Tag: mobility

• The climate idol of the unimaginative

  Here’s some food for thought around electrical vehicles. In this recent article in The American Conservative, Jordan McGillis argues that, “the electric vehicle is the climate idol of the unimaginative.”

  Rather than simply changing what’s under the hood of our cars, we should be reexamining the broader impacts that the car has had on the urban landscape. Here’s an excerpt that speaks to this:

  “All of the effort directed towards EV adoption would be better expended on improving our development patterns, bringing them to human-scale and reducing the necessity of the automobile. The obvious reform candidate is zoning. According to the New York Times, it is illegal to build anything other than a single-family home on 75 percent of land zoned for residential use in the United States. Zoning exclusively for single-family homes artificially flattens our cities, necessitates daily automobile commutes, and increases our greenhouse gas emissions. As Istvan Bart has documented for the Climate Strategy Institute, suburban sprawl bears more responsibility for increased emissions from transportation than either population or GDP.“

  There is no question that electric vehicles are helpful to addressing climate change. But Jordan is also not wrong. We can’t ignore that built form is crucial to this discussion, and likely even more important.

  2021.03.19

• A completely car-free neighborhood in Arizona

  The New York Times recently published this interesting piece about Culdesac and the completely car-free community that they are building just east of Phoenix in Tempe, Arizona (a place that is not generally known for its walkability). Culdesac calls itself the first “post-car real estate developer in the United States.” And so their Culdesac Tempe project has been designed to house 1,000 residents and exactly 0 cars.

  When the first phase is completed next year, residents will be restricted from having a car within the community and they’ll also be restricted from parking on any nearby streets. (This second stipulation was done to assuage concerns that a zero parking community would create a spillover effect in the surrounding area.) Instead, residents of Culdesac Tempe will rely on their local amenities, as well as on transit (it’s on a light rail line), biking, ride-sharing, and other forms of urban mobility.

  While this may seem kind of crazy for sprawling Arizona, the company’s thesis is both clear and clever. The future of American cities needs to be the kind of walkable urbanism that you find in places like the northeast. But at the same time, the fastest growing cities in the United States are generally in the Sun Belt. What they are doing is building walkable urbanism in the places where people clearly want to live.

  2020.11.02

• Uber to adopt 100% EV rides by 2030

  Last week, Uber made this green announcement.

  In it, they committed to becoming a “zero-emission platform” by 2040, with 100% of rides taking place in zero-emission vehicles, on public transit, or with micromobility. In the US, Canada, and Europe, they have gone even further and committed to 100% of rides taking place in an electric vehicle by 2030. And at the corporate level, they are similarly targeting net-zero emissions by 2030.

  To achieve all of this, the company will be focusing on helping drivers transition to EVs by 2025, investing in their multimodal network, and trying to encourage less reliance on personal car ownership, among other things. They’ll also be incentivizing both drivers (+$1.50 per Green ride) and consumers (3x Uber Rewards points per Green ride, instead of 2x). And I think these will be key.

  According to Uber, global carbon emissions fell by some 17% in the month of April as a result of lockdowns. But by June that decline had diminished to only 5%. What is obvious is that this was a short-term blip. “Normal” will return at some point. But once on-demand mobility is able to fully transition to electric vehicles, we’ll certainly be looking at a different kind of normal.

  For the full news release, click here.

  Full disclosure: I am long Uber.

  2020.09.15

• What tribe are you part of?

  This satirical piece in the Beaverton about “biking everywhere” is hilarious because it touches on so many cycling stereotypes:

  “It’s a great way to get around while also staying in shape,” said McFarlen as he biked through a red light. “From tattoo shops to my job at VICE to even the best Banh Mi in the city – I just hop on my bike and I’m there. Why does anyone drive ever? Gross!”

  But the other thing it does is speak to the trade-off between location and transportation costs. Brian McFarlen, the fictional protagonist from the article, is able to bike everywhere (low cost) because he allegedly lives in a central neighborhood (high cost):

  McFarlen, whose parents paid for him to go to film school and has no mortgage, kids, or debt, condemns people who drive in the city. “I hate cars – we should just get rid of all roads and replace them with bike lanes. Isn’t everyone able to live downtown and spend hours of their day biking around the city hitting up all the best micro breweries?”

  I think it’s natural for us humans to form tribes with others that are similar to ourselves. We have two wheels and you all have four wheels. We live in the city and you all don’t. All of these things make us different.

  But there’s certainly something to be said for having a bit of empathy for those outside of our particular tribes.

  2020.09.10

• How different is Tesla’s business model?

  I have a friend who is a big fan of Tesla. And judging by what’s going on with the company’s stock these days, he is not alone. This morning he sent me this article talking about how Tesla has introduced an entirely new business model for the automotive industry. The two key takeaways are as follows. One, Tesla is in many ways a software company. The hardware and software onboard each vehicle are continually getting better and oftentimes these improvements are delivered to their customers for free via over-the-air updates. This is not how the incumbent car companies work. And two, fully electric vehicles are going to crush after-sales revenue by virtue of the fact that electric vehicles simply don’t require the same amount of service. So now you’re in a position where the cars last longer (and apparently depreciate a lot less). This might seem bad for business, but if you can build an ecosystem of energy products and services around said car, then maybe you’ve got a big ass Tesla moat. Maybe. I have no idea what the company should be valued at today, but all of this is interesting to me and I’m fairly certain that the car I have right now will be the last combustion engine vehicle I ever own. Depending on when autonomy arrives, it may also be the last car I ever own.

