Mining Environmental and Social Responsibility
Mining is one of the oldest industries there is and for good reason: the resources these firms extract are essential for practically every good and service we enjoy, directly and indirectly. There will continue to be mines for most elements as there is and will be for some time more demand for the products and services that the materials go into than what can be recycled and conserved. Even recycled steel melted in electric furnaces often needs bars of pig iron, created in coke (converted from coal)-fired blast furnaces.
While mining, like many industries, do pollute through both generating emissions and scouring and despoiling the earth, there is nothing intrinsically totally ‘black’ about it; holes can be filled or lessened and tailing ponds can be minimized and cleaned up. Greener processes can be brought in to lessen the environmental impacts.
Alas here is the rub. Too many mining companies don’t want to pay for the mess they make, witness the blowing up of West Virginia mountaintops, the Alberta oil sands ponds, citing ‘costs’ that they instead download to the rest of us to subsidize. Good business sense, perhaps, nonsense for society as a whole.
Yet as bad as mining practices may be in North America they are sylvan compared to those in developing countries. There, mining firms basically have carte blanche and too many of them take advantage nonexistent or ignored environmental and labor laws amidst massive corruption and grinding poverty in which individuals are willing to work in Hades just to live an abbreviated, painful existence. Much like they behaved up until the middle of the last century in the more developed nations, as any tour of a mining museum or a conversation with an elderly ex-miner or a read of George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier will tell you.
To prod the mining companies overseas there is now proposed legislation, Bill C-300, a private member’s bill introduced in the Canadian House of Commons by John McKay, a Liberal Member of Parliament who I met a few weeks ago at an Olympic party in a Vancouver suburb. As Canada fought then won what turned out to be an exciting nail-biter of a game against Slovakia, so it could earn the right to face the U.S. for the gold medal, Mr. McKay and I talked about making mining firms responsible for extracting resources like gold.
McKay’s bill is aimed at promoting responsible environmental practices and international human rights standards on the part of Canadian mining, oil and gas corporations in developing countries. Its purpose is to “ensure that corporations engaged on mining, oil or gas activities and receiving support from the Government of Canada act in a manner consistent with international environmental best practices and with Canada’s commitments to international human rights standards. The Act gives the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of International Trade the responsibility of holding corporations accountable for their practices by submitting annual reports to the House of Commons and the Senate for review.”
The bill has been analyzed by Prof. Richard Janda at the McGill University Faculty of Law. Here is his take on one of the key contentious issues and that is whether the legislation–which Mr. McKay told me has not to no surprise been exactly applauded by the mining industry–will actually hurt mining businesses:
“There is no evidence that Bill C-300 will unfairly disadvantage Canadian extractive companies and in fact, there is strong reason to believe that the opposite is true. It is more likely to create a regulatory environment that would make Canada and Canadian extractive sector companies world leaders in the area of CSR [Corporate Social Responsibility], resulting in a competitive advantage for those Canadian companies when operating internationally. Research has shown that companies that are socially responsible–both due to mandatory measures and through complementary voluntary action– gain certain advantages over competitors that do not have in place CSR policies and programs.
“Some of the areas of competitive advantage arising from CSR include:
* Cost savings, improved productivity and operational efficiencies
* Improved risk management
* Positive effects on employee recruitment, retention, and motivation
* Attracting customers and investors
* Improved relations with the local community; and
* Better access to lenders and insurers.
Bill C-300 survived the Harper Conservative government’s decision to prorogue i.e. close and then to reopen Parliament under House rules, but whether it goes anywhere remains to be seen. Few private members’ bills ever get passed into law, and the Harper regime whose political core lies in Alberta, haven’t been cheering it on. The legislation is now in the hands of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development for further study.
Even if Bill C-300 dies that such legislation has been introduced and has been the subject of serious discussion and analysis, is a necessary first step–for other bills will follow until one gets passed–in what will be a long road to getting the mining industry to clean up its act, one that will pay off more even to these businesses than they will ‘lose’.
Tags: corporate social responsibility, environment, green practices, legislation
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Here’s How to Help Keep British Columbia (Properly) Green After The Winter Olympics
Amidst climate change that has led to an unusually warm winter even by West Coast standards that made mush out of Cypress, the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games has seen some green achievements, some of which are staying and others which are leaving, but can stay if only businesses, governments and individuals can take action.
* One of the most significant is the expansion of the TransLink transit system both permanent and temporary to accommodate massive numbers of people, and they did. During the first week of the Olympics more people than ever before – way more – more than 1.6 million people per day rode TransLink’s network of diesel and electric trolley buses, urban rapid transit and commuter trains, and ferries.
