Seattle gets nation's first all-electric Vanpool vehicles

OK, so I'm late in posting this up.  You know how life goes.  I received this in my e-mail on August 30 and have been meaning to take the, oh, three minutes to actually post it, but have been a slacker.

Nation’s first all-electric-vehicle commuting program kicks off in Seattle
Metro’s electric-vehicle Metropool program debuts at Seattle Children’s Hospital
The nation’s first electric-vehicle vanpools quietly fired up their engines at Seattle Children’s Hospital today, as four Nissan LEAF cars were added to the commute options for Children’s employees as part of King County’s new “Metropool.”
These electric vehicles are joining King County Metro Transit’s vanpool fleet – the largest public vanpool program in the United States.
“Sharing a ride to work is an environmentally healthy way to commute, and Seattle Children’s employees just got greener by signing up for Metro new electric-vehicle vanpools,” said King County Executive Dow Constantine. “King County is adding alternative fuel vehicles to its fleet, specifically electric vehicles, to cut fuel consumption and carbon emissions.”
Constantine said Metro’s purchase of these cars will enhance what is already one of the cleanest and greenest transit systems in North America. Metro’s Rideshare Operations has committed to purchasing 20 Nissan LEAF vehicles to pilot electric-vehicle technology in a commuter application called “Metropool.” The agency will coordinate the installation of charging stations at major employer sites and multi-modal transportation hubs such as park-and-rides and ferry terminals.
The first phase of the initiative involves Children’s employees using four of the program’s zero-emission cars. ECOtality’s Blink charging stations have been installed on the Children’s campus to support the program.
“Everyday 60 percent of Seattle Children’s staff take alternative commutes to work, many of them in vanpools. Alternative commutes taken by our employees since September of 2009 have kept almost nine million pounds of carbon emissions out of the air,” said Lisa Brandenburg, Chief Administrative Officer at Seattle Children’s. “By adding these zero emission all-electric Nissan LEAF Metropool vehicles to our vanpool program, we will be able to reduce Seattle Children’s carbon footprint even further.”
The LEAF is a 100-percent electric, no gas, no tailpipe, no emissions vehicle with an estimated driving range of 100 miles on a single charge. It seats five people.

Car-free weekend out and about

Last weekend, Maurie and I had our first car-free weekend since before we moved to West Seattle that involved more than just staying home and knocking about our neighborhood all weekend.

This being the first ever Seattle Tweed Ride, and the weather was looking promising, we decided that we'd join in the fun on Sunday. After exploding our closet all over the bedroom, and several plastic storage bins as well, we discovered we had little appropriate for the event. Time to visit some thrift & second hand stores. We'd decided that we really didn't want to get in the car this weekend at all, so we caught a bus into town. We spent Saturday busing and walkning through town, hitting thrift shops, and a second hand shop on Capitol Hill (ironically, a couple blocks away from where we'd meet for the ride on Sunday).

After a fairly exhausting day "off the island", as we tend to view our trips into downtown, we returned home and more or less crashed. Shortening my pants to knickers length will have to wait until morning, as will pulling together food and making the rest of the preparations for the ride.

Sunday morning, we dragged ourselves out of bed shortly before the alarm and began preparations for the ride. I brought the bikes out of the basement, got the picknick blanket and basket. We prepared food and Maurie shortened my pants. We got into costume and wheeled our bikes to the bus stop, arriving with less than five minutes to spare before the bus arrived. We had a good transfer downtown (less than five minutes to wait) and arrived at Cal Anderson Park for the ride half an hour early. People finally started to arrive right around noon, and continued to gather, drinking tea (and other libations), eating snacks and playing games.  Among those who showed up were Julian from Totcycle, Tim & Anne from CarFree Days, and Eric from Tubulocity.

Me, "tweeded-up" testing my stability with that huge picnic basket on my rear rack

 My dapper bride, posing with her bike

Shortly after 1 when we headed out for the ride itself. North up the length of Capitol Hill and across the University Bridge, then on to Gasworks park where we took a break.

We left the ride here, opting out of the pub stop, to make our way home, via the Seattle waterfront. We made a quick stop at the Fremont PCC to refill water and get some iced tea. While waiting outside, I was noticed by two gals who I worked with in at the state legislature. I must have been quite the sight!

We made our way by bike along Lake Union, and then up through Belltown to the Olympic Sculpture Park, where we rested for a bit looking out across the Puget Sound at the boats and the Olympic Mountains beyond. A deisre for coffee finally rousted us from our chairs and we made our way down the crowded waterfront to a Starbucks. So we didn't have to undo the half mile (hey, it seemed like that) of rope securing the picknick basket to my rear rack, we went in singly to get our drinks. The barista (technically, in this case since we're talking about a make here, shouldn't it be baristo?) had been at the ride until he had to go to work.

We made our way to the bus stop, only to discover that we had a 40 minute wait until the next bus home (really, one hour headways on Sundays for a route that goes to Alki, Metro? What's up with that!). Since it was getting chilly out, we decided to ride home. It was a pleasant ride home, mostly on milti-use path. As we rode along the Elliott Bay shoreline, we really were reminded why we love living here in Seattle so much. The Seattle skyline, the sunset over the Olympics with the ferries crossing the sound in the foreground, the smell of beach fires.

 Seattle evening skyline from West Seattle

Seven and a half hours, and a nineteen mile bike ride later, we were home...and ready to crash!

You can read Maurie's writeup on the Tweed Ride here.

Thank you for not driving!

We saw this sign in the window at Free Range Cycles in Fremont today while we were visiting the Fremont Fair and Solstice Parade. I wanted to shout out "Your Welcome!" when I saw it.

The Fremont Fair always makes trying to drive through Fremont even more of a mess than usual. To help people get to and from the fair, not only did Metro have the usual bus routes running through Fremont (well, at least they did when the parade wasn't going), but they added a shuttle service (PDF link) to the event today. Cascade Bicycle Club even got on the "don't drive to the Fair" bandwagon and had two rides going to the see the parade.

We caught a shuttle this morning at Dexter & Denney. It was the second shuttle to depart the stop after we arrived. The one we didn't get on, as well as the one we did, were filled to standing room only. It reminded me of playing "sardines" in middle school!

We were dropped off at the south side of the Fremont bridge and walked across into Fremont. We'd opted not to ride our bikes becuase we knew that it would be wall-to-wall bikes, with them locked to anything and everything reasonably solid. We were right. It seemed like every railing, street sign and fence had a number of bikes locked to them (sorry no picture, when we thought of taking one, we weren't near a good spot, and when we were, well, I forgot). Unfortunately for most of the cyclists, I believe Hal Ruzal would have given them pretty poor marks on thier bicycle locking (see here, here, and here to see why).

The highlight of the day was definitely the community-organized, human powered Solstice Parade, complete with its contingent of cyclists. Hmm...I wonder if any of them joined the Cascade ride to the parade...

Metro Transit expands bike loading downtown

Maurie saw this rider alert yesterday while on the bus. Starting February 7 (hey, that's today!), cyclists can load and unload their bikes at any bus stop in the downtown area, during off-peak hours only. Metro is also allowing bike load and unload at any stop in the transit tunnel, whenever it's open. During peak commute hours, however, cyclists will still be limited to loading and unloading their bikes at the first and last stops in the ride free area. I'd love to see this change so we can load and unload anywhere in the downtown area, at any time, but baby steps, you know...