Congressional Budget Office Releases Findings on CO2 Emissions from Passenger Vehicles

A report from the Congressional Budget Office reveals that taxing CO2 emissions through a cap and-trade system would result in a small decrease in vehicles miles traveled.

The report from the Congressional Budget Office is titled “Climate-Change Policy and CO2 Emissions from Passenger Vehicles.” It examines the contribution of U.S. passenger vehicles to greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions are a major contributor to climate change throughout the world.

The report reveals that taxing CO2 through a cap-and-trade system would result in higher gas prices, increasing by about 20 cents pre gallon in 2009 to 40 cents a gallon in 2018. But it reports that unless the price of gas rose to $6.50 a gallon, it is unlikely that drivers would alter driving. A few would switch to public transportation, but many would have no alternatives.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, “Recent changes to fuel economy standards – greatly increasing their stringency – will result in a substantial decline in vehicle emissions whether gasoline prices increase or not.”

The report says it’s likely consumers would respond by purchasing more fuel efficient
vehicles, and suggests that recent changes to automotive fuel economy standards will result in a decline in vehicle emissions without the implementation of a CO2 tax.
“...a CO2 price high enough to induce sizable reductions from other sources of emissions would have only a small effect on vehicle emissions of CO2,” states the report.

The continuing redesign of passenger vehicles will result in more fuel efficient cars, the report states, saying “New fuel-efficient technologies will, in turn, create additional opportunities for reducing atmospheric CO2 concentrations and stabilizing Earth’s climate.”

View full report:
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9901/10-27-PresentationWellesley.pdf

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Road Ecology: A New Way to Look at “Green”

One of the many concerns today is the built environment’s impact on the natural environment, and with the talk of GHGs and humans’ impact on the planet, this connection is becoming more and more important each day. A major cause of animal habitat fragmentation is human development, which invariably involves the building of roads for automobiles. Habitat fragmentation is the breaking up of a species’ natural habitat. When land is cleared for development, houses and shopping centers are built, and people move into a previously untouched area, the ecosystem is disturbed. Part of this ecosystem involves the living space of a variety of plants and animals, and human development carves up this habitat, forcing species to adapt or die off. Roads are one specific way human development affects the surrounding ecosystem; they create artificial barriers and separations in species’ habitats.

What can be done to help restore the habitat of plants and animals? The newly-emerging field of road ecology may well have an answer. By designing and altering roads with an awareness of their impact, designers and engineers can attempt to mitigate the negative effects of roadways on the ecological landscape. Such green design involves, for example, creating tunnels for salamanders to cross a road to a breeding pond on the other side in order to procreate. Although such solutions do not counteract all impacts of roadway development, they can mitigate some of the issues, such as species separation. It is a positive step toward creating a landscape where human development is better integrated into the natural environment.

To read more about this topic, check out The New York Times article “Thinking Anew About a Migratory Barrier: Roads,” by Jim Robbins, published October 13, 2008.

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Success of Bike Sharing

During the summer of 2008, GVF Transportation rolled out its first venture in Bike Sharing. Bike Sharing is a concept that provides bicycles at no cost, or low to users. The advantage of operating a bike share program is that is promotes cycling, and gets people who might not own a bike out riding. Bike Pottstown, GVF Transportation’s first bike share has the privilege of also being the region’s first bike share. This summer, Bike Pottstown has exceeded all expectations, and is continuing to grow as a program.

The success of Bike Pottstown has lead GVF Transportation to look to our other partners for possible bike sharing programs. The intent is to develop a region wide bike sharing network. Although bike sharing is a relatively new concept for the Greater Philadelphia region, it has been implemented with great success throughout the United States, and the World. In the U.S. many universities and employers are looking to bike sharing as a way to encourage people to ride.

Fuji Bike, the official bike provider for Bike Pottstown has partnered with Emory University and Bicycle South, a local bike shop, to provide 50 bikes that can be rented at no charge at six spots on campus. Students can also buy Fuji bikes at a discount and receive a free helmet, lock and lights from Emory. Students, faculty and staff can go to a rental station, show their Emory ID and check out bikes. The program plans to add 70 more bikes and four checkout points in the next year. In addition, about 150 bikes have been sold through the partnership in the past year, said Jamie Smith, who runs the program, called Bike Emory.

