CASCADIA CENTER

A lot has happened since the Redmond, Wash. “Beyond Oil: Transforming Transportation” conference earlier this month on electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, which was sponsored by Cascadia Center, Microsoft, Idaho National Laboratory (INL), WSDOT, USDOT and Pemco Insurance. For starters, Time Magazine’s environmental correspondent Bryan Walsh, who attended both days of the event and interviewed key sources there, has published an important article titled, “Is America Ready To Drive Electric?” Walsh writes: If plug-ins suddenly became popular, before the grid had a chance to get smarter, it could lead to a real power predicament…A…solution: tap into the enormous extra capacity of the grid during off-peak times, like between midnight and dawn…To do that, however, we need to persuade plug-in Read More ›

With funding from the Washington State Department of Transportation and advice from 75 employers, the Kitsap Regional Coordinating Council will develop common standards for telework. Derek Sheppard of the Kitsap Sun has more: Often, the idea of telework comes with some reservations. Will companies and employees miss out on the spontaneous creativity that trickles down next to the water cooler? What about slackers? Who will middle managers manage if there’s no one around? The focus, (Poulsbo City Council Member and telework advocate Ed) Stern said, is finding the right employees who can produce “deliverables,” so there’s a definable product they can show for their time at home. And the idea isn’t proposing wholesale abandonment of a company’s workplace. Stern hopes Read More ›

The need for public-private partnerships to help rebuild the nation’s overburdened and underfunded surface transportation network is growing. Even before gas prices spiked and gas tax hike prospects dived, the Washington State Transportation Commission was calling for P3s. They did so in this January 2007 report, and then again here. The January, 2007 report states that P3s should be closely examined as a potential strategy for completing planned major projects including the SR 520 floating bridge replacement, I-5 Columbia River Crossing, the State Route 167 extension to the Port of Tacoma, I-90 Snoqualmie Pass improvements, the State Route 704 Cross-base Highway in Pierce County, improvements to the state ferry system’s busiest dock, in downtown Seattle, Colman Dock, and for other Read More ›

This just in, from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Seattle is in violation of the Clean Air Act for the first time since the 1990s. Going over the legal limit for smog over the weekend means officials here will have to start hammering out a plan to improve air quality. That could feature a number of measures to put the brakes on pollution, including requiring reformulated, more expensive gasoline for the region. The final violation of the smog standard needed to push the Emerald City and the Puget Sound region into official violation of the act occurred Saturday afternoon, when a monitor at Enumclaw in south King County went over the official limit. It’s thanks to ozone emissions, which at ground level Read More ›

All over the world deep-bored vehicle tunnels are being built in major metropolitan regions. Paris. Hamburg. Zurich. Dublin. Madrid. Wuhan. Nanjing. Shanghai. Scroll down here to Cascadia Center’s chart titled “Supplemental Tunnel Project Data Examples” and you’ll see costs per mile range from $106 million to $580 million for deep-bored vehicle tunnels in these cities, typically of four to six lanes. The chart is part of a lengthier submission we made to the Alaskan Way Viaduct Stakeholders Advisory Committee (SAC). That cost range is worth noting, as SAC and state consultants work through options to replace the aging and unsafe viaduct on Seattle’s downtown waterfront. There are eight alternatives now getting a closer look, and one is a slightly curving Read More ›

Last Thursday June 26, our Cascadia Center hosted the West Coast Tolling and Traffic Management Workshop at the Bell Harbor Conference Center on Seattle’s waterfront. Speakers came from up and down the West Coast, Washington, D.C. and London to share with a capacity crowd the latest developments in regional tolling policy, tolling and traffic management technology, and transportation public-private partnerships. First, our own quick-take on the event. Then some handy links to media coverage, and speaker PowerPoints. Discussion Highlights Democratic State Senator Ed Murray, a member of the legislative majority in Olympia and the ranking majority member of the Senate Transportation Committee, voiced strong support for public-private partnerships as one important tool to help fund the approximately $50 billion backlog Read More ›

Similar to some other automakers, the vehicles currently on offer from Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep include quite a few, such as SUVs, minivans and pickup trucks, that aren’t really tooled for the motoring future that’s already unfolding. That’s a future with high gas prices that will be staying high, sharply slowing sales of gas-guzzling pick-ups and SUVs, and consumers ready to buy plug-in hybrid electric vehicles by the boatloads if automakers can deliver them with reliable lithium ion batteries and at prices of, say, $30,000 or less. That price point is apparently the aim for GM’s Chevy Volt, a PHEV to watch. So with gas now pushing past $4 a gallon, what does Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep do? Accent their plans for future-facing vehicles? No. They Read More ›

The May/June 2008 issue of Mother Jones is all about “The Future Of Energy,” and one must-read article is “The Seven Myths Of Energy Independence,” by Paul Roberts, author of “The End Of Oil.” Roberts argues that energy security is a far more achievable and strategic goal for the United States than energy independence, and the goal should be “massive increases in energy efficiency,” particularly in the transportation sector. With that in mind, he details some of the reasons why plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) hold such great promise. ….saving energy is almost always cheaper than making it: There is far more oil to be “found” in Detroit by designing more fuel-efficient cars than could ever be pumped out of Read More ›

Last week’s fast foot ferry demo and regional foot ferry discussion forum in Seattle, organized by Cascadia Center, stoked the fires again. KOMO 4 TV, The Kitsap Sun and The Peninsula Daily News all weighed in with coverage. Participants came away energized by the ride on All American Marine’s 50 mph River Gorge Explorer (right); determined to find a way to fund a regional network of state-of-the-art passenger-only ferries; and understanding that Puget Sound’s health must be maintained at the same time. The common thread is the huge population growth headed our way in coming decades. Before we delve into last week’s events, let’s set the stage. Off, Then On Again The speedy passenger-only state ferry running between Bremerton and Read More ›