Trust me: they were packed. Even from the car-oriented suburbs like where we live there were standees all the way in and out, nearly 24 hours a day.
“Week one ridership has been staggering and our system has been equal to the task,” says TransLink CEO Ian Jarvis. “This is a testament to a solid plan that built in the flexibility to respond and the great execution of our planners, transit operators, mechanics, customer service personnel and transit hosts.”
* Companies heeded the call to working from home including firms such as CounterPath, which makes softphones and Telus, a leading carrier which markets and supplies work-at-home solutions
The hope is that the high transit and telework use continues with the ending of the Olympics. To keep that up needs prodding to and by governments in the form of finding ways to keep some of the Olympics transit services going, like Bombardier’s Olympic Line streetcar that will end March 21, and in developing incentives to induce firms to create permanent telework programs.
(If any of you were at the Olympics and rode the streetcar I invite you to contact Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson to him know, so he can let others i.e. Translink, the province know how much you want to have the ‘tram’ to stay in Vancouver.)
At the same time viewers have been bombarded, quite naturally with tourism ads promoting British Columbia, showing its vistas plus its cities. For me as a British Columbian they are moving for the province has always been my home ever since I first moved out here in 1980 as a university student.
Yet one of the most beautiful parts of British Columbia–the Jordan River area west of Victoria, which is the closest spot to the capital where one can truly see, hear and feel the wildness of the inappropriately named Pacific Ocean– is threatened with ugly, environment-killing sprawl. It will happen unless cash-paying visitors let the province i.e. Premier Gordon Campbell know in bottom-line terms how unhappy they will be if his government allows this development to go ahead. There are efforts now to try and save them via the Dogwood Initiative and The Land Conservancy, whose sites explain the issue but time is running out. Action is needed.
Yes, going and staying green requires work and involvement like the call to action for the above issues. I’m active in front of and behind the scenes. Yet without such action we will most certainly lose the quality of life we have. And if there is success the payoff is enabling a sustainable environment for all of us.
Tags: British Columbia, climate change, environment, sprawl, telework, transit
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Full Cost Analysis Needed on Green Power
Full-cost analysis (FCA) examines both complete direct i.e. capital and operating costs and indirect i.e. environmental, health and social costs of private and public investments.
FCA, many of whose methodologies are still being refined, is a much needed tool to enable companies and policymakers to accurately determine the true ROI of projects. It will hopefully end the free ride ‘enjoyed’ especially by highways, airports and sprawl. And it should be used to carefully evaluate the power generation choices available.
It would be instructive to see the pricing at the end of the day between coal and where and how the coal is produced, tar sands and natural gas for electrical power. The environmental costs of blowing up mountains, creating huge tailing ponds and extraction and refining costs, and transportation and distribution expenses and their impacts i.e. trains, trucks, pipelines need to be put into the equations.
The same goes between fossil fuels, hydroelectricity and nuclear, all of which have their tradeoffs. For example, what are the true disposal costs of fly ash versus that of nuclear waste, per unit generated? FCA would allow power buyers to make effective decisions on where they get the bulk of their electricity.
There are also many nagging questions over green power especially as to whether it is truly environmentally sound. For example, small scale hydroelectric projects have been touted as alternatives to large ones.
Yet is this actually the case when FCA methodologies are applied, such as on construction of the dams and building new transmission lines? It is one thing to reuse an existing dam or dammed river near in-place distribution systems, such as on the Moira River in Belleville, Ontario; it is another to ‘greenfield’ a run-of-river plant in coastal British Columbia.
The same goes for wind and solar power. Do they cost-effectively produce the power for the investment and operating i.e. maintenance expenses required, for the land consumed?
Questions have been raised about ethanol thanks to FCA, and it is falling out of fashion as a result what with the trucks and trains to haul and the plants to process the material. It follows wood fuel that was also touted as an alternative energy source.
I got a perspective of wood fuel some 20 years ago when I worked as a reporter in a small British Columbia town. A power plant at the local sawmill that burned waste fuel often belched out soot. The particulate matter and other emissions from wood stoves and furnaces created harmful smog in local valleys in winter.
FCA also needs to be applied to smart grid strategies. I’ve heard the argument that smart grid investments makes sense where electricity costs are high i.e. Ontario and grid partners i.e. in Ohio are unstable as witnessed by the 2003 blackout, but the ROI may not be there in British Columbia or Manitoba where the rates are low and the infrastructure is stable.
FCA should also be applied when comparing how that energy is used i.e. power plants to create electricity for use in rail and urban transit or in internal combustion engines. That will help policymaker decide more accurately whether to go with clean diesel, CNG/LNG, hybrid, hydrogen and electrification.
