Guidance for the Metro Active Transportation Corridor: Redondo Beach Blvd Survey from a Local

Urgent Action Alert 

Deadline Extended to May 30, 2023 May 15, 2023 so read on and fill out the survey now 

I need you to fill out a public input survey about a vital active transportation project for Redondo Beach and surrounding cities in the South Bay region of Los Angeles County. This is our chance to reverse some of the damage wrought by past auto-centric road design in North Redondo Beach and allow those who can ride a bike to make school and shopping trips with confidence that they can make it home alive and in one piece. 

There's also a Story Map about the Redondo Beach Blvd Active Transportation Corridor Project with more information. 

Short version if you are in a hurry:

The current street allocation with car parking on both sides and massive SUVs speeding down our streets is not safe or welcoming for cyclists. The proof is in the declining bicycle mode share. 

When filling out the survey, select the options that give a protected bike lane every time. Scroll down past the background info to see my recommendations and why. 

Paint is not protection. Never select an option with a paint-only bike lane in the door zone. If someone opens a door, a cyclist in the door zone will be knocked off their bike and suffer grievous injuries. If they swerve to avoid the door, or are knocked into the traffic lane, they could be killed. No one wants to be killed or have their child killed while riding to school. 

Two-way cycle tracks are a good option, particularly near schools. When kids are arriving or leaving school, there will be a lot of traffic congestion on all modes. But cars are particularly dangerous. The less car traffic they cross while leaving the congested area, the safer they will be. Keep them on the school side of the street, with wide lanes so that there is passing room in the bikeway (keep the kids out of the car traffic lane). 

Plastic poles are not physical protection, but likely the best we can get as a first step.  Plastic poles can be replaced with bollards or concrete barriers later if we allow enough buffer space to install the plastic poles in the first place. Do not let the perfect get in the way of actions we can do right now. 

You can skip the background (but I hope you read it when you have more time).  

Background: The Connection with Schools

The project area below was originally going to be along the old freight route from Redondo King Harbor to the inland rail routes, but Ripley was found to be too steep (several areas with 15% grades) to be feasible for safe cycling. 

A Redondo Beach traffic study determined that 30% of the city's AM/PM peak traffic is the child school run. This travel corridor includes

• Adams Middle School: 1066 students: 6-8 grades
• Washington Elementary School: 801 students, K-5
• Jefferson Elementary School: 509 students, K-5

That's almost 2400 K-12 students arriving and departing each day on this corridor. 

But that's not all, because all students in Redondo Beach Unified School District (RBUSD) attend Redondo Union High School (RUHS) in South Redondo Beach*. Jefferson ES students also attend Parras Middle School south of RUHS. 

Assuming 350/grade at Adams MS and 90/grade at Jefferson ES, 

350*4 + 90*7 = 2030 students cross 190th Street to attend school and return home each day. 

About half of all RBUSD students traverse this corridor every school day.

But that's not all; El Camino College (ECC, 22,000 students, many from the Beach Cities) is on the eastern end of this travel corridor. Some RUHS and MCHS students do concurrent enrollment and take classes at ECC while they are in HS. Due to many factors, including cost and lack of housing at UC campuses, a large number of students are enrolling in grades 13/14 at ECC before transferring to a 4-year college/university. 

When filling out the survey, think about what you would send your kid to school on. Think about what you would be comfortable riding on as you accompany your younger child to school or run your errands. I ride this area 1-2x/week to run errands in North RB or West Torrance. I want better infrastructure for my safety, too. 

Watch this video of the horrifying existing conditions as ridden by two fit MAMILs (Middle-Aged Men in Lycra). Would you ride these steep hills? Next to fast-moving busy traffic?

 

Here's another video of the area where Kyle, an area father, rides his kids to preschool. 

My opinionated guide for the survey choices and why they matter: 

Every cross-section shown is facing either Eastbound or Northbound.

Q1: For the westernmost portion of the corridor, which alignment(s) do you prefer? 

I picked D because that would give us a 2-way cycle track on Lilienthal and the longest length of protected bike lanes on 190th. 190th St is also the only way to avoid steep hills. 

The problem with B: The first video shows just how steep Ripley is. Notice that the lead cyclist on a light road bike has trouble getting up the hill (and the trailing cyclist with the camera is on an eBike). Going up a 15-16% grade is difficult, but going down them is downright dangerous. Do not send kids on this route. 

A and C are better, but still steep in some sections. Also, if those are the official routes, there will not be likely any road changes except Sharrows, which are shown to be more dangerous than not doing anything. 

Only Option D along 190th St will yield any road space allocation for cyclists. 

What is a Sharrow? 

Why are Sharrows so dangerous? 

Q2: The proposed street section for 190th St (Alignments C and D) is shown here. How satisfied are you with this proposal?

I picked Very Dissatisfied: These cross-sections are looking towards the east, with Torrance on the Right Hand Side (RHS) and Redondo Beach on the LHS. Cars are coming down the hill from Flagler and often speeding 50 eastbound mph. People drive with the sun in their eyes during the morning and evening commutes. Do you feel safe with just paint and plastic poles designed to bend when run over by vehicles?

I recognize that people living in the apartments in Torrance on the right need overflow parking, but let's swap the bike lane and parking lane. Install a parking-protected bike lane like this one in Long Beach on the Torrance side with breaks to preserve sight lines at each driveway or street crossing. 

On the RB side, I'd like to see real bollards or a curb. Imagine something like these without the parking lane. Images courtesy of National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO). 

Q3: Select Option 1, the 2-way cycle track on the east side, next to Washington ES. 

Option 1 provides separation from cars, and is wide enough for passing, and allows parents to ride side by side with a child gaining confidence in their bike skills. In 2-way cycle tracks, people riding opposing car traffic are facing approaching cars, so they can see and react to dangerous drivers. It would be better to have solid protection here, but Option 1 gives us room to retrofit with more solid barriers later. 

