I had a chance to drive one of those little Smartcars the other day. This is the car that seats two and is just over eight feet long, about a third of the size of most cars and small enough to park perpendicular to the curb.

The biggest surprise I found was that driving it didn’t feel any different than driving any other car. The interior is totally normal and comfortable. Though there’s essentially no hood in the front and no trunk in the back, it’s not easy to tell that when sitting in the driver’s seat and looking out the windows. I found it strange to know that I was in a tiny car, but not feel like I was in a tiny car.

It was zippy enough — I tried revving it up and it seemed to have plenty of power. It’s all about proportion, I think. The engine is three cylinders, 1.0 litres and 71 horsepower. I’m not a “car guy” but I know that’s small (when I was a teenager I had a four-speed 1.0 litre hatchback that could barely get up a hill, but that’s another story). But given the low overall weight (I’m assuming) it felt just fine. I didn’t get to take it on the freeway, though.

I expected such a tiny car to have remarkable fuel efficiency, but it really doesn’t. The Smartcar gets 33 mpg city and 41 mpg highway (I sure sound like a “car guy” here). It’s not a hybrid, and its fuel efficiency is a lot lower than the full-size hybrids offered by Toyota and Honda (I used to read the “autos” section of the newspaper, so I can pull off the “car guy lingo” here). Safety is achieved through a stiff structure that encloses the passenger area, sort of like being in the middle of a strong rounded cage (and I just lost the “car guy” lingo completely on that one).

So with good — but not exceptional — mileage, the real appeal of the Smartcar is parking. These things can be parked pretty much anywhere, encroaching on spots previously only available to motorcycles.

I’m sure there are those who would welcome to the idea of fitting more cars into the existing available space. Perhaps with some foresight, though, smaller cars could allow existing space to be reclaimed for other uses; planting new trees, building parks and bike lanes, widening sidewalks and providing more pedestrian and transit options. It could happen, right?

Next step: small cars that are also highly fuel efficient. Let’s get the size down and get the energy usage down along with it!


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“To love one”™s city and have a part in its advancement and improvement is the highest privilege and duty of a citizen.” -Daniel Burnham

And who was Daniel Burnham? Some snippets from Wikipedia:

Daniel Hudson Burnham, FAIA (September 4, 1846 ““ June 1, 1912) was an American architect and urban planner. He was the Director of Works for the World”™s Columbian Exposition and designed several famous buildings, including the Flatiron Building in New York City and Union Station in Washington D.C.

Beginning in 1906 and published in 1909, Burnham and assistant Edward H. Bennett prepared The Plan of Chicago, which laid out plans for the future of the city. It was the first comprehensive plan for the controlled growth of an American city; an outgrowth of the City Beautiful movement. The plan included ambitious proposals for the lakefront and river and declared that every citizen should be within walking distance of a park. Sponsored by the Commercial Club of Chicago, Burnham donated his services in hopes of furthering his own cause.

Burnham helped shape cities such as Cleveland (the Group Plan), San Francisco, Washington, DC (the McMillan Plan), and Manila and Baguio in the Philippines”¦

Almost as a tribute to his urban planning ethos, Burnham”™s final resting spot is given special attention, being located on the only island in the park-like Graceland Cemetery, situated in Chicago”™s Uptown neighborhood. Burnham”™s personal and professional papers are held in the Ryerson and Burnham Archives at the Art Institute of Chicago. Because he was the planner and architect of Baguio City in the Philippines, the city”™s Burnham Park was named after him. In his honor, the American Planning Association named a major annual prize the Daniel Burnham Award for a Comprehensive Plan.


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From the BBC: The Spanish government plans to plant 45 million new trees — roughly tree one per resident of the country — to prevent “desertification” and to help fight global warming.


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Sunday Streets takes place again this weekend in San Francisco, Sunday September 14th from 9am to 1pm.

The Embarcadero will be closed to cars from Bayview to the Ferry Building and a connecting section of Washington Street will be closed to cars from the Embarcadero to Chinatown, to facilitate walking biking, exercise and related activities — including walking tours, yoga and dance classes — along the route.

From the Sunday Streets site:

Thousands of people came out on Sunday, August 31 and enjoyed the first-ever Sunday Streets event. A four and half mile route stretching from Bayview to Chinatown along the Embarcadero was closed to traffic to allow for biking, walking, jogging and physical activity of all kinds. Activities were offered all along the route, and people of all ages took part.