Finally FCA should be applied to conservation versus added building or buying additional generation capacity. If conservation via changes in methods and processes, or investments in more efficient technologies proves to be comparatively cheaper then more people, and commercial and institutions will conserve. And that’s win-win all around.
Tags: coal, conservation, electric power, full-cost analysis smart grids
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The Greenest (and One of the Last?) Winter Olympics Ever
There is a crack going around about the 2010 Vancouver Olympics that it is “the greenest Winter Olympics ever”.
The joke refers to the efforts to promote green tech and transportation at the event that has been more than offset by man-made global warming and pollution that has led to record-high temperatures and rain. This has forced organizers to ship in snow (thereby releasing more harmful emissions) to Cypress Mountain that overlooks Vancouver; Whistler, some 2 hours north where most of the outdoor venues are is mild but still in good shape.
My wife and I live in the Metro Vancouver. We park-and-rode into the downtown yesterday to get a feel of the crowds, the activities and the excitement just before the Opening Ceremonies on Friday. One of our stops was at the big downtown Hudson’s Bay department store that had a half a floor dedicated to Olympics merchandise; ‘The Bay’ is a sponsor. I saw a Vancouver 2010 umbrella and cracked to my wife “you’ll need this on Cypress” and she laughed. With even more rain and high temperatures forecast this weekend spectators and the athletes’ retinues will need them.
The Orange County Register has called it right with a Feb.8/9 story ‘Global warming a threat for the Olympics?‘
“One morning last week, environmentalist David Suzuki looked across English Bay from his Vancouver home to Cypress Mountain, usually covered in snow this time of year but now left all but bare by a warm winter.
“I’ve watched in horror as the snow has just melted away from Cypress Mountain,” Suzuki said, referring to the 2010 Olympic Games snowboarding and freestyle skiing venue.
“The view from Vancouver, Suzuki and others say, provides a glimpse into the future for the Winter Olympics.
“It’s certainly an early warning sign and I think and a wake up call to the Olympic movement,” said Ian Bruce,
“Global warming has placed the future of the Winter Olympics and winter sports from the Sierras to the Alps in peril, according to interviews with environmental scientists, Olympic officials, historians and athletes in recent weeks.
“As the 2010 Olympic Games open this week in Vancouver and Whistler, there is a growing concern within the Olympic and environmental movements that the Winter Games are in jeopardy of being significantly diminished if not eliminated all together by climate change.
“The tenuousness of the Winter Olympics has become increasingly more obvious with global warming,” said Derick L. Hulme, an Olympic historian at Michigan’s Alma College. “It (the International Olympic Committee) should be very concerned about the Winter Olympics. I think many people look out 20, 30 years from now and are concerned about whether the Winter Olympics will still be viable.”
The culprits are in the mirrors. The SUVs, the monster homes, sprawling subdivisions, the office parks, big box stores, and expressways we drive and select and with this the destruction of farmland, forests, open space and wetlands and the air, water and land that we depend on. The treating of the environment as a free lunch whose price is now becoming due but no one wants to pay, and the amount owed is climbing rapidly.
Ultimately the human species, as well as that of every other life form is doomed, as is our planet and solar system and the universe. There is the fatalism that ‘in the long run we’re all dead’ that has created greenlighted wanton materialist, environment-be-d**ned attitude as evidenced in the bumper sticker ‘The one who dies with the most toys wins’. The Algeria-born French philosopher Albert Camus summed it up nicely: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide” and we’re quickly collectively doing in ourselves before the sun going red giant, the collision between the Milky Way with Andromeda and heat death does us in.
So is there a reason to go green, to try and save the planet, when ultimately it is a futile exercise? The answer lies whether each of us has a reason to go on living, or to kill oneself, as Camus posits. We can decide not to look after ourselves and choose to ingest dangerous substances to oblivion too.
My attitude is that each of us are born without being asked into this world, a gift as it were, and we have an obligation to repay the givers if you like by making the best of it in the brief times we are here. Like Zen art just because life, like the planet and the cosmos is not permanent does not mean it is not worth while to create and maintain for it has a unique beauty that is to be cherished for that instant there is.
And that means looking after ourselves and our planet.
Tags: David Suzuki, Winter Olympics, global warming
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Desiring Streetcars
One of the greenest ways of getting around is electric streetcars. These elegant, comfortable rail vehicles use far less energy than cars, can draw their power from sources other than fossil fuels, are much more attractive than buses and can shape development.