Option 2 puts kids in the door zone on one side and makes them cross the street to get to school. It's a dangerous situation. 

Q4: Select Option 1, the 2-way cycle track on the east side, next to Washington ES.  

Don't be distracted by the stock visualization image with a tall solid wall. There is currently short solid wall on the parking lot side and a wood and rope fence on the road side. 

Option 1 gives a clear place for kids to ride that is physically separated from cars. The 2-way cycle track would replace the wide grassy area.

Option 2 is sharrows in a place where drivers are more focused on making a turn at Ripley than cyclists approaching from behind them. 

Motorists trying to make a right turn will pull over to the right, trapping cyclists behind them. Small children on bikes and tall, boxy hoods on todays trucks and SUVs mean that parents may not be aware of cyclists in front of them. This has led to an epidemic of frontover crashes where drivers run over people in front of them because they can't see them over their hoods. Or, they look at their screens and forget that there are children in front of them. 

Option 2, sharrows, is a safety disaster. 

Q5 on Ripley: Pick Option 1, the 2-way cycle track on the Adams MS side

Option 1 keeps the kids on the school side as long as possible. It also preserves the car unloading curb space that people are currently using. 

Option 2 puts kids in the door zone, at precisely the time that kids being driven to school are unloading. This is a safety disaster. 

Q6: Grant Ave from Inglewood to Kingsdale; I am very dissatisfied but I selected other and explained why we need solid protection instead of plastic bendy poles

They are proposing paint, a buffered (space separation) and plastic bendy poles. 

This is better than existing conditions, but not safe. Cars pick up speed heading downhill and frequently misjudge the curve, so they end up sideswiping cyclists in the bike lane. We really need a concrete barrier on the downhill (right hand) side. 

I ride by bike to shop at the Galleria and this is the scariest part. I saw a guy almost get killed here. If we want more people to bike through this area, which connects to shopping, the South Bay Transit Center, and the 300 new homes under construction, then we deserve solid protection in this dangerous area. 

I gotta break for lunch but I'm going to hit Publish on this so you can get started. I'll finish after lunch. 

...

I'm back. Stay with me because we are on the home stretch, but the most dangerous one that crosses the 405 Freeway and has the most high-speed traffic. 

Q7: Artesia Blvd from Kingsdale Ave to Redondo Beach Blvd pick Option 2.  

Existing conditions are awful and you see very few cyclists brave enough to ride here. If they do, they are often on the sidewalk, conflicting with pedestrians. 

Option 1 puts cyclists next to vehicle lanes, but protected with a concrete curb. Pedestrians and cyclists would intuitively understand where they are supposed to be, as faster bike traffic is at the street level. However, this would interfere with bus stops. 

Option 2 puts pedestrians next to the vehicle lanes, but also next to the bus stop. Trees would provide shade. There could be some confusion with pedestrians wandering on the bike path, but that can be solved with good signage.

Our community has experience with pedestrian and bikeways next to each other in the North Redondo Beach Bikeway (NRBB). While there is some spillover, people have already learned where pedestrians and rollers have priority on the NRBB. Option 2 will work best for us and we already know how to use it. 

Q8: Redondo Beach Blvd from Artesia Blvd to Hawthorne Blvd. Is a tossup but both Options are so much better than the status quo.

Option 1 pits cyclists against pedestrians, but provides 2-way access to Walgreens and Starbucks. It's not terrible as long as cyclists slow down when passing pedestrians and motorists exiting the parking lots look both ways. 

Option 2 provides a clear separation between motorists, cyclists and pedestrians. Cyclists are curb-protected on the eastbound RB side, and parking-protected on the westbound Lawndale side. However, coming westbound from Walgreens/Starbucks, people will likely bike on the sidewalk until they meet the 2-way cycle track. 

Although you lose a traffic lane, it's not the cyclists' fault. One can just as easily blame the space allocated to free car storage (on-street parking) and a turn lane. Motorists are losing a travel lane to other motorists, not cyclists. Don't forget that. 

Option 1, the 2-way cycle track, provides a better alternative not suggested by Metro for the next section. 

Q9: Redondo Beach Blvd from Hawthorne Blvd to Prairie Ave. I am Very Dissatisfied & propose a better solution. 

Although the status quo is very bad, we shouldn't rush into the proposed door zone bike lane next to high-speed traffic heading to the freeway onramps. It is extremely dangerous. This will greatly reduce the number of people brave enough to ride to Alondra Park and El Camino College. 

If there is enough room for on-street parking, then there is enough room for a parking-protected bike lane. That may require narrowing the car lanes a bit, but that would also inhibit speeding, making that stretch safer and quieter for all road users. 

The freeway onramp is on the north side of RB Blvd. A 2-way cycle track on the south side of RB Blvd would keep cyclists away from the crazy line of cars trying to merge onto the 405 on-ramp. Suggest that in Q11. 

Q10: Redondo Beach Blvd from Prairie Ave to Dominguez Channel. Pick Option 1, the 2-way cycle track on the North side, next to the park and El Camino College. 

Option 1 puts cyclists next to the park and ECC. Although it is shown with plastic bendy straws, it can easily be fitted with bollards or a concrete curb for better protection when cycling to and from evening classes at ECC. 

Option 2 puts cyclists in the door zone, where they can be knocked into fast-moving traffic and killed. Drunk or malicious drivers can also harm cyclists easily with only "paint as protection". 

Q11: Additional Comments: This is where we ask for a protected 2-way cycle track on on the south side of RB Blvd between Hawthorne and Prairie. 

What do you need to be comfortable bicycling this corridor? Tell them!

Keep in mind that younger Beach Cities kids will probably only ride the western side of this corridor, west of Inglewood or Kingsdale. But older teens and young adults may need to ride to ECC or to retail jobs between Kingsdale and Crenshaw. 

There are a lot of children and seniors in Lawndale and Torrance who would benefit from these bike facilities, whether they are riding a bike, trike or mobility scooter. 

