Let's face it: even if we developed high-speed rail networks everywhere, air travel is the only practical means to carry people and highly-valued cargo over medium to long distances and to remote locations.
One of the means airlines have been using to gain productivity is seat pitch. The more bodies on thinner, lighter furniture packed tighter together that they can squeeze into the maximum certifiable capacities of today' well-engineered aircraft the less BTUs-per-customer they must expend while achieving more per-passenger revenues.
Yet there are limits to this as anyone taller than 5'5" can testify. Today's seating arrangements make online work next to impossible in economy i.e. hoi-polloi class while making flying close to becoming unbearable.
(Replacing much-maligned but actually very nutritious and overall very good airline food with salt-and-fat-laden fare at most airports adds to the discomfort further because salt makes the joints ache)
Air travel though is about pushing the limits. An Italian company, Aviointeriors is promising to go beyond it when it comes to human endurance with its new 23-inch pitch (compared to typical 28-inch-31-inch pitch) "SkyRider" seat.
Not yet FAA-approved, the "SkyRider", is says Aviointeriors "an ultra-high density seat presently completely engineered and to be finally tested. The SkyRider has been designed and engineered to offer the possibility to even further reduce ticket prices while still maintaining sound profitability, which, even with a dual or three class seating arrangement, will allow maximum certified passenger capacity of the aircraft. With a much reduced seat pitch, the SkyRider preserves a comfortable position for the low fare passengers."
"Furthermore, in the SkyRider arrangement, a partial overlapping of the passengers seating between rows is allowed, thus further increasing the cabin density. The seat structure itself also provides space for personal baggage."
The seat row roughly resembles like those on amusement park rides without the over-the-shoulders harnesses, or the comfort. But don't give the airlines (or the FAA) any ideas. We've all been on flights that would merit such contraptions.
"The SkyRider is intended as a new basic class," says the firm. "The passenger's seating position is similar to that of a touring motor-scooter rider. This posture permits that the overall longitudinal space occupied by the seat."
If the Aviointeriors release had come out April 1 it would have been treated as a joke. Yet with domestic air travel--with the laudable exception of JetBlue--becoming a commodity where cheap-and-timing is what matters; if the FAA approves this cross between a seat and-straphanging don't be surprised if one carrier then another then another follow suit. Lowest common denominator. This is despite condemnation from reporters and users if the site Farecompare is any indication.
After all, the carriers know that if you have to fly, because your company tells you to or that you have to see your family or bury them you will have no choice, or so they think to endure the torture.
The only thing--barring Congress-driven mandates to the FAA--barring such a discomfort-inflicting device from being contemplated is for the individual business customers and for powerful consumers organizations like the AARP--to tell the airlines "don't even think about it or we'll switch/tell or advise our employees and members to switch to video/webconferencing, and Skype."
Given the airlines' better-but-still razor-thin profits, it doesn't take much of a shift in customers to change their ledger colors from black to red. For while the air travel experience has been deteriorating and prices climbing that for online virtual communications has been taking off and declining respectfully.
And one doesn't have to worry about strip-searches, what's in the other's person shoes, weather delays and lost bags, or tolerate the food on a Skype, web or videocall...the greenest "transportation" there is.
]]>Here are some excerpts from the piece:
"The sheer amount of packaging we deal with every day is staggering. According to the U.S.-based Dogwood Alliance, 25 per cent of the 2.4 million hectares of trees cut down every year in the southeastern United States ends up wrapping and boxing consumer goods."
"The computer age, which was supposed to diminish our need for paper, has only made things worse."
"The little plastic cartridges for inkjet printers, for instance, are notoriously over-packaged, contained in complicated boxes, attached to cardboard or plastic trays, wrapped in sticky plastic and accompanied by a series of instruction pamphlets and promotional paperwork."
The problem, says the editorial "is compounded if you happened to order that inkjet cartridge from an online retailer; chances are it was shipped in a cardboard box five or six times larger than the already voluminous box encasing the little plastic cartridge, and then further protected by crumpled paper, bubblewrap or styrofoam peanuts."
"Responsible, environmentally-conscious consumers can only do so much to keep all these boxes, containers, trays and whatnot from filling landfills."
For Metro Vancouver and environs like nearly every city is facing a waste management problem. There is rising in adjacent to an environmentally-sensitive area of Burns Bog a landfill that is beginning to look (and smell) like the first stages of New York City's infamous and now-closed "temporary" Fresh Kills dump on Staten Island. Barges, railcars and trucks leave this scenic part of "Beautiful British Columbia" to be disposed of elsewhere. Incineration is being debated as an option in a region where thanks to traffic from urban sprawl plus the pollutants from ships, trucks and trains along with that from factories air quality is becoming problematic.
