Comments Payton Chung has made

hacks vs. wonks

the description of Carrion above reminds me of someone else who will shape urban policy within the administration: Valerie Jarrett, whom Mayor Daley appointed to chair the Chicago Transit Authority and sit on the the Chicago Plan Commission -- despite have no formal training in either of these crucial, complicated, and vitally important fields.On What Obama's picks signal for urban policy posted 9 months, 1 week ago 5 Responses

one caveat

right now, federal transit funding requires that local governments at least match the federal funds 50-50 (whereas highway projects get matched 80-20). however, most states are not exactly flush with cash at this time, so one common-sense proposal from a new infrastructure program might be to increase that match -- up to 100% if necessary to get a high-priority project off the ground.On How investing in transit could save Obama's butt posted 1 year ago 7 Responses

Wheee!

CMS changes are so much fun. Looking forward to breaking down the -mill wall!

The most elegant solution I've seen to the "edited after the fact" problem is the way Flickr (and phpbb, I think) does it: it adds a little "last edited at XYZ time" note to the end if said edits were made more than a few minutes after posting. That subtly lets people know that something might have changed in the aftermath.

Two things I really like about Slashcode's CMS which haven't quite trickled into the mainstream: comments threaded by nesting, and user moderation. I think the latter might work pretty well around here, from the interactions I've seen.On Grist is cooking up a new site; what do you want to see in it? posted 1 year, 5 months ago 32 Responses

Hallmarks of a bad merchant

A grocery store can't quite be like database software, but much of the merchant's art is in the way she "edits" selections to meet (and anticipate) her customers' needs and wants. That's why there's still a bright future for good smaller retailers amongst the big boxes and online stores: people just don't want to bother having to wander dozens of aisles, filtering things for themselves.

Problem is, the huge corporations which appear to dominate retail these days only care about market share -- a metric which values "being all things to all people" over doing one thing very well. That said, even those metrics have their limits and eventually growth plateaus, the stock's outlook drops, and those particular retail concepts will die.

All of this is to say: the ground is shifting beneath Kroger's feet. If they don't do a better job of helping their customers find the products they want (and the natural foods market is growing fast), then they're in trouble -- nimbler merchants will grab their customers. And it will serve them right.

(Even though I write like a capitalist, I truly adore Marxist phrases. Maoist press releases are the best.)On When will the American public get snobby already? posted 1 year, 5 months ago 17 Responses

Right tax, wrong reason

Personally, I don't know whether I'd support the additional SUV charge -- it confuses policy priorities. The congestion charge should perhaps levy an additional charge on large vehicles (like SUVs) that consume more road space and contribute more to congestion, but carbon emissions should be taxed elsewhere (fuel, annual registrations). Then again, I'm a bit of a stickler with regard to "nexus" issues.

And, for what it's worth, Singapore had a congestion charge way back in 1975.On What will London's new mayor, Boris Johnson, do for the environment? posted 1 year, 6 months ago 5 Responses

Durability & recycling

I average about one flat per bike every 18 months or so (which means three years between flats on any given tire) despite awful potholed streets strewn with debris. The Kevlar (or similar) belt really does help a lot. It costs a bit more per tire, but the tires themselves last for several years.

Used tires and tubes can sometimes be recycled at places that take car tires for recycling, often for less than $1 apiece. Look 'em up in the phone book -- and, while you're there, take a look around at just how much more waste those cars are generating!On Umbra on bicycle tires posted 1 year, 7 months ago 11 Responses

Cecil Adams

The Straight Dope chimed in on this topic recently, also comes down on the side of hand dryers.

Enter Una and her spreadsheet to take an objective look. With everything she could think of accounted for (admittedly different assumptions might produce different results), Una's best guess is that standard hot-air dryers use 5 percent less energy than paper towels in the first year, and about 20 percent less over five years. If high-efficiency dryers like the Airblade really provided acceptable drying in ten seconds, then they'd use 80 percent less energy... Electric dryers might be better for the environment in other ways, too. Assuming the same five-year life span, Environmental Resources Management estimates paper towel production generates 35 percent more acid rain and 286 percent more greenhouse gas emissions... What about those reusable cloth towels mounted on a big roll? An EPA study found that continuous cloth towels, as they're known, have a low environmental impact, requiring only about 8 percent as much energy as paper towels and about 13 percent as much water (including what's needed for manufacturing and laundering).

On the other hand...

(a) it typically took 43 seconds [to dry hands] under a dryer to dry as well as 12 seconds with a paper towel, but (b) most dryer users lose patience well before then, and (c) about 40 percent end up wiping their hands on their pants.