We should make this corridor welcoming for ages 8-80. 

Think about who needs to travel through this corridor and at what times. What kind of cycling facilities do they need to get there comfortably and safely?  What about seniors in mobility scooters or electric wheelchairs? Would you like to see food delivery robots in the bike lane or more food delivery by privately-owned cars?

With better bike facilities, I may choose to bike to stores further east than I currently feel safe. Every trip I make by eBike instead of car, I am "sparing the air", not taking up road space in front of you, and not competing with you for parking. 

Another thing that excites me about this project is that it connects us to the Dominguez Channel. In a separate project, LA County Public Works will be extending the bike path along the channel southwards. It currently goes north to 120th St, past Amazon, Space-X, Lowe's and to the Metro Green/C Line. A southbound channel bike path would connect to the Harbor Gateway Transit Center, with very fast connections to the Silver/J Line to USC/Expo Park (15 min) and Downtown LA (20 min). Harbor Gateway TS is already linked up to CSU Dominguez Hills. This is a large step forward for a transportation transformation for the South Bay. 

Bike lanes benefit you even if you don't ride a bike, but your neighbors do. 

Bike lanes will save you time currently spent chauffeuring your kids short distances. 

Bike lanes will benefit your kids because students who get exercise before school do better. 

Bike lanes will benefit you when you age out of driving. 

Bike lanes may allow your family to shed one car, saving you over a million dollars per lifetime. 

Finally, I want to close with this terrific video of a #BikeBus led by Coach Sam Balto in Portland. 

https://twitter.com/CoachBalto/status/1656353963489501190?s=20

This bike corridor will touch the lives of half the students in RBUSD and can be transformative for the way our community gets around. If half of our households can shed just one car, we would be richer, our street parking and traffic congestion problems will evaporate, our air and water will be cleaner, and we will have done our part to slow climate change. Oh, we'll be fitter and happier, too. 

* A very few students living in North RB attend Mira Costa HS in Manhattan Beach, but only if MBUSD will take them. 

Destroying the NIMBY Sewage Capacity Talking Point: Another Zombie Myth

Meta:

I was coached to give an executive summary so people know where I am going. 

Executive Summary

• Sewage Capacity is not a reason to deny infill housing in established areas of Los Angeles County. 
• It's cheaper to service sewage from infill housing than for sprawl housing because you are using capacity that already exists and is currently underutilized. 
• Infill housing reduces or eliminates the cost of declining water flows, reducing costs to existing residents.  
• Infill housing spreads the fixed costs of infrastructure among more customers, reducing costs to existing residents. 

And was also told to add more color pictures, like this One Water Cycle graphic by Brown and Caldwell, 2017. 

Where I normally start my ramblings:

I signed the Change.org petition to Condemn recent changes to C&EN editorial policies and proposed content focus*. 

After I signed that petition, Change.org offered me another one to consider. 

Their algorithms offered me Oppose the mass build apartment complex on Little Britain Rd (Rt 207). 

It was such a classic display of NIMBY Kettle Logic about horrible traffic and parking woes, which they themselves contribute towards. This area is simultaneously such a historic area that it should not be desecrated with more traffic, while it is already so traffic-choked, that it cannot accommodate one more car.

But, since I had just been thinking about the societal impacts of chemistry and engineering, I homed in on the arguments about sewage. 

• A massive build like the one being proposed will dramatically change the character of our neighborhood.
• It will also have a significant impact on traffic in the surrounding area.
• It will further tax our already heavily burdened water and sewage systems, and potentially have damaging environmental impacts to the Quassaick Creek and its wildlife.

The build puts additional strain on the current water supply and added pressure to the city sewage system’s downstream capacity.

Residents in the town of Newburgh are currently nearing our maximum agreed sewage usage with the city.
...
In 2004 the town updated their intermunicipal sewer agreement with the city to increase the amount of sewage the town sends to the city treatment plant at 2,000,000 gals/day with the ability to send an additional 2,000,000gals/day providing the town pay to enlarge the current city facility. This previously cost taxpayers $1,250,000 to construct the necessary facilities. According to the November 3 town planning board minutes, the town is currently sending 2,000,000 gals/day already and at their first allotment. They have 2,000,000 more gallons owed to them, but much of that has already been allocated to other projects.

As stated in their draft scope, the proposed apartment complex would produce an estimated 28,380 gals of liquid waste per day. And according to the 2004 intermunicipal contract "when the town’s average flow exceeds 3.4 million gallons per day as evidenced by the last 90-day average flow" a second expansion will need to be constructed by and paid for by the town residents, unless we insist the cost be passed on to the builders of these new projects.

The US Census office estimates that Newburgh, NY has a 2021 population of 28,834. 

If 28,834 people send 2,000,000 gals/day of sewage to the treatment plant, that's 69.4 gallons per capita per day (gpcd). How many times are they flushing every day?!?! Or do they have many industrial facilities? Why are they using so much water?!?!

In contrast, 4.8 million Los Angeles County residents and a lot of businesses & industrial facilities sent 242 MGD of sewage (in 2021) to the Joint Water Pollution Control Plant (JWPCP), 50.4 gpcd. 

If Newburgh residents were as water-thrifty as Angelenos, they could house 10,000 more people and have cheaper sewage service as well because they would be spreading fixed costs among more customers. 

JWPCP has a design capacity of 400 MDG, we've added ~1 million people to the service area in the last 20 years, and we are still using only 60% of the capacity. We can add millions more residents without needing any more sewage treatment capacity. 

JWPCP is a huge plant that serves almost half the people in the most populous county and one of the largest manufacturing centers in the US. 

If Newburgh residents were really concerned about not overrunning their sewage capacity, they should look at water saving household appliances, low-flow toilets and low-flow shower heads.  But, perhaps they are just not interested in providing homes for people. 