The editorial quite correctly recommends "manufacturers and retailers to do their part and reduce the amount of packaging material they use. Most of it we can do without."
What is needed to make that happen is leadership from the largest manufacturers and retailers e.g. BestBuy, Dell, HP, Staples, WalMart, for this bulk and waste costs them money too. Perhaps a LEED for packaging?
The other option is VAT or GST for waste i.e. disposal fees added to the prices. The more it costs to clean, destroy, recycle or transport or to clean up from the processing i.e. air and water pollution, solid waste disposal, the higher the costs. This is fair; why should these expenses, including resulting increased healthcare costs from tending to those who become ill from the effects be foisted onto taxpayers?
Either method--while the former is more preferable the latter will likely be the case knowing human nature--the net results will be developing greener packaging or a switch to virtual alternatives: cloud computing, doing away with printing and online-only reading.
* Through routine measures, such as training employees to shut down equipment when they leave for the day, 52 percent of organizations actively working to reduce energy consumption have reduced IT energy costs by one percent or more
* If the average organization surveyed were to take full advantage of energy-saving measures, IT professionals estimate they could save $1.5 million annually
The message is getting out. CDW says 59 percent of organizations are training employees to shut down equipment when they leave their offices for extended periods, versus just 43 percent in 2008.
The 2009 report identifies where energy efficiency ranks in IT decision-making priorities, improvements in IT energy efficiency and remaining challenges, as well as uncovers strategies that successfully reduce IT energy bills.
More invaluable data and insights are on their way; CDW is readying to release The 2010 Energy Efficient IT Report that will be out in just a few weeks.
A once-great experience has been turned into, well, the most appropriately named commercial aircraft is the "Airbus", which speaks volumes for it. Namely cramming as many bodies to a hairline above the pain thresholds of most humans into a huge of hunk of material and transport them via their conveyance from Point A to Point B.
And that's without taking security into account--whose strict and now degrading and often tokenistic measures and procedures are lousy substitutes from lazy and incompetent intelligence. It is easier to force passengers to virtually strip than to gather, analyze, and most importantly act on potential threats. And yes I was there in New York City on 9-11-01 where I witnessed the attacks on the World Trade Center. And I have in my files a New York Times op-ed from July 10, 2001 written by Larry Johnson, a former State Department counterterrorism expert titled "The Declining Terrorist Threat."
On top of that, flying, like driving, wastes an awful lot of energy, eats up Earth-regenerating greenspace for massive runways and facilities and is not surprisingly a significant source of air pollution that leads to serious and deadly, and costly illnesses. Rail, buses (the highway variety), and web and videoconferencing requires fewer resources and spews less in return.
Even so, flying is a necessary evil. So I applaud efforts by the airlines, their suppliers and airports to take steps to minimize their substantial environmental footprints. I recently toured the Boeing plant in Everett, Washington that is rolling out the 787 Dreamliner with my father whom at the beginning of his career worked for Rolls Royce aero engines. He did his U.K. National Service i.e. conscription in the RAF as an aircraft mechanic, working on then-state-of-the-art turbojet engines built into Gloster Meteors and DeHavilland Vampires as well as their piston predecessors that had kept Britain free from Nazi rule in the bravely-piloted airframes of Spitfires, Hurricanes and Typhoons.
The Dreamliner is green technology in more ways than one. It will use 20 percent less fuel for comparable missions than presently similarly sized airplane. Advanced engine technologies -from General Electric and yes, my father's old company (I saw his smile and pride as he checked over a model of one of its turbofans)--will account for eight percent of the savings. Moreover, the Dreamliner's kit-built global manufacturing and assembly--in what is the world's largest building--is amazingly efficient compared to the old-fashioned piece-by-piece construction and is well worth the visit just for the facility.
Less impressed I am with voluntary carbon offset programs like the one between Air Canada and Zerofootprint. Both firms announced an expansion of it that includes a landfill gas recovery project in Ontario that takes the methane from rotting garbage and distributes it to a nearby plant that produces recycled content paper, along with a tire recycling program in Quebec.
While laudable the problem with such programs is that they "do good to atone for doing evil". Which in one cynical sense is better than just doing evil, but the programs they support should have been funded in the first place.
