I want my next move to be by bicycle. Crazy?

Not at all. Thanks to impressive new bicycle trailer designs, such a move is now possible. So are other, similarly audacious feats of human-powered hauling, from freighting fish to delivering mattresses. (More on that in a moment.)

In 1981, when I left for college, (almost) everything I owned fit in a backpack, a trombone case, and an airline bike box. By 1993, all of my worldly possessions and those of my small family fit in a 15-foot Ryder truck towing a Honda Civic. By 1996, my family’s possessions had increased to a 24-foot truck and a Volvo station wagon. By 2000, I had a family of five and the largest dwelling I ever expect to own, and my possessions had proliferated further still. But in 2006, I reached the high point. I shed the car. The following year, my eldest son headed to college, taking a pickup-load of stuff with him. Then my family, uh, changed, and a bunch of the possessions in the house moved out.

Since, I’ve been trying to shed possessions more quickly than I accumulate them. My guiding principal is reduction: nothing comes into the house unless things of greater mass go out. The motive for this purging is part ecological (discussed in my 1992 book How Much Is Enough? The Consumer Society and the Future of the Earth) and part personal (a Thoreau-like taste for “simplicity, simplicity, simplicity”). But since I first learned about bike moves in 2007, the thought of trimming my worldly possessions to a mass that can be transported by human power has become a fascination for me: a concrete benchmark against which to measure my de-stuffing progress. Specifically, when I sell my house, probably in 2012 when my two younger children (knock wood) start college, I intend to move without a van. No oil. No pollution. No moving company or equipment rental. No diesel exhaust. I’ll still have more than I did when I went to college in 1981, but I expect to have less than a 15-foot-Ryder load. To move it, I won’t need anything but a flotilla of friends with cargo bikes and trailers, a rain-less day, and bungee cords. It will look like the scenes in the photos interspersed in this post, which are from bike moves in Portland, where muscle-powered changes of residence are commonplace. (In fact, Portland has an online organizing hub for bike moves.)

(Two other noteworthy sets of bike move photos are here and here. And here’s a well-produced video from Boulder, Colorado.)

The possibility of bike moves depends, first and foremost, on having only a modest pile of stuff—hence my purging. It also depends on the emergence of remarkable load-bearing options. Fortunately, bike trailers, like the walking carts, convertible cart-trailers, and cargo bikes that I’ve written about in recent weeks, have enjoyed technical advances in recent years. Consequently, would-be bike teamsters are now confronted with an embarrassment of choices, such as those catalogued by the Bike Trailer Blog. (Gear-head aside: I particularly like the Bikes at Work models, which can carry loads as heavy as 300 pounds and as long as a canoe. Sightline friend Patrick Barber has described his experience with these trailers. Like Oregon-made Burleys, which I described, BOB trailers are popular and reliable, and Oregon’s Blue Sky Cycle Carts are also intriguing.)

Not Just Bike Moves

Bike trailers are cropping up in other uses too. They’ve taken the place of pickup trucks for maintenance crews in Eugene’s Alton Baker Park. The Mattress Lot in Portland offers bike delivery of bedding on its custom trailer, as this video shows. Pedal People of Northampton, Massachusetts, has built itself a business in human-powered hauling. Community tree planters in Portland use trailers, along with cargo bikes, as pictured below.

Perhaps most impressive of all, Fisherman Rick Oltman, who owns the F/V Cape Cleare of Port Townsend, Washington, estimates that he and his partner have transported 85,000 pounds of Alaska-caught salmon and other fish to restaurants and farmers’ markets in the past year. And he’s delivered it all on two bike trailers. (Go here to see beautiful photos of Rick and his partner hauling about 300 pounds of seafood toward the Ballard Farmers’ Market in Seattle.)

What Does All This Mean?

Bike moves and bike hauling do not imply that bike trailers are a viable alternative to internal combustion for most uses and most people. They are not. In the grand scheme of urban transportation, oil demand, and carbon emissions, bike trailers and other human-powered freight haulers may remain side shows.

Still, they do save oil, and they seem especially appealing right now as our oil addiction poisons the Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps their appeal is more symbolic than practical. They are embodiments of the joyful, festive, and quixotic culture that we urgent
ly need if we are to transform our energy economy. Bike moves, like other human-powered freight hauling, exemplify a way of life in which community is strong, possessions few, and life rich. And examples are ever more important. Or so it seems to me.

What do you think, readers? Does something speak to you about bike moves? Will your next relocation be on two wheels? More selfishly, will you help me with mine?

Huge thanks to volunteer and urban planner Alyse Nelson for doing research that made this post possible.

Photo credits:

• Couch move by bike: Flickr photographer Brad Reber, Creative Commons.
• Bike move gathering: Flickr photographer theoelliot, Creative Commons.
• Hauling a mattress and frame: BikePortland.org on Flickr, Creative Commons.
• Bike move with kiddo along for the ride: BikePortland.org on Flickr, Creattive Commons.
• Bike move procession: Flickr photographer Brad Reber, Creative Commons.
• Bike move across Broadway Bridge, Portland, OR: Flickr photographer theoelliot, Creative Commons.
• Cargo train with trees: Flickr photographer gregraisman, Creative Commons.

This post originally appeared at Sightline’s Daily Score blog.

Tom Udall (D-N.M.)

So it’s a good time to think through contingencies, to identify paths on which the movement for a fair and effective climate/clean-energy policy can still travel forward, even if the Senate fails to act this year. In the end, the shortest path may cross the thicket of Senate rules reform. Perhaps surprisingly, that passage may depend on the persuasiveness of the junior senator from New Mexico — and how much help he gets from Northwest senators.

