By Guo Shipeng and Emma Graham-Harrison

BEIJING (Reuters) - China launched a surprise crackdown on plastic bags on Tuesday, banning production of ultra-thin bags and forbidding its supermarkets and shops from handing out free carriers from June 1.

China uses too many of the bags and fails to dispose of them properly, wasting valuable oil and littering the country, China's cabinet, the State Council, said in a notice posted on the central government Web site (www.gov.cn).

"Our country consumes huge amounts of plastic bags every year. While providing convenience to consumers, they have also caused serious pollution, and waste of energy and resources, because of excessive use and inadequate recycling," it said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSPEK25589820080108Worries about pollution are growing among ordinary citizens, as years of breakneck growth take their toll on the country's air and water, but the new ban may not be universally welcomed.

Late last year the southern boom town of Shenzhen sparked a public controversy by unveiling draft regulations to ban free plastic bags in its shops.

Shopkeepers fretted that customers might be turned away and some people accused the government of making residents shoulder the costs of environmental protection.

Part of the new rules seem similar to the Shenzhen plan, stating that from June shops, supermarkets and sales outlets would be forbidden to offer free plastic bags and all carriers must be clearly marked with their prices.

"We should encourage people to return to carrying cloth bags, using baskets for their vegetables," the notice said.  

In addition the manufacture, sale and use of bags under 0.025 mm thick is banned from the same date, with fines and confiscation of goods and profits for firms that flout the rules.

The cabinet also said finance authorities should consider adjusting taxes to discourage the production and sale of plastic bags and encourage the recycling industry.

Rubbish collectors were urged to separate plastic for reprocessing and cut the amount burnt or buried.

The move brings China in line with a growing international trend to cut back use of plastic bags. From Ireland to Uganda and South Africa governments have experimented with heavy taxes, outright bans or eliminating the thinnest bags.

In some countries where the central government has not acted communities ranging from San Francisco to a small British town have taken unilateral action to outlaw the carriers.

Chinese people use up to 3 billion plastic bags a day and the country has to refine 5 million tons (37 million barrels) of crude oil every year to make plastics used for packaging, according to a report on the Web site of China Trade News (www.chinatradenews.com.cn).

by Clive Thompson in WIRED

Australia is suffering through its worst dry spell in a millennium. The outback has turned into a dust bowl, crops are dying off at fantastic rates, cities are rationing water, coral reefs are dying, and the agricultural base is evaporating. But what really intrigues Gleen Albrecht – a philosopher by training – is how his fellow Australians are reacting. They’re getting sad.

http://www.wired.com/services/press/
In interviews Albrecht conducted over the past few years, scores of Australians described their deep, wrenching sense of loss as they watch the landscape around them change. Familiar plants don’t grow any more. Gardens won’t take. Birds are gone.

“they no longer feel like they know that place they’ve lived for decades,” he says.

Albrecht believes that this is a new type of sadness. People are feeling displaced. They’re suffering symptoms eerily similar to those of indigenous populations that are forcibly removed from their traditional homelands. But nobody is being relocated; they haven’t moved anywhere. It’s just that the familiar markers of their area, the physical sensory signals that define home, are vanishing. Their environment is moving away from them, and they miss it terribly. Albrecht has given this syndrome an evocative name: solastalgia. It’s a mashup of the roots solacium (comfort) and algia (pain), which together aptly conjure the word nostalgia.

In essence, it’s pining for a lost environment. “Solastlgia,” as he wrote in a scientific paper describing his theory, “is a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at ‘home.’”

It’s also a fascinating new way to think about the impact of global warmning. Everyone’s worrying about resource management and the spooky, unpredictable changes in the ecosystem. We fret over which areas will get flooded as sea levels will get flooded as sea levels rise. We estimate the odds of wars over clean water, and we tally up the species – polar bears, whales, wading birds – that’ll go extinct.

But we should also be concerned about the huge toll climate change will inflict on our mental health. In the modern, industrialized West, many of us have forgotten how deeply we rely on the stability of nature for our psychic well-being. In a world of cheap airfares, laptops, and the Internet, we proudly regard mobility as a sign of how advanced we are. Hey, we’re nomadic hipster capitalists! We love change. Only losers get attached to their homelands.

This is a neat mythos, but in truth it’s a pretty natural human urge to identify with a place and build one’s sense of self around its comforts and permanence. I live in Manhattan, where the globe-hopping denizens tend to go berserk if their favorite coffee shop closes down. Hoe will they react in 20 or 30 years if the native trees can’t handle the 5-degree spike in average temperature? Or if weird new bugs infest the city in summer, fall shrinks to a single month, and snow becomes a distant memory?

