Around the world in 7 days

I am in Bangkok for the Better Air Quality Conference 2008 (www.baq2008.org). My trip started in typical fashion, mechanical delay at Knoxville’s McGee Tyson Airport, making me miss my Washington to Tokyo and later Tokyo to Bangkok connection. This is the third time in a row that this has happened to me flying out of Knoxville, all on different airlines. This time was United. The gate agent called me up and told me that I would miss my connection and the only thing they could do was try the same itinerary the next day. She said that all flights were full and it would be impossible to leave any sooner. I told her that I found it hard to believe that at 10 am, there are no other seats on any other airline that would get me closer to Bangkok that day. After some patient persistence and a return to the main ticket office, they got me on a flight crossing the Atlantic. They seemed determined to keep me on United, although they have an

 obligation (I think) to put me on another flight.Twice in the same day did someone tell me that the airlines needed to be re-regulated. The live-and-let-die notion of capitalism in America seems to be fading with the economy. I’ve heard far more proponents of government regulation (in Knoxville no less) than ever before. Anyways, I flew to Frankfurt Germany and had a nice seven hour layover, which was really nice. European transportation systems are amazing. I asked a couple of American travelers that seemed to have taken that route before how to get around Frankfurt and where I might want to go on my layover. They explained to me that, by the time I picked up my rental car and dropped it off, I would have a hard time making good on my layover. I asked about trains and they had never considered it. Well, I knew the train served the Frankfurt airport (from Julie and my 2001 trip). After a little asking around, I ended up getting on the S8 train and into downtown Frankfurt in 15 minutes. From the airport you pass the train station with the high speed ICE trains coming and going. 

Once downtown there were rental bikes everywhere that you could call in and have them unlock it for you. If I had a phone that worked, I would have done it--1 euro an hour. I was fortunate to be there before rush hour so I got to see everyone coming in and the streets getting busier and busier as time went on. They had buses, streetcars, the U-Bahn local trains, and great bike infrastructure; many options for the car-less. This is the fundamental problem with High-Speed Rail proposals in the US, what do you do when you get there? There are only a few cities and corridors in the country that could absorb the riders on their public transit systems, leading to the inevitable car rental system. This could work, but to compete with air travel you would have to have vast garages for rentals presumably in downtown areas. It seems it could serve a niche, but not reach the level of Europe or Japanese systems, without significant land use and local public transit investment in cities.  After about 45 hours of travel, I will be in Bangkok, making it to my meeting with four hours to spare. Instead of flying half-way around the world and back again, I am truly flying around the world, West to East all the time, from Knoxville to DC to Frankfurt to Bangkok to Beijing to Chicago and back to Knoxville, all in seven days.

Biking for fun and more

The last few weeks have seen a pretty big shift in my commute pattern. I am teaching an undergrad transportation class that starts at 8:00 on Tuesday and Thursday and Avah started preschool and goes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The big challenge was trying to find a way for me to drop her off in the morning on my way to school. The challenge comes with her not being able to hop on the back of my Vespa (at least without getting some evil stares) and her school being completely inaccessible to non-motorized transportation. Well, the solution became, riding the city KAT bus to her school in the morning (on the way to work) and bringing my bike along. The bus drops us off at her school on Kingston Pike and I check her in. From there, I do some hair-raising road crossing to get to the other side of Kingston Pike and ride in the wrong direction down the sidewalk (yikes! for everyone involved) until I get to a point where I can get into traffic safely and not be mowed over by 50mph driving soccer (or hockey) moms. This has worked better than expected despite the one time we missed the bus, which comes every hour. I get to spend some quality time with Avah, she gets a kick out of riding the bus and can get some exercise and get to the office at the same time. This leads to the question though of whether bicycling can be taken seriously in a city like Knoxville. There are a lot of good efforts by the MPO to develop bike infrastructure, but so many critical links are not safe for bicyclists. The parks and rec department has built some wonderful bike trails, but they can be circuitous and the don't necessarily go everywhere. Most of the people I see are out there for recreation. Is it just that Americans aren't ready to commute on a bike yet? Would they if they had the chance (infrastructure)? How much would someone invest in a decent bike to 'give it a try'? These are a few questions I have in mind when I am trying to get to the University and think about ways to introduce more sustainable modes of transportation into our "multimodal" system. 