Come out and join us for the second Sunday Streets on Sunday, September 14. It’s FREE and open to all. Travel the route and explore free activities along the way. Explore new neighborhoods. Exercise and have fun. Try your hand at yoga or dance. Rent a bike or roller skates. Bring your kids for special children’s activities. Ride MUNI free.

Heck yeahs!

Sunday Streets


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Okay so the last post got me thinking about dual-flush toilets. I’ve never seen one, though it was readily apparent to me that they would be toilets that flush different amounts of water for liquid or solid waste (“number one” or “number two” as they say, right?).

A couple clicks later on the InterWebs and I landed at the EcoTransitions site. They sell Caroma dual-flush toilets that use 0.8 gallons for liquid waste and the standard “low flush” 1.6 gallons for solid waste.

A really great — and really obvious — idea! I’m going to look into purchasing one to replace the hideous blue toilet my my bathroom (seriously, a blue toilet… what were they thinking?) at some point. Right now we tend to leave the liquid waste (I love that that’s the term they use) sitting through the night to save water anyway, but there’s just no way around the idea that doing so seems kind of gross.

I always wonder how far good ideas can be pushed. Do we really need to flush 0.8 gallons for pee? I bet that number could be tuned way down. I mean, a gallon or gallon and a half is a lot of water to toss out any time nature calls.

I’ve noticed a urinal at UCSF that is made by “Falcon Waterfree Technologies” — it doesn’t have any incoming water and instead uses a drain at the bottom (very clever!) combined with some kind of deodorizing bar. Now we’re talking. I’m amused to report that their website has a program called “Pee Green” promoting retrofitting existing urinal installations with their models.

From LEED to pee… yes I said pee again… how fun is this?

EcoTransitions
Caroma
Falcon Waterfree Technologies


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Looking through this weekend’s home tours on the Dwell website, one in particular caught my eye: Arterra.

This is a 269-unit condo tower recently completed in the Mission Bay area, which not only looks interesting and innovative on the outside — I like the blue and orange colors and the offset window depths — but boasts that it’s San Francisco’s first LEED-certified residential high-rise (LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a construction rating system developed by the US Green Building Council).

From Dwell’s site:

The building features two green roofs, low-VOC materials, Energy Star appliances and dual-flush toilets. The façade is made from Trespa, an environmentally friendly product developed from end-of-lifecycle recycled materials.

John King, the Chronicle’s architecture columnist (how great is it that San Francisco’s newspaper still has an architecture column!?) wrote about Arterra in August, and found the design to be a visual standout in an area that plays host to many generic designs.


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High speed rail may be coming to the California. Voters will decide whether to fund $9.95 billion worth of bonds for construction of the high speed rail network between San Francisco and Los Angeles, with eventual service to San Diego and Sacramento.

The California High Speed Rail Authority says the trip between San Francisco and Los Angeles will take about two and a half hours and will cost about $55. That sounds really good, right?

I’m all for high speed rail linking major centers in the state, as long as the system will actually garner enough ridership to be worthwhile and will be designed well. I realize public transit systems never make money, but I think we need to be sure not to build a system that will have few riders and will up losing massive amounts of money just to operate regular service.

I haven’t pored over the plans or predictions yet, so I’ll be interested to see what kind of ridership is projected and whether it’s conceivable that people are going to give up an hour and a half flight for a two and a half hour train trip. I know I would (I mean, if I had to go to SoCal), since the time spent at the airport getting through security and waiting for the plane generally adds a couple hours to a trip anyway. Plus trains have views and you can walk around and socialize. And purchase microwaved veggie-dogs (right?).

Here in San Francisco we’re saddled with a massively expensive and poorly conceived regional transit system, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). When it was designed in the 70s, all the technology was new and untested, and everything was custom designed and built — it’s all proprietary, meaning BART can’t use any off-the-shelf rail gear, making everything they do significantly more expensive than it should be. And then there’s the issue of how effective (ineffective) the BART routes are at actually attracting riders. It’s just a mess and now that it’s here there’s no way to get rid of it.

So yes, high speed rail sounds like a great plan in the abstract. But the devil is in the details, and if we get a system of unproven proprietary rail technology, we could end up with a “BART blunder” on a massive scale. At 9.95 billion, this will be the largest public works project in California history.

Love the idea, nervous about the details…


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