“We like to think that we’re cool, 21st-century people, but the basic sense of a connection to the land is still big,” Albecht says. “We haven’t evolved that much.”

What’s more, Albrecht has noticed that the more quickly environmental changes occurs, the more intense the solastalgia. The menta-health effects can be powerful. In the Australian outback, industrial activity – notably open-pit coal mining – has turned verdant areas into moonscapes seemingly overnight, and the suicide rate in the region has skyrocked.

Or witness New Orleans, where a Harvard survey found that survivors of Hurricane Katrina reported suffering a “serious mental illness” at roughly double the rate of the city’s residents three years earlier. Fully 6 percent have thought about suicide. Trauma and personal loss obviously play a role in this, but the decimation of the city’s physical environment surely does as well.

Ironically, we may simply be rediscovering a syndrome that we thought was dead and buried. Back in the 1940’s, the military considered homesickness to be a serious and potentially fatal illness, because drafted soldiers who got shipped overseas would often become savagely depressed. These days, Americans are rarely dislocated against their will, and the army is all-voulnteer. Few of us have the experience of being unmoored in the world.

But that may be changing rapidly. In a world that’s quickly heating up and drying up, you can’t go home again – even if you never leave.

Dear Harold,

The whole crew here at Adbusters took the afternoon off to go see the 11th Hour at a theatre near our office.  Time well spent.  The film was informative and challenging.  Along with other significant events like Al Gore's  Nobel Prize, and the UN's IPCC report, the 11th Hour contributed to an extremely green year in 2007.  Global warming deniers are in retreat thanks in part to your efforts.  Great work!

Warm regards,

The Adbusters Staff

http://www.adbusters.org/home/ 

ACROSS the road from a golf course and next to a verdant, cow-filled field in Whetstone, a village about as far from the sea as it is possible to get in England, there is a ship's engine-room in a barn. The area is dripping with history—Frank Whittle, one of the inventors of the jet engine, used a neighbouring shed for his project—but this is not some clanking historical curiosity, such as a steam engine rebuilt by an amateur enthusiast. The whirring gas turbine and whining motor being put through their paces in bucolic Leicestershire are at the cutting edge of maritime engineering. The electric drive being tested there could represent the next leap forward in ship design, as significant a technological shift as the one from sail to steam power in the 19th century.

SSOURCE: The Economist

Even since the first intrepid boatman thought to pick up a piece of wood to paddle against the current, boat propulsion has been a terribly mechanical affair. Galley slaves pulled on oars; river-boat steam engines turned paddles; and nuclear reactors boiled water to drive turbines connected to propellers on aircraft carriers and submarines. What makes the experimental engine room in Leicestershire so special is that it leaves out the bit that usually links the engine and propeller. Instead of a propulsion shaft connecting the two, the all-electric drive being tested uses the ship's engines (turbine or diesel) to burn fossil fuels to generate electricity, which is then routed down thick cables to an electric motor that drives its propellers.

The idea of using electricity to drive ships is not new. Almost a century ago, around the time of the emergence of modern ship propulsion, electric drives were seen as viable contenders to compete with the then-rising mechanical drives. In 1912 America's navy built an electrically powered collier, followed a few years later by a string of battleships which proved capable workhorses during the second world war. Some electric-drive warships used 20% less fuel than conventional geared-turbine vessels. But these early examples were large and unwieldy, and the idea was abandoned.

Its recent rebirth has been almost as rapid as its fall, helped by two related developments: power electronics capable of handling huge flows of current, and smaller, more powerful electric motors. These advances have allowed shipbuilders to reduce the size and weight penalties associated with electric drives. They have also made possible the development of totally integrated power systems, which make energy fungible: instead of having one engine dedicated to driving the ship and another one devoted to generating shipboard power, electricity from multiple sources can simply be routed to wherever it is needed at the time.

And that is why advanced navies such as Britain's and America's are now among the most enthusiastic and earliest adopters of electric-drive ships. As warfare has become more digital, the demand for electricity on board warships has increased. Radar, computers and combat systems now account for as much as 30% of the fuel burned on modern warships. And the demand for power could be about to jump dramatically. Some navies are already testing rail guns, which use huge amounts of electricity to produce a magnetic field which then accelerates projectiles to many times the speed of sound.