My family went on a bike ride organized by the Knoxville MPO (www.knoxtrans.org) last weekend. Some 250 bicyclists in a mob toured north Knoxville by bicycle, which surely allows you to see more compared to driving. We had a lot of fun, with the kids in tow in our small bike trailer. We had some problems/anxiety on Central Avenue as we were not with the pack and we were trying to ride our bikes on higher speed roadways (our entire family's lives in the hands of a 16 year old texting while driving). Well, we made it and when we got to the finish line, we were surrounded by bicyclists of all types. Most of whom seemed quite committed. The 20 year old Schwinn that I bought at the thrift store stood out like a sore thumb. This leads to the question, would Joe Public spend $1000 on a bike, then jump onto Central Avenue to get to work, just to try it out. I doubt it. I overheard a conversation with the owner of our local bike shop and he said that business hasn't increased despite ultra-high gas prices. Of course the average price of a bike in his shop is probably up around $1000 as well. He said that he sees people who are already into biking, using them more, but not many people running out and buying a bike. I wonder if bike sales have gone up at Walmart, and will an ill-fitting Walmart bike be something that will convert driver to biking? Where are the low cost, decent quality, commuter bikes? I haven't found too many of them. The classic transportation problem, is there no demand because of no (bad) infrastructure or is there no infrastructure because of no demand? Afterall, biking is a recreational sport.  

Hydrogen Road Tour in Chattanooga

Monday two of my students (Shuguang Ji and Casey Langford) and I went to the Hydrogen Road Tour in Chattanooga (http://hydrogenroadtour08.dot.gov/). For a couple of hours about a half dozen hydrogen powered cars (internal combustion and fuel cell) were displayed and demonstrated. It was quite an impressive demo, if you could ignore the tractor trailers with giant hydrogen tanks that accompanied them. This certainly demonstrates the chicken or egg challenge associated with developing cars first or hydrogen infrastructure. Not every H2 car can have a "station" following them wherever they go. Regardless, the vehicles were silent and local pollution free. It was also interesting seeing the different technology strategies involved, like the hydrogen gas powered fuel cell cars, with high pressure tanks, and BMW's internal combustion engine with very cool liquid hydrogen. The engineer told me the tank is so insulated that it would take 80 days for a cup of boiling coffee to become drinkable inside. Pretty amazing. At any rate, the reason I attended was to brush up on some of the technology, along with infrastructure challenges for a research project I am working on with Casey, along with Wayne Davis here in the Civil Engineering department. We are identifying infrastructure and fleet challenges associated with developing a hydrogen powered bus fleet in Knoxville. On a semi-related note, I've seen a few stories about using baking soda/water mixture that can supposedly boost fuel efficiency by 10-100%. I have been thinking about trying it out on my new moster truck (what do I have to lose?). I came across this PM article that tests it and so far has debunked it as a myth that violates thermodynamic laws.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/how_to/4276846.html?series=19

If I decide to go for it, it might be a fun experiment.

E-Scooters vs Motorbikes in Vietnam

With the price of gasoline increasing by over 30% in Vietnam, former e-scooter skeptics are re-considering whether e-bikes will enter the market and what affect they might have on local air quality. Here is my take that I just posted on the Sustran listserve.

E-bikes emit a less on almost all levels than motorbikes. Some recent work we've been doing in China shows that e-bikes emit 1/3 the CO2 as a motorbike. Similar improvements can be seen on almost all local pollutants with the exception of SO2, which has comparable rates, but this highly depends on local electricity generation mix. Another issue where e-bikes have an advantage is the ability for agencies to manage a few point emission sources (power plants), compared to millions of tailpipes. Finally, emissions from power plants are generally more remote and thus populations have less exposure to the pollutant than ground-level tailpipe emissions in dense urban areas. In the context of local "tailpipe" emissions electric bikes/scooters/motorbikes perform much better than gasoline motorbikes.

Lead pollution on the other hand is where electric bikes do not perform so well. This is something that the Vietnam EPA is addressing by developing a lead acid battery recycling system that encourages take-back into the "formal" sector, rather than backyard recyclers. I am working with them on this along with the development of an eco-label for sustainable battery production with an NGO, OK International (www.okinternational.org). Whether the Vietnamese can succeed in managing a "clean" lead battery supply chain is uncertain but they are certainly making an effort to address it, before e-bikes flood the market. Because of Vietnam's poor recycling infrastructure, a lot of lead scrap in Vietnam is being exported (illegally) to China, but that could change as more recyclers enter the market. It could be beneficial to begin looking at new battery technology for this new market, now that Lead has gotten expensive and Li-ion is coming down in price. One still has to address the recycling problem, but Li-ion could be more manageable than Lead.