I thought about that 40% remark when I was drying my hands under the jet-blast dryer installed at the US Green Building Council's restroom.On Umbra on paper towels vs. hand dryers posted 2 years, 1 month ago 1 Response

Inconsistent libertarians

Libertarianism as an ideology is typically so rigidly consistent that it's really fun to make fun of these guys when they are inconsistent. O'Toole has thrown his lot in with the Cato crowd, but he fundamentally does not believe in free markets (or free minds) -- he writes a lot in his paper about how planners were always overruling the neighbors and giving developers higher density. (Indeed, I saw a poll today that reported that 80% of developers in inner suburbs wish they could build denser than zoning allows them to.)

Well, duh, aren't developers supposed to be the good guys under libertarian theology? The developer's the valiant agent of the Invisible Hand, after all...On New report debunks libertarian attack on Portland city planning posted 2 years, 2 months ago 2 Responses

Hunh.

Maybe I went on an off day at Al Di La -- it was great, sure, but not sublime.

I'm more indifferent to NYC with every visit; perhaps I've become too modestly Midwestern to understand its self-aggrandizing way.On A good time was had by ... me posted 2 years, 6 months ago 17 Responses

Crude reserves vs. gasoline

Tar sands in Venezuela and Alberta, unproven reserves off the Taiwanese coast, biodiesel, ethanol, fuel cells, and umpteen GM hybrid cars aren't going to help one bit in August 2007. It takes months to get from oil well to gas pump, and right now the really big bottleneck is that the USA is short on refining capacity, not oil extraction. Lack of spare refining capacity, not lack of crude, was behind most of the recent runups in gas prices.

We don't have enough refineries because, well, I'll note that most of our existing refineries are in the part of Texas and Louisiana lovingly called "cancer alley."

I'm not particularly looking forward to $4/gallon gas -- well, actually, I am, but I don't want to hear the TV pundits, newspaper headlines, and windbag politicians all loudly whining about it 24/7, which they inevitably will.On Build your stockpile of gas now! posted 2 years, 7 months ago 15 Responses

seek shelter

@Engineer: LEED gives you a credit for having a bike rack, but not necessarily a covered one. D'oh!

In rainy climates, shelters over bike parking should be a matter of courtesy -- just as shady shelters over at-grade car parking is common in many sunny places (at least it seems common in the southwest, including a few park & rides under solar panels). However, many bike racks are placed with the assumption that people only bike on nice days, anyhow.

If they have an indoor parking garage, you might try seeing if they'll let you lock up inside.On Bike racks in rain, smokers under cover posted 2 years, 7 months ago 14 Responses

a raspberry & a wet blanket

"I hear those things are awfully loud..." Nonsense! It glides as softly as a cloud.

Seriously, though, PRT (not to be confused with driverless transit, which works well in, say, Vancouver) has never progressed beyond the pipe dream stage, despite literally billions of dollars of tax dollars thrown at it from all kinds of directions (usually from government). What has changed this time? Who calculated these cost estimates? The same people who claim that monorails cost 50% less, since they have just one rail?

The cheapest, most sustainable way of getting around is walking, which, incidentally, is also good for you and often fun. Instead of waiting for some pie in the sky technological fix, we could just build our cities around walking, a solution that existed before we ever realized that we had a "congestion problem."

BTW, I voted "no." Simple logic dictates that,  in a dense urban area with very high peak hour flows, individuals occupying large amounts of personal space will result in congestion. It does on today's highway system and on today's transit system, and it would on any PRT system as well.On Public transit that would work in Houston posted 3 years ago 29 Responses

Flush, flush

Erm, I'd have to agree somewhat that the tone of this comes off a little bitter. Toto "washlet" toilets are probably as common in China as in the USA, and actually, English is a tremendously complex and difficult language for non-native speakers to learn. I'm sure that White House press releases get translated into imperfect Chinese.

FWIW, Toto had a booth at the GreenBuild convention last year, hawking things like dual-flush toilets [different flushes for #1 and #2]. That water-saving invention began in Japan.

I hardly consider the question about cathedrals to be adversary -- many European towns bankrupted themselves to build ostentatious (if lovely) cathedrals, when THEY could have spent the money on science or whatnot. However, those decisions were made, and I see little use in second-guessing them a thousand years after the fact.On China, up close and personal posted 3 years, 2 months ago 20 Responses

Protest vote

I'd hold on to one share, just to be able to cast a protest vote and/or raise a shareholder resolution. Maybe it's the rebel in me or something, but for those corporations or funds I didn't choose for their social responsibility, I always return those proxy envelopes with votes against the slate. Sure, Vanguard and Fidelity and Long-Term Capital Management will outvote me 10 bazillion to three, but what the hey: otherwise, it would have been 10 bazillion to zero, and apparently even the threat of shareholder activism has some corporations busily greenwashing, er, Changing Their Ways.

