Biking in Sevilla: Orange Blossoms and Public Bikes

“Sevilla used to be a dangerous place for bicyclists and pedestrians. Now the biggest threat is getting hit by a falling orange.” Guillermo Peñalosa, the Director of 8-80 Cities (a group dedicated to the creation of healthy cities and vibrant communities).

My first day in Sevilla has been really wonderful. It's 75 degrees, sunny, and it happens that we managed to time our visit with the citrus blossoms. The scent here is, almost literally, intoxicating. If you've never been somewhere where orange and lemon trees are in bloom, I highly encourage you to try to experience their scent. Wow.

I was also wowed by the public cycling system, SEVici (a play on words, since "bici" is short for bike here, and "v" in Spanish is pronounced like a "b" in English). The SEVici system is one of the many European bike rental systems that allow people to use public bikes from various rental stations all over the city. I wasn't sure that we'd be able to rent bikes this way, because some of my friends told me they could not use their American credit cards (which, for some inexplicable reason, do not contain the security chips used in Europe). Happily, though, our credit card worked!

The system is really fabulous. You can electronically register for the system at any station where the bikes are parked, then you get a code to use at all other stations. Once you're registered, you can use a bike for free for the first 30 minutes or pay 1 Euro/hour after that. The stations are all over the city, too, so you can rent a bike in one place, return it to a different station, pick up a new bike in another place, return that in any other station, and so on. It's really much easier than this clip suggests:

SEVici Public Bike Rental from Mark Riskedahl on Vimeo.

Judging from the many, many people I saw on a SEVici bike, Sevillianos really love the SEVici system, too.

Bilbao's Public Art: Hola Puppy!

Even though we've left Bilbao at this point, I wanted to mention a bit about the public art in Bilbao. For whatever reason, I LOVE this sculpture, "Puppy" by Jeff Koons. It's a steel sculpture of a terrier planted with flowers (mostly pansies) that the gardeners of the museum change regularly. I am not a big fan of either terriers or pansies, but this sculpture is so big and silly, I can't help but smile whenever I see it. The Guggenheim Foundation caused quite a stir when it first installed it, but Bilbao's residents have grown to love it. I have, too. (Mark Riskedahl took all of the photos in this post.)

As I mentioned earlier, Bilbao was a very industrialized city that lost its major industries in the 1970s. After several years of economic depression, the city decided to invest in infrastructure and innovation. Its waterfront used to house a large shipbuilding industry. When the city redeveloped, it installed an amazing waterfront with pedestrian and cycling paths, a light rail system, and various art works. It also allowed the waterfront to become home to the Guggenheim Museum. Note how the museum's shape reflects the historical purposes of the industrial waterfront.

I have no idea what this spider's all about, but it sure is cool.

Finally, this is the wall of the Maritime Museum of Bilbao, which has put old ships to a new purpose. Gorgeous, no?

Renewable energy in Spain

Spain has been a leader in renewable energy development for a couple of decades. I had the chance to interview a director of one of the regional government agencies to explore how and why Spain has invested in renewable energy.

Pamplona from Mark Riskedahl on Vimeo.

Nuclear energy in Spain and beyond

The Japanese nuclear power plant disaster has, quite obviously, gotten a lot of attention here in Spain.  Spain has 6 nuclear power plants (with a total of 8 reactors) and, like nuclear plants in the United States, most of the nuclear plants store their wastes on-site, in pools of water designed to keep the wastes cool and thus to prevent release of radioactive material.

According to one of the professors at the University of Navarra (where I was teaching), Spain does not have a long-term disposal site for high level nuclear waste.  Neither does the United States.  The Yucca Mountain site was supposed to act as a long-term repository, but various studies about the seismic safety of Yucca Mountain and politics led the Obama Administration to withdraw the permit application for Yucca Mountain.  Spain's basically in the same place:  power plants keep producing nuclear waste but development of a long term disposal site is way off.

There are many potential problems associated with nuclear waste storage, and the Japan disaster highlights one of the biggest risks.  As various news outlets (including the New York Times) report, experts are particularly concerned about the spent fuel rods overheating because the rods, unlike the nuclear reactors themselves, are not encased within containments designed to prevent releases of radioactive materials.  Releases of radiation from the spent fuels would therefore be almost impossible to control.  Even if Japan somehow manages to gain control over the nuclear reactors (something that seems increasingly unlikely to happen), that may not prevent catastrophe with the spent fuel itself.

Nuclear energy advocates in Spain and the United States have argued that such a catastrophe would not occur elsewhere.  They argue that the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami are extreme, outlying events that we should disregard in assessing safety in other areas.

I think I prefer The Onion's perspective:  Nuclear Energy Advocates Insist U.S. Reactors Completely Safe Unless Something Bad Happens

I was actually interviewed by a news channel in Navarra about this.  For anyone interested (it's in Spanish, thanks to my translator, Nicolás Zambrana-Tévar), the interview starts about 15 minutes in.  


A couple of newspapers also ran some articles about this.

http://www.europapress.es/navarra/noticia-experta-dice-debate-energia-nuclear-mas-politico-seguridad-20110316182810.html

    Translated: http://bit.ly/gYOESS

http://www.abc.es/agencias/noticia.asp?noticia=738594

    Translated: http://bit.ly/hzpeqD

Bilbao’s Amazing Public Transportation System

The Sunday New York Times Week in Review (March 12, 2011) featured an article about Nimbyism among liberals who would otherwise support renewable energy and alternative transportation projects.

