"Acoustic space has the basic character of a sphere whose focus or centre is simultaneously everywhere and whose margin is nowhere..."

(Marshall McLuhan)

Einstien elucidated atomic visualization by using clear, simple language. Clear language dispels misinformation of my peers. The danger of overpopulation greets my evryday existance. The wheeled locusts (gas cars) plying the landscape, not decaying or abdicating in a short time, but surviving even the heartiest human lifespan (when not challenged by a probability of catastrophic tragedy) to chew resources, spew toxic poisons, and initiate tragic dramas (Diana, et.al.) linking destiny within this new mobility (yet only one generation old !) This generation is already ill-informed of the significance of an accelerated knowledge base. Automobility is on the brink of quieter, safer travel soon, protecting meditation zones!

The two-to-four passenger, zero-pollution, climate-controlled, collision-avoidant, phone booth and commute/touring pleasure-module. was: carbon-spewing mobile projectile.

I am never quite finished trying to reach both speed freaks and environmentalists about "the car"..with this footnote I am attempting to post an un-passioned definition on what these devices are. (I wrote a freind about a blown engine)... You may understand the nature of the Internal Combustion motor: torque curve, rpm limit, etc., and also the nature of stepper motors: torque curve flat up to rpm limit, right? max torque from 10 rpm lmited only by the explosion limit of the rotor (10-20,000+ rpm now), ONE MOVING PART. The rest of E-car prime mover is transistors and code. Scale that to the new speed attempts on the salt flats: battery powered scoots breaking gas car speed records, etc., and the street rods from Milano: carbon fibre street coups, 0-60 in a blink, no abusive fumes BUT different noise.

Your Miyata experience was ONE catastrophic failure of multiple sub-system dependancies: coolant, lubrication, fuel & vapor management, ignition/electrical/charging (including a BATTERY) and the motor(hundreds of moving parts)AND a smog suppression system. ACK. The future of individual transportation pods will challenge the 'newtech' applications at the cutting edge: collision avoidance, automated freeways, energy conservation, etc. "Battery weight" is a moot point when the naked components are revealed. With photovoltaics, fuel cells, setback and payback electric meter on your house, the 'fuel at home' after midnight convenience will be a welcome relief from the gasoline (dinosaur juice) distribution yuck and (per passenger mile) carbon spewing. Battery weight and toxics (lead/acid) containment and recycling is an overstated burden compared to, say radioisotope 'disposal' . It is still a "ton of stuff" just to move 150 pounds (of mostly water); a lot overhead for just a 'phone booth'. Mobility along with privacy, security, and respite from the elements are coveted precepts of modern person-hood. By 'living lightly' and approaching 'zero pollution' transport, one can then reward their effort with backyard campfire evenings (BEING RESTRICTED IN PLACES BECAUSE OF POLLUTION...).

The two-to-four passenger private, peronalized, non-polluting, air-conditioned collision-avoidant, commute/touring pleasure/conference-module. was: carbon-spewing mobile projectile.

I got an inspiration to build a homebrew electric vehicle as a continuing bicycling hobbiest. This solar assisted, ultralite electric vehicle/moped has been under construction for three years: build it, tear it down, improve it, tear it apart again.

The solar truck. Made from a 1972 Schwinn cycle truck (delivery bike). The storage batteries are tucked in the trailer for the moment. The one-wheel trailer is actually the midi sequencer/ band-in-a-box/ solo saxophone/wind controller / accompaniest, the (50 watts) solar panels on top of the custom 1/8 inch plywood box charge 2 conventional (22F) gelcell/lead-acid batteries and JUST keep up with the music load under full sun. How fast?

An interesting study in the dynamics of human power experience occurs when mass is added. Inertia is added, brute torque is required to overcome "hills". Small prime movers need torque multipliers (gears). A 300 watt wheelchair motor (commutated permanent magnet) pushes 20 mph on a flat. The 'cog - belt' drives a Sturmey/Archer 5 speed gearhub that swings onto the rear tire directly (Eddie Mercyks sustained 400 watts output). A shift lever array adjusts: drive engagement (for coasting), 6speeds (Suntour Ultra 6) from the forged 180mm BMX cranks with 53-48-36 alpine chainrings, and the 5 power ranges from the motor. Twist grips (left switch energizes a series-parallel relay to power the motor at 18 or 36 volts. A big bike bell and full lighting completes a safety array. The power is not neck-snapping, but zips along, like a truck, shift down for hills. For those keeping score, 300 watts is a comfortable effort for most bicyclists, so with pedalling, it goes 'faster'. It is like a bio-extender. There is no fancy regenerative braking, yet, just a good ol' ATOM drum brake on the rear, a Sturmy Archer drum on the front. The latest hip, high - tech electronically commutated motor from Maxon will soon push that envelope AND add the regenerative braking. Range: 30 miles. Speed: pretty fast downhill. The silence is golden. The gear hub multi-speed drive-train is a keep-it-simple, and safe, with the emphasis on quiet mechanism. I can hear the birds and frogs as I pass by. I am of the series-hybred school of electric vehicles, with a niche for natural gas as a range-enhancing/quick-disconnect option (i.e. a trailer with the charging system).