Once targeted for elimination by a combination of an apathetic public sold on the vision of unlimited mobility, not realizing that the dark side of congestion and environmental destruction lay just around the corner and by the beneficiary car and tire makers and petroleum companies, streetcars have been making a comeback in cities throughout North America.
The latest city to witness their return, if only for a short time, is Vancouver, B.C., Canada. The City of Vancouver and Bombardier have launched the Olympic Line, a 1.2 mile demonstration route from the Canada Line rapid transit near the Olympic Village to Granville Island, a popular shopping and entertainment hub long notorious for terrible parking. A pair of state-of-the-art 100 percent low-floor Bombardier streetcars, borrowed from Brussels, Belgium began operating last Thursday and will continue to do so until March 21, with the close of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and Paralympic Games. The service, which will be provided every six to 10 minutes from 6:30am to 12:30am, is free.
The tracks the streetcars use a rebuilt freight spur operated on by restored heritage streetcars in summer months. Vancouver lost its local streetcar system in 1955; its longer-distance electric interurbans in 1958. Rail transit, in the form of automated rapid transit, first returned in 1986 and has been expanded since.
Vancouver hopes to keep the streetcars going after March 21; it is planning a network that will connect offices, retail, transportation hubs, sports venues and parks in the downtown. City officials are keeping their fingers crossed that strong public demand and support will enable them to convince provincial and federal governments especially, for operating and capital financing.
Vancouuver is eyeing The City of Seattle, some 2-1/2 hours to the south, which has greenlighted a second new streetcar line that will connect its King Street/International District Amtrak/commuter rail/LINK light rail hub with First Hill and Capitol Hill. The first streetcar line, connecting Lake Union with the Westlake Center, a retail/transportation center that joins LINK with the Seattle Center monorail, opened in 2007. They will be part of a network that Vancouver hopes to replicate.
Tags: B.C., Olympic Line, Vancouver, green transportation, streetcars
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Fantasy Island 100 Percent Renewable and Giving Back
During the third quarter 2009, the small Danish island of Samsø reported 4000 residents, with no grants or funding, switched almost completely to renewable energy through a combination of community owned wind turbines, district heat plants (run on local biomass) and offshore turbines (installed to offset the emissions of the island’s transport). The island is self-sufficient, and produces 140% of the energy it consumes and is exporting energy back to the mainland. That is amazing!
Watch slideshow of this project at ScientificAmerican dated January 19, 2010.
As an aside to another blog I contribute to, Monetizing IP Communications, here is a list of voice over Internet providers for Denmark.
Tags: Denmark, Samso, Samsø, island, renewable, sustainable, turbines, voip, wind energy
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Green Box: Green tech survey and patents
A couple of items have landed in my inbox that are of interest:
Symantec via its PR firm forwarded the green facets of its recently released findings from the firm’s 2010 State of the Data Center report. Among them:
* 70 percent of enterprises mentioned energy savings as a somewhat/absolutely important initiative, which was one of the top ten
* 94 percent of enterprise said that reducing energy consumption was important, 89 percent said Green IT was important
* Green IT/energy savings came up in every cloud computing topic
36 percent are considering private cloud computing, 33 percent are looking at public cloud computing, 30 percent are considering infrastructure as a service, and 33 percent are considering platform as a service to become green.
Also 32 percent of firms are using storage as a service and 34 percent are deploying storage virtualization while 32 percent of enterprises are using storage virtualization–all as ways to go green.
–
Also Tom Ciesielka has kindly passed on this release to me on green tech patemts:
January 15, 2010 – Five weeks after the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) began a test program to fast track certain “green” technology patent applications, most of the 3,000 positions are still available. Only about one third have been applied for.
Businesses wishing to patent their proprietary green technologies are being given special “front-of-the-line” status in having their application reviewed. Unexamined pending applications that are accepted could have the processing time reduced by as much as one year.
“This may be used in conjunction with other governmental programs to speed the prosecution of foreign applications as well” said Paul Craane, attorney with the intellectual property law firm Marshall, Gerstein & Borun LLP. “Assuming your application falls within the proper class, this program is tailored for an application focused on a single invention,” Craane said. Craane recommended that applicants contact their patent attorney and get their petition in as soon as possible.
The USPTO has indicated that if this program is deemed successful it could very likely be continued and expanded. For more information about the USPTO pilot program to accelerate the examination of certain green technology patent applications visit the website:
http://www.uspto.gov/news/pr/2009/09_33.jsp
Tags: cloud computing, infrastructure as a service, patents, platform as a service, storage as a service, virtualization
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Backup Green and Philanthropic Promises with Actions
Al Gore’s book in the early 90s, “Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit,” and Rich Tehrani of TMC’s Green Technology World in September 2007 sparked a variety of responses: apathy, ridicule, inspiration, and action for many regarding green technology. It takes brave people to suggest change. In fact, climate change and other environmental change activists publicize ideas, but the actual implementations depend upon service and product providers making changes. The innovations must lead to environmentally-friendly services that are attractive to and purchased by users.