There is also some work in progress looking at some market analysis, using a stated preference survey that we conducted in June. The initial results actually show quite a strong preference for e-scooters, based on performance, cost and other metrics. I will send an email to this listserve when I have a report with some solid findings.

To summarize, e-scooters will improve local air quality, energy efficiency, and GHG emissions in Vietnam (perhaps also improving cost effectiveness of travel and safety at the same time). Introducing e-vehicles into the cities will increase lead pollution, simply because most current e-scooters use large lead batteries, frequently. The cost of alternative technology (Li-ion) is coming down, potentially leading to more adoption (maybe with the help of regulators). Also, Vietnam policy makers have been more pro-active than most in addressing lead problems in the past couple of years (in my opinion), so there is a higher chance that there will be a robust take-back policy like we see in the North America or Europe, and hopefully this will lead to high rates of formal recycling.

Birthdays Party

It is the Birthday season in the Cherry household. Julie's is July 12th, Chris' is July 30th, Kylie's is August 10th, and Avah's is August 13th. So we have one birthday party after another. Julie's was at...well Chris' friends house, a big reunion of all the childhood buds. Chris' was up in the Smokey mountains on a camping trip. Avah and Kylie get to share their party because they happen to be three days apart. We had a "water fun" party. Basically a bunch of kids, old and young jumping around in the water. Everyone had tons of fun, even if the birthday girls were a little slow waking up from their afternoon naps. So we have a "wonderful" two year old and soon to be four year old. We also went fishing on the boat today and Avah got to reel in her first fish, about an 8" smallmouth bass.

Catching up with the Joneses

So, we went there. I used to be a bass fisherman and be on the water several times a month. I went to college in Berkeley and it became too difficult to get connected with fishing clubs etc, not that I had any time between kids and grad school. As a result, my fishing gear collected dust and I only went out a couple of times in several years, fishing from the shore and not having much luck. One of the problems is that I'm used to fishing from a boat. Well, my dad hadn't been using a boat much so last week he offered to lend it to us, and we took him up on that offer. We had it shipped out and it arrived last Saturday...only problem is that we didn't have a vehicle to launch with. My Vespa wouldn't do it and our Chevy Malibu wasn't able. So we were shopping for something that could pull a boat...dare I say SUV. Yes, we were shopping for an SUV, which started with a mid sized Land Rover, then to a Dodge Durango. No luck on any of these. What did we get...a huge Ford Expedition. OK, this was bigger than we wanted, but it had what we needed, pulling power and a third row. This is the best time to buy a gas guzzler, but I was slightly embarrassed driving it today. On top of that, it defies what I would consider my moral fabric. See this link to know what I mean http://christiansandclimate.org/. OK, my only rationalization (not justification) is that it will be parked 9 out of 10 days. OK, this thing also is 10 years old and has 152,000 miles and cost us $3100 so it hopefully won't depreciate much more. I think this is a good time to buy a gas guzzler. I am going to do a little experiment and see if the "vehicle effect" will actually increase my household's vehicle miles traveled (VMT) like the travel demand models predict. Check back in a year on that one. For what it's worth, here is the beast and our new boat that we took out today for the first time. We are trying not to catch up with the Joneses, but we are living blocks from a lake and a boat is going to be tons of fun for the family and me.

Thailand beach and back to USA

We are back! We had a great time in China. The trip started with about a week in Beijing for a conference and some meetings, followed by two months in Kunming, then about a week in Thailand. On the side, I had a couple of trips to Shanghai and Hanoi to build some partnerships and initiate some research. The Bluey Louey saga has ended, with Bluey locked up for good, destined to rust away in a junk yard. Avah and I went to try to get her out once and we were able to see her one last time, but too much paperwork and fines to pay to justify going for the release.