They do seem interested in providing homes for cars. One of their objections to this apartment complex is that it will only provide 515 parking spots for 259 homes. 

Enough poking fun at Newburgh NIMBYs. We have plenty of NIMBYs at home in Los Angeles County to poke fun of. 

Gratuitous diagram of JWPCP, a social network tying together 4.8 M Angelenos

Consider the problem of declining water flows. This is a serious and expensive problem for established areas that are not building housing fast enough to offset improvements in water efficiency.  Californians in existing developed areas are using about 2% less water per year. If that is not offset by infill, this causes problems for both drinking water and sewage systems. 

California Urban Water Agencies surveyed their members and wrote a white paper on Adapting to Change: UtilitySystems and Declining Flows. Go to Section 6 (page 22), Impacts of Declining Flows on Wastewater Treatment Plant Operations. 40% of urban systems reported effluent quality problems. 

Lower flow means longer residence times in the sewage pipes, which exacerbate production of gases. That's both an odor and a corrosion problem. It also decreases the amount of hydraulic pressure, which works with gravity to move sewage towards the treatment plant. 

In fact, the less hydraulic pressure you have, the more energy you need to apply (e.g. sewage lifting stations) to push the effluent along. We have so much excess capacity in our existing sewage mains, it's costing us more energy to pump it to the treatment facilities.  

You also need to spend more unclogging pipes. We sometimes have to put fresh water into the sewage mains to reduce the residence times, clear clogs, and provide hydraulic pressure. 

We'll save the problem of declining flows on drinking water systems for another day. Spoiler, it's cheaper and safer for everyone if we concentrate new residents in existing areas rather than build new sprawl. 

Bonus Sewer Content:

the year is 1873.

in cleveland, a tall and narrow sewer is being dug deep underground and built by hand, brick by brick to move sewage. the work is hard. the need is great. the city is growing.

the year is now 2022. and this is that sewer.

149 years old.

still in use today. pic.twitter.com/DoiGS0TfsT

— NE Ohio Regional Sewer District (@neorsd) December 23, 2022

* C&EN News = Chemical and Engineering News is the monthly general interest magazine for members of the American Chemical Society. Bad Dad and I both hold BSs in Chemistry and he also has a PhD in Chemistry (while I hold a PhD in Chemical Physics). Although our work is far from what most people consider chemistry, we still enjoy learning about happenings in the Chemistry world and the policy implications and societal impacts of Chemistry. Editorial leadership of C&EN News eliminated coverage of science policy and societal impacts. Sign the petition if you disagree. 

Urban trees and the zombie carbon sequestration myth

Last summer, my city passed a tree protection ordinance that fines people for removing trees--even those on private property in side or back yards (where they don't shade public sidewalks or road asphalt). It was sent for legal review and will come back on December 20, 2022 for final passage. 

I'm not a lawyer, but I will say as a scientist that it is claptrap. 

So much nonsense was spewed that would fly under the radar of people not in the trenches of housing policy. I suspect that using the need for street trees to push through a more expansive policy is designed to make infill housing (eg ADUs*enabled by SB 9) harder or more prohibitively expensive to build. 

But, I want to push back on the pernicious myth that carbon sequestration through urban trees is better than building infill housing. 

Let's do the math!

A mature urban tree can absorb about 20 kg of CO2 per year. MIT Climate Issues rounded that to about 50 pounds. (Click through to read how they debunk some of the 'nature-based solutions' talking points.)

The EPA, US Environmental Protection Agency, reports that the Greenhouse Gas Emissions from a Typical Passenger Vehicle is 8,887 grams CO2/gallon or 404 grams CO2/mile using the US passenger car fleet average. 

The largest employers in my city are Northrop Grumman (next to a light rail station) and our local school district (dispersed around the city, not served well by transit).  Since school teachers cannot afford the median house price of $1,587,500 

or even the median condo price of $1,007,000

teachers drive in from elsewhere. The only places in LA County actively building new apartments and condos in substantial numbers is Downtown LA (DTLA) or Old Town Pasadena. 

If they want to buy an older single family home, like this one that sold yesterday in Whittier for $630,000, they also face a long commute. 

The Whittier house is 27-29 miles to Redondo Union High School depending on the route. Old Town Pasadena is 30 miles each way. 

A round-trip commute for just one of the hundreds of teachers in our city that cannot afford to live here is about 60 miles/school day. 

60 mi/day * 404 g/mi = 24,240 g/day = 24.24 kg/day

It would take a mature tree more than a year to sequester the carbon emissions of just one day's commute for a teacher commuting in from where they can find housing that they can afford.  

I looked up more data. 

California requires 180 school days/year. There are a few additional teacher prep and in-service education days, but let's use the lower 180 number. 

I looked up the RBUSD budget and see that there are 463.80 Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) teachers in the district. 

24.24 kg/day * 180 days * 463.8 teachers = 2,023,652 kg/year 

That would require 100,000 trees just for in-bound commuting teachers

That's just a few hundred of the 25,000+ jobs in Redondo Beach according to the research arm of Southern California Association of Governments (our regional housing and transportation governing body). 

I can't ensure that all infill homes will go to teachers in the community. 

I do know that teachers have to live somewhere, so they need homes. It would be great if they could live close enough to participate outside of school in the communities where they teach, and if they didn't need to drive a car to work.

The benefits of workforce housing:

• Planet (fewer climate-wrecking CO2 emission)
• Community (the teacher can be more present)
• Public health (fewer car miles = less air/water pollution)
• Teacher health (long driving commutes have well-documented detrimental health impacts)

Now substitute teacher for any other job in our city. This includes store clerks and caregivers to the elderly or young children that make just above minimum wage. They take care of us. We need to take care of them. We won't be able to build enough ADUs to fill the need. But, we can build enough apartments and condos, in a thoughtful way, to reduce the need for climate-destroying and space-gobbling automobiles. 

