1st, Los Angeles

In this Sustainable Transportation Club newsletter:

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Note to our members who do not live in Santa Monica.

Meeting reminders

Sustainable Transport Club Meeting February 11th

City Council meeting on February 14^th,

Your support for a Green Depot in Santa Monica needed.

Earth Day coming up April 15th

A letter for people who support bicycle safe cities

Electric Vehicles for sale in Nor Cal – possible bargains

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You can find the subject you want by looking for the separator bars

with the row of XXXXX’s in this document.

Please send any relevant information for inclusion in this

newsletter.

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Note to our members who do not live in Santa Monica.

The Club has moved toward focusing on Santa Monica and that

may not be very engaging for you. There are a few things that

might help make it more interesting.

One is that we would love for you to start a similar process in your

area so we can support that as well.

The other thing is that Santa Monica is a chance to create a role

model of how to promote Sustainable Transport in a local area.

We are already building connections with San Francisco around

the Green Depot concept as an example of how our work can

spread.

Once we figure out how to do this here we can take that on the

road and spread it far and wide.

So by all means jump in and help make this happen on any level

you can contribute.

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Meeting Reminder

Sustainable transport Club Meeting Saturday February 11th

10:00AM

Unurban Café, 33RD & PICO (across from Trader Joes)

Santa Monica, CA 90405

The proposed agenda has been changed based on talking to the

Assistant Director of Planning and Community Development for

the City. They are open and ready for our input.

· Review of Status of Santa Monica City Circulation Element

and guidelines for working with the City’s program

· The Green Depot idea – Building support and how best to

formulate one

· Building awareness of the potential for various sustainable

alternatives including:

Bicycles,

Electric vehicles

Neighborhood transport vehicles

Bio diesel

Mass transit and the expo line

Ethanol and mixed fuel vehicles

Methane and Compressed Natural Gas

Green waste conversions

Getting the Council, the Planning Commission and the City staff

up to date on what alternatives can lead to sustainability is an

important next step. This is an education process that can be done

on City TV to impact other people as well. Plus we can shoot for

press coverage in this effort.

· Creating safe routes for slower moving, high volume traffic

throughout the City and to neighboring communities. This is

taking bike paths to the next level that includes all neighborhood

vehicles and getting the routes completed as viable commute

options.

· How can we build a huge base of support for sustainable

transportation?

We are moving toward building a vision for implementing

Sustainable Transportation on the Westside. It is a vision that can

incorporate all of our ideas on how to take practical steps toward

that future. It is a vision that will need lots of support. It is a

vision that can become a model for other areas to work with and

implement.

It is a vision that takes form through our working together at the

next meeting. Please join us and bring as many friends as you

know are interested.

Be sure to keep up with the club and its activities by signing our

mailing list at www.sustainabletransportclub.com

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Meeting reminder

City Council meeting on February 14^th,

Tuesday at 6:45 Pm

Santa Monica City Hall 1685 Main Street

This meeting will be a chance to give support for a Bicycle safe

city and for the Green Depot. Details of both are to be discussed in

the budget item and a mentioned below. The city council members

definitely respond to people supporting such ideas, particularly

when such people present themselves and their ideas in well

thought out presentations.

Your attendance will help get things going and provide support for

a sustainable future.

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Your support for a Green Depot in Santa Monica needed.

The Green Depot is approaching the City of Santa Monica to work

with the City and various schools to bring a Depot to Santa

Monica. This would be a great step forward for sustainable

transportation in the area and it needs your help.

Having a Green Depot in our area would be a great focal point for

sustainable transport. It would be a place for us to congregate and

hold meetings for things like the Sustainable Transport Club, for

the bicycle groups, for mass transit groups and similar Green

transport efforts. It would be a place where we could get students

involved, get information out to the community and do a whole

range of things to bring sustainable transport into peoples lives.

This idea is being put forward by people tied to bio-diesel but that

is only one of the parts of this. We have the chance to get behind

this idea and help make it happen. This in turn will help open up

the project to including whatever part of sustainable transport we

are concerned about. Bio-diesel is one of many options that we

need to move forward on as we move toward a cleaner, sustainable

system of transportation.

We will discuss this and other options at the next Sustainable

Transport Club meeting scheduled for February 11^th – details

below.

The Green Depot idea is also on the agenda for the City council

meeting on February 14^th under the budget line item. It would be

very helpful to have people there to support it.

There is also a letter of support that needs signatures of support for

this project. The letter along with a sign up sheet is posted on line

in an Adobe Acrobat – PDF format so you can print out a copy to

collect signatures.

www.sustainabletransportclub.com

This letter is being circulated and supported by various groups and

businesses in the area. You may be able to find a copy at any of

these places. Please make sure you sign this and show your

support.

