funds. The state continues
to experience fiscal constraint due to diminishing revenues, but because
construction is ramping up slowly we will only need 2 percent of these funds in
the coming year to keep the project on track. The amount approved by voters
will be spent over many years, keeping the impact on our state’s budget low in
any given year.
Third is private funding. Our high-speed rail system is expected
to make money and attract private investment – similar to systems in Europe and
Asia. Twenty-two different funds have shown investment interest in financing
part of the system’s capital costs. Demonstrating our commitment by beginning
major construction and finalizing all the approvals will minimize investor risk
and net the best terms for the taxpayers.
Finally, there is the matter of where to start building. Many
Southern Californians have said we should give priority to their part of the
state; same in the Bay Area. We know that this system will never be a success
until it connects these two population centers and does so in a way that is
sensitive to local concerns. But the question of where to start does not
require complicated analysis. The place to start is the place where we’re ready
to start, and that’s the Central Valley.
No one thinks we should build the line through the Central Valley
and then stop. And we won’t. There is a parallel to the building of the
Interstate Highway System more than 50 years ago. When we started building the
Interstate Highway System, the first segments to be completed were not in New
York or Los Angeles. The interstate was born in the middle of the country,
America’s heartland, with the very first sections laid in Kansas and Missouri
and then connected to the rest of the nation.
On the day that first segment of interstate was dedicated we did
not know where all the money would come from to build a 40,000-mile network
throughout the nation, and we did not know when it would be finished. However,
it was because of the vision of those who were willing to initiate the effort
that, today, America has the most extensive highway system in the world.
California and the United States need high-speed rail, so let’s
keep going.
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