Tactical review

(Skip ahead, if you’ve been following climate politics.)

The last three years brought rapid progress toward a comprehensive climate policy. British Columbia passed a carbon tax shift in 2008. The Northwest states joined British Columbia and others in negotiating, but not yet enacting, a regional cap-and-trade system called the Western Climate Initiative. The U.S. House passed a comprehensive cap-and-trade bill in June 2009. The U.S. Senate is expected to take up its version of the same soon. The absurdly exaggerated influence of small states in the U.S. Senate, plus the historically accidental supermajority rules under which the Senate operates, militate against sweeping reform there in any area of public policy. When the reform in question would target the petroleum and coal industries, which are political goliaths in Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, and many other small-population states, the prospects shrink further. (As I’ve argued, this state of affairs does not reflect a lack of public support for a clean-energy revolution in the United States. It’s a fluke of history.) But the Senate may pass a climate bill yet. It may do so this summer, before mid-term elections lengthen the odds for strong action.

It may, but it may not. And it’s important to have back-up plans. If the Senate fails to act, or passes a flawed bill, what should Northwest champions of limiting climate-disrupting pollution do? A number of options present themselves, all worthy steps. The Western Climate Initiative may take center stage again. Or, if California voters defeat the initiative to repeal its climate laws, strong leadership may emerge from the coastal states and British Columbia. Shocked by BP’s Gulf oil gusher, ocean-fronting states are especially likely to see the need for a clean-energy transition. Any or all of these states might also join the Northeast states’ Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative — an already functioning carbon cap-and-trade system that currently covers dirty, fossil-fueled power plants in 10 Northeastern states. Or maybe Oregon and Washington will adopt carbon taxes, perhaps harmonized with British Columbia’s, to help fill their gaping budget holes.

Maybe. But obstacles stand in the way of each of these strategies. For just one example, the Washington state legislature refused this year to impose an increase in the hazardous substances tax that would have raised gasoline prices by about two pennies a gallon. It did so even though the proceeds would have gone to preventing the spread of waste oil and other polluted runoff in Puget Sound and other bodies of water. Convincing the legislature to enact a BC-style carbon tax (that is, starting at the equivalent of 10 cents a gallon and rising in steps to 30 cents) will be a challenge.

Playing to win

Our movement for a climate-friendly future will have to pursue one or more of these options if Kerry-Lieberman fails, because the physics of climate change are unforgiving, and the clock is running. In our circumstances, the only rational game plan is to play to win: not to seek modest, incremental objectives but to pursue policy goals that, even if they’re longer shots, will drive dramatic progress. We need victories commensurate with the flaws of our energy economy. At the same time, I’m not arguing for a hopeless, quixotic agenda.

We need a game plan that is both ambitious and achievable.

Which brings me to the Senate’s filibuster rule — the historically accidental rule that makes the Senate effectively a supermajority legislative body with a 60 vote threshold. Busting the filibuster is the ultimate playing-to-win plan: a Senate that operated by majority rule would be able to pass a muscular climate law tainted by fewer handouts to special interests. If the United States had a majority-ruled Senate, something like Waxman-Markey or Kerry-Lieberman would already be the law. (Oh, and a majority-ruled Senate would also be able to pass all manner of other needed legislation.)

I know, I know. I just said that I am not arguing for fools’ errands, and here I am talking about rewriting the rules of perhaps the most hide-bound and exclusive club in the world.

Senate rules

Senate rules reform is, I admit, a long shot. In fact, it’s a very long shot. By conventional means, rules reform requires 67 votes in the Senate, an impossible margin in today’s polarized politics.

But there is another way, an unconventional way. It’s still a very long shot, but it is neither hopeless nor quixotic.

It’s like Luke Skywalker firing a torpedo into the exact right portal in the Death Star, in Star Wars. Just as Luke knew exactly where to aim, with which weapon, from what approach, and just as Luke had a fiercely dedicated army at his back, we have open to us a strategy for blowing up the filibuster — a sequence of precise parliamentary steps employed at exactly the right time, with exactly the right alliance of forces assembled. (We won’t even need guidance from the disembodied voice of Obi Wan Kenobi.)

In the role of the young Luke Skywalker in the filibuster rebellion is Tom Udall, New Mexico’s junior senator and the son of John F. Kennedy’s Interior Secretary Stewart Udall (which, by the way, seems a lot better than being the son of Darth Vader). Since reaching the Senate in 2009, he has been speaking about the need to revise the Senate rules, steadily building the case for reform and gathering supporters to the cause. Other key parts would be played by the vice president, as presiding officer in the Senate, and the majority leader — who would need to assemble a simple majority of Senators to support reform. Together, they could end the filibuster, make the Senate a majority-ruled institution, and clear the path to a national climate law (among other things).

The game plan: Constitutional option

According to Sen. Udall’s plan, the new Senate that convenes in January 2011 will exercise its constitutional prerogative to adopt rules for its own procedure by a majority vote. The U.S. House adopts its rules at the beginning of each Congress, but the Senate’s tradition is to call itself a continuing body, with rules that carry forward from one Congress to the next. The current filibuster rule has not changed since 1975. Consequently, exactly two living Senators ever voted for the filibuster rule under which the Senate works. (Or, actually, doesn’t work, as this damning study from the Center for American Progress [PDF] makes abundantly clear: holds and secret holds on nominations and legislation plus filibuster threats so hogtie the Senate that it never even considers hundreds of House-passed bills, nor does it move budget bills through its own intended procedure.) All senators are captive to rules, such as the filibuster, laid down in the distant past.