Asides: 

ADU = Accessory Dwelling Units or Granny Flats or In-Laws' units. ADUs generate a little extra density in single-family neighborhoods, create homes without generating much external impact. In fact, when used to house caregivers or those needing care, or local essential workers, they reduce car traffic or Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) overall.

Keeping low-density existing homes is NOT better than replacing them with higher density housing, even accounting for embodied carbon. But, I'll cover that myth in another post. 

I hear lots of chatter about preserving or increasing urban tree canopy in order to combat the urban heat island effect. That's a good idea. I'm all for trees. In fact, we bid aggressively on both our home purchases because they had more trees compared to other homes in our budget/area. More on that later. 

Redondo Beach has no native trees. It was a coastal prairie according to UCLA's Urban Wildlands Group (Dept of Geography). I'm stuck wondering what proponents are calling "Heritage Trees". 

eBikes vs Direct Air Capture

Following up on my previous post about the relative carbon intensity of eBiking vs driving. and another post about utility cycling around town...

I read that the Denver eBike Voucher program has already put 2,100 eBikes on the streets. I did a little back of the envelope math. 

Suppose each of those bikes replace 3,000 mi/year of automobile travel in gasoline vehicles that get 20 mpg in the city. Then they collectively avoid almost 3 Million kg of CO2/yr or 3,000 mT (metric tons).

3,000 mi/yr * .444 kgCO2/mi * 2,100 eBikes = 2,797,200 kgCO2/year 

Further suppose that the eBike riders are using 10 Wh/mi or .01 kWh/mi (calculation from Utility Cycling). Collectively, they are using 63 MWh/yr.

3,000 mi/yr * .01 kWh/mi * 2,100 eBikes = 63,000 kWh/yr = 63 MWh/yr

The electricity comes from the grid, and Colorado's grid has a CO2 intensity of 537 kgCO2/MWh. We need to subtract that from the CO2 savings. 

537 kgCO2/MWh * 63 MWh/yr = 33,831 kgCO2/yr

Unleashing 2,100 eBikes being ridden instead of cars for ~8 mi/day (short, local trips), makes 2,763.4 mTCO2 disappear every year. 

2,797,200 - 33,831 = 2,763,369 kgCO2/yr = 2,763.4 mTCO2/yr of avoided CO2 emissions per year. 

As the Colorado grid becomes cleaner, the CO2 savings grow.

There are many ways to make CO2 disappear from the atmosphere and they all have issues. People love nature-based solutions, but we're emitting too fast for them to be effective. If it's sequestered in a tree, then a fire can release all the carbon back into the atmosphere. If it's sequestered in soil, and someone comes and plows it up, some of it is released again. Trapping CO2 in the ocean, e.g. with kelp, is very inefficient and will only take a nibble out of current emissions. 

There are a couple of high-tech solutions, Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) and Direct Air Capture (DAC). CCS can only be done at the source, like in the outflow of a power plant. CO2 is concentrated right at the source, but removing it costs 30-40% of the energy you just produced in burning stuff at the power plant. 

But, CCS is viable (as long as you have a place to sequester the CO2 forever), and the people who produce the CO2 pay for removal of the CO2. That makes accounting easier. Those who pollute, pay. 

But all of us are out there, driving cars, flying in airplanes and getting stuff delivered in trucks.  We're not going to carry around a CCS plant in our vehicles.  So we emit CO2 into the atmosphere where it gets well-mixed.  

Remember thermodynamics class in college? The more disordered a system, the more energy it takes to bring order to it?  DAC is enormously expensive and energy-intensive compared to CCS, which is already expensive and energy-intensive. 

No wonder people question whether DAC is a good use of money vs not emitting so much CO2 in the first place. I think those people are right, it's a waste of money. 

However, we've emitted so much CO2, that we painted ourselves into a corner. We don't want to pay for DAC, but we have to do it anyway. Did I mention that it's enormously expensive and only the government has that amount of money to spend? 

DOE announced it will spend $3.5 Billion to build 4 DAC plants. That won't even cover the full cost of building them or include the cost of running them. 

Meanwhile, a single bike lane installed in Thailand in 2015 has removed $1 Billion worth of DAC CO2 removal in avoided vehicle trips. And they use smaller vehicles like motorcycles in Thailand. Click through the read the very detailed journal article! It takes a while to load, but the full article is available for free. 

It sucks that individuals emit CO2, and the richest emit the most, but we don't price carbon so we socialize the cost of building DAC plants to clean up after the rich. Yes, we will all end up paying for Kylie's 2 minute private jet jaunts around Los Angeles. Removing the CO2 she dumped may end up costing the public more than it cost her to take the flight.

The Energy Information Agency (a part of the US Dept of Energy, DOE) estimates that Direct Air Capture (DAC) to pull that much existing CO2 out of the atmosphere costs about $250/mTCO2, not counting the cost of putting it someplace. Let's just use $300/mTCO2 for our calculations*. 

The value of not driving 2,100 vehicles 3,000 mi around the city is worth ~$830,000/yr in DAC CO2 removal.

2,763.4 mTCO2/yr * $300/mTCO2 = $829,011 

Suppose they gave a rebate of $400 for each bike, then Denver spent $840,000 in vouchers. 

But, the vouchers can only be spent in local shops, which generate sales tax. By the time you add that in, the two numbers are roughly equal.  

But the eBikes keep rolling, year after year (my eBike is 5 years old), avoiding CO2 emissions while you have to keep using huge amounts of energy pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and throwing lots of $ at DAC year after year.   Avoiding CO2 emissions by swapping eBikes for cars looks like a pretty good deal. 

Anyway, Denver gave out vouchers of $400 ($1,200 for low income) and an additional $500 for more expensive cargo bikes capable of carrying passengers or lots of cargo. They also targeted delivery workers, who put in a lot of miles. 

It may take more than a year for the avoided cost of CO2 to pay for the vouchers. But, it has other benefits of reducing traffic congestion, air pollution and improving public health. It's a very cost-effective program and we should scale it up and replicate it. 

