EVs, including Tesla, are Selling Well in China Due to Government's EV-Friendly Policies

Since 2016, China began to give out special “green-colored” license plates to new energy vehicle (NEV) car owners. This new plate distinguishes the NEVs from the regular “blue-colored” license plates which are commonly used on regular fuel passenger cars. Most importantly, NEV’s green plates are exempt from some cities’ license plate auction system, which was set to limit new car ownership in order to resolve congestion and pollution problems. For example, in 2020, the average sale price for a new license plate registration quota in Shanghai is about 90,000 Chinese yuan ($14,068). This means buying a NEV in Shanghai could cost about $15k less than buying a regular fuel car during the process of registration. Buying a NEV becomes a very good option for potential car buyers in Shanghai. The Chinese government is doing so to encourage people to buy more NEVs because it wants to achieve the goal that by 2035, 20% of the total vehicles on the road are NEVs. The policy aims to reduce carbon emissions by limiting the number of fuel-based passenger vehicles. In July 2020, Shanghai's government unveiled plans to add 100,000-200,000 public and private NEV charging points over the next three years. In May, It also offered a subsidy of 5,000 yuan/unit ($704/unit) to NEV buyers.

Tesla, which first entered China in 2019, has a large advantage in the NEV market. Since early 2020, Tesla's newly built super factory in Shanghai has been delivering vehicles to the Chinese market. The maximum capacity of the factory could reach 550,000 units per year. Shanghai’s Tesla sales made up 31% of the total amount of China-made cars Tesla sold in the country. In September 2021, Tesla sold 56,000 EVs in China. That is a record sale number per month, and it seems to be growing in the future.

Buyers at a Local Tesla Dealership in Shanghai, China

by Yingjia Zhou

Edited by Alan De Anda

Source:

1.       China's Shanghai continues to offer free EV licenses. Web. February 2021. https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2185607-chinas-shanghai-continues-to-offer-free-ev-licences

2.       Tesla sales in China expected to see Q4 surge with Shanghai’s updated license plate rules. Web. December 2020. https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-boosts-q4-sales-china-shanghai-rules/

3.       New energy vehicles in China. Web. October 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_energy_vehicles_in_China

 

Thoughts on driving (we need to price congestion)

As an avid cyclist studying transportation, I find Bryan D. Taylor's Rethinking Traffic Congestion a stark reminder that it will take a veritable revolution to wrestle the monopoly of streets from cars to people. While I am generally optimistic about the future of transportation based on new designs and policies that embrace people walking, biking, and taking transit, I am often let down in their implementation. Key features that would be truly transformative sometimes end up in the cutting floor. Shortened crosswalks, protected bike lanes, and light rail are often diluted to longer walk signal cycles, buffered bike lanes (nestled between parked cars and through lanes) and BRT lines that share lanes with cars. While there are valid budgetary and logistical constrains that may dilute a project, I feel that the main reasons we take these half-measures are political.

 As Taylor says:

Automobiles are central to metropolitan life, and efforts to manage congestion must accept this fact.
The so-called American love affair with automobiles is not an irrational addiction, as some assert. Instead it is a rational response both to the utility of private vehicles and to public policies supporting their use. Widespread auto use unquestionably imposes significant costs on society, but it also brings enormous private benefit. It’s so easy to see the many costs of auto use—like chronic traffic congestion—that we can forget how fast and flexible automobiles benefit travelers.

It is important to recognize that driving is the most convenient form of personal transportation in most cases because our policies and designs of the late 20th century dictated it. Today, with the private automobile as the de facto monarch of the streets, any policy or design that may be perceived as having a negative impact on the convenience of driving will have to prove its worth and face incredible scrutiny. And thus, active transportation and transit projects need to be framed as being able to solve multiple societal problems that are created (or at the very least exacerbated) by driving. We claim that these projects will result in less people driving because they present an alternative to driving. But being an alternative to driving is not enough if it is not more convenient than driving. It is difficult for these projects to provide a more convenient alternative to driving on their own, and near-impossible when their most promising features are diluted.

I believe that, in our current scenario, the only way that we will have the funds to produce world-class active transportation and transit projects, and the only way that we can make them more convenient to driving is by pricing congestion. It may seem like political suicide to suggest it now, but we can't wait until the gas tax fails (even more so than today) to fund transportation projects. It is time for driving to pay for all the societal costs it has accrued over the last century. And while climate change begins to affect our lives, and the public slowly begins to see the need for urgent action, we can't wait to have universal consensus on this matter. Yes, driving will be less convenient because it will be more expensive. Yes, it will be an uncomfortable transition. But we'll have a chance to make it through that transition. To continue on our current path is to accept that there is no future worth saving, and that we may as well do as we have been while we wait to die. To price congestion and fund safe and convenient alternatives to driving will give us a fighting chance for a healthy future.