At the beginning of the next Congress, in January 2011, Sen. Udall will move to adopt the Senate’s rules by simple majority. Three past vice presidents, sitting as the Senate’s presiding officers, have upheld the principle that the Senate has authority to take such action. If the vice president rules the motion acceptable (ignoring the advice of the Senate parliamentarian), and a majority of Senators support rules reform, the job can be done. It could then eliminate the filibuster, “holds,” and any other unproductive rules by writing modern, efficient rules. Between now and then, Udall hopes the Senate will agree on a set of rules reforms that have majority support.

Sen. Udall writes:

When the authors of the Constitution believed a supermajority vote was necessary, they clearly said so. And while the Constitution states that we may determine our own rules, it makes no mention that it requires a supermajority vote to do so. In addition, a longstanding common law principle, upheld in Supreme Court decisions, states that one legislature cannot bind its successors. To require a supermajority to change the rules, as is our current practice, is to allow a Senate rule to trump our U.S. Constitution and bind future Senates. This should not be.

The need to reform our rules is not a partisan issue — Senators of both parties have spoken out against the inability of the Senate to amend its own rules. Sen. Ted Kennedy … 35-years-ago said of the need to reform the rules, “the notion that a filibuster can be used to defeat an attempt to change the filibuster rule cannot withstand analysis. It would impose an unconstitutional prior restraint on the parliamentary procedure in the Senate … ” And, as my esteemed colleague from Utah, Sen. Hatch, stated in a National Review article in 2005, “both conservative and liberal legal scholars … agree that a simple majority can change Senate rules at the beginning of a new Congress.”

(Sen. Udall has also made his case here and in speeches and videos linked here. If you’re as interested in this topic as I am, I recommend the transcript and two hour video of this March 2010 Center for American Progress panel. No, I’m not kidding.)

The end game

A conventional win for Kerry-Lieberman is still possible in 2010, but if it proves elusive, climate champions would do well to change strategies. Winning majority support for Sen. Udall’s Constitutional Option will require an all-out campaign. Unlike Luke Skywalker, Sen. Udall doesn’t have the force, so he’ll need all the help he can get.

Fortunately, support is already building. In March, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pledged to take a hard look at rules reform in the next Congress. Other senators have been stepping up, as the Washington Post has reported: Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) suggested trimming the number of votes required to end a filibuster; Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have suggested a way to stop “secret holds.” Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) propose a way to make it tougher for any sole legislator to lock up business in the chamber. Any of these reforms would likely require Udall’s Constitutional Option — that is, rules reform by majority vote — to win passage. The Senate Rules Committee held hearings in April on rules reform and in May on filibuster reform. The May hearings included testimony (video) from former Vice President Walter Mondale on how he employed the Constitutional Option to force rule changes in 1975.

The American public is ahead of the Senate: it wants the filibuster gone immediately. But rallying the Senate to use the Constitutional Option will require mobilizing enough of that public that senators feel the courage to throw off tradition and embrace majority rule.

So far, senators from the Northwest have yet to announce their support for rules reform. Considering how much the Northwest stands to lose from climate change, and gain from a clean-energy economy, they would do well to support Sen. Udall. And we would all do well to encourage them.

It’s been a hard few months for us fossil-fuel-addicted societies: calamity in the Gulf of Mexico; coal mining disasters in China, West Virginia, and Russia; still-frustrated attempts to win climate and clean-energy policies in Salem, Ore., Olympia, Wash., and Washington, D.C. Perhaps we’re hitting bottom?

If so, catching glimpses of a life cured of addiction can be a step toward recovery. To that end, I’ve been devoting odd moments this year to marveling at some of the innovations going on in human-powered urban transportation: walking carts, community carts, and convertible cart-trailers.

Today: a report from the edges of human-powered conveyance, where pedal pushers are hauling car- and pickup-worthy loads on cargo bikes and trikes. The ingenuity evident across the Northwest and the world in finding practical, nonmotorized solutions to the daily challenges of urban mobility is heartening, even inspiring. It’s also sometimes whimsical and amusing.

Given a price on carbon, policies that grow compact communities, and adequate investment in safe, segregated bikeways, such inventions will proliferate. They’ve already won toeholds in the Northwest’s cities.

Pictured below, for example, are my Seattle neighbors John Floberg and Lisa Hellefond on their weekly grocery run. Their vehicle is their “long tail,” a bike suitable for hauling not only John but also 200 pounds or more of (Lisa and) groceries.

Varieties

Long tails, which put their load in the back on sturdy extended racks, are but one type of cargo bike. (Long tail examples include the Kona Ute, HammerTruck, Yuba Mundo, Work Cycles Fr8, Torker Cargo-T, Batavus Personal Delivery Bike, Surly Big Dummy, and the Xtracycle, which bolts onto a regular bike to make it a long tail. John and Lisa ride an Xtracycle.)

Others, called long johns, put the load in the front. (Examples include the Monark, Velorbis, Bullitt, and Eugene, Oregon-made CETMA pictured below.)

Bakfiets or Box Bikes have built-in cargo cases, usually in the front. (Examples include the Gazelle, Bilenky, Madsen, and two Portland made bikes: the Metrofiet and the JoeBike pictured below.)

A Cargo trike adds not just a crate but also a third wheel. (Examples include Christiania, pictured below, and Velorbis Mobii.)

Uses

Cargo bikes of all these types are spreading in the Northwest, and especially in Portland. No one has been counting, so it’s impossible to quantify the trend yet. But my anecdotal observations make me think that cargo bikes are growing at least as fast as electric bikes—a trend I discussed earlier this year.