Even more futuristic and power-hungry applications are within sight, such as “direct energy” weapons that zap enemy ships and “electric armour” that vaporises incoming missiles. With such demands for power, some of it only for a fraction of a second, warship designers are keen to have a single system doing all manner of things. Think of the Enterprise in “Star Trek”, where power is diverted to the shields, weapons or warp drive as needed. “We're going with electric drive because of warfighting need,” says Rear-Admiral Kevin McCoy of the American navy. “We are almost at the limits of technology and affordability in making improvements in mechanical drives.”

Electric drives offer other advantages, too. By distributing engines and generators around a ship, designers can make it more resistant to damage. Maintenance is easier if some of the engines can be stopped without halting the ship. And electric drives can help to cut costs. Although they are more expensive, bigger, heavier and in theory less efficient than mechanical drives, they use much less fuel. This is because the diesel engines and gas turbines commonly used to power ships are most efficient when buzzing away constantly at close to their maximum output. Throttle them back even a little, and the amount of energy obtained for each barrel of fuel burned falls sharply. That does not matter for ships that potter along all day and night at the same speed from one port to another; their engines can be run at their most efficient setting all the time. But in the navy, few ships have that luxury.

By some estimates, American navy ships spend 80% of their time travelling at half speed, which requires barely one-eighth of the power needed to propel a ship at top speed. But this requires them to burn almost as much fuel as they would when going much faster. By using an electric drive of the sort that is purring away in Leicestershire, ships can fire up their engines one at a time and run each at its most economical throttle setting.

Take Britain's newest warships, the Type 45 destroyers, which will be powered by the system now being tested in Whetstone. Each one will have four engines, half as many as the ships they are replacing, and usually only one will be running, says Paul Norton of the Ministry of Defence. The savings can be huge. America's Congressional Research Service reckons that installing electric drives on naval ships can cut fuel use by 10-25%. The American navy, which already has a handful of electric-drive support ships, expects savings of close to 20% for future warships using the technology.
Divert all power to the disco

Perhaps surprisingly, many of these advantages also apply to cruise liners, which present designers with many of the same problems as warships. Cruise ships need huge amounts of power. Stephen Payne, the chief designer of the Queen Mary 2, reckons the ship—the world's biggest passenger liner when it was launched in 2003, and fitted with an electric-drive system—could supply enough electricity for a town of 700,000 people.

Much of this power is used to keep passengers happy, running air conditioners during hot Caribbean days, for instance, and powering discos and cinemas in the evenings. Then, once all the passengers have gone to bed, the power can be routed down to the propellers for a high-speed dash to the next port. The technology is also being applied in cargo shipping. Makhlouf Benatmane of Converteam, one of the leading designers of electric drives for ships, reckons that almost two-thirds of liquefied natural-gas carriers now being built have electric drives. These cost about 4% more than the steam turbines that are traditionally used, but offer fuel savings of 10% or more, he says.

Now that electrical propulsion is being taken seriously in ships, not to mention trains and cars, can electric drives defy gravity and remake air travel? In some ways they are already doing so. Manufacturers of civil and military jets are collaborating on projects to add more electrically powered devices to aircraft, such as landing gear and flaps. These are lighter and more reliable than the hydraulic and mechanical systems now in use and could draw power as needed from non-essential systems such as in-flight entertainment. Military jets, meanwhile, need ever more power for their radar systems or to jam and dazzle those of their enemies. And airborne lasers are on the way.

Electrical propulsion is much more difficult. But some small experimental aircraft are already flying with electric motors driving their propellers. They are generally powered by high-discharge lithium-polymer batteries, which are also being used in some electric cars. Fuel cells are another option. Boeing is testing an electrically powered light aircraft which uses both batteries and a fuel cell as power sources. Some gliders also have small electric motors as auxiliary propulsion systems. Just a small amount of electrical propulsion, carefully applied, can dramatically increase the amount of time a glider can stay in the air. And many unmanned aerial vehicles, not to mention remote-control aircraft flown by hobbyists, are electrically powered.

Yet all these electrical aircraft are small and have limited range. What of larger aircraft? Retrofitting a large airliner with electric motors instead of engines would not be feasible because the power-to-weight ratio of an electric motor cannot compete with that of a jet engine, and storing and generating the energy needed for a long-haul flight would not be possible given the shape and size constraints of existing aircraft. But a “blended wing”—an aircraft in which the fuselage is a flat, tail-less structure resembling a giant wing—could provide huge efficiency gains and may form the basis of future airliners. Coincidentally, this shape would also lend itself to centrally placed generators, which could be gas turbines or fuel cells, driving electric fans or pusher-propellers distributed along the back edge of the wing, or blended into the body.