We had a great time in Thailand. I spent the first day meeting with faculty from King Mongkut University of Technology Thonburi. This was a very good meeting and I was very happy to meet the faculty there. I think that this will be a good interaction. After that meeting, we flew to Thailand to have some fun in the sun for a long weekend. We went to Khao Lak, about an hour north of the Phuket airport. It was wonderful, just the way I like it. I've heard that Phuket can be a tourist circus, which is what I try to avoid on my vacations. Khao Lak is a quiet village, still with plenty of local food and amenities, but without the hassle of being constantly hounded by people trying to squeeze your last Baht out of you. The place we stayed...Baan Khao Lak was pretty great, centrally located and there were only about 5 families in the whole resort (summer is off-season because of the monsoon storms). It only actually rained for a few minutes on the first day, so we really lucked out. We rented a motorcycle to get around, which was admittedly risky, but also very fun and mobile for all involved. We took it all over, up into the mountains, through the town, etc. Much better than walking in the July heat. Kylie didn't like the beach so we spent a lot of time in the pool. Avah learned to swim for the most part and both girls had a lot of confidence in the pool. We rode an elephant through the jungle and visited some waterfalls. Overall, it was a great vacation. It was a little eerie being in the location in Thailand that was hardest hit by the Tsunami. Even four years later there is still evidence. Most striking was the destroyed and abandoned resort down the beach from ours that was slowly being swallowed by the jungle.

We are back in the states now, visiting Julie's family, then to a wedding, then visiting my family for a couple of days in Prescott. Then back to "normal" life in Knoxville to write some papers and prep my new class for the fall.

Two down, one to go

We left China yesterday, bound for Bangkok. Overall, this has been one of our most interesting and rewarding trips. This was the first time I’ve gone as a faculty member and clearly the first time I have ever brought students along. It is also the first time I’ve had two kids along (no I’m not referring to the students). It has had its share of challenges and adventures. This trip was possibly busier than any other trip to China. This time I spent more time managing and planning projects than actually collecting data (like on my dissertation research trips. We were (are) working on five projects in two countries, coordinating with three of my students, several Chinese faculty and students and several Vietnamese researchers. Here is a list of the projects that we collected data for and are currently working on.

1) E-Bike Use in China: Patterns, Dynamics, Determinants, and Environmental Impacts (Luke Jones, along with Xiong Jian (Kunming University of Science and Technology))-Partial Funder: UT

2) E-Scooters in Vietnam: Factors Influencing Market Potential and Improvements to Local Air Quality (Luke Jones, along with Nguyen Quang and Vu Tuan (Hanoi University of Transport and Communications))-Partial Funder: Swiss Vietnam Clean Air Partnership

3) Lead Acid Battery Take-Back Policy Development and the BEST Eco-Label in Vietnam (Luke Jones and Perry Gottesfeld(OK International), along with Vietnam EPA)-Partial Funder: NCIIA

4) Illegal Pedestrian Crossing Behavior and Countermeasures (Elliott Moore, along with Xiong Jian (KMUST))-Partial Funder: UT

5) Intersection Design to Reduce Conflict and Improve Capacity (Terrance Hill, along with Xiong Jian (KMUST))-Partial Funder: National Science Foundation

Luke and Elliott left early in the week to get some R&R on the beach in Thailand. Unfortunately, they left early and my other student, Terrance, didn’t overlap with them much. He seems like he will do fine on his own though. My family and I came to Thailand yesterday and this morning I met with faculty at King Mongkut University of Technology Thonburi about renewing a MoU between our Universities that has recently expired. The meeting was very promising and the all of our research interests are aligned. I think that this could be a very promising relationship. Tonight we are going to Khao Lak to take a much needed long weekend on the beach. It should be quite nice before the twenty something hour plane ride back to Knoxville. The pictures are of our beast of an SUV and the one day all of my students were in town the same day, along with Professors He Min and Xiong Jian, and students Xie Chunrong and Ren Zhong.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

I am on a whirlwind trip to Shanghai. I’ve been promising various people in the Shanghai area that I would come for a visit and I realized that I was running out of time quick. I flew into Shanghai this morning and met with the director of the Clean Air Initiative for lunch. CAI is the benefactor of some of the e-bike work that I’ve been doing lately and it seems that they would like me to do some more in Southeast Asia. This is a nice fit with the Vietnam work that we started last week. The survey in Hanoi should go on this week and Luke and I have been working real hard to get the instrument in order. I sent it off at 2:00 am and then set the alarm for 5:45, to get to my 8:00am flight to Shanghai. OK, back to Shanghai. I met with several faculty members from the Transportation Engineering College at Tongji University. I’ve worked with a faculty member in the planning department on my dissertation, but never with the Transportation Engineering department (which split from Civil Engineering in 2000). Overall, we had a good meeting and I was able to present some of my work to them. This meeting was fruitful and will hopefully lead to future collaboration. I hope this will help build UT’s existing collaboration with Tongji University. Finally, I rushed off to the Shanghai train station to catch the train to Jinhua City, the location of Luyuan Electric Vehicle Company. I will get there by midnight I hope. I am meeting with the president of this company tomorrow morning. I’ve visited several e-bike makers over the last few years and Luyuan is by far the most forward thinking that I’ve encountered. After lunch I am back on the train to (hopefully) make the connection to the airport and get back to Kunming by the weekend. We booked our tickets to Bangkok. I will meet with some faculty at the King Mongkut University of Technology Thonburi to see about renewing a linkage agreement that Arun Chatterjee established, but is unable to continue due to his retirement. After that meeting, a couple of much needed beach days to relax before we get to hectic life in the USA. As an aside, I met an interesting fellow today. He is (was) a member of the infamous religion/cult (depending on where you stand) that is prohibited in China. He was discovered by authorities and he told me about his two years spent in the “re-education unit”. It didn’t sound like much fun.