What interests me most is not the numbers, which remain small enough to be a marginal phenomenon in Northwest transportation. It’s the variety of uses to which people are putting freight-hauling bikes. They’re becoming human-powered pick-ups. Consider:

- My friend (and Sightline trustee) Jeff Youngstrom, a gifted photographer, lives car-free in the town of Issaquah, Washington. He uses his longtail for dozens of hauling purposes (many of them documented here). For example, he used it to carry with him all the supplies he needed to set up a photography exhibit at a community art walk.

The Portland brewer Hopworks commissioned Portland’s Metrofiet to build it a custom “pub bike” (pictured below). BikePortland.org described it as, “A locally built cargo bike that holds two kegs below an inlaid wood bar. A rear rack is built to hold a stack of pizzas; below that a wood-paneled pannier is in fact a compact sound system.”

Also in Portland, a small company called B-Line PDX recently started offering delivery services on its cargo bikes (pictured below).

The Senate voted 53 to 47 against Murkowski and in favor of EPA’s authority to regulate carbon emissions, as the New York Times reports.

But the closeness of the vote gives the wrong impression about Americans’ views on this issue. The vote results might make you think that the nation is closely divided on climate policy, that the nation is deeply conflicted.

It is not. Only the Senate is, and the Senate is not a democratic body. It represents states, not people. It’s an Alice-in-Wonderland institution in which small population states all get “Eat Me” cakes and blow up like balloons, while giant-population states shrink down to small-state size.

In general, Senators vote their constituents’ values, so I tallied the populations represented by each Senator. By this measure, the 53 Senators voting to protect EPA’s authority represent 60 percent of the U.S. population. The 47 Senators voting to hogtie EPA represent 40 percent.

Democratically counted, it wasn’t a close 53-47. It was 60-40. That’s a different kind of story about political momentum and public will: it’s encouraging news.

Now, if we can just start fixing the Senate.

 Note: I took the vote roll call from the U.S. Senate’s website and the Census Bureau’s estimates of 2009 mid-year population by state. I tallied the population of each state into the “yes” (con EPA) or “no” (pro EPA) column on the measure. Where the two Senators from a state split their votes, I split the state’s population between the “yes” and “no” columns. This tally undercounts U.S. opponents of the Murkowski measure (that is, EPA supporters), because the District of Columbia (which has almost Alaska’s population) is unrepresented in the U.S. Senate, as are Puerto Rico (which has almost six times Alaska’s population) and other U.S. territories and protectorates—most of which would likely have sent votes in support of EPA’s authority to the Senate on this question. Out of curiosity, I added D.C. and Puerto Rico to the “No” (pro-EPA) column, which pushed the percentages further in support of EPA carbon regulation, from 59.7 percent pro-EPA to 60.3 percent pro-EPA.

This post originally appeared at Sightline’s Daily Score blog.

Properly understood, it should give us confidence that the clean-energy path is our best option by far for a high-employment future. Too bad CBO didn’t just say that. You could read the summary and never guess. I delved into the study itself and here’s what I learned.

The paper is essentially a summary of three general equilibrium modeling results on the industry-by-industry employment impacts of putting a price on carbon. All the studies in question are reputable research. One is from Resources for the Future. Another is from the Brookings Institution. The CBO paper is fair synopsis of them.

But the models are, by their authors’ admission, all loose and imprecise. Each of them makes a long list of counterfactual assumptions about the economy and politics, in order to limit itself to a set of variables small enough in number to allow modeling.

In short, they pile simplifying but false assumptions one atop the other:  

• None of these models is an assessment of any actual climate bill before the U.S. Congress. Such bills are elaborate pieces of policy with far too many moving parts to put into an econometric model. Instead, they attempt to model a crude policy that puts a rising price on carbon emissions.

• The models assume that there is no first-mover advantage in developing clean-tech industries. They assume that carbon-constrained economies won’t develop expertise and exportable products that laggard nations will have a hard time catching up to. (Tell that to Denmark, for example, which embraced ambitious clean-energy policies years ago and now make a fortune selling windmills to the world.)

• The models ignore the considerable benefits to the U.S. economy of trimming the trade deficit, by weaning the nation off imported oil. Trimming trade deficits will also help to rebalance world financial and currency markets, reducing the pressures that contributed to the Great Recession.

• The models discount the possibility—probability, many would say—of game-changing technological breakthroughs. Once carbon has a price and the ingenuity of tens of millions of profit-motivated people and companies turns to wringing carbon out of the economy, new approaches may emerge. These new techniques and technologies have a chance of launching whole new industries

• The models assume that U.S. action on climate change will have no effect on other nations’ actions—that if the United States puts a price on carbon, other countries will be no more likely to do so. (Tell that to Canada. Ottawa has been saying for months that it will consider comprehensive climate policy after the United States does.)

• The models also assume that U.S. climate policy will include no border adjustments or other measures to levelize competition with any trading partners who do not match the U.S. carbon price. Consequently, they assume that climate pricing will put the United States at a competitive disadvantage. (Tell that to the U.S. Senators from every manufacturing state. There won’t be a U.S. climate policy that doesn’t somehow protect U.S. manufacturers from a near term hit to their price competitiveness.)

• The models also essentially assume that the economy is already as energy efficient as it could be, ignoring the massive, cost-effective savings potential documented by dozens of studies.

• The models assume that reducing greenhouse emissions brings no ancillary economic upsides, such as the benefits of huge reductions in conventional air and water pollution that will accompany a post-carbon economy.

• The models ignore the shock-absorbing benefits of a clean-energy economy. Price spikes in world oil markets are a major contributor to recessions, which are the biggest job killers around. Getting off the fossil-fuel rollercoaster protects jobs.

• Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, they assume away all the impacts of climate change itself. That is, because they cannot model the impacts of climate change on employment (which could be either utterly devastating or merely debilitating), they simply ignore them. This assumption essentially invalidates the conclusions of the CBO briefing, because the “base case” (no price on carbon + status quo economic trends) cannot exist. If we do not reduce emissions, we will reap a future of both ecological and economic decline. Our choice is not between business as usual and a carbon-priced economy. Our choice is between (a) unchecked climate change and (b) less-rapid climate change in a carbon-priced economy.

Of course, for the modelers themselves, the main point of such models is not to predict specific net outcomes. Modelers know better. The main point of such models is to forecast the broad outlines of change. For example, the models are on pretty solid ground, and agree with one another, when they say that employment in coal mining, oil drilling, and oil refining will decline sharply. Employment in energy-intensive industries such as transportation and chemicals manufacturing will also likely diminish. Employment in clean energy, clean tech more generally, and the gargantuan service sector (more generally still) will increase.

So, here’s the good news. Despite the almost preposterously anti-clean-energy assumptions baked into the models CBO studied, they still basically show that the U.S. economy will hardly lose any jobs at all on net. Employment will be “slightly lower,” CBO says, and only for the early decades of the clean-energy transition. In time, even as emissions fall toward 80 percent reductions by 2050, the nation will have returned to full employment.

Take away some of the assumptions above, and “slightly lower” employment surely starts to look like “increased employment.”

Here’s Robert Pollin of the University of Massachusetts and his colleagues, summarizing their survey of an earlier batch of economic modeling studies on cap-and-trade (which also made many of the same assumptions listed above):

According to all the forecasts—including the worst-case scenario developed by the most pessimistic forecasters, the American Council on Capital Formation/National Association of Manufacturers—the impact of a cap-and-trade system on US GDP growth will be negligible. According to most forecasts, it will be almost indiscernible. …

Even assuming this most severe negative effect of a carbon cap on economic growth [the NAM forecast], it would still only require, over the course of 23 years, an additional 14 months for the U.S. economy to reach the same level of GDP under a carbon cap as against the baseline scenario.

I take the CBO paper’s real point as something similar: the worst possible outcome from pricing carbon would be to reduce overall employment slightly in the United States in the early years of the transition to clean energy. The more likely outcome by far is an increase in employment.

Those interested in modeling should read David Roberts’ excellent piece, this study by Robert Pollin and his colleagues at the University of Massachu
setts (especially around page 41), and Sightline’s Green Collar Jobs primer.

This post originally appeared at Sightline’s Daily Score blog.

My 1994 Oregon-made Burley bike trailer-stroller (above) is still dear to my heart, but innovations in newer Burleys and in other companies’ offerings show that tools for human-powered urban mobility are developing at a rapid clip. The 31-year-old Eugene company Burley and four manufacturers outside the Northwest offer bike trailer-stroller-cart-jogger hybrids that convert into so many mobility tools they are like something out of Transformers.

Almost every Burley model is quickly convertible from a bike trailer to a stroller/cart. (Sightline trustee and Walk Score creator Matt Lerner tows his loaded Burley above.) Some are even convertible into ski trailers for Nordic enthusiasts. Their wide wheel bases, bicycle-style wheels, and tensioned-fabric construction make them stable, light, low-friction rides, with excellent gear stowage capacity, all-weather protection, and good foldability. The company’s pet carrier and cargo-only models (pictured below) provide options for the child-free, and Burley now offers a plethora of thoughtful fittings and accessories that emulate auto conveniences, such as a handlebar console with cup holders.

Four ingenious hybrid bike-stroller-child carriers have entered the market more recently than Burley. All of them put the kid carrier/cargo box in front of the rider, and all of them are shape shifters.

The Danish Triobike (pictured below), for example, is a regular bike, a baby stroller, and a kid-carrying trike in one. It even turns into a jogging stroller with a large front wheel. (Watch it transform here.) The bike blog Copenhagenize loves the Triobike’s design passionately, calling it “a three-in-one extravanganza of bikealiciousness.” But another reviewer points out that trying to engineer three vehicles into one may mean compromising each.

A similar American product is the Zigo Leader (below): a cargo bike, stroller, jogger, and regular bike. It also has a trailer hitch, so you can pull it behind a regular bike.

The Feetz, in contrast, does not separate into a separate bike and cart. Instead, the bike portion collapses forward, transforming itself into a compact and maneuverable cart/stroller. One design innovation is front wheels that lean into corners, to make the trike corner better (visible in this video).

Finally, the European Taga, reportedly to be launched in North America this Spring, converts from a trike to a baby stroller. (Cheesy promotional video that shows the conversion here.)

What may be unfortunate about all of these muscle-propelled Transformers is that their kid-carrying capacity may make adults associate them too much with carting young children. That’s certainly the market niche that Burleys are known for. Consequently, we may overlook the trailers’ full utility. My youngest child is now 15, but I routinely use my Burley. Hitched to my bike, it’s ideal for car-less runs to the grocery, lumber yard, or farmers’ market. Dedicated cargo bikes and trailers, which I’ll cover in subsequent posts, also do this job, but they’re not as versatile.

Two closing points: First, Burley in particular is an example (one among hundreds) of a Northwest company that is making superior products for the emerging sustainable economy—an economy that is getting off the fossil-fuel rollercoaster. Such products trigger a cascade of small positive impacts. Every Burley sold in the Northwest, for example, not only means a little more employment in Eugene. It also means less fossil fuel burned in the Northwest, which means less drain of dollars from our regional economy, which means more local spending, which means more local jobs.

