BIG OIL’S LIES

The sweet sound of Big Oil (and Natural Gas) money regularly tells the American people not to worry any more about importing energy from rogue Venezuela, unreliable Nigeria or volatile Iraq. Seductive television ads spread a happy message that the USA will soon export abundant oil and natural gas resources thanks to “proven” and “safe” fracking -- a method of injecting chemical waters into the ground to loosen up reluctant oil/gas for consumption. Usually most of the chemical fluids are then sucked back up to be safely disposed of elsewhere.

Are we missing something here about side effects?  Does this sound like something you want happening in your neighborhood or near your water sources?

Is this China's road to prosperity?

Common Scientific Sense

It shouldn’t take a PhD to read the growing data. It is clear that fracking messes up groundwater systems and causes earthquakes (so far only small ones).  There are regular reports on this on www.ecowatch.org. Most scientists - someone’s count says 97% of them -- acknowledge that documented climate warming is indeed caused by human activities affecting the natural ecology around us. We are the problem.

What folly is fracking, no matter how much money it makes for a few! Energy company executives make millions of dollars a year. Landowners in the right spots get bonanzas in the thousands. They, of course, want us to ignore the costs to be paid down the line. Their what-me-worry visions are all for their profits. We, the people, can continue our lifestyles addicted to fossil fuels that are giving us increasingly erratic and violent weather.

A Roadmap to Sustainability

Thoughtful people agree that we should lessen our need to burn fossil fuels. Civic people appreciate that this will require governmental policies and programs, not just individual adjustments. Informed people know that technologies are in hand to give us clean, sustainable ground transport. We can start demonstrations in campuses and managed districts. These can be extended into citywide and then into large metropolitan networks, interfaced with airports and high-speed rail of some sort.

A select group of international technical experts who are aware of the steady progress in designing, financing and implementing ATN in its many forms, will meet in Stockholm September 3-5 to plot out a roadmap for sustainable transportation. Come join us.

TAMPA AIRPORT INNOVATION - PAST, PRESENT AND ... FUTURE?

When Tampa International Airport (TPA) opened in 1971, a whole new way of configuring airport terminals took off. It changed the aviation world of airport planning. TPA is today adding a landside APM to car rentals, parking and transit. It is being designed in intermodal fashion to accommodate future ATN links to a thriving airfront district known as Westshore. This would likely unleash a new revolution in airport development. No wonder this airport regularly wins top ranks and awards!

The TPA terminal complex was designed to pamper passengers -- often elderly who walk with difficulty and fun-seeking tourists who have many choices. Parking-to-gate walking distance is less 700 feet, accomplished by pairs of APM shuttles radiating out from the Main Terminal to up to six airside concourses. Two decades later, a driverless monorail was built into a new large parking garage to adhere to the 700’ rule.

TPA's Main Terminal with parking garage

Car rentals take up several levels of that garage. To decongest the Main Terminal area, airport officials will move them to a a site near the roadway entrance to the airport. This is known in airport circles as a Consolidated Rental Car Facility (ConRAC). A third APM will make it work -- much like has happened successfully at much busier airports in Atlanta and Miami. 

Over the years, airside concourses have been added, modified and demolished, adapting to traffic levels and airline preferences. All the original APM vehicles have been replaced, and controls have been upgraded. The monorail is to be rehabbed or replaced in 2018.

TPA air traffic rose from 10 million in 1973 to 14m in 1979, 16 million in 1996, peaking at 19 million in 2007. It has hovered low due to the Great Recession of 2008. Last year it was 17 million.

PODS ON TPA’S FAR HORIZON

There is no immediate need to increase airport capacity, so TPA is investing in other improvements. One program will enlarge and improve the main terminal with Sweden’s Skanska as DB contractor. The plan includes relocating a few stations of the shuttles to provide more interior space. The other is the new 2.1km, 3-station APM for the ConRAC intermodal complex described above. It is targeted for a 2017 opening.  An intermediary station will serve existing economy (remote) parking. The ConRAC complex has plans for a new employee garage, airport offices, a hotel, retail and maybe planned metro and high-speed rail.

Satisfied with the driverless APM shuttles and monorail, both supplied and maintained by Bombardier, airport officials saw little reason to ponder PRT options for what has been designed as a high-volume link. Procurement is now active, with bids due September 5.

Concept of the Terminal station of the ConRAC link

The ConRAC complex is at the southern edge of the airport’s extensive property.  On the other side of the highway border is the modestly dense Westshore district of offices, hotels, retail and other facilities. This is all located strategically in the center of the sprawled Tampa Bay region, at the western edge of the city of Tampa across the bay from Clearwater and St. Petersburg. It is a prosperous commercial area with excellent long-term growth potential.