Besides, now's a wonderful time to divest of yer XOM! Capital gains tax rates will never be lower.
.pcOn Which is thicker, blood or oil? A longtime shareholder reflects posted 3 years, 3 months ago 5 Responses

Ethanol or biodiesel - nah

Neither ethanol nor biodiesel presents an acceptable alternative at this time to kerosene (aka jet fuel). Ethanol has 37.4% less energy per gallon than kerosene, and less energy = more fuel needed. I suppose it might work for short flights, but Virgin flies few of those. Biodiesel has more energy, but freezes up at the low temperatures that jets fly in. It might work for smaller planes flying at lower altitudes.

Hydrogen doesn't feasibly work even in cars yet.On EU may introduce carbon tax on airplanes posted 3 years, 4 months ago 3 Responses

Also in the Guardian report:

"This followed orders on Tuesday that all civil servants should cycle to work or take public transport to reduce the smog that chokes most streets.

It's Bike to Work Week, every week!

"The apparent shift of focus comes at the start of a new five-year economic plan in which the government says its priority is to improve the environment and conserve energy."

Ah, communism.
.pcOn Move Thyself: "Kingdom of bicycles" experiencing identity crisis posted 3 years, 4 months ago 5 Responses

Not yet

LEED-ND is still in gestation, but already some cities have expressed interest in using it as a template for approvals for new developments.

Austin applies a smart-growth scoring system to developments applying for various city subsidies, and many cities have requirements pertaining to green buildings (including requirements for building to LEED certification* for buildings over X size, or which receive subsidy or zoning exceptions).

* Not actually attaining certification, but building to the standards.On Investors see green in buildings posted 3 years, 5 months ago 2 Responses

Economic advantage?

The Czechs successfully modernized their Soviet era train building expertise into an international franchise, providing streetcars to cities like Tacoma and Portland. Curitiba, Brazil pioneered its Bus Rapid Transit system in partnership with a Volvo factory in town, which now exports the buses to cities like Bogotá and Santiago. And China has already nearly cornered the world market for finished bicycles, while also building the world's first maglev train. Yet economic development officials the world over pursue auto factories and new roads, despite plenty of evidence that automobility yields rather limited (and quickly exhausted) mobility benefits.

Can countries like China derive a strong economic advantage by developing an edge in sustainable transportation systems?On Move Thyself: "Kingdom of bicycles" experiencing identity crisis posted 3 years, 5 months ago 5 Responses

"The new world we're living in"

Excerpts from what Bob Tita from Crain's, the Chicago business paper, wrote about Woertz's appointment at ADM:

The selection of Ms. Woertz to run the Decatur-based corn and soybean processing giant surprised many in the farm commodity processing industry who expected the company to dip into its own executive ranks or pluck an executive from a competing commodity processor or the food industry.

"All of us in the ag world look for other aggies in these jobs," said John Campbell, vice president of Ag Processing Inc., a farmer-owned grain processing company in Omaha, Neb. "But she's certainly qualified. It makes sense in a lot of ways."

ADM is the country's largest producer of ethanol, an alternative to gasoline that's distilled from corn. The company accounts for about 30% of the domestic ethanol production, producing 1.2 billion gallons a year... ADM is also the leading producer of biodiesel in Europe and plans to build two biodiesel plants in the United States. Rising oil prices have also revived interest in bioplastics, which substitutes corn oil for petroleum in the production of plastics. ADM recently said it will begin bioplastics production in Iowa in mid-2008...

Ms. Woertz's knowledge of the oil industry is seen as a key asset for ADM, whose management ranks are largely made up of executives who know how to buy, sell, transport and process corn and soybeans into cooking oils, starches, sweeteners and animal feeds...

Ms. Woertz's hiring at ADM also could help thaw the traditionally hostile relationship between ethanol producers and the oil industry, which has bristled for years at the federal tax credits and usage mandates awarded to ethanol producers to stimulate production of ethanol.

"I think there should be less firing at one another and an understanding of the new world we're living in," Ms. Woertz, a former Chevron Corp. executive, told Crain's. On Archer-Daniels Midland's stock soars on ethanol, biodiesel hype. posted 3 years, 6 months ago 4 Responses

Bring back the draught!

