Tokyo Great Cycling Tour

One of the nicest ways of discovering Toyo is to participate in the Tokyo Great Cycling Tour. Is this your first trip to Tokyo? Or are you a Tokyo repeater? In either case, if you are looking for something different, this is the one! Tokyo Great Cycling Tour is a guided tour, open to all foreign visitors to ride through - on a BICYCLE - the major tourist spots in Tokyo. Even if you have visited those places before, riding a bicycle will make the trip very special. Tokyo Great Cycling Tour promises you a wonderful day in Tokyo. Velo Mondial participated - sponsored by Oriental Consultants Co., Ltd. - in this wonderful tour and is happy to share the photo album.

Amsterdam’s first cycled fashion show!

YDU - Young Designers United will participate at the Downtown programme of the Amsterdam International Fashion Week with a special project: Amsterdam’s first cycled fashion show!
“We notice very often that our Dutch customers are looking for pieces which are not only beautiful, wearable from day to night, occasionally sexy and unique, but they should also be handy for cycling”, says Angelika Groenendijk, founder of YDU. “With Amsterdam’s first cycled fashion show we want to make a statement: Biking doesn’t necessarily mean plastic rain ponchos and rubber boots – it can be stylish and practical at the same time. YDU will present an ‘amsterdamized’ collection for women who are biking to different destinations: For the ‘ lady on her way to a first date’ or the ‘party night’, the ‘opera visit’, the ‘shopping with the girls’ experience and many more.”Amsterdam’s first cycled fashion show will bike through the city along various spots.

Cities Adapting to Sustainable Mobility.

Speeches in Portland, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Daejeon and Cork; June/July 2008.
Cities are changing fast and a few arguments show that: Car sales have dropped in Europe with 8 % in the last month; Car industry disassociates with SUV; Car companies focus on electric cars; Petrol price has passed $4 per gallon in USA; $11 in Europe; Congestion on the rise, infrastructure overheated; Public Bike systems in over 140 cities now ; Waiting list for bikes in New York; Overbooked trains in the USA; Price of donkeys in Turkey on the rise. Local arguments become more compelling: obesity, diabetis, noise, asthma, sleep disorders; Global arguments are felt: climate change, air polution, CO2 emission,
Economic arguments for change emerge like Emission Rights trade; New ways of energy generation: solar/wind/tidal/sweet & salt waterBuilding permits; Floods / nature disasters; Cradle to Cradle; ‘Dump the pump’ behaviour all over the world ; New modes of transport are out there.
Better understand Sustainable Mobility as a political choice for a level of long term balance between: emission rich modes, emission poor modes and emission free modes; at the same time aiming at a mix of mobility modes in economic terms, environmental terms and terms of social justice. See the IAMSTERDAM / AC2S power point presentation.

Happy Birthday Velib!

On July 15, 2007 Paris debuted the world's largest self-service "bicycle transit system" called Vélib outdoing previously designed bike share programs. The program celebrates its first anniversary. And, throughout the year cities across the globe have kept a close eye on the progress of this environmentally-friendly public transportation mode. Overall, bike-share programs have proven to increase public transportation options at a relatively low cost to the city. In Paris, Vélib has saved the city 10 million km in car trips, roughly equal to $10 million in savings. With 200,000 Parisians paying the city $50 each for an annual Velib pass, this has yielded an additional $10 million in revenues. Beyond economics, Paris has seen tremendous traffic calming and air quality benefits from this public bicycle system. Transportation Alternatives' Caroline Samponaro visited Vélib. Check out this video to get a picture of it yourself.

Electric Hire Cars Become Competition for Velib

The French capital will get 4,000 electric hire cars to expand on the successful bike pick up scheme. Not everybody is happy with this new transport system. Environmentalists have offered the plans a lukewarm greeting, claiming the scheme could undermine the popularity of Vélib bicycles in Paris and add to congestion. Read more in Bike Europe. The key issues of sustainable mobility are: energy, environment and safety. Therefore developing clean, efficient and intelligent vehicles, including battery electric vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles and fuel cell electric vehicles is necessary. The two major environmental risks affecting sustainability in the production of electricity using fossil fuels are green house effect and acid rain. The basic requirement of power electronic for electric, hybrid and fuel cell vehicles are: high energy density, high power density, high efficiency over wide speed and torque range, frequent start stop, continuous dynamic, capable working under severe ambient temperature and vibration environment, compatible EMI-EMC, high reliability, high endurance, and reasonable cost.