Which brings us to the California Air Resources Board (CARB) meeting on Wednesday, August 24, at 3:30 PDT. Click on the link to register for the Zoom meeting.

The California Air Resources Board (CARB or Board) invites you to participate in a work group meeting to discuss the Electric Bicycle Incentives Project. We invite all stakeholders to attend and provide their input and feedback on program design. The meeting agenda and any handouts will be posted to the Low Carbon Transportation Investments and Air Quality Improvement Program website ahead of the meeting.

California set aside $10 Million for eBike rebates/vouchers, but has yet to select a vendor or even an implementation program (despite promising a roll-out in July 1, 2022). So attend the meeting tomorrow and tell them to quit studying equity and just do something. They can refine the system later as they study the outcomes. 

If you want, cite the economic efficiency of avoided CO2 emissions versus future DAC. 

I'll get you started with the math. 

California's grid has a CO2 intensity of 225 kgCO2/MWh

If each bike displaces 3,000 vehicle miles/yr at .444 kg/mi = 1,332 kgCO2/yr. 

But they will use 30 kWh = .03 MWh/yr of electricity

.03 MWh/yr * 225 kgCO2/MWh = 6.75 kgCO2/yr

That's 1,332 kgCO2/yr - 6.75 kgCO2/yr = 1,325.25 kgCO2/yr

A metric ton is 1,000 kg so each eBike results in 1.325 mTCO2/yr in avoided emissions, worth $398/yr.

* Estimates of the cost of DAC are about as real as the Hyperloop because we have so little real data.  The International Energy Agency report on DAC:

There are currently 19 direct air capture (DAC) plants operating worldwide, capturing more than 0.01 Mt CO2/year, and a 1Mt CO2/year capture plant is in advanced development in the United States.

So all the DAC plants currently in existence can pull 0.01 Million metric tons (1,000 kg) CO2 out of the atmosphere. That's 10,000 mT. The modest Denver program avoids almost 3,000 mT/year of emissions. I would say that the Denver eBike subsidy is the most successful existing CO2 removal program in the US. 

No wonder countries around the world are increasing their eBike subsidies. 

World Water Day 2022: Groundwater

We've circled the sun one more time to another World Water Day. This year, the theme is Groundwater. 

I co-organize a monthly (Zoom) series for the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles County that grew out of a one-time water walking tour I led in the Beach Cities. We record and post all the Water and Infrastructure Group (WIG) lectures along with the slides. Occasionally, I add articles about what we learned or add further information on each month's subject. 

Please take some time to watch Groundwater 101: Introduction to Sustainable Groundwater Management in Southern California or look through the Groundwater 101 slide deck.

   

Mr. Matthew Hacker is a registered geologist in California and is currently a Senior Resource Specialist at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. He has more than 27 years of experience in water resources planning and local resource development in the areas of groundwater, stormwater, and water recycling. Currently, he is striving to create a more resilient water future for Southern California through innovative new projects such as Metropolitan’s groundbreaking Regional Recycled Water Program. 

His prepared talk is under an hour, half the video is Q and A. 

One fascinating thing I learned is that Metropolitan stores imported river water in the vast LA coastal aquifer. That water we pump out, treat, and deliver to our homes, may have originated in Northern California or Colorado. 

You can learn more about that by watching the Who Fills Your Taps? Video or reading the Who Fills Your Taps? Slide Deck. This is a marathon one that is better ingested in two bites. WIG co-organizer, Kathy Kunysz, is a scientist & planner who has had a long & varied career in water. She knows so much, it's an honor and an education to co-host this series with her. 

Batteries don't grow on trees

This video came across my Twitter timeline and I retweeted it. Rice geophysics professor Cin-Ty Lee explains why nickel and cobalt laterites are found in the areas where biodiversity is greatest. It's pretty heartbreaking.

   

I knew that batteries were very toxic, and that the Cobalt used in them came from DRC*, often using slave or child labor, but I had believed the stories that alternate sources of Cobalt had been found and that would be a nonissue as soon as the alternate sources came online. 

Professor Lee's video made me realize that the most economically viable Cobalt deposits are all in the tropics: Congo, Papua New Guinea and Queensland, Australia.  You reach the deposits either by strip mining in tropical highlands, or mining the oceans.

If you are in the "green-industrial complex" and need to calculate your client's carbon footprint, you end up having to sum the carbon from battery production with the savings that the battery enables.  If battery production includes the carbon released from strip mining tropical rainforests to mine the ore, the potential carbon savings plummets.

I found an open access journal about the Life cycle assessment of cobalt extraction process that gave a picture of the tradeoffs.  Eutrophication means adding nitrogen and silt to waterways from the strip mining.

Highlights

• The life cycle assessment of the cobalt extraction route is carried out.
• Blasting and electricity consumption in cobalt mining is damaging to the environment.
• Eutrophication and global warming are the most affected impact categories.
• Carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide emission are highest from cobalt mining.
• Alternative energy sources for electricity generation would enhance sustainability.

One way to avoid destroying tropical rainforests to mine ore is to source your ore from the ocean floor.  I found other articles such as, Deep-ocean polymetallic nodules as a resource for critical materials, that show the potential of deep ocean mining metals used in batteries.  You may not release carbon by cutting down tropical rainforests, but you will make the fishing and tourism industries and coral reef ecologists very angry.  You'll also destroy ocean ecology.  Pesky tradeoffs!

Right now, we're in the battery build up phase.  Eventually, we'll have enough that we can keep recycling them, much as we do for lead-acid batteries.  This will end the destruction caused by mining, but cause other problems.

I did a little research to wrap my head around how much we are talking about.

Lithium-metal batteries are about 10-20% cobalt chemistry, but that includes water, so it's about 1-2% Cobalt by weight.