The article explained how people in Brooklyn, NY, Nantucket, MA, and Berkeley, CA, have opposed local bike lanes, wind farms, and a new public transportation system, respectively, while espousing the benefits of cycling, renewable energy, and public transit.  It then sought to explore how other countries have overcome Nimbyism and ultimately generated substantial support for the projects.  In part, my travels to Europe are about exploring these same ideas. 

I should note, though, that I’m not entirely sure that the media’s portrayal of the opposition is always accurate.  A common meme in any news story about renewable energy or public transportation investment is that each project will face considerable opposition.  Yet, most stories about the opposition only highlight one or two people, or at most, one or two groups.  For example, a headline from a different NYTimes article from a few months ago stated that former wind energy proponents had become opponents due to the noise from a few wind turbines.  But the article mentioned fewer than five people who opposed the project, and several other residents expressed their support, noting that the turbines’ noise equated to normal conversation levels and was typically inaudible whenever the wind blew or waves crashed.  Similarly, notwithstanding the opposition to the Cape Wind project from the Kennedys and the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, many local organizations, politicians, and economic interests support the project.  Nonetheless, these stories often downplay the support and hype the controversy.  I fear those types of stories make a transition to renewable energy and innovative transportation solutions even more difficult than they already are.

That said, I did find myself contemplating the recent opposition to a host of U.S. public transportation projects throughout my stay in Bilbao.  Governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida all turned down significant federal funding for high speed rail projects, citing fiscal concerns.  While I can’t comment on the soundness of the specific projects, the general unwillingness to invest in public transportation infrastructure, even while the United States dumps billions upon billions into highway building and maintenance, seems very shortsighted.  In comparison, Bilbao has invested heavily in public transportation over the past 20 years.  These investments have produced the light rail system I blogged about in my last post and an amazing subway system that serves both the center of the city and continues well beyond the city to several smaller towns along the Rio Nervion (the river running through Bilbao and out to the Bay of Biscay).  What amazed me most about this system is that it was built in the 1990s and 2000s – i.e., within the past 20 years.  Most U.S. subway systems, in contrast, were built in the early part of the last century, before the automobile took hold over the country.  Could a U.S. city plagued with transportation difficulties – like Los Angeles or Denver or Seattle or, increasingly, Portland – ever succeed in building a system like Bilbao’s?

Take a look at the photos below to consider what Bilbao has done.   

Several features of the subway system and Bilbao’s broader transportation system particularly impressed me.

1.  Bilbao has built the most recent subway system in Spain, which features incredibly impressive design elements by Norman Foster.  Bilbao's subway travel is both convenient and aesthetically pleasing.

2.   According to MetroBilbao, the system operates on 100% renewable energy.  Even better, the braking system actually delivers energy back to the system (much like a Prius charges its battery during braking) and reduces electricity consumption by 33%.

3.  The light rail system provides above-ground access to the most popular tourist and commercial destinations and operates with amazing efficiency. 

4.  The light rail and subway systems connect at strategic locations, to make travel above and below ground easy and convenient. They also connect to other transportation networks for long-distance travelers.  Thus, someone staying near the Guggenheim Museum can take the light rail directly to the bus station and, from there, travel to Pamplona, Madrid, and many other Spanish cities.  By 2012, the subway will also connect to the airport (right now, a bus travels conveniently from the airport to the city center).

5.  Both the subway and light rail get tons of use at all times of day and night, in all of their locations, from all sorts of people.

Bilbao!

Welcome to my new blog.

This blog will explore a variety of topics, but it aims to focus primarily on sustainability and renewable energy as I travel through Spain, Italy, and France during the next 10 weeks.  I'll also be sure to comment on the food and wine I sample along the way.  I'm also going to be running a half marathon at the end of April, so expect some posts on running in Europe.  Finally, from time to time, I'll be biking, so cycling friends shouldn't feel left out.

My main purposes for being in Europe are 1) to teach at universities in Pamplona, Spain, and Trento, Italy, 2) to learn more about Europe's sustainable cities initiatives and its renewable energy systems, and 3) use these experiences to develop some expertise in these areas.  I'm incredibly excited about all of these opportunities.  I'm also very grateful to have the opportunity to experience them.  I'll welcome your thoughts and comments as I travel along.

I'm writing this from my first stop in Bilbao, Spain.  Bilbao was a heavily industrialized city for many, many years that fell on hard times when steel production slowed down in Western Europe.  After a long period of depression, Bilbao decided to invest in the arts and culture as a way to revive its economy.  It welcomed the amazing Guggenheim Museum (more on that later), and invested in infrastructure improvements, like a subway and pedestrian bridges and light rail, all designed to make the city more livable and welcome to tourism.  From my perspective, these efforts have paid off.

I was particularly captivated by the tracks for the EuskoTran, the city's light rail.  As the attached photos show, the light rail tracks actually sit in grass fields, not in cement.  They create green spaces in places that would otherwise be paved and, in my view, make for a very appealing aesthetic.  Beyond that, the grass absorbs water that could otherwise run off into the nearby river, and thus reduces the potential stormwater pollution.  Finally, the grass probably helps ever-so-slightly with carbon sequestration and localized temperature control, since vegetation in urban areas can mitigate the urban heat effect.  Very cool!  (Ha, no pun intended.)

One last thought about the grass patches:  they fit in quite well with other smart transportation options.  The circular patch is also a roundabout.  Various studies show that roundabouts work better than stop signs or lights in managing traffic and improving fuel economy.  Also note in the picture with the roundabout the designated bike lanes and the huge amounts of pedestrian-only space.  From my short time here, I can say that all of these alternative transportation options receive a lot of use.  It's nice to feel so inspired after only one day.