Internationally, the most famous bike share is the Paris Velib program. The bikes are scattered throughout the city in self automated kiosks. Users can check a bike out, use it to run errands, or as transportation, and leave it in another location. The program has been met with incredible success, and has been a model for other cities to follow.

Bike sharing is growing in popularity. With the environment effects of driving, combined with the rising prices of fuel, more and more people are using bicycling as an alternative mode of transportation. Look for more bike shares in the greater Philadelphia region in years to come.

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Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) as an Alternative Fuel

GVF Transportation recently attended a workshop held by TMA Bucks that discussed the potential use of CNG as an alternative fuel for cars, trucks, and buses. Before we go any further, it is important to note that CNG is not propane. Propane is derived from petroleum and is heavier than air, whereas CNG is lighter than air, thus it disperses quickly when released. CNG is also much safer than propane and gasoline when it comes to spills and combustion. CNG also compares very favorably to gasoline as a fuel source. Aside from being both cheaper and more environmentally efficient than gasoline, natural gas is commonly found throughout the United States, and Pennsylvania in particular. Therefore, vehicles using CNG help to promote energy independence.

Though CNG is slowly gaining notoriety, gas-electric hybrids are the most popular energy efficient cars among American manufacturers and consumers right now. Presently, the only car that is specifically designed to run on CNG, and is available in the United States, is the Honda Civic. It should be noted, though, that General Motors has released several gas-CNG hybrid cars in foreign markets. Major progress with using CNG as an alternative fuel has been seen with industrial vehicles and public transportation. The City of Philadelphia is set to release a request for proposal to purchase 75 garbage trucks that will run on CNG. Centre Area Transportation Authority (CATA) which operates out of State College in Centre County, PA, began to replace their entire fleet of diesel buses with CNG-fueled buses in 1994. They were the first transit system on the East Coast to adopt CNG as their primary fuel. Lower Merion School District has replaced all of their diesel fleet with buses that operate using CNG.


Not only is CNG cheaper than gasoline and diesel, there are several government grant programs available to assist businesses, municipalities, and other organizations with converting their vehicles to CNG. One of the major drawbacks to switching to CNG is the initial cost of the vehicles and building the fueling stations. To counter this hurdle, the federal government, in conjunction with many state governments, offers a tax incentive to purchase CNG vehicles as well as multiple grant opportunities. Pennsylvania offers the Alternative Fuel Incentive Grant (AFIG) program to assist organizations switching to alternative energy vehicles. The federal government also offers a fifty cent tax incentive on CNG vehicles per gallon of gasoline gallon equivalent (GGE), or the amount of CNG used to equal the amount of one gallon of gasoline. This also helps to remedy another slight drawback on CNG, which is that it is roughly 5% less fuel efficient than gasoline. This gap is likely to shrink as technology improves, and that small level of inefficiency along with the cost of the physical equipment does not change the fact that CNG use saves organizations more over the long-term than gasoline.

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Urban Renewal and The Promise Of PA's Brownfields

In the old days, your power and wealth was based on the amount of land you owned. Nowadays, it's not the land you own but what you do with it that matters. As the industrial revolution swept through urban centers, many plots of land eventually became unusable due to chemical runoff, excessive debris and other toxic concerns hidden in the soil. Drained of all economic value, plots were left to rot in cities and towns across the U.S. These infected parcels are called brownfields.



So the question arises: What to do with blighted brownfields? Why would anyone want to develop a contaminated property?



The answer is that no one would, without a little push.



Enter Gov. Ed Rendell's Business In Our Sites fund. Approved in 2004, the program provides $300 million to local entities to make brownfields "shovel-ready" for businesses--a move that has since created huge redevelopment projects, some beginning just last month.



On September 10, a $240 million mixed-use brownfield redevelopment broke ground in South Fayette, near Pittsburgh. The Newbury Project, which will create more than 2,000 new jobs, will feature 200 acres of residential space with 130 acres of open space for parks, trails, and tree-lined streets. Newbury Market, a 100-acre site that will include more than 900,000 square feet of retail space, restaurants, plazas, offices and a hotel, will anchor the project.