The usual misconception/misinformation about E.V.'s fuss about the 'weight' of the batteries. Rarely understood is that regenerative braking gives back range - increasing energy, and a majority of (gas car) trips are short, GAS engines are very dirty (especially short 'cold' trips), and *only* 14 percent effecient at putting energy to the road *after* "warming up" . The conversion effectiveness and cleanliness of an E.V. is *way* higher. (Utility studies equate THREE *zero emmission vehicles* (ZEV's) could be powered by the same amount of "fuel" used in a gas car a lot more cleanly when that fuel is connverted at a central electric generating facility, then stored in a battery "fuel pack" .) The cost-effectiveness/weight formula leaves an uninformed opinion about battery weight. Distinctions in battery parts recycling also leaves a bad rap on ZEV's, but is *WAY* more containable than, say, plutonium. Centralized pollution control is better than non-point (gas car) sources, and your *deregulated* utility power choices do have solar sources (wind, photovoltaic, hydro) in the mix. The cost savings CAN be significant, BUT the pragmatic rewards are incalcuble.

Catagory "HYBRED" :

Another subject to illuminate is fuel cell energy. Not a futuristic technology, but PERFECTLY clean system, just now becoming cost-effective. "Terrestrial vehicle applications" use PEFC's (Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells). A recent announcement elucidated ability to use gasoline as the hydrogen source, filtering the carbon, eliminating tailpipe toxics.

This now puts the onus on the user ("gas car motorist") to choose to pollute, or not. The compression - ignition motorist will likely be scorned and ridiculed, as this period of a peverted culture/society stays cloistered in metal cans (safe, climate-controlled cellphone booths), and "will either thaw out or freeze". (A "greenhouse gas" joke - [heh heh] - from a song by Joanie Mitchell).

The illusion of movement: really we are sitting still and vibrating a lot these days.

A life sentence for repeat offender roads... three strikes and they're out. That would eliminate the roads and overpowered gas car in 90% of the cases.

The gas motorist is a second wave industrial dinosaur, based on the now defunct atomistic view of the universe, brainwashed by the media. Gas car motorists cannot reconcile social or environmental responsibility with their chronic addiction to petrol and an egotistical transportation mode. Bicyclists and walkers are in tune with the environment in a way that the gasoline auto-driven never can be; users of mass transit are in touch with their social community in a way that the auto-driven never can be. But the auto-driven imagine themselves to be gods, as James Hillman points out: "We are forced to recognize that transportation awakens profound fantasies about motion, and that transportation plans are attempts to rationalize motion. Driving to the center city, covering space with speed, my foot to the accelerator, puts me automatically into the fantasy of motion as an *actual experience* that before the automobile was imagined only in terms of gods, stars, and atoms. I, the modern secular ego, is the self-moved mover, which is precisely what the word *automobile* means.

Moreover, these wheels, including the steering wheel, reflect the ancient Celtic and Mediterranean symbol of the wheel of death. As long as I am driving, the wheel is in my hands, no matter the facts of death on the roads, my fantasy assures me I have death in my control. A recent survey concluded there are more fatalities in suburban traffic tragedies than AIDS and cancer deaths. That is steep!

To meet our patient's complaint, to restructure the relations between private driving and public service, means coming to terms with this gigantic fantasy of our godlike power over motion and death. This fantasy that identifies the control of motion with the control of individual fate makes it so difficult to conceive transportation as a service required by the community, much like justice and education, fire protection and public safety, water and sewage, lighting and cleaning. Instead we imagine transportion from a private viewpoint, as if it should pay its way, part of free enterprise,[emphasis added:] *competitive*.

