The Oil Drum

Austin has a reputation for tree hugging that goes back to the previous energy crisis 30 years ago; in fact, it's probably less 'green' these days, and more 'greenwashed corporate welfare'.

Around our house we frequently refer to Austin as "Austin dot Org", as it is the land of the trustafarian slacker and others who live the good life on other people's money. Whether it's UT, or the Texas Lege, or any of the myriad of non-profit lobbying organizations, it seems about half the economy here is based on such arrangements. So it's like a resort town in some ways -- an affluent, but transient, population. Lots of oversize gas guzzlers on the roads, and some of the worst drivers this side of India.

Of course there are some industries, Freescale, AMD, Dell, and a couple of other wafer plants that come to mind (maybe some hope for a solar PV industry here soon). To some extent Austin's technology industries are staffed with refugees from California. Up to about two years ago, a techie could sell his or her little 2 bedroom duplex in Silicon Valley and get a paid-up 3500 sq.ft mcmansion here.

One of the popular Austin (pro-pedestrian?) strategies, and I have heard this from lifelong residents, has been to delay the building / widening of streets. Don't build it ant they won't come, or something like that. ... In a recent news story, the Austin Lyric Opera had a bunch of angry patrons when they couldn't get into the parking lot. So, yeah, Austin is pedestrian-friendly, more or less. Or automobile-hostile.

In other news, the city has lavished millions of dollars on commercial real estate developers to build the Domain and Arbor Walk "Transit Oriented Development" projects near my own location. The entrances to these sites are infuriatingly hard to find off of MoPac, and we doubt that they are getting the same level of customer traffic as their predecessor shopping venues had. It remains to be seen whether future public-transit riders will be shopping at Nordsrom's and eating at California Pizza Kitchen, or whether the whole mess will simply go out of business. At least it'll be near the railroad tracks.

Then there's the Triangle project. Apparently it's a stab at emulating that nice pedestrian neighborhood in Addison, but it doesn't look nearly as attractive. For one thing, the buildings are right on an extremely busy street, and it's just a matter of time until some drunk drives through the brick veneer into someone's living room. The other objection I have is that the living units are designed around a parking garage instead of having individually secured parking areas for each unit. Even in a world without cars, it would be nice to have a garage to stash your crap in.

But as I mentioned above, Austin has a longstanding reputation as a center of treehuggery. The Yellow Bike Project has been around for more than 10 years. Since I live in the 'burbs I haven't actually seen any of their bikes, however. It has a greenbuilding program, incentives for efficiency / renewable energy, and "smart growth", whatever the heck that is.

And on the free-market side of things, we have:

• A company making lithium-based storage batteries,
• A dealer for those little super-golf-cart electric vehicles,
• And AMAT is going solar.

Best hopes for a solar Austin,
DIY

I live in Austin. Yes, the bike lane program has been a long-term project and not related to recent price spikes. I am riding my bike to work. We don't have showers. I keep hoping if enough people complain about the odor from my cubicle they'll do something. :-)

But frankly other than people complaining more than usual about gas prices I don't see any changes. I still see F-250s and Suburbans hauling large boats to the lake every weekend. Our major roads continue to be choked with traffic every weekend. Stores are packed. People are somehow managing. Maybe they're all close to bankruptcy or just filthy rich. I really don't know, nor do I care.

Nice concept Kris - was that Central Park?

Please send us links to your stuff in the future.

I've been doing this for a while on an informal basis when working at the library, shopping in town, and once when at a gathering of want-to-be Democratic representatives. In the latter case, only one of the three of them (the youngest) had even the slightest idea of what I was talking about. One of them responded "Pink Oil? Is that some special kind of oil?" When I explained what it was, he responded by saying we had plenty of oil stored in an underground government facility... Ugh. Needless to say, the young guy will get my vote.

I wonder how things would differ if you talked about "oil running out" as opposed to the term "peak oil" which is a bit technical (I bet 50% of the people asked imagined oil from mountains). It'd be fun to collect estimates of when oil is about to run out from people. Probably "in 50 years" would be the most common answer.

BTW bravo for going out and talking to people about this. I normally keep quiet about it with my friends. I figure it's a depressing topic and they won't be able to impact the situation, so why drag down the mood? But it's probably the wrong approach to take.