Airport officials have specified that the ConRAC complex be designed as an intermodal hub with the possibility to plug in, so to speak, other links, and here ATN may come into play. A visionary outlook is still alive and well at TPA.

CHUCK HARRIS: THE BIG GARDENER

Charles Harris, past Chairman and Professor Emeritus of Harvard's Department of Landscape Architecture, thinks broadly about the way we treat and mistreat land and natural resources of our land. He is very disappointed that those with power and funds have not made a new mode of automated personal transit (podcars) happen in the USA. He sees clear benefits and tries to visually introduce this new technology into today's and tomorrow's urban landscapes.

Light transit can help create and fit into walkable urban environments.

Known as Chuck to hundreds of students and colleagues, Harris points out that historically eighty percent of Southern New England's land was occupied by humans in some way in 1850 -- mostly agriculture, forestry and a growing number of villages, towns and cities with streets and industrial uses. Only 20 percent of the land was left as forest. By 1950 -- one hundred years later -- 80% of Southern New England land had returned to nature, because its rocky hills with short growing seasons simply could not compete with the broad fertile plains of the Heartland, drained swamplands in the heart of Florida or irrigation in California's Central Valley. The result today: only one New England acre in five is directly used by humans. Trees and other forms of natural areas have reclaimed the other four.

Historically human settlements have tended to cluster along coastlines, waterways, and major land-based travel ways. Today's settlements have continued this pattern of clustering and spreading, often in unplanned ways into surrounding agricultural and natural areas. This has resulted in vast suburban areas that have overpowered the surrounding natural resources. Recently there is a reverse trend away from low density, car-dependent suburban development to clusters of higher density with a mixture of uses. These new and old nodes need podcars to transform the unsustainable auto glut of contemporary life.

Rather than plot out maps, crunch numbers or argue the logic of pod-oriented develop, Chuck with pen in hand has sketched out it in creative proportion, as shown above. Such illustrations can be very powerful and be worth more than 10,000 words.

FIGHTS ON THE AIRFRONT

After four years of lawsuits, Philadelphia has agreed to pay millions of dollars every year to an airport neighbor that is a kind of  Paradise-Lost-to-Airport Noise. The township of Tinicum is south of PHL. Funds will go to it, the county in which it lies, and the local school district. A $6.4 billion Capacity Enhancement Program has FAA approval, now ready to go.

Immediately to the east of PHL is the mouth of the Delaware River as it leaves South Philadelphia and numerous industrial scars of the 20^th century to flow into the vast marine beauty of its large estuary.  To the west  of the airport is Amtrak’s NE Corridor (but no station, only a special $8 fare commuter rail shuttle in Center City run by local transit agency SEPTA).

Aircraft noise from flights to and from Philadelphia's main airport have deprived Tinicum of waterfront quiet.

PHL ranks high in the national aviation grid, with passenger traffic of almost 38 million last year. That puts it ahead of LaGuardia and Newark but trailing JFK with its 50 million last year.  PHL needs to grow, and a new ground transportation center is planned astride the Amtrak corridor. With its location roughly midway between New York and Baltimore -Washington, PHL is also nicely located for trans-Atlantic traffic going on to most of the Americas.  In other words, PHL is real estate with value.  Airport, City and Township lawyers have come to terms to build.

Curiously, Tinicum was first settled by Swedes in 1643. It was occupied by the Dutch in 1655 and ultimately by the British in 1664. Most people consider it to be part of the United States, but Governor Printz still looms large at City Hall and in a riverfront park.

Airport-Airfront Conflicts

Conflicts over rights and benefits in the struggle to balance regional need for a large airport and the degraded quality of life for nearby residents are common. PHL and Tinicum are a case in point.

Tinicum has memories and reminders of its quieter past, tucked away far from the bustle and hustle of the City of Brotherly Love, whose Mail Line goes to the northwest, not southwest. Once sleepy, Tinicum was shaken up decades ago by growing air traffic.

Today it has about 5,000 residents, and the township  will soon get $5 million for airport land takings, $1 million per year for twenty years, and share $1.86 million per year with the County and local School District. It is a complicated formula, but a quick look says Tinicum will get $4000 per person per year to compensate for the pervasive drone of aircraft landings and takeoffs, millions of tons of GHG and commercial development encroachment.

Jobs are a political priority. Prospects for lots of airport and airfront jobs are good. There is an APM spine in the PHL master plan with a branch to the planned multi-modal hub. In future years, it could be extended to serve future development in Philadelphia. Should it also go to Tinicum?