Instead Air Canada should be doing more to shrink the environmental footprint it and the other air carriers create. Re-equipping their fleets with new efficient airliners like the Dreamliner for medium-long haul flights is one step. Lobbying governments for proven-effective European-styled airport-high-speed-rail (HSR) ground spokes to minimize short-haul flights (which are the big polluters and runway eaters) is another.
Canada is pathetically behind even laggard U.S. on that count. Only one airport (YVR, in Vancouver, B.C.) has a rail rapid transit link. Yet there are airports in Edmonton, Alberta, Montreal, Quebec and Toronto, Ontario that lie in a jet-fuel-whiffing range of existing HSR-candidate railroad tracks that have had intercity rail (Edmonton) or presently have higher-speed passenger train services (Montreal and Toronto, including commuter rail). There is a rail spur three rapid transit stops from the YVR terminal building that can bring travelers directly to/from the fast-growing Fraser Valley communities.
(Canada's air carriers should also tell the federal government to dump the long-proposed Pickering airport east of Toronto, a project so controversial in its environmental impacts and long out-of-date that not even Mark Holland, the Member of Parliament representing the area wants it.)
Still another step is to recycle the garbage used by passengers. The airlines are saving fuel and reducing emissions by getting rid of onboard food services. The offset is the take-on food trash. How about joint programs with the airport authorities and the concessions to use lightweight recyclable/reusable cutlery and packaging? There's a win-win (rail operators e.g. Amtrak in the U.S. and VIA in Canada should do likewise).
Here's another source of emissions that the airport authorities can mandate: low-emission/zero-emission airporter shuttle vans such as by buying and leasing them to operators to get rid of the smelly fuel-belching clunkers that prowl the terminals.
The airlines could also take a hint from JetBlue and go virtual i.e. home-based agents with their contact centers. Why waste money and energy and crap up the air in the process by providing facilities and requiring staff to commute to them?
In this fashion travel is only kept to when it is truly needed. Which is really the way to go green.
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Shipping goods on trains in whole or in part of intermodal (ship/truck-rail) movements uses less energy and land, emits fewer pollutants at greater labor productivity than all-truck for medium to high volumes of freight over likewise distance: short distance heavy movements, such as aggregates are also more efficiently carried on trains. On a per-ton basis, trucking uses on average four times the energy to transport freight versus rail, says the report. That means rail jobs are green jobs.
Moreover, encouraging freight rail through investment in it will also enable green passenger rail. Most of Amtrak's routes and a good chunk of U.S. commuter rail operations are on tracks that are owned by freight railroads. Therefore more freight rail and green jobs means more passenger rail, thereby generating even more green employment.
The BlueGreen Alliance and the Economic Policy Institute's study according to their release says "that the expansion of freight rail in the U.S. can create approximately 7,800 green jobs for every $1 billion of capital invested. If this is expanded to include re-spending by freight rail and supporting industry employees, between 12,300 and 26,600 American jobs would be created or sustained per $1 billion invested."
"Over the past two centuries, rail has helped the United States become the world's leading economic power," said David Foster, Executive Director of the BlueGreen Alliance. "As we enter the new clean energy economy, now is not the time to abandon such a profitable, clean and promising industry. It's a winning situation for everyone - thousands of green jobs are created and we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil."
"This report affirms the tremendous public benefits that are generated both by freight rail's inherent fuel efficiency and the industry's commitment to reinvesting in the nation's rail network," said Edward R. Hamberger, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Association of American Railroads.
Freight rail jobs are green jobs, states the report, "which are crucial to reducing carbon and saving energy in the transportation sector. Over the past three decades, the industry has nearly doubled the amount of goods it has shipped without increasing fuel consumption, creating a fraction of the pollution of other modes of transportation. It cites for example, TTX Company, which is profiled in the report, has found ways to prevent more than 2.5 billion empty miles per year, and save more than 167 million gallons of fuel annually."
To make an expanded freight rail system happens the report recommends that governments consider investment incentives, such as rail capital and shortline tax credits and public-private partnerships (P3s) between freight railroads and passenger rail with government paying only for public benefits, and railroads paying for the business benefits they gain from improvements to the rail network.
(A P3 was used to finance Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada's very successfully Canada Line rapid transit, which opened last year from Vancouver International Airport a.k.a. YVR and Richmond into downtown Vancouver: in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics)
"Freight rail represents a significant opportunity to create good, green jobs while making our transportation system more efficient and sustainable and also helping passenger rail," said Carl Pope, Executive Chairman of the Sierra Club. "This report shows that expanding freight rail will meet our goals of creating good jobs while helping to reduce our dependence on oil."
