IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

A BILL

To ensure that all users of the transportation system, including pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users, children, older individuals, and individuals with disabilities, are able to travel safely and conveniently on and across federally funded streets and highways.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Safe and Complete Streets Act of 2011’’.

1 (1) COMPLETE STREET.—The term ‘‘complete

2 street’’ means a roadway that—

3 (A) safely accommodates all travelers, par-

4 ticularly public transit users, bicyclists, pedes-

5 trians (including individuals of all ages and in-

6 dividuals with mobility, sensory, neurological, or

7 hidden disabilities), motorists, and freight vehi-

8 cle operators; and

9 (B) enables all travelers to use the road-

10 way safely and efficiently.

Bill sponsor Tom Harkin understands the connection between autocentric street design and health and safety. “In many places across the country, there is a complete lack of sidewalks and bike lanes,” said Sen. Harkin in a statement upon release of the legislation. “This not only makes our roadways more dangerous for pedestrians, it discourages people from being more active by walking or riding a bike.” (from dc.streetsblog.org)

Gas is over $4 a gallon

On April 7th, I will return a car I have been driving for nearly a year to it's owner. I will then be without a car again. This will give me an opportunity to revisit what I felt nearly 3 years ago when giving up my own car. Interestingly, gas had gone above $4 a gallon then. It seems there is much less concern or panic that gas is as high as it is. Probably $5 is the threshold for panic/worry at this point. I think that rising gas prices, while not good for the economy or people with lower incomes, higher gas prices will lead to more alternatives to automobile for day to day transportation which is a good thing. Most alternatives to the automobile have multiple benefits both for society and the environment. I have been riding my bicycle to work, but not for any other errands really. I quote Oscar Wilde here "I can resist everything except temptation." Initially, early in the year, I drove the car less. But as the year progressed, I drove it more. One can do

a lot with a car, there is a sense of getting around and accomplishing a lot and as Americans we admire that. It is part of our culture to do a lot, see a lot, and be busy. All this busy-ness has a cost which we largely ignore. I am looking forward to slowing down the pace of my life in a couple of weeks, to get back to my inner snail. Thanks for the year in the car Andy.

Copenhagen is Cool

How many cars are in the United States? Take a guess. Answer is after the video.


There were 254,403,082 cars in the United States as of 2007. Did you guess correctly?
Here is an interesting table that shows the Number of U.S. Aircraft, Vehicles, Vessels, and Other Conveyances in the US from 1960 to 2007. The numbers paint an interesting picture. There are more than a quarter BILLION cars in the country now. There are only around 300 million people in the US. This is simply not sustainable. What we need to do at the local, state and national levels is promote the two most sustainable forms of transportation... walking and bicycling.

Back from Santa Fe

WOW!!! The train ride was a vacation in itself. I met many people including Andy from Brighter Planet www.brighterplanet.com who was traveling by train all the way across the country. Lots of good information on the web site which says this:

On Brighter Planet you’ll measure your carbon footprint, discover simple ways to reduce it, track your progress, and share your experiences.

No politics, no arguments. Just real people, real actions — all making a real difference.

I am enamoured with train travel. Here is a list of 10 advantages to travel by rail vs by airplane or automobile:

More room compared to plane or automobile travel
Friendly conversations with fellow passengers
Better views through bigger window
Dining car with good food and good conversation
Observation lounge with bigger windows to view the great American landscape
Coach seats with lots of leg room
Doors between cars are exciting to pass through
Very cool sleeper cars
The pace of travel is slower and the feeling is civilized
The number one thing... lower carbon than other modes of travel

Look for videos of some of the train travel.

I am going to Santa Fe without traveling in a car or an airplane. I will leave the house with a nice rolling luggage bag and walk to the bus stop (about a mile) then take the bus to downtown San Diego, catch the Surfliner to LA and catch the Amtrak Southwest Chief to Albuquerque and from there, the Rail Runner to Santa Fe. Pretty low carbon travel. My reading material for the trip is "Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream", plus I will have the Helmet Cam and will document some of the trip.
The train ride is overnight, I'll see how that is in a coach seat. I am really looking forward to traveling through the southwest in this manner.

Helmet Cam Footage on Youtube

I have finally gotten the correct cable and a capable computer. I transferred one DV tape with 51 minutes of HELMET CAM footage today. I used iMovie even though I have Final Cut Pro. The results are interesting. This is a starting point and I am happy that the process is working. Hopefully I can find someone to edit the footage at a later date. Until then, I will work with the program and learn as much as I can. I just wanted to get some footage up, so do not judge this little clip too harshly. This was a trip to Jimbo's Natural Food Store in Rancho Bernard a few weeks ago. We used a short cut we had found. Speaking of short cuts, I used Google Maps Friday and noticed that there is a directions for walking route feature. But it does not locate or use shortcuts that are not roads. Shortcuts would be very useful.