Taylor, Brian D. "Rethinking Traffic Congestion," Access, 21: 8-16, Fall 2002.

Traffic safety in Portland's urban center and surrounding areas

    The Eric Dumbaugh and Robert Rae article about community design and traffic safety really got me thinking about the traffic related hazards that I see on a daily basis in the Portland metro area, both in central and neighborhood settings. One of the issues that I always think about it lighting; can you see pedestrians and other vehicles, and is so how well can you see them? I often seen neighborhoods and main roads with so little lighting that unless its light out, you can barely navigate the intersections and neighborhoods you are in. Lack of street lighting and high visibility signage makes the potential for crashes significantly higher, while also making the likelihood of a human/vehicle collision also significantly higher. I would be interested to see what the results would be if we took an intersection  or groups of intersections that have poor lighting and track the number of crashes that occur, then see what the difference in incident rates were once more lighting and high visibility signage was added. While speed does play a large roll in safety as the article suggested, speed reduction along with a more pointed focus on visibility would impact the rates of traffic incidents, at least within urban and suburban environments, in a way that could potentially increase safety both for motorists and pedestrians. 

    There should also be some consideration given to taking a deeper look at where in the city of Portland these high rates of vehicle safety incidents are occurring and seeing if there is any geographic region where traffic patters clash with infrastructure the most; and on top of that look at if there are any economic and class related differences between the rate of traffic incident and geographic area.    

source

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01944360902950349?scroll=top&needAccess=true 

Don't Widen I-5 (Or Use it at All) - Addressing Congestion

Congestion in Portland is a major issue. The Oregon Department of Transportation is slated to spend over $700M to widen and “improve” Interstate-5. The project has received a lot of criticism. Transportation advocates warn of induced demand - the reality that more roadway begets more cars, resulting in more congestion, an endless cycle. 

The City of Portland has one throughway that is not victim to congestion, the Willamette River. Introducing the Frog Ferry, a proposed passenger ferry that aims to alleviate congestion on Portland’s highways while addressing environmental and emergency management issues. 

The Frog Ferry is slated to begin running in the summer of 2022 as a pilot program lasting two years. The ferry will run from Cathedral Park in St. Johns to the RiverPlace Dock on the South Waterfront, a commute lasting 30 minutes and costing $3.00. The final iteration will begin in Vancouver, WA, providing commuters an alternative to heavily congested I5, ending in Oregon City. The pilot route will be part of a program to run as “proof of concept” for riders and investors while gathering data on performance and public appeal. 

The ferry was proposed in 2017, but did not receive funding until last year. The Oregon Department of Transportation awarded the non-profit “Friends of Frog Ferry” $200,000 accompanied by a $40,000 grant from the Portland Bureau of Transportation to conduct a feasibility study.

The pilot service will consist of one ferry, with a capacity of 70 passengers operating six days a week. While the pilot ferry will run on renewable diesel, the non-profit envisions a fully electric fleet for its service. According to the Friends of Frog Ferry, the water route will eliminate 600 automobile trips with a total of 1,000 passengers a day. This will prevent 3,170 metric tons of CO2 from being emitted, for perspective - that would take a forest of 3,884 acres over the course of one year to sequester that much carbon dioxide.

The ferry will not have the capacity to carry motor vehicles, but will have bike parking as well as connections to public transportation. 

In addition to environmental purposes, the ferry aims to act as an emergency response vehicle, aiding in the city’s resilience efforts. A ferry, while bound by the natural environment, does not have a fixed route. The infrastructure can act as an evacuation vehicle, unreliant on bridges and roads deemed to fail in the event of an earthquake. 

I was most curious about the permitting process of running a passenger ferry service. This is outlined in Section 6 of the feasibility study published last year. 

The ferry must gain approval from both Washington and Oregon, as it will eventually extend to Vancouver. Permits are processed through the Corps of Engineers in Vancouver and Portland. Both states use the same permitting process, adhering to the same standards and regulations making the permitting process fairly easy.

State-sanctioned environmental reviews must be conducted as well. These include, according to the study, the State Environmental Policy Act, National Flood Insurance Program, and Federal Emergency Management Administration reviews.

Federally, the Corps of Engineers, Department of State Lands, and Washing State Fish and Wildlife will require permits due to the presence of endangered species in the river. These are just some of the requirements of implementing transportation infrastructure on the Willamette River. 