What is also needed are incentives to encourage rail electrification, which is virtually nonexistent for freight and only exists in the Northeast with a couple of exceptions in the Chicago area and that is only for passenger. Electric traction has the enormous benefit of being able to return much of the power used through regenerative braking i.e. turning the electric motors under nearly every locomotive into generators as well as relying on cleaner energy sources such as hydro and modern natural-gas fire generating plants.
But hey you have to start slow before you can move fast. If lawmakers adopt the recommendations in this report to expand freight rail first then we can talk about electrification later.
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And in anticipation of the latter, on British Airways (BA), Tandberg has wisely capitalized the opportunity to market its videoconferencing and telepresence solutions by offering TANDBERG FlyFree, a program that gives companies an easy and risk-free way of experiencing the power of high-definition video conferencing and telepresence.
By adopting Tandberg's technology, it says employees "can still make critical meetings, avoid unnecessary business travel and benefit from a better work-life balance by working around personal schedules. In turn, the technology can deliver serious business advantages and consistent return on investment, regardless of the BA strikes, as well as help companies make great CO2, time and cost savings."
"Businesses cannot afford to be slowed down by the impact of international travel disruption, especially at this time when continuity is so critical to success," says Simon Egan, Vice President, Western Europe & Sub-Saharan Africa, Tandberg. "By accepting our FlyFree offer, businesses can still make important face-to-face meetings while maintaining productivity among employees. Our standards based solutions enable our customers to communicate with their partners, clients and suppliers so its business as usual even when working conditions are disrupted."
Tandberg is onto something here. It should have similar offers with the green pitches launched in key seasons when North American air travel reliability goes into the toilet, like July-August and December-February and in specific markets like Atlanta, Chicago and New York/New Jersey. It should also buy billboard and monitor space in waiting lounges at LAX, Logan, Kennedy, O'Hare and in Canada, Pearson, to name a few, with images of relaxed business people in a meeting room or better yet on a home office desktop conference application with the catchline: 'Wouldn't You Rather Be Here?" The firm should also buy outside advertising on the Harbor Freeway, I-93, the Van Wyck, I-94 and the 401 respectively with the same message.
If more people went 'fly free' we could also breathe a little easier, and in more ways than one.
A new report by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2010 covered on TMCnet illustrates why staying or locating in traditional suburban sprawl office buildings is a bad financial idea. It paints a bleak outlook for investors, owners, and landlords for office space.
"[D]on't expect any spikes in this recovery given the dearth of employment generators and rising vacancies. New demand could stall well into 2011 or even 2012. Employers continue to seek outsourcing and productivity gains, especially in the financial industry.
"Big companies pursue various options to reduce costs, use space more efficiently, and increase "people-per-seat metrics. They count on young employees to adapt to paperless environments as well as more work-at-home and open space hoteling strategies." These secular trends could "mitigate any office rebound."
Suburban office markets are in a much worse position than those in downtowns and accessible on transit. The central cities have and will outperform suburban sprawl, which it has done since 2007, as an investment prospects, with vacancy rates tracking approximately five percent less downtown than on the fringes.
"Avoid suburban markets," recommends the report. "Urban and infill areas should benefit from demographics changes and economic shifts working against many suburbs. The "move back in" by echo boomers and empty nester baby boomers continues, and office tenants migrate toward suburban nodes with more urban amenities. Rising car-related costs (gas, insurance, user fees, loans) and increased congestion don't help the suburban office story, either. In particular, obsolescence threatens older office parks."
Yes, there are deals to be had, and landlords are willing to bend over backwards. But Diety forbid you have to pull up stakes--a key consideration because how quickly things change--the chances of finding someone to take over your lease or if you decide to own a building, you'll have your finances dragged into the mud by this white elephant.
Here's another green-in-many-ways-tip: if you have to have your staff travel, for short trips put them on buses and trains instead having them fly (or drive) to ensure that they can work productively enroute.
A new report from DePaul University also reported on TMCnet found that the ability and ease of bus and train customers to use portable electronic devices as compared to those who fly is prompting their greater use. So much so that it is offsetting the longer travel times resulting it says growing market share for bus and rail.