Teslas have 1060-1200 pounds of batteries or about 55-85 kWh (kiloWatt hours)

The new eHummer has 200 kWh

My Ebike has 0.5 kWh

My Escooter has 0.3 kWh**

Electric cars have 100-500x the batteries and toxicity of Ebikes/Etrikes/Escooters. They are also very very spatially inefficient with road space and urban space (parking).  For rural areas where space is not a problem and distances are large, they make sense.  For the 90+% of Californians and Angelenos living in urban spaces, they are a last solution, not a first solution.

I Ebike about 50 miles on the charge used to move a Tesla X just 1 mile.  Do we really need to move a 4000# car with an additional 1000# of batteries to move one person plus groceries?  I can carry 5 days worth of groceries for 3 on my Ebike without a backpack.  I could probably carry 7 days worth with a backpack, but why bother?

This is why I don't support strongly support electric cars, trucks and buses alone.

We have to get out of single occupancy cars as much as possible, especially in the urbanized areas.

We need to decarbonize transportation using every tool, starting with right-sizing the vehicles for the task.  

We need to use road space more efficiently, which means remodeling our urban environments to make better use of transit and active modes (walking/cycling). 

There is no time to waste.  

We need to do it all at once.

Further reading:

• Where will the materials for our clean energy future come from?
• USGS on global known reserves
• Unflinching look at cobalt mining history in Canada
• The silent cost behind the world's electric vehicle revolution
• The business case for electric cargo bikes

* Just because you rebrand a county from Congo to the Democratic Republic of Congo, doesn't automatically make it so. I refuse to use the Newspeak name.

** A research paper showed the CO2 per passenger-mile for a bunch of different transport modes and the statistic that caught all the media editors' clickbait attention was that shared electric scooters are inefficient.  They are inefficient due to their short lifespans (people trash them) and miles driven in cars by the people who hunt them down, recharge them and restock them.  

A subsequent study showed that privately-owned Escooters are almost as efficient as Ebikes, which are almost as efficient as regular bikes-the most efficient mode of travel ever invented.

Plastic

I vent sometimes on Twitter. Earlier this month, I ran a Twitter poll and learned how hard it is to write an unambiguous multiple choice question.

Is plastic petroleum?

Of the 164 votes, 

• 72.6% chose "Yes, duh"
• 3% chose "No"
• 4.3% chose "Don't know"
• 20.1% chose "Not enough info to answer"

It's a good thing that I don't have to come up with a grading rubric for this question because you can make a valid argument that any of the choices are correct. 

I started to write an explanation for the answer, but it became quite a long thread.  Since it took so much research and time, it deserves to be put up on the blog.

Until 2 years ago, I didn’t know that materials scientists consider plastic a property instead of a material. You can make plastic from all sorts of polymers that are soft when warm and rigid when cooled. Eg potato starch plastic. 2/ 

Most plastics used in the world are made from fossil hydrocarbons, typically ethane. It used to be made mainly from petroleum distillates but is now often made from fossil gas aka natural gas. 3/ 

Worldwide, plastics use is increasing alarmingly. We should question whether we really need to consume so much. But, in the US, our car dependence is a much, much bigger problem. Landfilled plastics are sequestered. Gas tank hydrocarbons get burned and add CO2 to the atmosphere 4/ 

4/ Quote Tweeted this AirQ thread about how CO2 is lower on weekends because people drive less.

I’m not a big plastic user and live in a community that supports reduce, reuse, recycling. Angelenos produce much less garbage than US avg. Many areas, including mine, haul away yard and kitchen waste for industrial composting. Our recyclables are collected, sorted and recycled 5/ 

The rest of our trash is incinerated at SERRF on Terminal Island, Long Beach. It generates electricity for SERRF and feeds the grid. The ports of LA/LB use a lot of electricity 24/7 so this is synergistic. My city diverts 74% of waste (typical for LA County) and burns the remaining 26% 6/ 

(Our regional solid waste stream is also smaller than the US avg due to state/local government policy choices. Our family also made lifestyle adjustments to reduce it even further. The main driver is that government policies support solid waste reduction.)

I’m still using a roll of Saran Wrap purchased 10 years ago. I used Parafilm in lab when I needed it. I have zero guilt about using plastic when I need it. Right now, my trash is full of takeout containers from local restaurants that need our support during the pandemic 7/ 

Try to reduce single-use plastics in your day to day life as much as you can. Carry that refillable water bottle daily, but keep a case of water bottles in your earthquake kit. The American Chemical Society devoted a special issue to plastics recycling 8/ 

In short, mechanical plastics recycling chops up the long-chain polymers and weakens plastic. So, the current methods of plastics recycling, where new and old plastics are mixed together, is not closed loop or sustainable. Eventually, the plastic will be too weak to do its job of holding stuff. You don't want a container that breaks unpredictably.

THE DYSFUNCTION OF PLASTICS RECYCLING Plastics recycling, as it exists today, is a mess. In 2015, the US recycled only 9.1% of the 31 million t of plastics that consumers threw out, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The vast majority ended up in either landfills or incinerators. In contrast, two-thirds of paper, a third of metals, and a quarter of glass were recycled that year. In the European Union, about 14.8% of the roughly 27 million t of plastic waste was recycled in 2016, according to the European Commission.

But, there's active research into using enzymes to break down plastic back to its pre-polymerized raw feedstock shape. About 40% of it will remain, but it can be turned into low-sulfur diesel fuel--not a bad fuel for long distance trucking or ocean-going cargo ships which operate away from urban areas. 

