Straddle Structure Homes

Condos and apartment houses are one way to increase urban density. In established residential neighborhoods near downtown Portland, people are invested in their home and have no interest in deconstructing it to build condos. Rather than deconstruction of valued single family homes, the property owner could consider the option to build a structural-steel support straddling the home and serving as the foundation for a second home directly above.

What if home owners could sell the property above their house? Within a few miles of downtown Portland, the city could allow innovative zoning to allow straddle-structure homes in residential neighborhoods to encourage dense urban growth.

The SunEdison Equation: No need to own the installation, just buy the juice.

You’re in business, and you have a large commercial warehouse the size of New Seasons. You are ready for solar power. The cost of installing photovoltaic panels on your building runs in the tens of thousands. You’ve got a budget for the next five years, and a distant ten, but in no way is your company prepared to pay for twenty years of electricity up front. Enter Jihar Shah, the entrepreneurial developer of SunEdison.

Shah got the solar power business into the energy business. Well-capitalized investors, banks, and corporations with government subsidies (not to mention the cost of procuring and shipping fossil fuel to your friendly neighborhood power plant) develop and own coal, natural gas, oil, and nuclear plants. Public utilities sell electricity to customers.

Shah created SunEdison to apply energy industry practice to solar power. SunEdison clients Whole Foods, Staples, and Ikea pay nothing for their solar systems. They sign a power-purchasing agreement (PPA) and agree to buy electricity at a set price for at least 10 years. This helps establish price certainty in a volatile market and reduce the carbon footprint. Once SunEdison has customer commitment in PPAs, they borrow money to build solar systems with PPAs as collateral.

On March 7, 2008, SunEdison purchased Renewable NRG, a solar company in Portland.

Latent Demand

New roads do not relieve traffic. New lanes fill with people who previously chose to avoid busy roads. Wise city planning solves long-term transport problems. There can be high-density zoning near large transit stations. Public transit supports large employment clusters. If business parks locate in the exurbs, they should be within foot or bicycle distance of the rail stop. Public transport also connects suburban homes to downtown businesses. The rail connection to the airport saves money on long-term parking. Personal transport is an expensive convenience and public utilities provide for lower-income populations.

Public transport is a necessary convenience for visitors from other countries who can’t rent a car.

See Good for great ideas!

Yellowline Extends on Replacement Bridge to Vancouver, WA

Jeff Mize, a reporter at The Columbian in Clark County WA, covers the Columbia River Crossing. Here’s a section from his article, “Two Sides Clearly Divided on Bridge”:

Comparing options Crossing officials have come up with a matrix showing the different implications of an eight-, 10- or 12- lane bridge.

A 12-lane bridge would result in less congestion, fewer accidents and less traffic diverting to the I-205 bridge than the other alternatives. A 12-lane bridge, unlike the other two options, would not create unsafe “hot spots” at freeway interchanges or cause clogged freeway traffic to spill over onto local streets.

On the downside, a 12-lane bridge would cost $100 million more than a 10-lane project and $180 million more than an eight-lane option.

Metro Council President David Bragdon said officials agree on a number of issues, including the need to replace the bridge and to extend light rail into Vancouver. On the day a light-rail line opens connecting Portland and Vancouver, it would have the highest ridership of any route in the Portland-Vancouver area, he said.

“This is a very important project to do,” he said. “And it’s a very important project to do it right.”

For Bragdon, doing the project right means making sure there are no “unintended consequences,” namely triggering more sprawl by building a bridge with twice as many lanes as the current crossing. Read the full article.

Portland Steps Forward: Building the 21st Century Transportation Infrastructure

The Columbia River Crossing proposes spending $4.2 billion dollars to build a 12 lane [cars] mega-bridge. The problem is congestion, greenhouse gas emission, and job creation. The best route to solve these problems and build a sustainable transportation infrastructure is passenger rail with parking hubs at major work/live destinations in downtown Vancouver, Hayden Island, and Portland.

“‘The temptation is much greater to bail out the automobile industry,’ said Anthony Perl, an urban studies professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, and the author of ‘Transport Revolutions.’ He advocates electrical mass transit powered by renewable energy as the solution to our twin problems of climate change and energy.

“The United States once led electric rail technology, stringing interurban rail lines across Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. Americans abandoned many of the lines and stalled any new rail development with the coming of the Great Depression and the rise of the automobile.”

For the whole story see: Obama’s stimulus plan offers opportunity for Chicago mass transit by Chris Gray and Alexander Reed, Dec 11, 2008

The infrastructure spending written into the stimulus bill is Portland’s opportunity to quell congestion, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and build out the clean tech industry. The potential to power an electric passenger rail with energy generated from renewable resources of wind, solar, wave, and geothermal will create the synergy necessary to mitigate cost.

Future Past: Looking Ahead from the 70s

“This was the aborted response to the last oil crisis:

From an informative article by Alan Drake on The Oil Drum.