In 2007, Delta Airlines announced a corporate cans and bottle recycling program. (Our Techistan research team searched the Delta site and could not find any reference to it with either of these set of terms: “corporate recycling” or “recycling.”) Read about Starbucks’ explanation as to their ability or lack of ability to recycle at http://www.starbucks.com/aboutus/pressdesc.asp?id=792.
The Toyota Prius as well as electric cars and other hybrid cars became popular the same year and more so in 2010, largely because of a USA tax incentive but also incentives by Canada, Jordan, UK and other countries.
The telecom industry, often ahead in technology than other industries, has had many role models, has made many promises, and has or has not followed through in green technologies. Energy may become cleaner and more powerful as more people, endpoints, and technologies are connected within the particular network.
Bob Metcalfe’s Law states that the value of a telecom network is proportionate to the square of the number of users in a system: the more distributed users there are on the system, the greater the value of the network and of those endpoints themselves. Services and companies that fit into this scenario very well include TelX, Stealth Communications, Voice Peering Fabric, DIDX, Facebook, Arbinet, eBay, Skype, and Google, of course, with a huge gap between lowest value to highest, but still accurately defined.
Companies that take not only an environmentally-friendly view of providing service to the world but also a philanthropical push to empower the less fortunate include Vocati Communications, Global Crossing, ActivePort, and BetterWorld Telecom LLC (of which Techistan has interviewed the first three and looking forward to the third). BetterWorld Telecom LLC was the first carbon-neutral carrier in the United States. In 2007, it claimed to use VoIP, wireless, and unified communications to shrink its infrastructure, utilities, and energy needs. It had planned to get rid of paper billing. It was using an Internet-based and paperless system. Whenever paper was needed, its preferred was 100% recycled paper. Also in 2007, it was giving 3% of revenue to nonprofit activities that benefitted education, children and the environment. It had set a goal to donate at least one million dollars by the end of 2012.
The Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a nonprofit group of consumers, businesses and conservation organizations, is dedicated to promoting smart technologies to improve the power efficiency and reduce the energy consumption of computers. Some of the organizations involved in 2007 were Intel Corporation, Google and other PC companies. In early 2010, others include the same, plus Dell, EDS, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Microsoft, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), World Wildlife Fund and more. See the complete updated list at http://www.climatesaverscomputing.org/about/member-directory/. The goal was and is to educe energy consumption by computers by 50 percent and reduce global CO2 emissions from the operation of computers by 54 million tons a year by 2010.
For more information, consider registering now for http://www.itexpo.com in Miami Beach, Florida on January 20-22, 2010 to participate in Virtualization, SmartGrid, Cloud Computing, and other sessions and summits that involve green technologies and resourceful uses and types of technologies, services, and products. An additional and powerfully-informative and action-oriented event is the IEEE Green Technology Conference scheduled for April 24-25, 2010 in Dallas, Texas. Make your company promises and follow through with action whether in green technology areas or helping those who need help. Be respected and the choice to do business with.
Tags: activeport, al gore, better world telecom, climate savers, conference, didx, ebay, global crossing, IEEE Green Technology, itexpo, metcalfe law, recycling, rich tehrani, skype, telx, vocati communications, vpf
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Tags: al gore, recycling, metcalfe law, better world telecom, vocati communications, activeport, global crossing, didx, telx, vpf, ebay, skype, rich tehrani, itexpo, climate savers, IEEE Green Technology, itexpo, conference
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Going Green With Your Cell Phone
By Tom Lasky -
The fast advancements in technology, especially as far as phones and computers go, means that most people are buying more and more products than ever before. From the latest laptop or fastest desktop computer to the cutting edge technology of smartphones, even those who work outside of the technological sector are adopting [...]
To Go Green (In More Ways than One) Go Virtual…and Bus and Rail
Want more proof that going green by virtualizing offices i.e. teleworking and locating those functions that need people to interact with each other and with equipment inside energy-efficient buildings at high-transit-accessible locations is the smart way to go? Why it will save green 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.
Tags: Amtrak, air travel, bus, green buildings, sprawl, telecommute, telework, video conferencing
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Tags: air travel, Amtrak, bus, green buildings, sprawl, telework, telecommute, video conferencing
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