Dear :

Things are happening so fast it is hard to keep up - here is what we

have for this week.

Best Russell Sydney

310-450-7419

In this Sustainable Transportation Club Newsletter:

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Community based action

Reminder - Hearing on the Future of Alternative Fuels

– July 21^st, at SMC with State Assembly and Senate reps

Getting Your City Moving on a Sustainable Transport Future

Santa Monica City Council Meeting –Activist alert

Land use and Circulation Issues

– originally next Tuesday July 25th- POSTPONED

Outreach and Education

Building the buzz on WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR?

Results on Santa Barbara July 14^th - opening day splash

Alternative vehicle manufacturer and distributor alert.

ALT CAR EXPO – is a marketing opportunity

Action needed NOW.

ALT CAR EXPO – a good move but is it bold enough?

– How about making it more non-car friendly.

Getting your Sustainable Ride

Finding your Electric Vehicle – EVFINDER.COM

One member has the web resource – all the info you need

Electric motor scooters

– Two for one mechanics special

Seeking politically preferred gasoline

– Citgo stations wanted = link found - http://www.citgo.com/CITGOLocator/StoreLocator.jsp

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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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Reminder - Hearing on the Future of Alternative Fuels

– July 21^st

Want to learn more about what is being planned for the future of

alternative fuels in California?

Let's pack this Alt Fuels Hearing and let California know we

support more choices being made available to run our vehicles!

Join Assemblymember Fran Pavley and Senator Sheila Kuehl:

For more info call 310-395-3414

For details:

http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a41/OutReach/PavleyAirQuality.htm

WHEN: Friday, July 21^st

TIME: 10:00 to Noon

WHERE: Santa Monica College, Concert Hall, 1900 Pico Blvd. Santa Monica.

Free Parking in Campus lot #1

From the 10 - Take the Clover field or the 20^th street exist and go

south to Pico. Turn right – the Concert Hall is at the intersection

of 19^th and Pico.

WHAT: The hearing will be discussing the future of Hydrogen,

ethanol, biodiesel, natural gas and plug-in hybrids.

This is a chance to connect with political interests at the state level

as well as to connect with more people for building the movement.

There will be a formal display of vehicles at the front of the

theatre and space is limited there.

We are working on getting preferred parking for alternative

vehicles in one area so we can have a show of strength.

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Santa Monica City Council Meeting –Activist alert

Land use and Circulation Issues

– originally next Tuesday July 25th- POSTPONED

This meeting will go over the working goals to guide Shape the

Future and the Motion by the Ocean projects.

This is what will determine the future of bicycle and related uses in

the City.

WHEN: originally next Tuesday July 25th- now POSTPONED it will come up again soon so we now have more time to prepare.

WHERE: Santa Monica City Council Chambers, City Hall,

1685 Main Street. Santa Monica.

WHAT: Goals for the Land Use and Circulation Element of the

City’s general plan revision. This will set the direction for the next

twenty years.

WE have gained at least two weeks to prepare for this, which

means we can refine the concepts in the next section for that

purpose.

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Getting Your City Moving on a Sustainable Transport Future

What can YOU and the Sustainable Transport Club do to bring that about?

The following is what has been garnered from all of your various

interests and expertise. It is a distillation of the things we need in

any city to create a sustainable transportation system.

MASS TRANSIT – trains and buses that accommodate bicycles,

other human powered rides and lightweight electric vehicles with

express delivery to all parts of the metropolitan area

PARALLEL SAFE ROUTES and Main Thoroughfares specifically for ultra high sustainability vehicles.

These vehicles include bicycles, lightweight electrics,

neighborhood electric vehicles, clean burning renewable fuel light

weight vehicles, and any human powered rides. These routes

would allow these vehicles to get from any part of town to any

other part of town quickly and safely. The thoroughfares would

have priority right of way and would look like bicycle boulevards

upgraded to include the other vehicles.

SAFE PARKING AND STORAGE for all ultra high sustainability

vehicles at all commercial and public locations and in conjunction

with mass transit hubs. This is particularly important for bicycles.

CHARGING FACILITIES for electric vehicles for every

apartment, condominium, house and place of employment.

SOLAR PANELS development for electric vehicle charging at all

residential and commercial sites.

FUELING PUMPS for alternative fuels including bio-diesel

(B100), Ethanol (E85) and Compressed Natural Gas.

Infrastructure to create RENEWABLE SOURCES for these fuels.

This means waste oil conversion for bio diesel, food and green

waste conversion to ethanol and to methane as a CNG

replacement.