The youtube link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umfXtII96CA

Plant a Meadow Not a Lawn & Limit the Use of Non-Road Engines

Each weekend, about 54 million Americans mow their lawns, using 800 million gallons of gas per year and producing tons of air pollutants. Garden equipment engines, which have had unregulated emissions until very recently, emit high levels of carbon and other pollutants, producing up to 5% of the nation's air pollution and a good deal more in metropolitan areas.

A typical 3.5 horsepower gas mower, for instance, can emit the same amount of VOCs -- key precursors to smog -- in an hour as a new car driven 340 miles, say industry experts.

The exchange of 1,000 gasoline-powered lawn mowers for electric mowers has the potential of reducing volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions by 9.8 tons per year, which is equivalent to removing 230 cars from the highways. (From EPA Lawn Equipment)

There are the facts. One of the beautiful things about getting rid of a lawn and planting a meadow, is that a meadow is more enticing for birds and butterflies and other beneficial insects. A meadow is a more complex pattern with changing colors and motion from breezes. But some of these meadow grasses can be walked and played on. There is no need to give up functionality because choosing a low growing sedge can produce a similar texture and look of a turf grass lawn. Best of all, meadows are watered and mowed far less frequently and do not require the chemical inputs that turf does.

The goal is to reduce the burning of fossil fuels as much as we can. That is better for us and better for the planet. And it might be more beautiful. Inspiration for this post was John Greenlee, author of The American Meadow Garden: Creating a Natural Alternative to the Traditional Lawn

Rented A Car

I rented a car for the weekend... a KIA. I wanted to get some bigger errands run. I use Enterprise because they will pick me up at my house. I have rented from them about once a month since I sold the Element. If I have a photography shoot, I rent a car as most of my jobs have been in the Inland Empire or Los Angeles or even further north. Austin and I were driving and I had the experience of CAR SEDUCTION. Cars are powerful and give the driver a sense of freedom. Car Seduction is the reason it will be a long hard withdrawal from the automobile as a major means of transportation. Car Seduction is not as potent when I am riding with my DAD in his Saturn. I am not exactly sure why that is, maybe because it is a bare bones kind of car... a 5 speed, 4 cylinder engine that gets better gas mileage than a Prius. So I am not Sans Automobile this weekend. What was up with Enterprise and the brown wrapping paper on the car?

More Rain

The good thing about the rain is that the chapparral on the hills will turn really green. I love the soft bright green of the Ceanothus. San Diego County has 1,003,441 acres of chapparral. If you want to know more about the chapparral, check out the CALIFORNIA CHAPARRAL INSTITUTE : http://www.californiachaparral.com/

But the rain is hard for biking. Imagine being next to this car. Fenders would not help.

Rain - No Biking Today

There are a couple of things that make it hard for me to bike. One of those things is rain. I just do not like to bicycle in the rain. I had some packages to ship, but since the post office was closed, I did not go. Had it been not raining, I would have biked. I don't like to bike when I am not feeling well. Fortunately, that is not often. It easier to get in a car when you are not feeling well than it is to get on a bike.

Easier to get in a car when it is raining too. So I borrowed my neighbor's Prius. I couldn't figure out how to start it. After a brief lesson, which was "...put the key in your pocket, put your foot on the brake and push the power button", the car was running. Sweet... the MPG indicator read 99.9.

Map My Ride Website

Found MapMyRide.com and spent a couple of hours creating rides and looking at the features of the site. I love this site. I will probably become a GOLD member when I get a bit more money. The free membership is fantastic. I made a couple of maps of some routes I will hike or ride. This one is a 3 mile loop that goes over some nice hills. There is an elevation feature that calculates how much climbing and descending each route does. http://mapmyride.com/

One gallon of gas

Burning 1 Gallon of Gasoline Produces 20 Pounds of CO2.
One of the major culprits in CO2 pollution is the automobile. You may be surprised to learn how much pollution is produced when you drive your car. For every gallon of gasoline you burn in your car, you remove 21 pounds of breathable Oxygen from the atmosphere, as well as adding 20 pounds of CO2, or Carbon Dioxide to the atmosphere. This might seem unlikely or improbable, but it is a fact.
A gallon of gasoline weighs 6.3 pounds and is comprised of 87% Carbon (C) and 13% Hydrogen (H). When you burn gasoline, a chemical reaction occurs, using Oxygen from the atmosphere. The Hydrogen and the Carbon separate, then recombine with Oxygen from the atmosphere to form H2O, or water, and CO2, or Carbon dioxide.
EPA calculation page
When you multiply that 21 pounds by the United States daily consumption of gasoline (378 million gallons), the result is 7.9 Billion pounds of Oxygen that we are removing from the atmosphere and converting into 7.5 Billion pounds of CO2 each and every day of the year.
Today, I rode my bicycle to the bank, the office supply store and Radio Shack. If I had driven a car, I would have used a gallon of gas. But I rode my bicycle, got some exercise and saw a humming bird fly right near me as I rode along the sidewalk.