A more promising option would be an ATN to multiple landside locations flexibly designed as a network with non-stop taxi-like service, not stop-go linear rail.  It is well worth study, especially if Swedish planning expertise emerging from studies of efficient development options around Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport are brought to bear.

Post-Car Urbanism

Implications for Town & Airport District Planning

The 8^th annual Podcar City conference will advance the vision of sustainable urban transportation that reduces our auto-addiction and its high costs. Most modern countries are auto-addicted. Recent converts are in oil-rich areas and the choking cities and towns of India and China.

Auto-addiction is life when cars serve almost all everyday needs. On the whole, and especially from a community viewpoint, this degrades the quality of life. Whenever too many people want to gather somewhere, parking becomes a problem. If more people walked, rode bikes or came by transit attractive enough to make them prefer it, community life would improve. Automated Transit Networks (ATNs) do that. Planners, civic designers and landscape and building architects need guidelines. PCC8 will help create them by addressing issues head on.

Come move forward to sustainable transporation

Airports present special challenges. PCC8 will learn from professional studies of sustainable development underway near Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport. What efficiencies can be achieved to create good jobs for thousands of Swedes? Mark your calendars for September 3-5 north of Stockholm.

Conference Theme

Here are the themes to be explored in the PCC8 program:

·   Revitalization of maturing suburbs and inner neighborhoods

·   Rationalization of airport clutter into airfront development

·   Definition of the evolving range of ATN options including solar

·   Innovative remote parking solutions, robo-valets, and urban infill

·   How PPPs can finance and implement infrastructure projects

The  Icebreaker on Wednesday, September 3 will be close up and personal with the Podcar Station Display  already greeting from afar thousands of highway motorists approaching Arlanda Airport. The conference technical sessions will take place September 4 and 5 at the Arlanda Radisson.   

For current information on PCC8 and to register, www.podcarcity.org.

PODCARS GO GLOBAL

South Korea's Vectus PRT now regularly carries passengers at the Suncheon, bringing modern, 21st-century  ATN mobility to the eastern shore of Asia. Like its recent counterparts in Abu Dhabi (Masdar by Holland-based 2getthere) and England (Heathrow Airport by Ultra), the Vectus project is late. Of immediate significance is the triangulation it brings to the the geography of modern mobility.

Will South Korea be the site for the 9th Podcar City conference?

Congratulations to the Korean, Swedish and British team that have added Vectus to the menu of modal options! May they navigate the first weeks and months of passenger service without major debugging problems. By September, when PCC8 takes place in Stockholm, the O&M aspects of their product -- more robust than battery-powered Ultra and 2getthere -- will stand up.

How closely are officials in Japan and China watching? Perhaps they already have serious R&D programs underway. For now, the spotlight is on the south coast of the Korean peninsula. And then, across the Pacific Pond, officials in Seattle (especially Boeing and Micosoft) and Silicon Valley (especially Google and Apple).

CARBON REVERSAL

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (IPCC) has no legal power. It simply provides those with power the best available scientific information on changing weather patterns the causes and effects.

Last month, IPCC warned world leaders that significant alterations to the Earth’s weather patterns are real, and it has consequences, Many in power and enriched by a fossil fuel dependencies counter that is folly. To such “climate deniers”, New York commentator Tom Friedman puts it the ways: if we invest in clean energy and Climate Weirding continues unabated, we’ll still end up with a cleaner, healthier and more sustainable world.

IPCC’s international network of scientists and policy makers ominously, for the first time, have spelled out some of the identifiable consequences of climatic shifts and jolts yet to come to the peoples of the world. They will cause migration problems and disrupt food production. Images of doom and gloom abounded. The good thing is that IPCC has set off another round of discussions of the sustainability of modern civilization.

The sky isn’t falling. It’s worse and we have to act.

Reducing Carbons

Our chronic burning of coal, oil and natural gas to power modern life is heating up the sky. Glaciers and polar caps are melting at an alarming rate. It is not a matter of slowing the rise of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, or even of stopping it. In light of IPCC findings, we must reserve the trends. That means many things to many groups. To transportation specialists, it means phase out of internal combustion engines. Happily, it is already happening.

Human (walking, biking) and electric modes of transport have inherent benefits and should be encouraged. Advances in transit controls bring higher service levels. Witness scores of driverless metros and effective mini-metros in Europe and Asia, smart links in airports and campuses, and breakthroughs in automated transit networks.

Solar Synergy

Transit projects require management and control of extensive interconnected pieces of urban real estate. Integrating solar collection into new (and old) transit rights-of-way creates carbon-free electricity right where it’s needed.

Massive conversion from ICE fleets to podcars can quickly reduce GHG from the transport sector. Alone it won’t save our troubled planet, but it will have a positive payback for infrastructure investment over the next decade or two.