Personally, I hope to see this ferry a success - for the reduction of congestion on our roads and elimination of carbon dioxide emissions in our air. 

By Anthony Tortorici

Edited by Sam Galvan

Sources

https://frogferry.com/about/

https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator

Bike-and-Ride in Los Angeles

After reading “Autos, Transit, and the Sprawl of Los Angeles” by Martin Wachs, I keep thinking about the vicious circle faced by the city’s transit service in its early stage. In the vicious circle, the problem of congestion happened first on LA streets, as the rapid growth in automobile ownership is much faster than the rate of street widening and opening. The congestion “slowed transit service, increased operating costs, and caused even larger numbers of commuters to abandon the trolleys in favor of auto commuting” (Wach, 1984). This effect made the problem of congestion even worse and finally formed a vicious cycle. On the modern stage of transit development in LA, improvements have been made. However, whether it is Railroads and trams, cars and highways, it is aimed at improving mobility while ignoring accessibility and proximity, that led to the rapid suburbanization and multi-centralization of the city, which made it harder for LA transit to attract passengers and provide efficient services like New York, Chicago, cities dominated by single centers.

In my opinion, improving the accessibility and proximity of transit stations is the key to reviving the city’s transit service. The introduction of bike availability at transit stations will promote people’s willingness to use transit services more and serve as a last-mile solution for passengers. Robert Cervero, a researcher from UC Berkeley, once did a study in 2013, researching how bike facilities at public transit hubs affect ridership. In his article, “Bike-and-Ride: Build It and They Will Come”, Cervero concluded that bicycle infrastructure improvements at BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) rail stations could increase the use of both bicycles and rail ridership. Cervero’s study was conducted in San Francisco Bay Area transit service, but I think LA could take a similar approach to improve the city’s transit ridership.

In fact, there has been an existing bike-and-ride program in LA called “Metro Bike Share” since 2016. Metro Bike Share is a partnership between Metro and the City of Los Angeles. The program aims to provide convenient bike access to the public at transit stations including rail, bus, and BRT stops. It only costs $1.75 for a 30 minutes ride and the monthly pass costs $17/month. Annual passes are also available at $150 per year. As of October 2021, the program has sold 211,808 passes and more than 1.3 million trips were made. Here is a map of Metro Bike’s service area and bike path. (https://media.metro.net/dcr/bikemap/metro_bikemap.html)

By Yingjia Zhou

Edited by Alan De Anda

References:

1. Wachs, M. “Autos, Transit, and the Sprawl of Los Angeles: The 1920s.” Journal of the American Planning Association 50, no. 3 (1984): 297-310.

2. Cervero, Robert, et al. 2013. Bike-and-Ride: Build It and They Will Come. Journal of Public Transportation, 16 (4): 83-105.

3. Los Angeles Metro Bike Share. Web. October 2021. https://bikeshare.metro.net/

Saved by the Hill: Why San Francisco's Muni Is the Way that It Is

“Autos, Transit, and the Sprawl of Los Angeles: The 1920s” by Martin Wachs highlighted how streetcars helped shape LA and how that region first pivoted from transit to the automobile. I’ve barely spent any time in LA but the article got me thinking about the interplay between transportation and urban form in another California city I know much better: San Francisco. I’ve spent my fair share of time getting around San Francisco on public transportation and it doesn’t take long to start to notice the quirks in the system, particularly in the light rail, Muni Metro. A  quick read through the history section on Muni’s website reveals the reasons behind some of these quirks.

San Francisco is one of the few US cities that preserved part of its streetcar network, most famously a few of its cable car lines. Less well-known than the cable cars, but more important for the city’s transportation infrastructure, are five former streetcar routes that survived post World War II bus replacement and today make up five of the six Muni Metro lines: J-Church, K-Ingleside, L-Taraval, M-Oceanview, and N-Juddah. San Francisco and Los Angeles are often contrasted against each other in many ways, including in their preferred modes of transportation. The decision to preserve these five lines however, was not based in politics, culture or ideology, but rather geography. The K, L, and M all ran through the rail-only Twin Peaks Tunnel. The N similarly used the Sunset Tunnel and the J followed a narrow winding right-of-way through the hillside in Dolores Park before all five converged on Market Street in the city center. All of these routes would have required substantial infrastructure investments to accommodate buses, so streetcar service remained. 