These propellers could be driven by superconducting motors, which can generate three times the torque of a conventional motor of the same weight and power input, according to a paper published in August in the journal Superconductor Science and Technology by Philippe Masson and his colleagues at Florida State University. American researchers are working on superconducting technology for maritime propulsion, which would leapfrog the British electric-drive system. Just as the earliest aircraft owed much to boat-building techniques at the start of the 20th century, the same might be true of electric-drive aircraft in the 21st.

http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10202790

Two hundred Greenpeace activists shut down the annual meeting of the European Union Fisheries Council meeting where EU fisheries ministers were to gather for their annual meeting on fishing quotas, demanding an end to mismanagement of European fisheries. The activists constructed a wall in front of the building's main entrance bearing the message "Shut Down until Fish Stocks Recover."

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/fisheries-council-locked-out

The new American handbag and satchel compony Noon Solar has gone deeply sustainable.

Noon Solar has just created a line of truly sustainable purses and satchels with incorporate thin and flexible solar panels (and adapters for cell-phones and ipods) made with cradle-to-cradle manufacturing process based on 11th Hour expert William McDonough. They are also made in the U.S. with fair labor practices and hand-made techniques.

The bags are made with materials that can either biodegrade naturally or be reclaimed and re-used by future users/generations (“cradle to cradle” philosophy) rather than the common “cradle to grave” product lifespan that has caused the rapid growth of landfills.

http://noonsolar.com/

http://11thhouraction.com/ideasandexperts/William%20McDonough

Colin Bulthaup, the visionary founder of Potenco—whose mission is to make clean power universally accessible and immediately useful all over the world—shared a few thoughts and inspirations behind his work.

Me and some friends at MIT in the basement of Media Labs started Squid Labs.  Our goal to start creating an innovation “factory” to take technology and creativity with direct focus to make a huge impact on world.  We were part of this community around 2000-1.  We tried structure our passion.  We spun off 5 companies:

Instructables—a do it yourself website to share projects w/ others…an open-source application for everything.
Optiopia—creating technology to make low-cost eyeglasses for developing countries for less than $1/piece.  The machine costs $100 and can be carried on the back of a motercycle.
Makani Power—to make the ultimate renewable energy—high-altitude wind generations
Howtoons—for creating educational cartoons for kids on how to build things
And Potenco.

We decided to tackle a large problem—Power.  We were involved in the human power concept and developing the power for the one-laptop project per child project.  We took the opportunity, developing the underlying power technology for it.

http://www.potenco.com/
http://laptop.org/
http://squid-labs.com/companies/

We created our own separate company and now have 13 people working here.

We’re a “platform company”.  We create the platform and infrastucture for power.  We have a number of problems all over the world.  We have excited people on all levels—from individuals to ministers in government positions who want to improve the lives of their citizens.  We are also talking to the US government since we have a way to build goodwill overseas.

Our project does not harm the world…and does not take away from existing economies.

There is such an incredibly strong need for significant change…and the possibility for change.  We are half tech-company and half micro-finance/logistics company.

There are over 2 billion people in the world with no electricity and no ability to communicate.  One third of the planet is not participating in the global conversation.

We were in Bangladesh one month ago testing models in the field.  We got out 3 days before giant cyclone hit.  We are also in Uganda conducting extensive field studies in really remote villages.

Want to draw people in and push our mission.  We’re doing a number of versions of the product here in the US for emergency preparation, camping, etc.  We want people to participate getting involved with technology for greening personal power production in the States.

We need your experience.  If you have have connections or relationships in these countries would love to hear from you.  Contact: info@potenco.com.

Aerial artist and environmental activist John Quigley (whose "Global Warning" image appears in the 11th Hour) created with Greenpeace an aerial “human banner” with a thousand people to highlight the dangers of Indonesia’s growing dependence on coal ower plants. The art/action coincides with the UN Climate Summit happening in Bali from December 3-14th. Quigley also participated in a high-altitude banner hang off a coal plant on Java highlighting the link between climate change and burning coal.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/wind-turbines-and-warning-shots-031207

http://www.spectralq.com/

Report on Social Entrepreneurs: TZEPORAH BERMAN: CO-FOUNDER OF FORESTETHICS
If a tree falls in the forest, she knows
CATHRYN ATKINSON

December 4, 2007

VANCOUVER -- November finds Tzeporah Berman spending a few quiet weeks with
her family at their home on Cortes Island, near the haunting Desolation
Sound on British Columbia's Sunshine Coast. She is pleased about the
haphazard cellphone reception and reflects on a busy, successful year for
ForestEthics, the non-profit forest protection group she co-founded in 2000.