The governor's little push--$5 million in state funds allocated to Newbury Market--was all the encouragement developers needed to run with the project. And although it is billed as a brownfield redevelopment, the massive site makes use of only one acre of brownfield land.



The Community Buy-In

But the brownfield story unfolding in Pennsylvania is not always as simple as that. Increasingly, developers can no longer safely assume their projects will see the light of day unless the surrounding communities are on board. Six years ago on Pittsburgh's South Side, the $300 million South Side Works opened, housing a movie theater, retail and office space, and sports training complexes for both the University of Pittsburgh football team and the Pittsburgh Steelers--all on the site of a former steel plant. The site has been a tremendous success, still growing to this day.



But according to Deborah Lange, Executive Director of the Western Pennsylvania Brownfields Center at Carnegie Mellon University, the most important aspect in making a brownfield project take off is community involvement, listening to what the residents want and giving it to them.



"When people think of brownfields, they often think of these big steel plants, but to be clear, there are smaller sites that don't lend themselves to mixed use--sites with environmental impairments that can get hidden in communities," says Lange. Those sites become necessity projects--dry cleaners and gas stations. And they often come about from community involvement. But with larger sites, with tons of shareholders and business interests, developers have to have the experience to know that the community counts.



"There was a time when developers could get away with not involving citizens but information is too readily available now," says Lange. "And citizens can make or break a development project."



Two apt examples of what Lange refers to are the waterfront proposals for the Sugarhouse Casino in Philadelphia's Fishtown section and the MLS Soccer stadium in Chester. Both started out as brownfield developments, but these massive, sea change projects don't come easily.



After granting $25 million in state aid to developers for a soccer stadium, condominium development and commercial vendor space, Gov. Rendell is receiving blowback from citizens groups in Chester. Many have become concerned that Chester's location--sandwiched between two waste treatment centers--may not be the best place for this type of investment. They even threatened a lawsuit if the site was not cleaned up to their specifications and the process was not made more transparent.



"All we ask is that they assure us that the right steps are being taken to do this," says the Rev. Horace Strand, head of the Chester Environmental Partnership. "And so the community knows what's going on.



"The struggle between Fishtown residents and the state over a proposed slot casino in their waterfront neighborhood has gone from mild community battle to epic David-and-Goliath bloodbath, with citizens filing lawsuit after lawsuit against developers and state officials. Rendell finally caved last month and began exploring different locations for the Sugarhouse slot parlor.



One Step at a Time

Despite the setbacks of those large-scale projects, smaller brownfield redevelopment projects seem to be finding favor. In August, Gov. Rendell and other state officials announced $4 million of state taxpayer money would go to redevelop the Ambler Boiler House in the Northern Philadelphia suburb of Ambler. Westrum Development, the firm receiving the grant, specializes in brownfield projects, and their vision is the Crossings At Ambler, a mixed-use community with 288 condominiums and 42,500 square feet of office space.



State representatives argue that brownfield redevelopment is crucial for densely populated suburban communities like Ambler because it forwards economic progress without depleting scarce open space.



Harrisburg has had great success turning brownfields not into entertainment centers like Philadelphia has attempted to do, but into necessity projects. According to David Black, president of the Harrisburg Regional Chamber and Economic Regional Development Corporation, Harrisburg just finished a $2 million renovation of a former manufacturing plant that is now home to the DuraBond pipe company. The company, Black says, now employs over 200 people.



"Its not really one of those big, sexy projects where you take an old mill and put up a shopping mall," Black says. "But we still manufacture stuff in Pennsylvania so it got us some much-needed space.



"Black and his colleagues have also worked on turning a former crystal manufacturing plant into a small business incubator in Carlisle, partnered with Dickenson College to convert another manufacturing center into extra classroom and administration buildings, and converted a contaminated site into parking space for the Appalachian Brewing Company, a popular Harrisburg destination.