  2020.08.31

• Toronto approves 40 km expansion of cycling network

  This week, Toronto City Council approved the largest ever one-year expansion of bike lanes in the city — a total of 40 km. It passed 23 to 2. Here is a map of the approved routes:

  

  The Bloor West extension is being accelerated. This will take the Bloor Bikeway out to Runnymede and High Park in the west (close to our Junction House project).

  New expansions of the network in the core include Bloor Street East, University Avenue, Dundas Street East, and Danforth Avenue (which also happens to connect another one of our development sites on Dawes Road).

  Bloor, University, and Dundas are expected to be among the first installations. The idea here is to have them mirror some of our subway lines and fill the mobility gap as many people shy away from transit in the short-term.

  All of this wouldn’t have happened without COVID-19, at least not this quickly. I’m certainly not happy about a pandemic, but as a car owner and fair-weather cyclist, I am happy about these new bikeways and I am happy that we were compelled into action.

  2020.05.30

• Moovit Public Transit Index

  

  The Moovit Public Transit Index has been tracking the impact of COVID-19 on public transit usage around the world. Not surprisingly, people are using transit a lot less.

  Above is a chart from Moovit showing usage from January 15, 2020 to April 12, 2020, for a collection of US cities including San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, and others. Early March is when usage started to really fall off, with most of the cities now sitting somewhere around 70-75% below January levels.

  For the most part, the cities included in this chart have followed a similar trajectory. But there are a couple of outliers. Philadelphia doesn’t seem to have fallen quite as much as other major US cities (-55.7% as of April 12, 2020). I’m not sure why. San Francisco looks to have “corrected” a lot faster. Perhaps because of an easier/quicker shift to working from home? And then there’s Seattle.

  The first confirmed US case of COVID-19 occurred in the Seattle area on January 21, 2020. Looking at the above chart (and implying causation), that single case appears to have had an immediate impact on transit usage. Over the subsequent three days, ridership dropped to -4%, -8.3% and then to -9.1%. Usage then remained consistently lower relative to all of the other cities in this index.

  Was that it? Did Seattleite’s behaviors really change that quickly? (And yes, I did have to look up the demonym for the fine people of Seattle.)

  2020.04.13

• Rightsizing in Kits Point

  

  Architect Michael Green’s new house in Kits Point, Vancouver was recently featured in the Globe and Mail. He and his family went from a 3,500 square foot home in the suburbs to a 1,500 square foot semi-detached home in the city, close to downtown. The house is simple, sparsely decorated, and about 13-feet wide.

  Here’s why he decided to do it: “I didn’t want to have to commute by car any more,” he says. “I wanted to be able to bike everywhere. I also wanted my kids to be able to bike everywhere. I wanted them to develop a sense of freedom, to have mobility, something too many kids don’t get these days.”

  As we all know, there is typically a very real trade-off in cities between space and location. The further you move out from the core (a generalization), the more affordable space usually comes. But at the same time, your transportation costs also increase — both directly and indirectly if you factor your time and your quality of life.

  Depending on how you value each of these items, you might be inclined to pursue more space or pursue more reasonable transportation costs. A 2,000 square foot reduction in space might seem like a lot. But if you’re heavily weighted toward freedom and mobility, as Green clearly is, it could be a perfectly rational decision.

  Photo: Ema Peter via the Globe and Mail

  2020.02.19

• The ride-hailing red herring

  There’s a lot of data/speculation out there about the impact of ride-hailing apps. Many dense urban centers are claiming that they have increased traffic (slowed average speeds) and pulled people away from public transit. The University of Toronto published this study last year. And the WSJ recently published this chart for Chicago:

  

  To be honest, I’m not sure how much of the above is a result of ride-hailing apps, overall urban growth, e-commerce deliveries, public transit disinvestment, or other factors. But what is clear is that ride-hailing is pretty convenient and most (if not all) cities are seeing massive growth in this space.

  But all of this feels to me like a bit of a red herring. People will obviously choose what is most convenient and relatively affordable. And congestion was a problem well before people started using these apps (demand > road supply). The only solution I have seen work is to price congestion/roads.

  2020.02.15

• Who is spending on developing autonomous vehicles

  The Information estimates that around $16 billion has been spent over the last few years on developing autonomous vehicles. This is across some 30 companies. But about half of this spending has come from just three companies: Waymo (Alphabet), Cruise (GM), and Uber.

  

  Waymo has been working on AVs for about a decade and the industry seems to believe that they are the furthest ahead. Still, the technology is not yet there and their AVs — which are operating in Phoenix — require lots of human supervision.

  The sentiment right now is that self-driving cars are going to take much longer than initially anticipated and many more billions in R&D spending. Last year, Waymo was looking for financing from outside investors. Morgan Stanley said the business was worth about $105 billion.

  Graph: The Information

  2020.02.12