SOURCE:  The Globe and Mail

First, there was her appearance in the lauded Leonardo DiCaprio-narrated
environment documentary The 11th Hour, which opened in August. In it, she
describes the perilous state of the world's forest system, 80 per cent of
which has already disappeared.

Then there was October's announcement by B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell about
the province's plan to protect 2.2 million hectares of old-growth forests to
help the dwindling numbers of mountain caribou rally from an all-time
population low of about 1,900 animals. Saving this globally unique inland
temperate rainforest had been a ForestEthics cornerstone project for the
past five years.

ForestEthics sprang from the Clayoquot Sound anti-logging protests on
Vancouver Island in the 1990s, which she took part in. With staff in Canada,
the United States and Chile, the organization aims to protect endangered
forests by determining which are endangered and approaching companies that
buy the products made from logged trees in those forests. ForestEthics asks
the companies to stop purchasing those products; if the firms refuse, they
are met with protests on websites and in advertisements.

 "The caribou story is a perfect example of what we do," said the
38-year-old mother of two boys. "The victory in protecting caribou habitat
in British Columbia is, in part, a direct result of the growing green
marketplace. There is a willingness on behalf of major [companies] to engage
in these issues."

She refers to Lowe's Companies Inc., the U.S. home improvement retailer, as
an example of businesses stepping up to the ecological plate. "Lowe's buys
close to a billion dollars worth of forestry products from British Columbia
every year," she said, adding that it changed its policy of buying lumber
from unsustainable northern forests in 2005.

"That is a perfect example of what we've created at ForestEthics: an
environmental watchdog that does the science and research necessary to
identify which forests need to be protected, and that is connected to a
sophisticated financial and marketplace strategy."

Parisians are known for favoring revolutions over peaceful reform.

On the morning after Bastille Day 2007, Paris awoke to
thousands of new gleaming, pearl grey bicycles stationed
at former parking spaces all over the city. Within hours of
the system’s opening, the streets were filled with “freedom
bicycles.” Vélib, the new bicycle-based mass transit system,
proved that the revolution will be non-motorized.
By the 18th day, Vélib had logged one million rides. The
ubiquitous bikes are now an integral part of the city’s identity,
a symbol of Mayor Bertrand Delanoë and Deputy-Mayor
for Transportation Denis Baupin’s multifaceted efforts to
address traffic congestion, reduce air and sound pollution,
and revitalize the city’s public space.

SOURCE:  Sustainable Transport Fall 2007

The Vélib revolution began with doubling the amount of
cycleways in the City, making a fairly coherent and continuous
network. In early 2001, bicycling represented about one
percent of the 10.6 million trips made daily. Between 2001
and 2006, bicycle mode share increased by 48 percent while
keeping the number of crashes and injuries stable. Vélib is
expected to double or triple the number of daily bicycle trips
and to accelerate the rate of independent bicycling.
A few months ahead of the municipal elections, Vélib
is indeed “a success beyond our expectations” said Pascal
Cherki, Deputy Mayor for Sports.

How Vélib Works

Vélib is an important innovation over earlier city bike
sharing programs. Amsterdam famously put free bicycles
on the street in the 1960s, but they were not well maintained
and eventually all were stolen. Starting in the late
1990s, both JC Decaux and Clear Channel improved on this
model, with successful automated and credit card based programs
in Rennes, Amsterdam, Vienna, Lyons, Oslo, Brussels,
Stockholm, Helsinki, and Barcelona. The Vélib program in
Paris is however by far the largest and the most successful.
When it comes to bike sharing programs, size (and density)
matters.

Vélib requires the user to pick up and leave the bike at
automated, self-service bike stations. Users can either have
an annual membership or pay for short term subscriptions for
daily or weekly usage. A one-day subscription costs 1 euro, a
weekly subscription costs 5 euros and an annual membership
costs 29 euros.

Terminals at each station allow the purchase of a short
term subscription with a credit card, which gives you a subscriber
number and a password. Getting the bicycle then
only requires typing the number into the terminal any time
during your subscription period, selecting a bike stand number,
and stepping to the stand to unlock the bike. Annual
members use their smart card and just swipe it at the parking
stand instead of going to the terminal.

In addition to paying the subscription fee, short term users
must pay a security deposit of 150 euros, which is pre-authorized
on their credit card to help guarantee the return of the
bikes. This cuts back dramatically on theft.

Beyond this, for the first 30 minutes, the bicycle is free
to use. However, after that, usage costs are incurred (see
table). This system, including the pricing system, is designed
for short range, individual trips. As a result, in the first two
months of operation, 92 percent of the trips lasted less than
30 minutes.