Where street lighting, street signs, and street repair may belong to our community life and be supported by taxes, we resist paying for public conveyances through these same streets. Public transportation seems to infringe upon our identity as self-moved individual -- so that we pay for the automobile fantasy with every sort of tax without protest. But we are unwilling to pay for public transport, the collectivity of the omnibus, the tracks and schedules of trains, which take the wheel of fate out of my hands. A wonderful and irritating case in point: A local school district (in a manifestation of Reaganesque poverty mentality/second wave view of wealth by scarcity) decided that the most expendible part of the local school budget was the school bus budget... so instead of four school buses carrying 100 kids each, we have aproximately 300 gas cars descending in full ego on the (once local, now non-local due to inacessiblity) school each day... my ten year daughter found this difficult to understand in view of the numerous lessons in ecology and social studies that truthfully depict the autombile as a horrible polluter and waster of natural resources.

I am so tired of dirty cars, fixing grimy cancerous engines, maintaining thousands of tiny parts that any one could fail, stopping the whole car, smelling dirty exhaust, hearing misfiring cylinders, leaking exhaust pipes, noise in general, knowing so much about the unaknowledged costs associated with gasoline propulsion, I decided to BUILD an expression, a solution, to my torment, to free the guilt of associated with this antiquated and filthy habit for 30 years.

WRParker of Parker Engineering and Associates 1997. Here is random contributions picked off ba.transportation:

WHAT? WHAT WAS THAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU WITH ALL THIS ENGINE NOISE IN HERE! I SAID I CAN'T HEAR YOU! TURN OFF THE ENGINE! TURN OFF THE ENGINE! THE ENGINE! OFF!

All well and good, but don't forget the production of gasoline takes its environmental and psychic and subliminally audible toll, too.

here is some more from alt.transportation:

I worked for a while at a Dow Chemical plant, and it really brought home just how complex the refinement process is.

It's a pretty amazing process. Unfortunately, in spite of the best efforts to keep it clean (the folks I tried *very* hard to keep emissions at zero), it's still a messy process. This particular plant put off a chemical haze that could be seen from airplanes for 100 miles to the north.

One interesting thing I learned while I was there is that every storage tank ever made leaks. That includes everything from the large tanks at the production facility all the way to the underground storage tanks at your local gas station.

On some above-ground steel tanks (steel, mind you), you can actually see gasoline collect on the bottom and drip off.

While you can minimize the damage, just about every gas station will eventually have petroleum vapor extraction systems installed to clean up the soil the tanks were buried in.

This doesn't even start to touch on the havoc wreaked on the environment in the drilling and transportation of crude oil, nor what happens with the other byproducts of the "cracking" process used to manufacture gasoline.

from http://www.montara.com/

our neighbors north preserving coastal environmental integrety related to moving goods and services

SOLAR

another from .alt.transportation:

New oil is comparatively benign next to USED crankcase oil.. big problem after exposed to the toxics of the Otto or Diesel engine... the equivalent of 3 Exon Valdezes of this is dumped in yards, drains, and the like, every year by end users. Capitalism is not the problem.

It's the users who dump oil, AND don't use alternate transportation like the bicycle, or train, or walking often enough. We are the real problem.

Here in Europe there are quite a number of buses run on "green diesol" ie. vegetable oil. The engine has very little modification, but the vegetable oil has to be chemically changed a little. Unfortunately I don't think it will solve your problems.

The "green diesol" is cheap because

A)the govenment does not charge as much duty (for petrol we pay 5 USD per gallon)

B)the European Union have to get rid of it. European farmers receive a set price for oils (from our tax) under the Common Agricultural Policy. This will change because of GATT (US Govt.) and everyone in Western Europe is scared that it will be too expensive if Eastern Europe joins

I disagree, transportation improvements do not promote sprawl. Cheap land promotes sprawl. No land use controls allows the cheap land to be sold. People move out there and demand streets and traffic signals and wider streets, etc. This is the American way since day 1. It is the reason California is here.

Transportation allows sprawl. Let me use a coffee mug analogy. Coffee mugs do not promote coffee drinking. Trying to wake up or to stay awake does. A coffee mug allows coffee drinking.

If a high speed train connected Tracy to Silicon Valley and the land prices in Tracy were high or there were strong land use controls, development would be curtailed.

It's like saying guns kill. Guns allow killing. Guns, the coffee mug, the train, are mere tools. Don't blame the tools for the acts of the users.

Marty Bernard: *Making EVs Current* National Station Car Association check this out : deep thinking!

Widening it or re-engineering it will simply make it more attractive to more traffic, so the traffic on it will increase, which is bad for more reasons than just the danger.

