This is a guest post from Will Stewart. Will is a systems engineer in the DC area and previously has written several guest posts on The Oil Drum, including a series on Passive Solar Design.

As oil production falls and volatile oil prices in concert with a struggling economy induce a pattern of demand suppression/destruction, mobility choices will narrow and Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) will decline. What should governments at all levels be proactively preparing for? What should individuals and their families be preparing for in advance? The choices are broad: at a high level, land use planners could refine cities into a series of compact, carfree urban districts interconnected with mass transit. For the existing built-out suburban and exurban communities, however, such choices are limited. Aside from telecommuting, transportation choices will increasingly include biking, carpooling/vanpooling, bus rapid transit, and other efficient means of transportation. Travel between cities and countries will also undergo a transformation, with air travel becoming less and less affordable.

This series will cover current and projected land-based vehicle energy efficiency and a high level overview of the factors that determine it, such as aerodynamic drag, weight, efficiency of motive force (e.g., engine, motor), rolling resistance, driver behavior, drivetrain losses, parasitic losses, environmental factors, Passenger Miles Traveled (PMT), etc. In this first article of the series, we will focus on energy losses associated with aerodynamic drag losses, or more succinctly, “drag”.

Tri Sled Avatar, a velomobile	Bus rapid transit in Cleveland

A friend of mine sent in a link to this new electric bike concept from New Zealand - the YikeBike. Its a little expensive at the moment (though not compared to a high-end road bike or mountain bike I guess).

Road.cc has a review - Yike bike - is the future a folding, electric, penny farthing?.

Let's play a word association game: electric bike, penny farthing, folder, carbon fibre, Porsche… hard to build a mental image from that lot, but one day… that list will immediately make you think “Yike Bike”. Maybe.

What we have here is a folding electric bike that weighs less than 10Kg with a range of about 10Km and that is as easy to charge as a laptop and not that much bigger when folded, which the team behind it hope will one day be the transport of choice of the style-conscious buisnessman or urban commuter for the short hops from penthouse apartment to downtown office. And as for the “Yike” – well, that's what you say the first time your ride it, or at least the cleaned-up version.

This is a guest post from Robin Lovelace (lovelacerobin@yahoo.com), a graduate student at the University of York, UK. As part of his Environmental Science and Management MSc Robin was asked to pick a policy area and discuss how it could adapt to climate change. Due in part to the Oil Drum, he decided to include peak oil in the discussion, with a reluctant ‘OK’ from Professor Mike Ashmore. Robin is a qualified bicycle mechanic, writing part-time for Interclimate, starting an interdisciplinary PhD in energy research next year and wants to save the world.

This is a guest post from Community Action for Sustainable Transport Inc

Reducing the fuel excise and Federal investment in roads will not make travel affordable.

This is the message coming from a coalition of more than 20 transport and environmental groups who have signed off on an open letter to PM Kevin Rudd (see below), urging the Federal government to invest heavily in public transport to reduce the impacts of rising petrol prices.

“The Federal government’s urban transport priority must be to create a public transport system that takes people where they need to go, when they need to be there. More than anything else we need better alternatives to the car,” said Tristan Peach, spokesperson for Community Action for Sustainable Transport QLD (CAST).