Father's Day(s) in Kunming

I returned from Hanoi friday, buy the skin of my teeth. We arrived to the airport 25 minutes before our flight departed, but made it. Good thing too. Julie's dad had a few meeting re-shuffled and was able to come down to visit us on Saturday, en route to Jakarta. We spent the day with a bunch of activities. Luckily the day before an expat friend lent us his SUV (don't judge me treehugger friends). Happily our fourth set of wheels since we've been here. We used it to go up to the Golden Temple in the morning, then some good Uygur noodles for lunch, off to the countryside for in the afternoon, and finally to the Dai restaurant for some exotic food for dinner (fried grubs and bees). The kids chowed them, even after we told them what they were eating. Julie's dad was off Sunday morning at 6am; we had a great day.


On the true father's day, Sunday, we went up to Shi Lin or the Stone Forest with Luke and Elliott. This is the much anticipated tourist attraction of most Kunming visitors and most of our friends have promised that it would be a bit of a let-down. We went and loved it. It is a geological wonder. Giant stone pinnacles jutting out of the countryside. It had it's fair share of Chinese tourist junk, but the interior of the park was very isolated from the gift shops and annoying people selling who knows what. You could certainly get lost in the park. It had it's share of steep drops for the kids so we had to watch out for them and it was slick and rainy most of the time. Really much cooler than the reputation it had from my friends and lonely planet. It was a really great father's day. Even better, the kids did really well.

Meetings and What-not

I've been quite busy here in Hanoi. Luke, Perry and I have been working hard and meeting a lot of policy makers from VEPA, in addition to other NGO's etc. It has been a lot of fun, but also very exhausting. The first day was spent participating in a workshop on eco-labeling, sponsored by OK International. It went quite well I thought. There were quite a few stakeholders in the room so it was good exposure for the battery eco-labeling project we've been working on. We had a different meeting today with some influential folks in the Vietnam EPA to determine a strategy and policy on lead battery recycling. It went better than the previous day's workshop because it was less formal and more interactive. A lot of Q&A going both directions. It is exciting and humbling working helping VEPA develop a lead battery policy. We'll see if anything comes out of it.

Hanoi is quite nice. The culture and food is great. The people (who are not selling me something) are quite friendly. I saw the Hanoi Hilton yesterday and I had a chance to talk with my Vietnamese academic partner's father who was a anti-aircraft gunner in the Vietnam war. I didn't sense any hard feelings. I asked my partner if there were any lingering negative sentiments and he said that most Vietnamese from that generation recognize that it was a war between political groups, not individuals. Definitely interesting being here.

I still feel like I'm getting ripped off around every corner and the Vietnamese are relentless when it comes to overcharging foreigners. I got my first barber style shave today (although is was a seat on the sidewalk). I forgot my razor and tried to use the cheap disposable with warm water. That was far too painful. Everyone around me getting shaves made sure they didn't show me what they paid. I'm sure I paid at least double. One really good thing here is the coffee. It is about as thick as maple syrup and, with enough cream and sugar, tastes and feels like Hershey's chocolate syrup. Excellent I might say. We went to a coffee shop last night and I was wondering why there were about 10 very attractive women hanging out there (while there were no men to speak of). We found out real quick that these women were working girls. Really quite sad. When the sun goes down the illicit behavior comes out.

Research in Vietnam

Today I arrived in Hanoi to work on two projects. The first is related to environmentally friendly lead battery manufacturing and recycling. This work is working to aid the Vietnam EPA develop a lead battery recycling policy as well as introduce a lead acid battery "eco-label". The main partner in this is OK International, who developed the BEST Certification system (www.okinternational.org). This work is funded by NCIIA and Luke is working down here with me on this project. We will have a workshop on June 10th and 11th.