Redevelopment that Works

There is one unexplored wrinkle in the brownfield game: a lack of funding. While the last five years have seen a tremendous increase in brownfield development across the state, a struggling economy threatens to turn the faucet off.With the economy in turmoil, the margin for error with redevelopment projects is slim to none. So while the state remains committed to increasing incentives to turn over post-industrial lands, it will be up to organizers on a local level to see what works for the community and continue to make their voices heard.

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PA Turnpike Bid Pulled

GROUP WANTING TO LEASE HIGHWAY TAKES OFFER OFF THE TABLE

It appears Pennsylvania’s self-help guide to road funding has been burned. After learning that the Federal Highway Administration denied its application for a grant to toll I-80, the state received word on Wednesday, Oct. 1, that the group looking to lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike for $12.8 billion has pulled its offer. Pennsylvania Transportation Partners, led by Citigroup and Abertis Infraestructuras from Spain, allowed the deal to expire on Sept. 30. The Pennsylvania state legislature failed to bring the measure to a vote.

Gov. Ed Rendell proposed the idea of privatizing the Turnpike months ago, and the state selected Pennsylvania Transportation Partners in May in the hopes that the lease would serve as a model for large-scale public-private partnerships in the U.S. The original deadline for the bid approval was June 20, but Pennsylvania Transportation Partners granted two extensions. The struggling economy, made worse by a tightening credit market, led to the bid’s demise. Rendell, however, still looks to lease the Turnpike. “Should such legislation be enacted, it would be my hope to execute a lease with the [Pennsylvania Transportation Partners] team,” he told the Associated Press.

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Dynamic Carpooling

Imagine a device that you carry with you everywhere; a device that allows you to connect to an entire network of people wanting to carpool; a device that knows where you are, and where you are going. What if the device could connect you into a transportation network that will take you to your destination on your schedule? This device exists, and you probably already own one. The device is your GPS and web-enabled cell phone. The concept is dynamic transportation.

This is carpooling 2.0 and it utilizes web based technologies to get you where you need to be. The network of users is managed by an online networking site, similar to Facebook or MySpace. A willing participant signs up on the site, creates a profile with a photograph, enters contact information, and if willing to drive, enters information about their automobile. Other superfluous information can be added as well, including typical destinations, travel times, typical routes taken. Once the information is stored in the database, the user is set to start carpooling. The system defines two groups or carpoolers, drivers and riders.

If you are driving to a destination, and wish to take on a passenger, simply log into the service through your web enabled phone and enter your destination. Because of advances in cell phone technology, the service is able to find your location through GPS. The service will then give you a route to follow to your destination, similar to the GPS you may already have in your car. If there is a passenger along the route, you receive a pick-up request. The passenger’s information is displayed on your phone with a location, a destination, as well as a photograph. If you choose to pick up the passenger, you are routed to the pick-up location. After dropping the passenger off at their destination, you receive payment from the passenger via the service. Payment is determined by adding the total distance of the passenger’s ride to the distance you deviated from your original route to either pick up or drop off. You are also given an opportunity to rate your experience with the passenger.

How does a passenger find a ride? Easy, as a passenger, you log into the service through your phone and enter in your destination. The service uses the GPS to identify your location. Once your ride has been accepted by a driver, you view in real time your pick-up time and arrival time. You are given information about the driver, including a photograph, and car registration. When the driver arrives, you get into the vehicle, and are taken to your destination. When you arrive at your destination, you are charged a fee for the ride, and also given a opportunity to rate the experience. The system will match you with a driver that is travelling the closest to your destination.

This idea may sound farfetched. The service mimics a typical form of transportation utilized in almost every urban environment. Taxis have long been a way to get on-demand point to point transportation without owning a car. However, there is no tracking on a taxi, no way for anyone to know where you got in, and where you got out. The dynamic carpooling service knows your location the entire time you are travelling because it is tracking the driver and passenger during the journey. Also, by having the service as a web based networking site, you can see the reviews other people wrote about their experience before you accept a passenger or driver. Imagine having that at your fingertips when hailing a cab. This service is not currently being used in the United States; however it is in its infancy overseas in Dublin. With today’s ever increasing interconnectedness, and constant expansion of technology, a program like this could definitely help alleviate traffic on our roads and enhance the social experience not typically associated with commuting.

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