Second, in all of these shape shifters, I think we’re seeing examples of fast-maturing technology for human-powered urban transport. In fact, we’re witnessing a flowering of invention. These devices are high quality, modular, durable, and ingeniously made. No doubt, some of them will survive in the marketplace while others will not, and the survivors will continue to improve. But to me, the primary lesson here is simply that solutions are abundant to the challenges of climate change, oil addiction, obesity, and congested cities. Given the right laws and policies—compact communities, a price on carbon, and comprehensive pedestrian and cycling infrastructure (all already in place in Denmark, for example, where the Triobike originates)—profit-seeking entrepreneurs will produce elegantly functional wheels for the urban future.

Next time: Cargo Bikes.

Huge thanks to volunteer and urban planner Alyse Nelson for doing research that made this post possible.

Photo Credits:

• Matt Lerner and his Surley-Burley Combo courtesy of Matt Lerner.
• Loaded cargo Burley courtesy of Flickr user dionhinchcliffe under the Creative Commons license.
• trioBike v2 courtesy of trioBike.
• ZiGo Leader from the Bike Portland Flickr photostream
  under the Creative Commons license.
• Video of the Feetz photo of the Taga courtesy of Flickr user anabananasplit under the Creative Commons license.

This post originally appeared at Sightline’s Daily Score blog.

That’s the point of community carts: to extend cart access without necessarily extending cart ownership. Unfortunately, the era of neighborly cart-lending is long past. Still, community carts may enjoy a resurgence as our communities grow more compact and walkable.

Two Northwest nonprofit programs have actively promoted community carts. At the University of British Columbia, staff and students can check out a CanCart at no charge (pictured above) from any of six locations for as long as three days. Designed to fit on buses and through grocery aisles, and fitted for towing behind bicycles, CanCarts are perfect for hauling books and supplies. At last count, the campus had 85 units in service, substantially outnumbering the campuses car-share vehicles. The Seattle pedestrian advocacy organization Feet First ran a pilot for a similar effort at the city’s affordable, senior housing community of Westwood Heights in 2008.

Such nonprofit programs appear to be rare, but community carts are not. In fact, shared carts are actually commonplace. Just think about it: Many Northwest resorts and camps make garden carts available for guests moving in and out of their quarters. Rental centers across the region offer hand trucks for dollars a day. Many Laundromats provide wheeled carts for handling loads of clothes. Airports offer luggage carts for hire. And stores, of course, routinely provide shopping carts. (Trivia: grocery shopping carts are late arrivals among wheeled vehicles. The first patent was not issued until 1940, if Wikipedia can be trusted.)

So one question is, What prevents community carts from becoming even more common? Why don’t groceries do now what they did for my mom in the sixties?

One barrier is proximity. We lived two blocks from the small, neighborhood grocery. Nowadays, stores are bigger, fewer, and farther apart. Smart growth may remove this barrier, as more people move into dense, walkable neighborhoods.

Another barrier is theft. When my family moved in 1977 from Seattle to a suburb of Washington, DC, I remember being surprised that grocery stores there not only refused to let customers wheel their groceries home, they didn’t even allow carts off the curb into their parking lots. Low steel fences with narrow openings let people pass through, but the carts were corralled in the loading zone between store and cars.

Now, in places such as West Seattle where shopping cart theft is common, stores accomplish the same thing by means of electronic perimeters. Much like the invisible fences that keep dogs in their own yards, high-tech theft-prevention systems cause carts’ wheels to lock up if you try to cross a store’s property line.

A third barrier is tradition. In some parts of Canada and the United States, and in many other countries, shoppers must deposit a coin into a dispenser to use a shopping cart. When the shopper returns the cart, the deposit is refunded. Deposit-refund systems, much like those used for the proliferating bike-sharing programs around the world (pdf, page 24) and for luggage trolleys at airports, would allow shopping carts to roam across neighborhoods and still find their way home. Unfortunately, in the Northwest, to my knowledge not a single retailer charges for using carts. Northwesterners are accustomed to free carts, and companies may fear that initiating a charge for carts would irritate customers. Which retailer will start first? Or will it be one of the region’s growing number of farmers markets?

Until someone starts deposit-refund systems at stores and markets, communities can emulate UBC and Feet First’s programs, providing carts to registered users as a way to facilitate walking.

In most situations and for most uses, I suspect, our urban, pedestrian future will hold mostly privately owned carts. But I also expect a steady proliferation of community carts in situations where they make sense: for groceries and hardware in high-rise neighborhoods, for example. In other words, before too long, a trip to the grocery may again include a community cart, as it did in my childhood.

Next time: Shape-shifting cart-trailer, for foot or bike travel.

Huge thanks to volunteer and urban planner Alyse Nelson for doing research that made this post possible.

Photo of CanCart courtesy of University of British Columbia Campus and Community Planning.
Photo of airport luggage carts courtesy of Flickr user confidence, comely under Creative Commons licensing.

This post originally appeared at Sightline’s Daily Score blog.

In the end, the real alternative to automobiles is not better automobiles. It is better neighborhoods. Complete, compact communities enable walking, cycling, and transit to thrive. They make electric vehicles’ limited range adequate. And they allow cars to fill their rightful place as one transportation tool among many, rather than as the organizing principle of daily life.

It’s in the context of better neighborhoods—dense, vibrant, beautiful, mixed-use, mixed-income, mixed-age communities—that rolling suitcases are a vehicular breakthrough. Well-wheeled luggage is a vast improvement on the lift-and-carry type, and it is actually just the beginning of the innovations in human-powered motion. This post on the wheels of the urban future launches a short series on the subject. My frequent collaborator Alyse Nelson, an urban planner, assembled the photos. The series expands on this pictorial ode.