The second project is related to electric scooter market potential in Vietnam. We are hoping to conduct a stated preference experiment among future motorcycle purchasers, identifying what factors are most influential in their purchase decisions. This project is building off of a budding partnership with the Hanoi University of Transport and Communications. We are hopeful that this project will go well.

My first impressions are overall very good, an overwhelming amount of motorcycles. Our taxi driver from the airport was very friendly and the Vietnamese people are very hospitable. We did end up with one problem. We went wandering and we expected that any cab driver would know exactly where our hotel was (since our first cab driver did). Well, we ended up getting lost and were hoping to hop in a cab to get back. Problem was, no cab driver seemed to know where our hotel was. We asked dozens of people and probably 10 cab drivers. We actually got into two taxis, but ended up getting out after a few kilometers of aimless driving. Finally we knew we were close and found a confident taxi (all taxis seem to try to rip you off by the way so we insist that we use the meter). As we were on our way home with the 3rd taxi, suddenly the meter jumped up so that about a 1 km ride went to 6 km instantly (and the price tripled). We bickered, and I don't know how he flipped the meter, but we were happy to be back at the hotel, about 2 hours later than expected. Lesson: always know how to say your destination in the local language or have it written down (like on a business card).

Eight Years Celebrated in AnNing

Our anniversary was June 3rd, eight years. Wow time flies. This year we had a couple of friends watch the kids for the day and Julie and I went to An Ning, a city about one hour away from Kunming by bus. We went to AnNing for its famous hot springs and the fact that it didn't make the lonely planet China tour book, so it isn't crawling with tourists. We ended up going to the "golden forest hot springs", which turned out to be a real decent place. It had a little bit of Chinese styled junk, but wasn't over the top. The grounds of the hot springs were dotted by small pools, each with its own style. There was a milk spring, a rose spring, and a candy apple spring. It was really great and relaxing. Overall, a really excellent experience. A little chronology of our anniversaries for those who care:

Married June 3, 2000 in Tucson, AZ
1st-Bisbee, AZ
2nd-Flagstaff, AZ
3rd-Payson, AZ
4th-Las Vegas, NV
5th-Chicago, IL
6th-Tucson, AZ
7th-Yosemite National Park, CA
8th-AnNing-China

Rising gas prices (or not)

So, you might complain about rising gas prices in the USA. I would probably complain too. China's gas prices are fixed by the central government, so pretty much anywhere you go, you pay the same price (so the Sinopec on one corner doesn't beat the China Petrol on the other). There are no fuel taxes, but since the government sets the price, they set the "profit" or "loss" of the oil company, which is largely owned by the government, but has been put on the market so that private investors can buy stock. This has some pros and cons. The pros are that the fuel prices do not fluctuate wildly like they can where the price is set by the "market", like in the USA. Since fuel taxes are low in the USA, we really see huge fluctuations since almost all of the price is reflected in the price of oil. European markets, where fuel taxes are much higher don't feel as much brunt (ie prices don't rise or fall by the same proportion) because their price at the pump includes some very high taxes...see http://www.cnbc.com/id/24793710 . Chinese drivers haven't seen much of the major recent increases because the Chinese government has not recently changed prices. This results in losses (rather than profits) for the Chinese oil companies (sorry dad that you just bought Sinopec). Currently, the price of a gallon is about $2.80. So what is a Chinese oil company to do? Well, rather than sell as much as they can at a loss, they are known to restrict supply by temporarily closing stations and thus jamming others. This happens periodically and happened a couple of weeks ago (along with the earthquake demanding some energy rationing). The result is rather than pay market price, drivers are forced to wait for up to 3 hours in embargo style lines. This makes it pretty inconvenient to drive a car, but also ride a bike since the lines generally spill throughout the road network, including the bike lane. Well, next time you have to pay $4 a gallon, consider paying $2.80 and having to wait several hours in your car for a fill-up or for a rationed few gallons. I would recommend driving less if you can, or getting a more fuel efficient car.