Muni Metro Map from 

https://imprail.tumblr.com/post/148317786041/muni-metro-san-francisco-design-is-mine-but

In the 1970s the four-track Market Street Subway opened with the lower level accommodating the new BART regional rail and the upper level available for Muni trains. By the early 80s the streetcars had been replaced with light rail trains that used the new subway and the five lines were collectively rebranded Muni Metro. Today Muni Metro remains a major part of the backbone of San Francisco’s transit infrastructure, and although generally regarded as a light rail system, it retains many quirks from its streetcar past. When running on the surface Muni trains are often in shared traffic alongside cars and feature a significant number of flag stops, where trains will stop only if passengers are waiting or have requested to disembark. Muni also lacks the traffic signal prioritization used to speed up many newer light rail systems. When compared with a newer system, such as the MAX here in Portland (which stops only at designated stations and runs in dedicated rights-of-way with traffic signal priority), traveling along Muni’s surface sections often feels slow and unpredictable. Still, these routes, shaped and preserved by the city’s geography and intersecting layers of infrastructure, have played an important role in building and retaining San Francisco’s urban form as we know it today.

Edited by Anthony Tortorici

Citations:

Wachs, M. (1984). Autos, transit, and the sprawl of Los Angeles: The 1920s. Journal of the American Planning Association, 50(3), 297-310. 

Muni History. San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/muni/muni-history

Road Trip Through LA

This past summer I went on a road trip with my dad. We drove from San Antonio, TX to Portland, OR. The trip took us about a week to complete. We took our time, stopped in different locations and took the opportunity to explore different parts of the country. At times we would rather just teleport to our next location, other times we would want to go back and redo the drive. For example the drive from Flagstaff to Sedona was gorgeous, Big Sur is breathtaking, and along the Oregon Coast there are many spots worth stopping by. On the trip we stopped in Sedona, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Newport, and many other locations along the way. One place in particular caught my eye, and made me think about the city and it’s transportation. 

Arriving in LA was a hassle, accident here, accident there, thanks to the traffic we recognized we arrived at Los Angeles. As you drive you see car lots filled, and you just wonder to ask yourself “How can they sell all of these cars?”. The city of Los Angeles is beautiful, but it is extremely dispersed, it was even planned this way. “City planners and businessmen agreed that dispersal of Los Angeles was desirable and recognized that pursuit of this objective required large capital investments in the capacity to move people between many activity centers” (Wachs, 1984). The city of Los Angeles is a low-density metropolis, and back in the 20’s the public was critical of the transit companies, and the idea of LA was to be thought of as a city that values sunlight and striking views, and in all fairness I think of LA that way. Throughout history we can understand why LA became this automobile dependent city. During my stay in LA, we spent the night at West Covina and the next morning I met with a friend in Santa Monica. It took me an hour and a 15 minutes on a sunday morning to get to Santa Monica. By transit it would take me more than 2 hours. 

Edited by Asif Haque

Source:

Martin Wachs (1984) Autos, Transit, and the Sprawl of Los Angeles: The 1920s, Journal of the American Planning Association, 50:3, 297-310, DOI:10.1080/01944368408976597

By Manuel Suarez

Transit as a contributor to sprawl in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in LA

I was intrigued by the fact that transit contributed to sprawl in Los Angeles from around 1880 to the 1920s, and that by the WWII period and afterwards transit had already established a political and built environment for roads and highways to dominate. Looking at historic maps of Los Angeles, one can see the sprawling range of the city's past transit system. I had always considered transit as a method to combat sprawl in places, which is the current paradigm of thinking. I had not significantly considered before that early planners had initially perceived transit as a method to induce sprawl and alleviate congestion. I think a fundamental issue at the time, among many, was a sense of binary thinking. Transit could only induce sprawl or alleviate congestion, it could not accomplish an equilibrium between the both. This sense of binary thinking is still an issue today, but planners now I believe are becoming much more aware of the gradient between binaries, such as the gradient between sprawl and density. I wonder how different Los Angeles and the surrounding built environment would look if instead past planners had the opposite intentions and outcomes for implementing transit: to increase density (while alleviating congestion) and reduce future sprawl. It is interesting to think that Los Angeles is still considered a really dense city of over 7,000 people per square mile in 1990 terms. Is this densification over time due to the paradigm shift in the thinking of planners, from a concern to decrease congestion to a goal to increase density? I think it is.

By Asif Haque

Edited by Manuel Suarez Pallas

Source:

Martin Wachs (1984) Autos, Transit, and the Sprawl of Los Angeles: The 1920s, Journal of the American Planning Association, 50:3, 297-310, DOI:10.1080/01944368408976597

Class presentation on history