The options for human-powered transport just keep proliferating, as tinkerers and entrepreneurs apply ingenuity and ball bearings to the task of moving people and their stuff around. Future posts will cover community carts, bike trailers, cargo bikes, and an array of wackier inventions. First, though, a pedestrian starter: updating the “granny cart.”

The traditional personal shopping cart is a collapsible, wire-grid cage with two or four wheels. It’s as utilitarian an option as it was for my car-less grandmother in the 1960s. Better models easily support more than 100 pounds, and if you don’t like the styling, you can trick yours out, as Instructables.com details (and pictured atop this post).

Newer designs include this more-maneuverable canvas cart, which collapses like an umbrella. These trusty carts, however, are rapidly giving ground to better-engineered and more-expensive models, some smaller and others bigger and many of them documented at Cities21.

	Among the smaller models are several scaled like wheeled luggage, carrying just one or two sacks of groceries. This one (at left) by Roadrunner has a three-wheeled design that allows it to climb stairs.

The even smaller Carry Cruiser (at right) by Reisenthel folds up—wheels and all–inside its own handbag-sized pocket.

	This stylish model (at left) also impersonates a shoulder tote when folded, but has a telescoping handle to operate like wheeled luggage.  Thoughtful design makes it versatile.

The manufacturer Rosler, meanwhile, offers a vast array of European-made (and styled) carts in bright colors, some sturdier, some more easily folded. This one, for example, folds and hangs from a grocery’s shopping cart while you’re in the store. A UK competitor—the Typhoon Spotty Trolley (at right)—is insulated to keep your groceries cool.

	A minimalist design from California (at left) is a rolling hanger for shopping bags. Its lack of a carrying basket of its own makes it easier to fold and, therefore, to stow while shopping.

Folding hand trucks such as this one and this one can haul the heaviest loads.

The best built carts, in my view, are baby strollers with cargo capacity (and convertible bike trailers, which I’ll discuss another time). They cost hundreds of dollars, and that’s a lot of money compared to a granny cart. On the other hand, it’s peanuts compared to a car.

The photo below shows Alyse Nelson touring Europe with her baby and her fully-loaded stroller, plus a wheeled suitcase . . .

and here is a look at the cargo capacity of her stroller.

Big-wheeled jogging strollers such as this one have more capacity and easier handling than the standard type pict
ured above. Some can even accommodate panniers, for added storage. But they also cost more and take up more space.

In time, as cities grow increasingly walkable and more people want to do their errands on foot, I expect that personal carts and baby strollers will essentially merge, with interchangeable fittings and modular components for kids and groceries. (They will also merge with bike trailers, as I’ll argue another time.) Communities that are eager to promote walking will also find ways to accommodate them: providing easy, secure parking in shops and cafés, and welcoming them on buses and trains. At present, as Alyse points out, you can’t bring a cart or stroller on a bus in the Northwest without emptying it and folding it up first. In Denmark, in contrast, strollers have a place on transit, just like wheel chairs.

Next time: community cart programs.

Huge thanks to Alyse Nelson for researching this post!

Photo Credits:
Hotrod Granny Cart photo courtesy of Flickr uzbeckistan.
Photo of carts crossing the street courtesy of Flickr user Ed Yourdon under Creative Commons licensing.
Reisenthel Carry Cruiser photos from Flickr user framboise under Creative Commons licensing.
Hook and Go photo courtesy of Cities21. 
Photos of Alyse Nelson and kid/cargo carrying stroller courtesy of Alyse Nelson. 

This post originally appeared at Sightline’s Daily Score blog.

Richard Rosenfeld, in Harper’s writes of how deeply embedded in the Constitution is the power of the Senate. For example, it says, “No State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.” Even in a constitutional convention, votes are taken by state, not per capita, so there’s no reason to believe small states would bargain away their absurdly exaggerated influence in the Senate.

What can we do to revise small-state rule in the Senate?

Rosenfeld himself gamely suggests taking steps to gradually make the Senate less powerful, until it has faded away to an advisory role like the House of Lords. That’s a many-decade prospect, and Rosenfeld does not say what steps he has in mind, nor does he offer any compelling reason why small states would go along.

This blogger suggests a faster and more clever strategy, though far-fetched: it might be within the Senate’s rule-making powers to put weights on each Senator’s vote to reflect the relative size of his or her constituency, just as the Constitution originally weighted each slave as 3/5ths of a person for the purposes of apportioning Representatives. The Constitution doesn’t explicitly forbid such a practice, although the whole intent of the Senate was to give each state “equal suffrage.” Still, under this proposal, Wyoming would have two senators, and those senators would each get to vote. But their votes would count one-sixty-eighth as much as would the votes of California’s senators. It’s hard to imagine this passing the straight-face test, much less actually winning approval (and I haven’t even talked yet about how hard it is to change Senate rules), but it would sure fix the Senate.

An equally creative—and far-fetched strategy—is the brainchild of Michael Lind, now at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC. He sketched a course in 1998 by which the populous states could perform cellular mitosis, splitting themselves up until there were about 75 states and the imbalances in Senate representation were markedly diminished. (His “75 Stars” article remains the best thing I’ve read about the Senate and its reform. I recommend it!) The trouble is, can you imagine a scenario in which California’s governor and legislature would approve of splitting the Golden State in eight? If you can get past that, why would the small-state-ruled Senate approve admission of the new states? And what would stop Wyoming from subdividing too?

I haven’t given up on fixing the Senate undemocratic composition, but I sure haven’t heard a strategy that seems likely to succeed. A revolution? It’s almost enough to bring despair to a believer in the principle of one person, one vote.