One of my husband’s former classmates at MIT is working on enzymatic fuel production from plastics and agricultural waste. I am optimistic about the technology, though it is still too expensive. 9/ 

Driving an ICE car is single use petroleum. Using plastic, even if it is incinerated after 1 use, gets 2 uses out of the material. If it is landfilled, it is at least sequestered vs burned and released into the atmosphere 10/

Gasoline accounts for 45% of US petroleum use while all chemical feedstocks (paint, solvents, cleaners, pharmaceuticals, plastics) account for 1.5% https://eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/use-of-oil.php 11/

In summary, that smarty pants state senator is operating on old information. Plastics are made from a variety of sources & petroleum is one of the top 2. Plastics in waterways is a problem, but tire particles are the overwhelmingly major source 12/ 

[oops, I skipped 13/]

EVs, because of their weight, increases tire wear, exacerbating water and air pollution https://greencarreports.com/news/1127424_study-particulate-emissions-from-tire-wear-is-higher-than-from-tailpipes 14/ 

I wrote a detailed blog post about this 15/ Leaf blowers, street sweeping, car tires, fish and you

“Non-exhaust emissions...are currently believed to constitute the majority of primary particulate matter from road transport: 60% of PM2.5 and 73% of PM10.” https://tiretechnologyinternational.com/news/regulations/pollution-from-tire-wear-1000-times-worse-than-exhaust-emissions.html 16/

Under-inflated tires are a huge contributor to tire particles. Remember the Ford Explorer rollover scandal? SUVs are top heavy. To reduce rollover risk, they use special tires that don’t burst when inflated much lower than passenger car tires 17/ 

SUVs and pickups need larger tires, often at lower pressures, so they don’t roll over. Want to know why our regional PM 2.5 just keeps increasing? The answer is almost always cars, especially SUVs. Electric SUVs are greenwash. Electric bikes/trikes in every garage instead 18/fin

I'm not the only one who sees EV-only approaches without remaking our streets to help us move out of cars as greenwash. 

Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities: 

Tackling the climate and air pollution crises requires curbing all motorised transport, particularly private cars, as quickly as possible. Focusing solely on electric vehicles is slowing down the race to zero emissions. 

Only getting out of cars will solve the urban particulate air pollution, road congestion and parking/land use problems. I said URBAN. Rural areas have different problems and different solutions. But, since California is the most urbanized of all US states and Los Angeles is among the most urbanized of all CA and US counties, this is what we need to do right here, right now, where I live. 

10 Million people live in Los Angeles County, 5.6x as many people as Idaho. So I don't want to hear any critiques along the lines of this will not work in Boise or on my Montana ranch. The Netherlands has a bike culture with just 511 people per square kilometer vs 905 for Los Angeles County. 

Sure, NL is flat and LA is surrounded by steep mountains. But that also means we live more densely because most of us live in the flatter broad valleys and coastal plains. Ebikes flatten the hills anyway.  It sure does rain a lot more in NL, though.

Followup 10/1/21 

The US Department of Energy, who runs the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, started a new program to fund research in chemical recycling of plastics.

Face Mask Science 3, August 2020 edition

Do you have face mask confusion?  Do conflicting headlines give you headaches?

I sort of feel like I've read enough to know that I should wear one whenever I am indoors in any place that is not my own home.  I should also carry one whenever I am outdoors and be ready to put it on whenever anyone is nearby.

There is no way to reduce risk 100%, but we can reduce it to pretty low by:

• Social distancing in the sense that we minimize going out where we could encounter other people--especially in poorly-ventilated indoor places
• Social distancing in the sense of putting as much space (and air) between you and others outside your household when you do go out
• Universal mask wearing, especially indoors
• Good hygiene (cleaning surfaces, washing hands, not touching face, etc)

The even better news is emerging evidence from multiple countries and situations/studies that show that universal masking reduces the severity of Covid-19 illness if you do catch it. The idea is that viral load matters.  The higher the viral load, the more severe the illness. 

• Try to avoid situations where you can be exposed to the virus.  
• Assume that everyone is contagious (even though usually, it's less than 1%, often much less than 1% of the population.) 
• Then minimize your exposure.

The shaped 2-layer cotton masks I sew are fine for essential shopping trips and the occasional doctor visit.  The problem is finding masks that are comfortable enough to wear when being active (walking, biking, gardening.)

I made some gaiter-style masks with poly/lycra knit sewn into a tube, with a ponytail port at each end.  They were comfortable enough to wear for exercise, but a recent article said that gaiter masks might be worse than nothing.  That made no sense.

Fortunately, Professor Brent Stephens wrote 6000 words about what we know and don't know about masks, different materials, and Covid-19. What kind of mask should I be wearing to protect against COVID-19?

He has some thoughts on Gaiter-Gate, which I need not replicate here. Go read his analysis on why that gaiter measurement (with no control) is highly suspect.  Other scientists pointed out that the measurement that showed a "fleece gaiter" was worse than a bare face at containing droplets might have been measuring fleece fiber shedding instead of droplets.

Professor Linsey Marr wrote how she runs with a gaiter and doubles it up when anyone is nearby.  She posted a presentation on the blocking efficiency of neck gaiters.  The bottom line is that the thin kind that I sew blocks 50-90% of particle sizes that matter when worn in a single layer.  When doubled over, they block 90% over the entire range.

Lab setup:


The data:

The airbrush and spray bottle produce large droplets that, in the absence of a mask or neck gaiter, land on glass slides attached to the opposite manikin’s face. When either neck gaiter was affixed to the spraying manikin, no droplets were observed on the opposite manikin. Thus, the neck gaiters are 100% efficient at blocking these droplets from reaching the opposite manikin’s face.

I know that I sound like a broken record, but the best mask is the one that you will keep on.

Anyway, I am heartened from all of this advice from scientific experts.  It makes Covid-19 less scary.  I have enough to worry about with the elections and the census. 

In other news, this pandemic has made me read up on indoor ventilation and reminded me of sick building syndrome.  I was the canary in the goldmine for that and remember being treated like I was crazy.  One doctor even told me that he ordinarily sends patients who present with my symptoms to psychiatrists but he didn't think that was my problem; after all, I don't dislike technology and chemicals if I decided to major in it.  I'm assembling a blog post with very interesting things I learned.  I even ordered test equipment for my home. 

The mask series.