It is my intension to present this overview to the Santa Monica

City Council at their meeting next week. There is a chance I am

over looking some important item – I claim rights to a certain level

of absent-mindedness. Please let me know if that is the case.

You are encouraged to come to that meeting and show your

support if you live, work or play in Santa Monica.

You are encouraged to find out about similar meetings in your area

and to participate in this process where you live, work or play.

The Sustainable Transport Club may be able to help you get this

sort of effort going in your area.

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Building the buzz on WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR ?

Have you seen the buzz going down in the paper and in the news?

The movie is staying in our LA area theaters and we have helped

to create that. The main credit goes to our people at Plug in

America and to Chris Payne and his people.

Results from Santa Barbara – July 14^th opening day splash

The opening day had a modest crowd but the theater people said it

was better than expected for a documentary. I am sure that the

efforts of our club helped improve that by at least thirty percent –

and that can make all the difference. We got a total of 35 people

signed up - a good percentage of them were couples, which means

over a thirty percent of the people are now connected to us. That is

a great response rate. That may be enough to start their own

chapter of the Sustainable Transport Club, particularly if the local

group the Community Environmental Council gets on board.

It was good to have at least one RAV4 EV there and the electric

scooters and bicycles really helped make a festive event. Taylor

Arneson carpooled up and helped work the door and the sign ups

(thanks Taylor you really made a difference to the day). There was

a good display at the door with signs and lots of literature etc.

My appreciation goes out to both Arjun Sarkar from UCSB and

Scott Shaw from Santa Barbara Electric Bicycle Company for

having done so well to get people involved before even seeing the

movie. In addition, special thanks to Jenny Phillips of the

Community Environmental Council and Bob Banner’s HD Films

group.

It was very impressive to see how well Santa Barbara is organized

with these and other groups. They may well show us how to get

sustainable transport to become a reality.

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ALT CAR EXPO – is a marketing opportunity

Alternative vehicle manufacturer and distributor alert.

Action needed NOW.

This Expo is planned to be a big splash for sustainable transport.

They are making some of the big decisions about it in the next

month. Manufacturers and Distributors would benefit from getting

in touch now.

WHEN: Dec. 9 and 10^th 2006

Scheduled to coincide with the LA Car show

WHERE: Santa Monica Pier

WHAT: an Expo featuring alternative vehicles of all kinds

This should attract a large crowd and get a lot of media exposure.

WHO: The sponsors include the people behind the ALT BUILD

EXP and the various people in the City who work on sustainability.

WHO FOR: This is for manufacturers and distributors of any

vehicle running on alternative energy sources. That means

everything from transportation bicycles to EV’s to electric scooters etc.

Contact Christine Dzilvelis 310-390-2930 platia@earthlink.net

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ALT CAR EXPO – a good move but is it bold enough?

– How about making it more non-car friendly.

ALT CAR EXPO, Alternative Cars and Transportation Exposition

The name and tag line for this expo is really catchy. It clearly

states that the expo will help people to understand the alternatives

to using gasoline to run our cars and trucks. This should be a

really good step forward and is there for something really

important that we can help to create and to get behind.

But is this the right concept to free us from our dependence on

foreign oil and our addiction in general? Most of us who have

been looking at the details of the energy use in our country see that

we need to do a lot more than switch to other fuels and improve

our fuel efficiency. That switch and improvement is all that is

implied by the name for this event.

John Breza brought up this point at the meeting when he asked

what part of this implies the use of bicycles and other two wheel

alternatives. Others of us might wonder how mass transit fits with

this expo and re-localization is not even on the horizon with such a

name.

A good counter point was that LA is all about the automobile and

that we need to engage people where they are now in order to get

them to make a shift. That is a very real point and one that we

would benefit from always keeping in mind. We may see ahead

ten steps from our current car insanity but most people are only

ready to make one small change – that is one reason why bio diesel

is so hot right now. This means it falls to us to help people move

one step at a time.

While that is certainly valid we have to ask where we want to lead

people as an end point. Sustainable transportation looks very

different than a 6000-pound SUV running on bio diesel doing a

hundred mile commute with one person in it.

Five years from now the ALT CAR EXPO will be all about cars

unless we set it up to be something different and the time for that is

now. A simple change to the tag line would do this. One

suggestion is

- Alternatives to gas powered cars and transportation.

That is a small change that has huge implications. There may be

some other changes that would work as well but we need it to

change to really become a path toward sustainability and not just a

way to help big car companies adjust from gasoline to compressed

natural gas – one fossil fuel to another fossil fuel.