The study: Is Portable Technology Changing How Americans Travel? A Survey of the Use of Electronic Devises on Intercity Buses, Train, and Planes reported in the transit trade magazine Metro, says curbside bus and high-speed Boston-New York-Washington, D.C. Amtrak Acela Express trains travelers are the heaviest users of portable technology. At randomly selected points during trips, it said that 39.6 percent of passengers on curbside buses are using some form of portable device. This is two percentage points more than on conventional Amtrak trains and more than twice that on commercial flights and traditional Greyhound buses.
In contrast to rail and bus users, on the average commercial flight, only 17.6 percent of passengers are using technology at any given point. The report points to the requirements that devices must be deactivated after leaving the gate and remain off for an extended period. Also the aircraft design makes power outlets and centralized computer-equipped work stations impractical to install. While airlines make special allowances for passengers to travel with laptop and notebook computers but when flights are full, keeping such equipment at seats can be awkward. Even the seemingly simple act of retrieving a laptop from an overhead compartment can be difficult, as many are filled to capacity.
"Due to gradual reductions in seat pitch, escalating load factors, and the "hassle factor" of airport security in the post-9/11 environment (requiring travelers to complete a series of tasks before boarding the plane and taking their seat), many travelers opt to bring only the smallest devices, such as cell phones and iPods, with them," says the report.
The trends identified by the DePaul report will accelerate. It came out just before the attempting bombing of Flight 253 and the resulting added security measures that has added to the total air travel time, and the resulting hassle. Both Amtrak and Greyhound are accelerating their Wi-Fi deployments notes the report. Wi-Fi provisioning came up at a meeting last month in Vancouver, B.C. Canada on improving cross-border intercity rail. Washington, Oregon, the province of British Columbia and Amtrak have been working together to drive more customers into the spiffy Amtrak Cascades Talgo trains that operate between Eugene, Oregon and the Canadian city, which is home of the 2010 Winter Olympics, by way of Portland and Seattle.
If one does need to fly, and one's destination is the Seattle area, Sound Transit has just opened its LINK LRT to SeaTac airport. It offers a 36-minute ride to the downtown. Flying to Seattle, then riding LINK and taking Amtrak can be a less expensive as well as a scenic, if longer option to reaching Vancouver, B.C.
In it he writes: "Europeans are beginning to find that installing windmills to generate electricity has not led to any significant reduction in CO2 emissions--despite all the early hopes and promises. Because wind power blows only fitfully, backup conventional generators are needed, at full capital costs, for intermittent use."
"Denmark's costs are 15 cents per kilowatt hour while Ontario's cost is six cents. In the U.S., wind-powered generation is subsidized to the tune of $23.34/kwh; compare this to gas at 25 cents, coal at 44 cents, hydro at 67 cents and nuclear at $1.59. The wind itself costs nothing; harnessing it obviously is not free."
The study Dr. Strang appears to be referring to is titled "Wind Energy The Case For Denmark" published in September 2009 by the Center for Politske Studier. Among the findings are:
--"The wind power that is exported from Denmark saves neither fossil fuel consumption nor CO2 emissions in Denmark, where it is all paid for. By necessity, wind power exported to Norway and Sweden supplants largely carbon neutral electricity in the Nordic countries. No coal is used nor are there power-related CO2 emissions in Sweden and Norway."
--"Notwithstanding its many disadvantages wind power's one striking advantage is that, like nuclear, its marginal costs of operation are very small once the capital has been paid. However, unlike nuclear, many ten to fifteen year-old turbines are past their useful life. By contrast, most conventional rotating power plant can enjoy a working life of 40 to 60 years, as evidenced by most power plants in Europe today. This puts into question the strategic, economic and environmental benefits of a power plant that may have to be scrapped, replaced and resubsidized every ten to fifteen years."
Hmmm...do we have another case of well-intentioned greenwashing (with taxpayers' green) a la ethanol on our hands where the net benefits do not exceed the total costs? Wind energy, like solar, cannot effectively be used to shave the most critical need--namely coping with peak-power demands unless you want to invest huge sums in electricity storage schemes like batteries, capacitors, and flywheels; hydro has long used pumped storage that sucks up a lot of land.
Or is this an example where, like solar, wind can be harnessed only in rare and site specific cases in close implementation with other tools such as LEED-designed buildings as in the case of Other World Computing's corporate HQ in Illinois, that, as reported on TMCnet.com has become first U.S. technology manufacturer/distributor to become 100 percent on-site wind powered. OWC also installed the wind power plant and made other energy-saving and environmental-footprint-reducing investments like heat pumps and water conservation at the facility without subsidies.
