A city as geographically spread out as Virginia Beach could hardly have grown to its present size without the widespread affordability of personal cars. The effects can be seen in our road patterns and in parking lots. Neighborhoods developed in recent decades have featured cul de sacs and limited entry to reduce through traffic. Almost the only parking that is not free serves as beach access. Drive thru service is offered by a wide variety of businesses.
Automobile makers design cars to meet a range of expectations, from high gas mileage to off-road ruggedness to luxury symbol. Better gas mileage appeals to those concerned about foreign oil and global climate as well as those wanting to save money. Driving safety is an ongoing issue – even as manufacturers add safety devices, other parts malfunction and cause accidents.
“Overall traffic fatalities reported at the end of 2009 reached the lowest level since 1954, declining for the 15th consecutive quarter. The projected data puts the highway death count at 33,963, down 8.9% from 37,261 in 2008.” http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/
Living a suburban lifestyle is necessarily automobile-centered, since suburban developments are not usually convenient to where people work and shop. Auto-based development can lead to sprawl and traffic congestion, so land use planning for suburban communities has to consider the community’s transportation choices and options.
Traditional suburban design uses single-use and low-density zoning. Newer suburban land use designs like Traditional Neighborhood Design (TND) include more neighborhood sidewalks for safety and walkability, use traffic-calming methods to slow down street traffic, designs interconnecting roadways without dead ends to create choices for entering and leaving neighborhoods, and increases transportation options like bicycling and ensuring public transportation reaches suburban communities.
Sprawl This Wikipedia entry describes the characteristics of sprawl, gives examples, and provides criticism both against sprawl and in favor of suburban lifestyles.
The price of gasoline has provided a market for the development of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) which use a fuel –driven engine and an electric motor. Their large and special battery for the motor can be recharged with household electricity. When driving, if the battery’s charge becomes depleted, the engine is used to either recharge the battery as the car moves or to be the main source of moving the car. Plugging stations around the community are needed to accommodate recharging. Operating costs are forecast to be substantially below gasoline-powered vehicles.
“While many buyers of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are thinking their contribution to national security lies in saving oil, ‘a major benefit of electric vehicles, say many, is that they bring a new level of stability and control to the grid – including giving power back to the grid when it’s needed most (in blackouts or at times of peak demand),” notes RMI Analyst Mike Simpson ‘By some estimates, a battery electric vehicle, with about 40 kilowatt-hours of usable energy, could power an entire residential block for more than an hour if necessary.’”
Rocky Mountain Institute The mission of this 501(c)3 non-profit organization “is to drive the efficient and restorative use of resources” so that there is “a world thriving, verdant, and secure, for all, forever.”
MOVE = Mobility + Vehicle Efficiency “MOVE is RMI’s transportation innovation group, leading cutting edge research and transformative industry engagements in the transportation sector.”
Smart Garage An initative of the Rocky Mountain Institute to “bring transport, the electricity grid, and the built environment together for the first time via the enabling technology of electrified vehicles and their smart integration with the grid.”
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Smart Garage Charrette Documentation
The Year is 2025
“A typical day might go something like this: after work, you drive home in your plug-in-hybrid, pull into the garage and connect your vehicle to a power cord that connects to your house. Your car and house ‘shake hands’ – the car tells your house the state of its battery, and the house’s energy management system figures out how best to charge your car. The car then spends part of the night recharging on cheap electricity that comes from a new big wind farm. In fact, your car charges in sync with how fast the wind is spinning the turbines – guaranteeing you are only getting ‘green’ electrons. In the morning, you check your home energy dashboard to review the status of your car’s charge,
and you happily drive to work in your vehicle, which uses electricity most of the time. If your commute takes a few extra turns, an efficient little biofuel, gasoline, or diesel engine comes on to provide extra range.
You get to work, drive into the parking lot, and plug your car into another electric charging system. It automatically recognizes your car and links to your credit card and your utility account. Your car and utility share information in both directions – how much electricity the battery has or needs, how much it costs (now and perhaps later in the day).
Say it’s a hot summer day, and electricity is in high demand and more expensive. Based on your preferences, the utility and the vehicle converse. The car declines the day’s charging because the price is extremely high. In addition, the utility would prefer to draw power from the car and pay its value back to your credit card. The price is right, so your car, seeing a juicy “carbitrage’ opportunity, decides to use its electrical storage to earn you some money. At 5 p.m., you climb into your pleasant, pre-cooled car and drive home mostly on advanced, environmentally-friendly biofuel.”
(Smart Garage Charrette Documentation, Rocky Mountain Institute,
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)
NC Get Ready! “A new initiative being piloted in the Triangle area, supported by a consortium of cities, government officials, industry leaders and not-for-profit organizations…To facilitate the adoption of electric vehicles in NC”
Project Get Ready Founded to “Help community stakeholders work together to create a plan to become plug-in-ready, and provide a forum for pioneering communities to openly exchange lessons learned and best practices”
Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) – uses a fuel –driven engine and an electric motor. The special battery can be recharged with household electricity. When driving, if the battery’s charge becomes depleted, the engine is used to either recharge the battery as the car moves or to be the main source of moving the car.
TC (Timed charging) – electric vehicle doesn’t charge until a given time (from an installed program or a signal from the utility) when rates and grid load are low (source - Smart Garage Charrette Documentation, Rocky Mountain Institute)
V1G (Smart Charging) – electric vehicle communicates with the grid and charges when the grid needs it to. (source - Smart Garage Charrette Documentation, Rocky Mountain Institute)
Regenerative braking – the reversal of an electric motor of an electric vehicle when it slows through braking or by lifting off of the accelerator. The reversal causes the electric motor to become an electric generator feeding electricity back into the battery of the car. (source - http://www.move.rmi.org/features/faqs.html)
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