The main people with a say in this are the contact person noted

above and the management at the City of Santa Monica. This

includes Craig Perkins, Dean Kubani and Rick Sikes. All three of

these people have worked really hard to move us toward

sustainability and deserve our support and encouragement. Lets

encourage them to open this up to a longer-term view by making

some sort of tangible opening for the larger concern of breaking

the death grip that cars have on our culture and our planet.

Just in case you think we might be able to let this one go and relax

about things lets review our situation – forgive me for preaching to

the choir a little.

The US uses twice as much energy per person than our second

closest rivals the Europeans. The US hit peak fossil fuel energy

production in the late 1970’s. The peak production for oil on the

entire planet will happen in the foreseeable future and may be

happening now. The US has 250 million people out of 6500

million people on the planet and we use 40 percent of the world’s

resources. The other 6,250 million people need more and more

energy for basic survival. The US is in a war in a country with one

of the top three known oil reserves in the world. Our energy use

produces close to one third of the green house gasses for the entire

planet and those green house gasses are clearly tied to global

warming. This is all tied directly to our use of the CAR for

individual transportation.

The worst part of this is that it is making me sound like an

alarmist, which I am not usually inclined toward. Then again

maybe we have a reason to direct people away from using cars not

just using them differently. Lets take slightly bolder action!

The best idea that comes to mind now to get a list of who wants

this to be more non-car friendly. We can then take a delegation to

the people involved and let them know that we are willing to go to

work to turn this into a national showcase for sustainable

transportation if it is clear that these issues will be handled. I need

to hear from you soon as things are taking shape now and will soon

be solidified in the branding for this event.

Call or email if you are concerned about this - 310-450-7419 sustain@rsydney.com

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Getting your Sustainable Ride

Finding your Electric Vehicle – EVFINDER.COM

Below is a quick run down of evfinder.com. This site is a resource

created by one of our people to help you get the EV you want.
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About EV Finder

Back in the 1990s, when the California Zero Emission Vehicle

Mandate was in full swing, and the big five automobile

manufacturers were supposed to be selling EVs, it should have

been easy to find electric vehicles, but it wasn't.

True, electric bikes could be bought at local bike shops and cheap

Chinese scooters were starting to appear in stores, but serious on

road electric transportation was difficult to find.

I spent a lot of time researching EVs and decided that what was

needed was a single site that would describe all the EVs available. 

It wasn't enough to give specs or reviews of these vehicles, I also

wanted to give links to where they could be bought.

evfinder.com was born as a geocities web site but soon outgrew

that and was moved to its present location.

The site is organized by vehicle class, Full sized EVs are those

four wheel EVs that can be driven on the freeway.  City class EVs

are four wheel vehicles that can be used around town but aren't

really fast enough for the freeway.  Three wheel EVs are just that,

EVs with three wheels irrespective of their capability to be driven

on the freeway.  NEVs are neighborhood electric vehicles

governed by federal low speed vehicle legislation.  Two wheel

electric vehicles include “Vespa” style electric scooters and

electric motorcycles.

Each class of vehicles is given its own web page which can be

accessed using buttons at the top of the home page.  Two other

pages can also be accessed using these buttons, the classifieds page

and the EV Watch page.  The classifieds page contains ads for

used EVs an EV parts.  Advertising on this page is free.  At the

bottom of this page are links to other sites that sell EVs, including

links to current ebay listings.  The EV Watch page contains

information and links to EV prototypes that haven't made it into

production yet.

At the bottom of the home page are links to a page that provides

links to other EV sites such as parts suppliers, a page to help

people choose an EV, and an EV events calendar.

The site doesn’t just include EVs available in the US but features

vehicles from all over the world.  To assist in identifying where

vehicles are available, the various countries are indicated by their

flag.

Finally, to help people in their decision making process, I have

included product reviews when I, or someone else, has been able to

test drive the vehicle.

Next time you are on the web stop by evfinder.com and check it

out.  Feedback and product information is always welcome.

Noel

You can contact Noel through his website by going to the FAQ page. (you didn’t think you would get away without going to the site did you J?)

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Getting your Sustainable Ride

Electric motor scooters

Two for one mechanics special

There are two used retro style electric motor scooters that have

interchangeable parts available for a great price. These are street

legal and can be licensed.

One is in full operating condition with a brand new 1500-watt

brush less motor. One of them has some body damage that could

be repaired. IT has a beta version 2000-watt brush less motor on it.

An insurance settlement allows these to go for really cheap. They

both are real transportation that goes 30 mph with range up to 25

miles. I am asking $900 for the two of them and will take $100 off

this for any one who gets this email directly from the Club.

Call 310-450-7419

Email to Sustain@rsydney.com

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Events for Sustainable Transport - coming sooner and later, and other news