My own personal solution to beer bottles: drink draft beer at the bar. The kegs and the glasses are both washed and reused, and around here it's easy and cheap to buy local brews at local taverns. Sadly, even wine bars that serve in 250ml decanters (rare in the USA, common in France) usually are just pouring said decanters from regular bottles, not from barrels/kegs.

Unfortunately, one local dairy uses returnable glass bottles and no rBGH -- but one of their owners has run for (and lost) statewide Republican primaries with absolutely disgusting right-wing views. So, no more tasty milk in reusable bottles for me, although the infrastructure is in place at most supermarkets here.
.pcOn More on glass recycling and reuse posted 3 years, 7 months ago 5 Responses

not quite, but

Yeah, I've noticed that line. Ben Gibbard has written about air pollution before ("Why You'd Want to Live Here" on Death Cab's "The Photo Album"), but that was O3, not CO2. ("I'm in Los Angeles today. Asked the gas station employee if he ever had trouble breathing and he said it varies from season to season.")

Still doesn't beat a Stars concert I went to, where Torquil Campbell said something along the lines of, "we could be the first generation that says, `forget about getting there on time, I'm going to save the planet and walk.'"

Hey, we'll need a lot of help to make "dead" environmentalism a little more alive and relevant to folks, I guess, and some benefit concerts might be cool.On Pop songs about global warming posted 3 years, 8 months ago 13 Responses

The laws of business

Even where it's not legislated -- and, as Eran Ben-Joseph points out in his new "The Code of the City," regulations the world over require sprawl -- the past fifty years have given the construction industry every reason to optimize the process for building sprawl. Something like 15% of the US economy is nothing but one very finely honed machine for building sprawl. Engineering schools turn out vast numbers of graduates beholden to traffic manuals written in the 1950s; highway department steamrollers are fixed to accommodate only 12' wide traffic lanes; greenhouses grow flowery Bartlett Pears instead of shade-casting sycamores and locusts; the NIMBY neighbors have been so inured to the uniformly bad buildings of the past fifty years that they rightly expect that any new construction will damage their neighborhood -- all of these are predicated on continuing sprawl forever.

One of the biggest barriers is finance. Property development is typically very highly leveraged, i.e., it's often 90% borrowed money. These days, lenders lend money, then bundle up similar loans and sell them as bonds. It's a very efficient way to spread risk and recycle capital, but the result is that developers are under even greater pressure than before to build stuff just like the last guy did -- it's very hard to get a loan to do something that will be literally one of a kind. Hence, our financial system has practically outlawed the creation of those unique places that many people cherish, in favor of building bland, formulaic (but market tested) strip malls and garden apartments. It's not surprising that so many New Urbanist developments have some sort of wealthy patron behind them, like a landed developer who "got religion" or an activist public official willing to risk the public purse; it's genuinely a huge challenge to get "conventional financing" for unconventional developments.

But hold on tight. Some New Urbanist market researchers have pointed out that the suburbs were built for nuclear families with children, which are a shrinking slice of America's population. In most large American cities, detached housing now accounts for less than half of new construction. The market success of pioneering developments have paved the way for those gun-shy lenders to lend to more interesting developments.

As for me, I'm writing this a block from home, at a local independent coffeehouse, watching the train disgorge streams of passengers into the station. It's quite nice.

PS. Shout-out to Rick Cole in Ventura!On Why isn't there more new urbanism? posted 3 years, 8 months ago 28 Responses

Addendum

Jim Mateja, an auto columnist for the Chicago Tribune, sheds a bit more light on the ethanol equation in Illinois.

Dave Sykuta, executive director of the Illinois Petroleum Council, knows all too well the shortcomings of E85. He bought a Ford Explorer SportTrac that burns E85.

"The window sticker says the mileage rating is 15 m.p.g. city/20 m.p.g. highway with regular gas, but in tiny print it says with E85 the average is 11 m.p.g. city and 14 m.p.g. highway. But I'm getting 9 m.p.g."

Alan Weverstad, executive director-environment and energy for GM, explained that a gallon of E85 simply produces less energy than gas.

"So it takes more fuel to run a mile. Some might say 30 percent more, we're saying the mileage loss is 20 to 25 percent. But while you burn more fuel, you burn less petroleum," he said...

Jim Givens of the Farmtown store in Bloomington, Ill., sells E85 for 20 cents less than regular unleaded but says there's little demand. "Unless you want to support farmers, I don't know why you'd buy it because you get less mileage," he said.