The bike comes with its own lock for intermediate stops,
but when the user is finished, the bike has to be returned
to one of the Vélib stations. Because of this, there needs to
be enough stations that riders can readily find one. Vélib
opened in July with 10,648 bicycles and 750 stations; by
December of 2007, the system will have 20,600 bicycles and
1,451 stations – or one every 300 meters in central Paris.
If a station has no empty stand, 15 minutes of free time
can be added in order to reach the next station by swiping
the smartcard or logging into the terminal. The terminal also
shows the status of nearby stations and their current number
of empty slots.

Vélib stations tend to be located on converted parking
spaces. About 15 to 25 meters long, each station displaces
three to five parking spaces – or roughly 6,000 parking spaces
total by the time of full implementation.

Although the system was planned with about 70 percent
more parking stands than bikes in operation, the even distribution
of bikes and open stands at stations remains the main
challenge of the system. Optimizing station sizes and locations
presents an interesting challenge to system planners. In
Paris, the plan was done by the Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme
(APUR). Many stations are near historical landmarks and
required approvals from the Department of Architecture and
Heritage. Because it was difficult to predict where pick-ups
and drop-offs would concentrate, the system operator has
staff with 20 compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles dedicated
to shifting bikes from full to empty stations.

Vélib also has a support center on a barge that moves
between 12 landing points on the river. It features a shop
with 10 mechanics and ships the more seriously damaged
bikes daily to the main logistical base outside the city.

Vélib Bikes

Particular attention was given to a bike design that would
blend elegantly in the Paris landscape. At 22 kilos (compared
to about 18 kilos for a standard commercial bike), the
three-speed bike is not designed for speed, but to be substantial,
sturdy, and to handle some 18,000 kilometers in a year.
Particular attention was given to prevent taking on passengers.
Thus, there is no back rack, no horizontal frame bar,
and no child seat option.

The shifting, dynamo and brake systems are all located
inside wheel hubs. Control chips inside the bikes report on
their condition, as well as on tire pressure and on the bright
LED lights, directly to the central computer via the docking
stand. If a bike is defective, it remains automatically locked
on its stand (a red light appears) until the mechanic clears it.
Bikes returned to the stand for less than a minute stay locked
for inspection as well.

Weight, along with the distinctive design, was also
thought to discourage theft. However, this has been only
partially successful. As of September 10th, 250 to 300 bikes
had been stolen. “This is a lot” said a JC Decaux official.
Some of the bikes have been removed from the stations by
sawing through the arm that locks the bike to the rack. In
most cases, thieves simply took bikes improperly locked at
the stand by their users.

The Contract: The City and JC Decaux

Vélib is privately operated by SOMUPI, a joint venture
owned by JC Decaux, an outdoor advertising and street-furniture
multinational, and Publicis, a large advertising and
communications corporation. Most profits are derived from
billboard advertising.

SOMUPI is responsible for covering the entire cost of
implementing and managing Vélib, as well as any additional
fees. In return, it receives exclusive rights to provide
and operate the bus shelters, public announcement boards,
and other street furniture, which then serve as the physical
support for 1,628 lucrative advertising boards. The revenue
directly generated by Vélib subscription and rental fees,
expected to be in excess of 30 million euros a year, goes to
the city. If SOMUPI meets all contractual standards of good
operation of the system, it is entitled to revenue sharing of
12 percent of Vélib revenues plus payment by the city of an
amount equal to 12 percent of advertisement sales, i.e. about
10 million euros.

Since 1976, SOMUPI had held the street furniture and
billboards contract with the city. The contract was not supposed
to expire until 2010. However, in January 2006, Mayor
Delanoë decided to break it and tender a new one designed
to emulate the success of Velo’v, Lyon's bike share program,
also run by JC Decaux. Delanoë wanted at least 3,000 bikes
by the summer of 2007, and 6,000 by the end of the year. He
also demanded a 20 percent reduction in the 2,000 existing
billboards.

The top two bidding companies were SOMUPI and Group
for Paris, a joint venture led by Clear Channel, the Texasbased
global media conglomerate and number one outdoor
advertising company worldwide, and including major French
companies. Initially, Group for Paris made the winning bid in
November 2006 with a proposal for 14,000 bikes; SOMUPI’s
proposal was for just 7,500. However, SOMUPI attacked the
bidding process on technicalities and obtained its cancellation
at the Paris Administrative Court. In February 2007,
SOMUPI won the new bid by tripling its initial offer to
20,600 bikes and pledging to implement the first phase by
summer 2007. Group for Paris’s bid remained 14,000 bikes,
and offered a slower timetable.