Contenders for the e-bike name

Well, we had a few contenders for the e-bike name, the first seven from my Uncle Cody. Here they are:

1) Crotch firecracker
2) Cherry bomba
3) Hardly Hawg
4) American Flyer
5) Evel BoWeevel
6) Bi-micro-mini SuV
7) Cheeps (as in CHips)
8) The Electrocutioner (by John Lee)
9) Penguin Hearty (by Avah)

I think we are leaning toward Cherry bomba or Penguin Hearty or even the Electrocutioner if it were easier to say. On a semi-related note, our camera fell out of my pocket (or had some help falling out by a pick-pocket) on the bus, so we are going to have a hard time posting any recent photos. We'll see about getting a loaner until we return, since cameras here are about twice the price of ones in the USA. Also, another notable transportation related event (although I missed the picture). Kylie did a back flip out of a grocery cart and landed on her face. Really scary, but she recovered really quickly.

China taking its toll

It seems that China is taking its toll. My students Luke and Elliott have been here for a little less than two weeks and they are already starting to feel the strain of language barriers, cold showers, exploiters, thieves, and yes transportation risks. Their first experience with China was a negative one. No sooner had they stepped onto the mainland from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, had they been taken by an informal taxi driver, who solicited them into his car. Little did they know that this was an illegal operator, not operating on a meter. About halfway between the ferry terminal and the airport did they realize that they were being taken for a ride. When they arrived, the driver demanded 730RMB, a little more than $100 for a ride that should have cost less than $15. Since they didn't know what it should cost, they reluctantly paid (more for the cab across town than the airfare from Shenzhen to Kunming). Well lesson learned. They arrived to Kunming at the beginning of a week worth of rain, which wouldn't be a problem but for their solar powered hot water heater. You guessed it, icy showers. Then the day before yesterday Elliott witnessed a nasty (and likely fatal) car and bicycle accident, so he is vowing not to ride his bike again. The car was apparently driving down the bicycle lane in the wrong direction. Another instance of a "dangerous" bicyclist killed and a car with a dent. This is the underlying perception of many traffic police in this city. On a relatively less significant note, Luke's backpack was stolen from in front of him while playing basketball. Fortunately all that was lost was his (new) camera, and cell phone, not his laptop. Elliott's backpack was next to his and had about $3000 worth of computers and cameras inside. I'm going to bring them to some good McDonalds tonight and they might end up watching an English version of Ironman at the theater. Julie and I went on a date last night and saw it and it was excellent, but then maybe my standards have changed since arriving here.

Pedestrian Research Started

Elliott and I, along with a Chinese student, Ms. Xie, started up our research on pedestrian mid-block crossing behavior. It is starting out with some observations of illegal ped crossing, trying to understand how far one is willing to walk to make a legal crossing. This really depends on a number of things, like traffic and road width. China is known for it's superblocks, so sometimes it is a huge distance to get to the nearest signalized intersection. We are going to try and measure this phenomenon at several types of roadways, with varying geometric configurations and traffic levels to identify where and when signalized or over/underpass style legal mid-block crossings should be constructed. Or, when barriers should be built. I will blog about the new BRT line and it's barrier effect sometime down the road. Often, though, barriers have some effectiveness, but mostly just at reducing walk access to destinations, not necessarily a desirable outcome. We spent a bit of last week finding suitable road segments that have good aerial views to surrounding buildings so that we can trace pedestrian movements. We are then going on top of the surrounding large buildings to video the street segment so we can watch how pedestrians behave. Origins, Destinations, Gap Acceptance Etc. Our first segment has us on a big neon sign on top of a 22 story building. Two cameras with wide angle lenses lets us capture the entire street segment.

Dirty Deeds...Done Dirt Cheap

Ah, gotta love Chinese plumbing. How can I make this transportation related???? A downstream bottleneck caused the turd queue to spill back into our laundry room. The plumbing systems here are pretty open. No P-traps and a lot of drains in floors which are open to the sewer pipes below. What does this result in? Well, most apartments I've lived in smell like sewer, especially in bathrooms. I remember hearing theories that SARS actually spread because of this. We had about three inches of raw sewer in our laundry room, from the five apartments above ours. I thought it was because we are on the first floor and the 4 days of straight rain caused the sewers to back up. After looking outside the window though, the ground is still several feet below our house so that couldn't be the problem. I called the maintenance and they had three guys out for about three hours trying to clear the sewer inside and outside our apartment. Finally they were successful and the laundry room drained, but left a nice mess. We cleaned it up so that it was sparkling and clean, but yesterday evening after dinner it filled back up. Yuck.