There's nothing really obvious going on here in N.E. Ohio, either. Having said that, we just had a "bike to work/school/wherever" week promoting cycling and the fact that with the road renovations in downtown Cleveland they are introducing bike lanes.

I do know that in order to get your monthly bus pass for the R.T.A. you have to do something like sell your first born. They are NOT to be had. People are adjusting, but I don't think (personally) that a true readjustment will happen until gas hits $5.00/gal.

Nothing substantial here in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada either. (The Hummer capital of the world). A consultant's report for the city of Hamilton, Ontario noted that $2.50 per litre for gasoline (about $10 per gallon, I would think) would be an approximate tipping point for real changes in behaviour. I think that would certainly be the case here, where a high school drop-out can probably earn close to $100,000 per year in the oil field (or tar field, I should say). Maybe the real tipping point will come when the price of natural gas goes through the roof and the tar sands will have to rethink its strategy...and when our minus 30 degree celsius winters will cause heating bills to soar stratospherically (probably 90% of our houses are heated with natural gas).

The conservative bent just doesn't bode well for making advances in conservation or public transportation.

Damn I hate it when a perfectly good word gets adopted to mean the very opposite of what was intended. Conservatives used to represent the values of hard work, thrift, living within your means, saving for a rainy day and little or no pretentiousness. Today it has come to represent just one thing: industrial consumerism ramped up to maximum speed to generate wealth for the few at the expense of the ecosphere through ruthless corporations.

Here in Vancouver WA, they were trying to get a new auto bridge installed across the Columbia River, and there were some attempts to get that changed to a rail commuter bridge, but the effort failed politically. (I was here during the '70s oil-price spike, and at that time traffic decreased considerably. This time I have seen no change, and the traffic jams between Vancouver WA and Portland OR are just as horrendous as ever.) Our local bus system is very limited, and would never handle any major growth in ridership. The Max light rail in Portland is usually standing room only during rush hour (personal experience), but has been that way for several years.

Hi Platy ~
The short answer is nope, not a whole lot going on here in the U.S. heartland. The vast majority haven't a clue, thinking we can "drill ourselves outta this hole." There is a lotta talk about wind power here in Oklahoma, and some wind farms are being built, but so far I see nothing that'll make a real difference.

I'm chastened, to say the least...

Why don't you guys set up Transition town groups where you are?

I think hitch hiking is likely to come back into vogue somewhat. The axe murderers and rapists must be salivating!

Seriously though, if it weren't for the security issues, I reckon that the entire public transit system could be operated with as little as a third to a quarter of the cars on the road today. It is simply a matter of hitching a ride with people going along the same route you need to go. You might have to change cars a few times for very complicated routes but most trips I think could be doen with two or three changes at the most.

I am sponsoring a trial program of this from my neighbourhood to our CBD but it will be limited to one fixed stop at either end. Our town is not that big so we can designate the Post Office as the pick up / drop off point and the rules are that passengers cannot ask to be dropped elsewhere and drivers should only pick up passengers if they are going past the designated drop off point.

If this trail works, I will encourage other neighbourhoods to do the same thing. The first stage is toestablish the hub and spoke routes and the next phase will be to establish cross suburb routes as well.

One othe biggest hurdles is legal. Drivers picking up cannot accept any payment as they then become taxis which are highly regulated.I'm not sure what is in it for drivers except the feel good factor and the chance for them to use the system themselves from time to time. Thats the theory anyway.

As a year round Eugene bike commuter, I have yet to notice much of an increase in bicyclists on my morning commute. I can count the "regulars" on one hand.

You should keep an eye on the Letters to the Editor in the Asheville Citizen Times. I've seen a couple come up that poke around the issue, but most of the letters dealing with oil and prices and such are just people bitching about gas station gouging, Big Oil conspiracies, breaking out the Vasoline, etc. The only glimmer of hope comes from the Mountain Xpress which serves basically only those people who visit downtown and getting paper out of the sidewalk-placed distribution boxes. There are at least some hopeful things which appear in there talking about reducing consumption of FF's, bikelanes, efficiency, and such. Just goes to show you, though, how very little distance you have to travel outside of downtown to return to the Republican-entrenched narrow-minded bible belt of the rest of the area (or at least how out of mainstream the Mountain Xpress is in comparison to more traditional MSM Asheville Citizen Times).

You failed to mention a TRULY GREAT IDEA that Asheville & Buncombe County have implemented: The Emergency Ride Home Program.

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