HBO, Patagonia, Co-Opportunity Market, Urth Café,

CALSTART/WestStart, Natural High Lifestyle, Zen Zoo Tea Café,

Mobile Education Department of Natural History Museum of LA

County, Whole Foods Markets, Big Imagination Group, Youth

Mentoring Connection, Folio Gallery, Crossroads School, New

Roads School, Samohi Solar Alliance, Environmental Charter

High School

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Earth Day coming up April 15th

Earth Day is coming up and it is a great chance to take steps

forward for Sustainable Transport. The event last year is what got

the Sustainable Transport Club off the ground and can be a good

way to move forward. Last year it was the Westside Greens booth

that we were connected with. This year we could do one of our

own by pooling our resources. We could combine with Green

Depot, Bio Diesel Co-op, and one or more of the bicycle groups.

What do you think?

Here is an outtake from an email from the organizers in Santa

Monica.

"Earth Day on the Promenade" in Santa Monica. This year it will

be on the Saturday before Easter, one of the great shopping days of

the year, April 15, 10 am to 7 pm, with a projected total of 15,000

people. This event has a very limited number of booth spaces and

we are giving you first opportunity for a space.

We can discuss this on Saturday.

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A letter for people who support bicycle safe cities

Please get this to as many bicycle enthusiasts as you can.

Dear bicyclists:

Have you ever thought how great it would be if large numbers of

people used their bicycles to get around town? There are reasons

why this does not happen and we have a unique opportunity to

change some of those reasons.

One of the reasons that we can impact here on the Westside is to

do with having safe places for people to ride and get around our

town. You have all noticed that the bike lanes are a safer place to

ride and that they are not complete. They start and stop in lots of

strange places that cause us to have to go back to competing with

fast traffic for a place to ride. Not only that but there are very few

ways to get into and out of Santa Monica safely.

The other set of reasons we can deal with is the issue of parking

and storage for the bikes. People are forced to keep their bikes in

places that take up living space and can be very difficult to get to

while their cars are given prime real estate for safe storage. And

then you have to wonder how to park them safely when you get to

your destination.

These problems are the sort of things that you have figured out

how to deal with. You are probably one of the hardier and more

courageous of the people who want to ride your bikes. You can

use your experience and your love of the ride to help make it easier

for others to join in.

There may well be other similar things that we can impact due to

the unique set of conditions that has come into our times.

The unique set of conditions includes several key components.

· You are connected to other bike riders through things like the

email groups and the critical mass types of rides.

· The Santa Monica City Council is reviewing its priorities for

land use and Circulation for the next twenty years.

· There are a good number of Council members who are

favorable to using bikes including at least three or four like Kevin

McKeown in Santa Monica and Bill Rosendahl in the LA city area

that surrounds us.

· We have the Sustainable Transport Club that is building

alliances between bike people and people that support other forms

of sustainable transport, which will give us a larger base of support

than just the bike people alone.

· The Expo line is coming into being and can include both

building parallel bike lanes next to the route as well as having a

way to carry bikes from Fourth Street in Santa Monica to all parts

of LA served by the rail system.

The potential to create a safe and viable bicycle city is in place

right now, but that potential will only come into existence if you

and lots of others step up and do the things it takes to get it to

happen. That means working with other bike enthusiasts and

connecting to other groups through things like the Sustainable

Transport Club.

You are invited to come to the next meeting of the Sustainable

Transport Club and or to sign up to get the mailing list.

The meeting will be on Saturday February 11th at 10:00 am at the

Unurban Café on the corner of 33rd and Pico in Santa Monica -

across from Trader Joes.

You can sign on to the Sustainable Transport Club Mailing list by

going to www.sustainabletransportclub.com

Please feel free to forward this to as many fellow two-wheelers as

you can.

Thanks

Russell Sydney

310-450-7419

or you can put you name here and change what ever you like

before sending. You can ignore the copyright on this one.

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Electric Vehicles for sale

A recent review of site that sell electric vehicles turned up

information on some EV’s that are for sale. These look like

evaluation vehicles for this distributor and some of them look like

mainstream items like GEMS. They may be available for a good

price. So check it out.

http://www.zapworld.com/cars/salecars.asp

These are probably located in Northern Cal. I may have someone

who can bring them down here if you are interested. Email me at

Sustain@rsydney.com.

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Those of you who want to participate fully in interacting with the

city can get your information directly by signing up for their email

distributions by going to;

http://santa-monica.org/win/emailnew_hash.htm

You can select what information you wish to get. I suggest you

sign on to the Circulation Element as well as the Land use element

lists.

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Please sign up to receive this newsletter by going to

www.sustainabletransportclub.com

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