Movin' on Up...through the modes

Well, it seems everything has to be transportation related in this blog, so after Bluey was gone, I figured I needed some wheels fast. The round trip cab fare from my house to campus is about 24RMB; and you have to trust your life to a cab driver. I'm an American and I need personal mobility, plus there are no cross-suburb buses to get me where I need to go. So I did the math and I could pay for a bike within a week...80 RMB and I was rolling on a vintage Chinese bicycle. It took about 45 minutes for the bike repair guy to get the brakes semi-functional, but hey it stops fast enough. Well, a couple of days of riding and a little complaining landed me a loaner e-bike, truly my heart's desire. This is actually the same e-bike I used for my dissertation research two years ago. The owner bought a car. This is a pretty sweet ride, but still only a two seater. It gets me where I need to go, but moving the family can be tough. We don't have a name yet, but how can this classless and uninspired ride be named? Any suggestions? I saw an e-bike today that had a sticker on the side "Future Spaceship". Hmmm? I ended up handing down my bicycle to Luke, one of the students who just arrived to work on some research with me. Now I'm rolling in style. I even got a helmet (but not one for all of the family). Luke and Elliott each have a bicycle, we went on a 10 mile bike ride through the city for a few hours to get them acclimated (I believe in trial by fire). Remember, I was on my e-bike...no human power required. I felt like Mickey (Rocky's trainer) riding in the car next to Rocky (my students) pushing them to pedal harder, look out for that manhole, jump in front of that taxi, don't let that nasty granny on an e-bike cut you off, and above all look out for the donkey cart. They did fine and by the end of the trip they went from scared crapless to confident mixed traffic bike riders.

The Boneyard

Well, it has been nearly two weeks since Bluey Louey was taken and I have made some headway toward recovering her. I received the official receipt (fa piao) from the original owner and went to get insurance yesterday. They wanted to charge me 400 RMB, since they thought it was a high power, high speed three wheel motorcycle (not a laoren che, or elderly person car). I decided not to go for it, since there is still a slim chance of recovery and I don't want to invest more. I think I found where she is imprisoned as well...the three wheel bike boneyard. This confirms my suspicion that these are being ousted from Kunming. Hundreds of three wheel bikes-gas, electric and pedal power, all locked up; confiscated because entrepreneurial peasants thought they could make a buck providing low cost neighborhood transportation services. Well, I am not entrepreneurial, nor am I a peasant, but I was caught in the dragnet. Well, I have a couple of more days to find some affordable insurance and that might be my only hope of getting her back, even though I have proof of ownership now. I might call a friend of mine at an insurance and pull in some guangxi. Once with an insurance card, I will go down and submit my paperwork, along with an apology.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

We came to China about two weeks ago, spending the first week in Beijing, presenting a paper on e-bikes at the TDIBP conference (www.jtzx.net.cn/tdibp/). That was interesting, seeing how Beijing has and has not changed in anticipation of the Olympics. A week later we came down to Kunming. One of the first things we did was searched for transportation for the family. Cabs are expensive and buses not convenient enough for those 1-2km trips that we take a lot (seeing friends in the neighborhood going to restaurants etc). Bicycles are ideal, but the kids make that a little tough. After a little search we found her, Bluey Louey is her name. Well, we bought this beauty from an expat family of 6 who was moving to Guangxi province and had driven it for 3 years incident free. Sadly for them, they couldn't take her with. A cool 1675 RMB and she was ours. Not exactly classified as a vehicle, no registration required, my chinese motorcycle/car drivers license would probably do, and with a top speed of about 20 mph, well what else could this thing need. Well, about three days after we bought her, I was heading off to my first day of work, when a cop pulled me over at the corner...now I've been pulled over in China before for no apparent reason (like riding with a headlight on in the daytime), and after producing a drivers license and playing a little stupid, I've always gotten a pass. Not this time. I produced my drivers license, but the cop wanted the original receipt to prove it was legitimately mine. Doh! I forgot to get the receipt from the sellers and now, in the cop's eyes, I was a thief with no way to prove I hadn't stolen this thing. Well, without that proof, I was had. The cop asked for the key and that was it. Bluey Louey was lined up for the impound yard with the three or four other bikes whose owners could not prove ownership. Well, I went the the cop-shop to line up with the other poor souls attempting to prove their innocence. I called the guy who sold me the bike and he explained to the cop that the receipt was on the slow train to Guangxi. In the end, I have to wait for the receipt to get mailed and buy insurance (surely the only three wheeler in China to have insurance). That should get her out of jail...maybe. I also have to convince them that I really don't need a three wheel motorcycle driver license, since I have a three wheel car license and a two-wheel motorcycle license...we'll see how that goes. Welcome to Kunming.