Trip to Jimbo's Natural Food Store

Lisa and I rode to Jimbo's using the short cut we found a couple of days ago. The ride was around 7 miles round trip and was enjoyable. We rode on the sidewalk because in general, the bike lanes do not feel safe. I like separation of cars and bikes especially on a road where the speed limit is over 45mph. I shot footage with the Helmet Cam.

Jimbo's is a wonderful supermarket. The produce looks amazing and while some of it is from distant places, a lot of it is local. I bought some broccoli and some grass fed organic beef. I have been reading the "THE OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA" by Michael Pollan and have been thinking a lot more about what I eat and what the environmental consequences are of what I choose to eat. Corn fed beef has more fat as well as more e coli and is raised in giant polluting feed lots.

“What should you eat? Michael Pollan addresses that fundamental question with great wit and intelligence, looking at the social, ethical, and environmental impact of four different meals. Eating well, he finds, can be a pleasurable way to change the world.” —Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food

Why I don't own a car

There are several reasons I have given up car ownership, but the most important one is that cars are not good for the environment. Cars pollute, they are loud, they use a lot of land for their operation and storage, and they are expensive. Of course there are positive aspects to car ownership. We all know what these are. I want to explore and document alternatives to the car for short trips. I have a Helmet Cam and a bicycle trailer. The Helmet Cam is to document my rides around suburban southern California and the trailer is for hauling groceries and other goods. Additionally, oil is a non-renewable resource that has great value and it is wasteful to burn it in engines. Check out the concept of Peak Oil. Here is a paragraph from a report commissioned by the US government on Peak Oil:

The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation,the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking.
In 2003, the world consumed just under 80 million barrels per day (MM bpd) of oil. U.S. consumption was almost 20 MM bpd, two-thirds of which was in the transportation sector. The U.S. has a fleet of about 210 million automobiles and light trucks (vans, pick-ups, and SUVs).

So if two-thirds of US consumption is in the transportation sector, then it seems that the easiest target for reduction is that sector. While not easy, living without a car is not hard either. Just less convenient.

Picking up packing peanuts

I picked up some packing peanuts that I found on Freecycle. Peanuts cannot be recycled. I do a lot of shipping and use a fair amount of peanuts. I am always happy when I find something to reuse. It looks like a lot in the trailer, but it was easy to pull.

Looking for shortcuts

I walked about 3 miles today with my neighbor Lisa and her 2 dogs. We found a second path that leads to Rancho Bernardo (our suburban town to the north). I have been scouting a route to ride my bicycle to Jimbo's , an organic and natural foods grocery store in Rancho Bernardo. I estimate the ride will be about 7 miles round trip with a couple of big hills as well as some riding on heavy traffic streets. Driving a car to Jimbo's would be about 10 miles round trip including a few miles on the 15. The green circles on the map show the 2 shortcuts paths from Rancho Penasquitos to Rancho Bernardo and the red is the route we will ride to Jimbo's on Friday. Without the shorcut, the ride would be nearly double the distance. I will wear the Helmet Cam to collect video. I have been collecting video footage since July 2008 of my many bicycle rides. Look for postings soon.

17 Months Without a Car

I doubt I can recap 17 months of CAR Free living in San Diego in one blog post. But I will try to recap over the next couple of weeks my successes and lessons replacing a car with a bicycle.

There is no doubt that I am in better shape. My legs are stronger, my cardiovascular endurance has improved, and I feel a bit righteous about not polluting the air while running errands. I have used cars occasionally either renting from Enterprise or borrowing from family or friends.

Live without a car in San Diego - an experiment in low carbon output

I have sold my car, my 2003 Honda Element with AWD ABS and a CD MP3 stereo player, and seats that fold down, a car that is completely paid for. After getting the cash... and it was cash, I rode my bicycle to the bank. Riding back from the bank after depositing the money, I felt a slight sense of righteousness, of right, of green. Plus, the cheap gas station was selling regular gas for $4.59 a gallon. This is an experiment to see what the limitations are, and if the concerns of my friends and family are justified. Will life be "impossible" without a car? No, but getting to the beach will be harder.

My impressions of my first task completed riding a bike:

• I was struck by the decibel level of the 15 as I rode over it... quite loud.
• Actual navigation in the bike lanes was easy, but I did ride on the sidewalk a couple of times because the traffic lane seemed too close to the bike lane.
• I think that drivers are more distracted than a decade ago.
• I got sweaty but that felt good.
• The round trip took 40 minutes, not bad.

Next step, attach container to bike trailer, attach bike trailer to bike and go grocery shopping.