For myself, while I await a viable strategy for making the Senate democratic, I console myself with a fantasy: organized migration from big states to small ones. The margins of political victory in the 2004 and 2008 US Senate races in Alaska were 3,953 and 9,349 respectively. A detachment of 10,000 voting transplants from southern Cascadia—say, Mendocino County, California—to stunning Sitka, Alaska (pictured atop this post), might be enough to rewrite the course of US politics substantially. Lawyer friend Rod Brown of Seattle tells me that 30-days residency and the intent to remain are all it takes to register and vote in Alaska, according to state law.

A larger migration would be needed to Wyoming, where in 2008, a US Senate landslide in Wyoming was won by 129,000 votes. In 2006, the margin was 77,500. Still, Jackson Hole (pictured!) is beautiful and a lot of Californians own homes there anyway: why don’t they just stay a little longer and change their voter registration? Rod Brown adds that the state of Wyoming’s residency requirements for voters are minimal: you just have to move there with the intent to make it your principal residence. No duration is specified. Perhaps northwesterners  from heavily populated states could serve volunteer terms in Jackson Hole? (For a small stipend from my fellow Washingtonians, I hereby volunteer to lead the advance party, to scout the Jackson area. I’m willing to go in either climbing or skiing season. Anyone care to join me?)

OK, I’ll be serious: I’m still looking and hoping. Perhaps you’ve got an idea? A plan? A better understanding of the US Constitution?

Meanwhile, I note that changing the composition of the Senate is much harder than changing the Senate’s filibuster rule. And the filibuster is half the problem with the US Senate. It’s the subject of my next post.

This post is part of the series Game Changers on Sightline’s Daily Score blog.

Photos of Sitka, Alaska and Jackson Hole, Wyoming courtesy of Flickr photographers muirtrail68 and wvdave.geo under Creative Commons Licensing. 

Richard Rosenfeld, writing six years ago in Harper’s answers that question. The 1787 Constitutional Convention created the Senate in a triply split vote won by states representing just one third of the fledgling nation’s (free, white, male, propertied) electorate. In doing so, the convention rejected Common Sense-author Thomas Paine’s plea for a one-chamber, popularly elected legislature. Instead, it essentially imported the British system of government of the time, as filtered through the writings of John Adams: a limited monarch in the person of the president; the Senate to replicate the House of Lords and speak for the aristocracy of landowners; and the House to speak for democracy.

Most US states, including those in the Northwest, modeled their own governments on the federal system: two houses and a separately elected governor (plus, especially in the Northwest, many other elected statewide officials).

Britain, after the American colonies left, abandoned this model. Rosenfeld writes, “By the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949, the House of Lords can no longer veto acts of the House of Commons and can no longer delay legislation for more than a year. Although the British monarchy retains a theoretical veto over acts of the British Parliament, no monarch has dared to exercise that prerogative for nearly three hundred years. Today, the House of Commons reigns supreme on legislative and executive matters. The monarch and the House of Lords have merely advisory roles.” In short, Britain followed Thomas Paine, the radical American revolutionary; the United States followed the British system it had rebelled against, stoked by Paine’s inspired pamphleteering (“These are the times that try men’s souls”).

(Warning: Canadian readers may want to skip ahead. I’m going to sketch Canadian government for American readers.) Canada has essentially the newer British system: a popularly elected parliament that combines executive and legislative branches, with each member representing a like-population district, plus a largely ceremonial upper house (called the Senate in Canada) and ceremonial allegiance to the British monarchy as titular head of state. The leader of the parliamentary majority is the head of government, the prime minister. In the US context, imagine if the Speaker of the House also served as President. (In British Columbia’s one-house parliamentary government, the leader of the majority party in the legislative assembly becomes premiere, which is the provincial equivalent of the prime minister.)

Having spent the last sixteen years studying policy and politics in the Cascadia region, including the province of British Columbia, I’ve grown convinced that the parliamentary system is just plain better. It’s more adaptable to contemporary circumstances, engages citizens better, and matches responsibility for addressing public needs with accountability for doing so. It allows a party that wins a legislative majority to implement its program swiftly and decisively. It allows the opposition a forum to voice its views—in fact, to furiously debate and critique the government’s policies. Every few years, it gives voters a chance to decide if they want different leadership, typically in an election campaign that lasts just weeks.

An example: British Columbia’s leaders announced a carbon tax shift in February 2008, enacted it in May, and began collecting it in July. This speed and decisiveness would have been impossible in any of the Northwest states. When elected officials have authority to implement their decisions, it does not lead to the erratic “mob rule” that John Adams and some other framers of the US Constitution feared. Instead, it makes them intensely aware of their accountability. It dramatically raises the stakes in elections, because voters hold leaders accountable: the governing party defended its carbon tax shift in an intense, closely fought, and vigorously argued election in May 2009.

A fully empowered parliamentary government does not always bring policies that I like—far from it! But when voters know that governments have the power to implement their programs, it does convince them that elections matter. I would happily trade some policy setbacks for a healthier and governable democracy—a system of governance that can actually implement solution to the towering challenges of our era.

The parliamentary system—and the greater public trust and democratic engagement it yields—explains much that I admire about Canada. Far more than any cultural or ideological differences between Americans and Canadians, the design of Canada’s democracy explains why Canada provides health insurance to more of its citizens; why it maintains a stronger system of public education; why it raises revenue through a more uniform, green, and progressive system of taxation; and why it boasts dramatically more compact, transit-oriented cities.

Shorter: Canada rules, because of Canada’s rules for making rules.

“Well, yes,” you may be thinking. “But what can we in the Northwest states do about it? ‘Be Canada’ is not exactly an action plan.” That’s what I’ll turn to in my next two posts.

This post is part of the series Game Changers at Sightline’s Daily Score blog.