As Michael Oliva of the East Coast Greenway Alliance (ECGA) staff recalled, the ECGA got involved in local bike-ped advocacy efforts years ago to complete the region’s section of a 3,000 mile long greenway route from Key West to Canada. The ECG brought attention and awareness to making all areas surrounding the ECG a safer place to bike and walk. From their work sprang the Westchester-Putnam Biking and Walking Alliance — a group dedicated to making cycling and walking safer in the County.

Their recent accomplishment was the passage of a law that requires all new developments to provide bicycle racks. For every 10 car parking spaces, one bicycle parking space must be provided. Mayor Noam Bramson celebrated the measure as one of many to help lower greenhouse gas emissions and promote public health in his New Rochelle community. Other initiatives include bike parking in public spaces and a growing bike lane infrastructure to increase the safety of riders.

It will take much more work to help a majority of New Rochelle’s ~70,000 residents embrace bicycling and walking as a legitimate means of transportation. But the effort of local citizens (the Biking and Walking Alliance) in collaboration with regional organizations (such as the East Coast Greenway Alliance) is already making great progress and is a model for bike-ped advocacy in other communities.

Here’s to much more progress in New Rochelle that breeds progress here in NYC during the months and years ahead!

photo by Jerry Markatos

I’m happy to report that Sustainable Energy Transition (SET) is now getting the bulk of its cell phone’s energy needs from solar power! After 250 blog posts over the past year, it’s nice to look back at this piece of tangible progress for SET’s operations. Thanks to Connect2Earth.org, a green online community supported by WWF, IUCN and Nokia, who gave SET the solar charger – we are further walking our talk.

SET’s Green Practice

SET operations have been green from the beginning. Our office has large south-facing windows, allowing daylight to provide all necessary light during business hours and providing warmth during the cold New York City winter. On hot summer days, a light curtain helps keep the office cool while still letting enough light come through. And my transportation to local and regional meetings has been mainly by bicycle, train, or bus.

A Step in the Solar Direction

Since June, SET has added solar power to its green credentials. Our new solar charger is a Solio Classic Universal Hybrid Charger which retails for $100. The charger provides a majority of the power needs for my cell phone. But since I use a smartphone that requires a bit more power than some models, I need to charge it through conventional sockets around once per week. For my next phone, I’ll aim to get a more energy efficient model. And then I aim to get a larger solar charger that can power my laptop by 2010. Once that is complete, SET will be both energy independent and completely mobile (able to power up the laptop and phone even on bike trips or from remote locations).

Again, this progress as the first year of SET comes to a close is encouraging – here’s to much more in our own operations and by impacting the communities and institutions around us. A huge thank-you to Connect2Earth.org – be sure to check out their site which is full of excellent environmental info, blogs, and discussions with fellow environmentalists throughout the world!

Onwards in the Sustainable Energy Transition-