E85 currently runs about $2.50 in Illinois, more expensive than today's average of $2.36 in Chicago -- even after 51c in federal subsidy and 25c in foregone state/local sales taxes per gallon.On T-shirts are all sold out! posted 3 years, 9 months ago 6 Responses

Corn belt

Ethanol is a big vote-getter in Illinois -- the nation's second largest corn producing state, and (I believe) the nation's biggest producer of ethanol.On Big Oil suppressing biofuels? Obama thinks so. posted 3 years, 9 months ago 5 Responses

They hate our freedom

"only if a public affairs officer is present or on the phone."

Wow. Scientists in America, like visitors to North Korea, need to have government minders monitoring their words at all times.
.pcOn A story on the suppression of climate scientist James Hansen posted 3 years, 10 months ago 4 Responses

but what about his Mother?

Although I've seen children try, it's pretty hard to dance elegantly with a plastic bag. Those silk ribbons are much prettier on screen.

Seriously, though, an environmental group here in Chicago has challenged local designers to come up with an alternative.On Indian movies need to take up the plastic-bag fight posted 3 years, 12 months ago 1 Response

Actually, there are a few

"Costs of sprawl" studies date back to the 1974 with the original "Costs of Sprawl" report (it even has a groovy cover. The same concept has been updated several times, most notably with "Costs of Sprawl 2000," available in PDF format from TCRB, a division of the National Academies of Sciences:

http://gulliver.trb.org/publications/tcrp/tcrp_rpt_74-a.pdfOn Maybe posted 4 years, 1 month ago 2 Responses

High horses

"the biggest impact I could have as an environmentalist was to give up meat."

Actually, no. The "Consumer's Guide" that Umbra mentions states pretty clearly that energy consumption in home and transportation are larger impact items than food.

We all agree that beef can be quite destructive and energy consuming, but poultry and fish require many fewer calories of plant energy to create their protein, and don't have the ruminants' problem of methane-filled farts. Let's not pick on meat using the most obvious examples--again, apples to apples. Even if we did revert the prairies back to bison (and it'd be politically difficult) you'd have a problem of bison overpopulation: millennia before Whites settled the Plains, bison's primary predators were humans. Hence, Ted Turner's chain of bison grills to cull the populations on his Montana ranches.

Personally, I eat a meat-light, largely local diet, with variety and moderation rather than exclusion as the guiding principle. Indeed, I challenge someone to stick to a largely local vegan diet through a Midwestern winter. On the other hand, I never drive. Heck, I rarely even ride buses. I challenge any car-driving vegan to a low-impact duel!
.pcOn Umbra on soy vs. meat posted 4 years, 1 month ago 27 Responses

Southern strategy

I would be curious to see how a voucher policy would play out in the South -- home of the nation's worst sprawl but also of many consolidated, desegregated city-suburban school districts, and relatively few private schools. (Catholic schools are particularly scarce, although many evangelical schools have opened recently.)

In addition, having a neighborhood school within walking/biking distance seems like a good, sprawl-busting idea to me. I attended (by choice) a magnet school five miles from home, with students from all over the city, and as a result had neither school nor classmates within walking/biking distance of home.
.pc

(Entirely my own views, not my employer's)On School vouchers won't solve educational or environmental problems posted 4 years, 1 month ago 5 Responses

Don't worry, bike happy

Personally, I get too sweaty under those gas-mask things. I have asthma and sometimes end up a bit winded from summer smog, but overall I don't worry too much about air pollution.

What Umbra said about pollution levels up high is correct, but others are right that bicyclists breathe more air than drivers, since they're outside longer and breathe deeper. In particular, soot (PM), largely from diesel engines, gets more dangerous the deeper it's breathed in. However, many urban bicyclists have many choices when it comes to routes. I don't like riding behind foul-smelling, erratic-moving diesel buses and trucks, anyways, so I usually take advantage of my city's grid to bicycle on calmer, quieter, better smelling residential streets for 85% of my route.

On safety, I would point out that driving is indeed quite lethal, and that many cycling injuries or deaths occur from potentially dangerous activities like racing or downhill mountain biking. Using safety to argue against bicycling creates a dangerous (hah) tautology, as well: studies have amply proven that bicyclists have safety in numbers: biking is safer where biking is popular. Car drivers in cities with many bicyclists are more aware of cyclists' presence on the roads and watch out for bikes. So, people should take a stand for bicycle safety not only by riding safely but by riding often.

I won't say that everyone in every situation can learn to comfortably ride in traffic -- I feel uncomfortable riding in the exurbs, so I stick to the city -- but that defeatist attitude won't help to save the world.On Umbra on bicycle commuting posted 4 years, 1 month ago 10 Responses