No precise numbers regarding Vélib implementation and
operational costs have been published, but various public
statements by Decaux officials suggest that capital investment
and bike procurement amount to about 90 million
euros. Maintenance costs in Lyon’s similar bike-share program
are reportedly about 1,000 euros per bike per year.
On this basis, the total investment and operational cost of
Vélib over the 10-year contract is estimated to be about 300
million euros. Decaux separately said that he expected the 1,628 billboards
to earn 60 million euros per year for SOMUPI -- or about
600 million euros total.  The consortium also has
to pay for the billboards, street furniture, and up
to 32 million in space rental fees to the city.
Critics have raised the question of whether JC
Decaux’s back-lit billboards consume as much
fossil energy as is saved by people using Vélib over motorized forms of transport. The
billboards, however, pre-existed. While many of them are
being retrofitted with rolling ads mechanisms, the increased
energy consumption may be relatively marginal. A more
important question is whether the city should have paid for
Vélib directly out of its budget. It could then have either
12 percent of Vélib revenues plus payment by the city of an
amount equal to 12 percent of advertisement sales, i.e. about
10 million euros.

Since 1976, SOMUPI had held the street furniture and
billboards contract with the city. The contract was not supposed
to expire until 2010. However, in January 2006, Mayor
Delanoë decided to break it and tender a new one designed
to emulate the success of Velo’v, Lyon's bike share program,
also run by JC Decaux. Delanoë wanted at least 3,000 bikes
by the summer of 2007, and 6,000 by the end of the year. He
also demanded a 20 percent reduction in the 2,000 existing
billboards.

The top two bidding companies were SOMUPI and Group
for Paris, a joint venture led by Clear Channel, the Texasbased
global media conglomerate and number one outdoor
advertising company worldwide, and including major French
companies. Initially, Group for Paris made the winning bid in
November 2006 with a proposal for 14,000 bikes; SOMUPI’s
proposal was for just 7,500. However, SOMUPI attacked the
bidding process on technicalities and obtained its cancellation
at the Paris Administrative Court. In February 2007,
SOMUPI won the new bid by tripling its initial offer to
20,600 bikes and pledging to implement the first phase by
summer 2007. Group for Paris’s bid remained 14,000 bikes,
and offered a slower timetable.

No precise numbers regarding Vélib implementation and
operational costs have been published, but various public
statements by Decaux officials suggest that capital investment
and bike procurement amount to about 90 million
euros. Maintenance costs in Lyon’s similar bike-share program
are reportedly about 1,000 euros per bike per year.
On this basis, the total investment and operational cost of
Vélib over the 10-year contract is estimated to be about 300
million euros. Decaux separately said that he
expected the 1,628 billboards to earn 60 million
euros per year for SOMUPI -- or about
600 million euros total.  The consortium also has
to pay for the billboards, street furniture, and up
to 32 million in space rental fees to the city.
Critics have raised the question of whether JC
Decaux’s back-lit billboards consume as much
fossil energy as is saved by people using Vélib over motorized forms of transport. The
billboards, however, pre-existed. While many of them are
being retrofitted with rolling ads mechanisms, the increased
energy consumption may be relatively marginal. A more
important question is whether the city should have paid for
Vélib directly out of its budget. It could then have either
auctioned the advertising contract separately at a higher
price or simply cancelled it as an undesirable encroachment
on the public realm.

Local governments clearly like deals that make urban
amenities appear to have no cost to the tax-payers, a business
concept JC Decaux pioneered in the 1960s. In the case
of Vélib, the bidding process was so competitive that in
the end the city got a much better contract than it initially
thought. Also, with JC Decaux’s experience, SOMUPI was
able to implement Vélib on schedule and with only minimal
glitches.

At about the same time, Barcelona has shown that different
financing schemes are possible. The city pays 4.5 million
euros per year for the 3,000 bike-share program managed by
Clear Channel. The separate urban furniture and advertising
contract, operated by JC Decaux returns 11 to 18 million
euros per year.

Behind Vélib: The Paris Mobility Plan

Vélib is just one component of Paris’s new mobility plan.
When the Delanoë Administration came into office in 2001,
they took a sharp turn away from previous administrations.
They understood that new road construction just led to more
car trips, further degrading the urban environment. They set
out to scale back motorized traffic, focusing instead on revitalizing
local life and public spaces, by converting acres of
roadway and parking spaces into pedestrian space, bike lanes,
busways and tramways.