-- Robert Kennedy

A wonderful and irritating case in point: the local school district (in a manifestation of Reaganesque poverty mentality/second wave view of wealth by scarcity) decided that the most expendible part of the local school budget was the school bus budget... so instead of four school buses carrying 100 kids each, we have aproximately 300 cars descending in full ego on the (once local, now non-local due to inacessiblity) school each day... my ten year old friend found this difficult to understand in view of the numerous lessons in ecology and social studies that truthfully depict the autombile as a horrible polluter and waster of natural resources... as my daughter said, much to my amusement, "white women speak with forked tongue..."

For the first time in fifty years I'm living in a school district without school buses (in "ecological, liberal, and aware" Santa Cruz, of course)... the rather nauseating school principal and his secretarial staff, true to their linear roots, are aghast that anyone would even remotely consider not being owned by an gas car... and of course the fact that the county is no longer offering accessible education to first to fifth graders in neighborhood schools (the school is away from us by a 40 minute trek or a 1.5 hour trip by what is left of the decimated public transit system) is of little concern to them.

The surest way to raise the ire of western man/woman is to suggest that they give up their gas car...

I take great delight and pride in the fact that by walking with my daughter to school in morning I can continue the bonding that began when I delivered her at home)a little over ten years ago (another antiquated and anti-social act I'm sure)... in a way that would be impossible with an auto trip... we can also bond with our surroundings and the cultural traditions our Bavarian ancestors who would hike for days on end through the Alps in family groups... plus freed of the expense of maintaining a gas car as I am, I have money to spend on communications equipment, and good walking shoes and clothing for her and can spend much more of my time with her as a sole parent should. I am forced to believe that the vast majority of people of my generation would rather own an gas car than have a child or get to know their child if they have one... - brettbutler...

gear-hub mania!!

Sometime ago, there was some action to control unabashed hand drumming; a trance-induced state of expression that created an intrusive plume of sound on the common domain of the local townsfolk. The progression of awareness to ambient acoustic pollution now includes the mindless leaf blower drone, the unmuffled antique air-cooled motorcycle, and now, escaped club ruckus. I must point out that musicians have a tendency to perform reflections that is experienced in their surroundings, in a broad improvisational way. So these proposed use-permit by-laws are an effort to restore the original environment (peace, quiet), so that stringent action can be enacted on the external culprits (boom boxes, car stereos, cell phone gabbers), just as airplane noise pollution has been curtailed by legislation. The increasing numbers and unrestricted hours of industrial equipment, diesel trucks, the accelerating gas car (climate-controlled, carbon-spewing phone booth), the tire sounds, the urban 'emergency' vehicle siren, and general 'white-noise' pollution pushes a plume in an ever-enlarging and aggravating sphere along our 'civilized' settlements and commuter corridors. Some folks are more sensitive to it than others, most of those unaware of this issue have hearing damage. It's a shame that traditional hours of social gathering and 'appreciation' of this expressive live art (music) is under attack. It is also atrocious that some of the sources of this loud expression (war toys, gas car racing, parental arguments) cannot be easily suppressed, and a calming 'ommmmm' descend on our evening outing or motel-room stay. The discovery of a pleasure response in the brain to 'loud music' may also spirit this debate. At least there is some introspective dynamics occuring in the percussive arts now.

So I discovered the introduction of foxtails ( the barbed weed ) causes the hills to 'brown' earlier in the season, which absorbs the sun's heat, drying the earth and surrounding vegetation , accelerating the 'desertification ' of California . The introduction of domestic cats (and now feral cats) reduce earth-burrowing animals that help keep topsoil loose. So much for progress!-- wrparker 2/98

ERADICATE THE NEARY LAGOON SWITCHYARD BULLTHORN MINEFIELD! (now slowly becoming urbanized, still pockets of these things) (A Native American anti-personel ordinance)

A volunteer effort to create and maintain non-motorized thruways.

There are four parts of this urgent plea:

1) When the settlers were moving West, a technique to sow these (not indigenous) anti-personnel seeds around the homestead aiding the security by using this knowledge against Native Americans' barefoot trespasses.

2) Non-motorized pneumatic tires (a post-migration invention) are no match to the unwitting bicyclist in an area bounded by Neary's lagoon, Washington, and Chestnut and Laurel streets in Santa Cruz, California.

3) The main ingredient in vehicle immobility are deflated tires. (US dept of Transportation) Karma, eh?

4) Motorized people-movers are lethal and noisy.

Bullthorns Music