In the summer of 2002, the Quartier Verts (Green
Neighborhoods) program was the first initiative to reclaim
neighborhood streets for the community. Squares and plazas
were renovated, sidewalks widened, and new landscaping and
raised crosswalks were added. To slow traffic, street directions
were revised to carefully eliminate all through-routes, making
vehicles exit back onto the avenue from which they entered.
The legal speed limit was lowered to 30 km/h from 50 km/h.
On most of these slow speed, one-way streets, cyclists are
allowed to use the road in both directions.

A network of pedestrian-priority shared streets was also
created, where the legal traffic speed was lowered to 15
km/h. New low-floor microbus circulators were introduced
to improve local accessibility and connections to transit
stations. Free parking was eliminated altogether. Although
parking permits are issued to residents for a
nominal fee, they are only valid for parking
spaces in the immediate vicinity.

The Espaces Civilisés program was launched
to tame the heavy traffic that dominated
many of the wider boulevards and avenues.
Boulevard de Magenta was one of the first
to become a “civilized space.” Dubbed by
residents as the Magenta expressway, it had
endured traffic volumes up to 1,400 vehicles
per hour in each direction, frequent speeding,
and many fatalities at intersections. Noise and
pollution levels were among the highest in the
city.

Under the program, 24 million euros were
invested (about 260 euros per square meter)
into widening sidewalks from 4 to 8 meters,
planting trees, and building bikeways. Granite
separators were put in to protect a new dedicated
bus lane. To accommodate deliveries,
30 minute truck parking spaces were placed
on the curb-side of the bus lane. Intersections
were made safer with secured crosswalks, widened median
refuge islands and extended crossing phases for pedestrians.
New pavement, landscaping, and street furniture were added
to sidewalks and plazas. Businesses signed “charters of quality,”
harmonizing displays and signs and promoting good
public space practices.

While Paris regularly expands its Metro and recently
opened a new tram line, the administration is also building
a light BRT system, with 17 major lines in the City of Paris,
and 150 lines in the metropolitan area. The Mobilien system
has dedicated bus corridors, signal priority at intersections, and raised stations for rapid boarding and alighting from any door of the low-floor buses. Fare payment is mostly done by Navigo smart cards and enforced by roaming ticket inspectors.
The first three BRT lines opened between 2005 and
2006. Though bus ridership was disrupted during construction,
by the second half of 2006, ridership on new Mobilien
busways increased dramatically.

The city is also developing a new car sharing program,
with self service pick up stations similar to the Vélib system.
The city will be supplying three recently licensed car sharing
companies with parking spots in public garages and at
on-street stations. One car-sharing vehicle is estimated to
substitute 10 personal cars, and experience shows that users
tend to reduce their mileage by about 20 percent due to pricing
incentives.

These improvements and traffic restraint measures led to a
decrease in private vehicle traffic by 20 percent, trucks by 11
percent, and tourist buses by 11 percent between 2001 and
2006. The Metro received the biggest ridership increase, at
12 percent. With the completion of the first Mobilien corridors,
bus ridership is also now growing rapidly.
Over the same period, all indicators of air pollution
improved regularly, with the exception of summer ozone
levels. Six percent of the overall 32 percent reduction in
nitrogen oxides (NOx), as well as all 9 percent of the reduction
in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, were attributed to
the reduced number of cars and trucks in the city. Air quality
had strongly improved along the streets and avenues that
have been reorganized, with a reduction of 10 micrograms of
NOx per cubic meter on many streets. Injuries also decreased by 25 percent between 2001and 2005, in spite of a rapid
increase of motorized two-wheelers . Motorcyclists constitute
50 percent of road casualties in the city.

The Future

Mayor Delanoë is running for reelection in March 2008,
as is his Green Party coalition partner, the Deputy-Mayor
Baupin. They are opponents in the first round of the election,
and both are claiming credit for the legacy of their
mobility achievements. However, if they are re-elected, it
is probable that they will join in coalition again. Although
Baupin has occasionally been called names such as ‘Pol Pot’
and the ‘Khmer Vert’ by disgruntled motorists, this critique has largely fallen flat given the increasing interest in environmental
and climate change issues in opinion polls.
The administration has only been charging ahead. In
February 2007, it presented a 15-year sustainable Mobility
Plan which the Council of Paris approved for public hearings
and a final vote in 2008. The 2020 objectives of the
plan include: reducing traffic by 40 percent; reducing greenhouse
gas emissions by 60 percent; increasing transit capacity
by 30 percent; and raising non-automobile transportation
mode share from 78 percent to 83 percent.
The city has become a role model for sustainable transport.
Should the next administration receive a renewed
mandate to continue these policies, Paris would be able to
sustain their revolutionary efforts.