scholarly journals Distance, Time, Speed & Energy: A socio-political analysis of technologies of longer distance cycling

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Cox
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Modal Shift ◽  
Performance Expectations ◽  
Human Power ◽  
Practice Analysis ◽  
Available Energy ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Distance Travel ◽  
Made In

The basic laws of motion governing cycling are wellunderstood. Consideration of the variables of energy use in cycle travel areless frequent. The potentials of both aerodynamically efficient cycle designand the augmentation of human power with e-motors dramatically reconfigure whatwe understand as a cycle and as cycling. The prospect of increasing travel distance in regularjourneying, coupled with the logical application of augmentation (aerodynamicand/ or power), suggest a need to re-evaluate some of the ground expectationsapplied in design and planning for cycle travel if the cycles being designedfor do not fit the existing expectations of what a cycle is and how itperforms. Current e-bike performance is limited principally bynormative legislative intervention, not by the intrinsic potential of thetechnologies. Existing decisions as to what an e-bike can (and should) be, areshaped by the performance expectations of late 19th and early 20thcentury bicycle designs. Shaping modal shift for longer trips returns us tothink about the place of cycling travel time as a function of the relationshipbetween distance and speed. Increased speed allows for greater distance withouttime penalty. However, speed is itself governed by available energy, coupledwith the efficiency of use of that energy. Without entirely substituting humanpower, E-motors allow us to augment the human power available in differentways; Changes in cycle design (as us, for example, in velomobiles) allow us toincrease the efficiency of use of available power in overcoming resistance tomovementIdentifying the assemblage of cycle/cyclist as avariable, rather than a determinate object to be accommodated, raises difficultquestions for cycling provision, especially in relation to longer distancetravel.This paper takes an approach rooted in Actor NetworkTheory and developed through social practice analysis to explore theinteractions of people machines and spaces for longer distance travel. It paysparticular attention to the capacities and affordances of each of theseelements, especially in their interaction. Drawing on the capacities of already existingtechnologies of cycling and e-cycling, the paper focuses on the socialimplications of potentially problematic interactions. It argues that newdecisions will need to be made in regard to speed and distance in cycle traveland that the forging of regulations consequent on those fundamentals  will substantially shape the potentials andpossibilities of modal shift for longer distance cycle travel. What emerges isa politics of longer distance cycle, not simply a set of technical barriers andproblems.

Global Environment Facility Support for Sustainable Transport: Early Lessons from World Bank–Assisted Projects in Mexico City, Mexico; Santiago, Chile; and Lima, Peru

2003 ◽  
Vol 1846 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Graftieaux ◽  
Walter Vergara ◽  
Todd Johnson
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Land Use Planning ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Demand Management ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Global Environment ◽  
Sustainable Transport ◽  
Modal Shift ◽  
Global Environment Facility

Global Environment Facility (GEF) support for World Bank sustainable transport activities is described. An overview is presented of current GEF strategy for sustainable transport, which reflects a shift beyond individual technology interventions toward broader objectives, including modal shift, demand management, and land use planning. Ongoing GEF projects that exemplify this shift are reviewed by examining projects in Latin America and Asia whose aim is improving public transport, nonmotorized programs, and institutional capacity related to sustainable transport. The major lessons that can be drawn from these projects, most of which are still at an early stage, is that local authorities are often enthusiastic about getting involved in programs that simultaneously address key transportation concerns in their cities (such as access, safety, congestion, local air quality) and result in less overall energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Much can be achieved as long as project communications and promotion are addressed and carefully targeted at decision makers and potential beneficiaries.

“Wild notes” … Improvisioning

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Fischlin
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Musical Meaning ◽  
Social Reformer ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Active Elements ◽  
The Social ◽  
Made In

This essay unpacks a new term in improvisation studies and discourse, improvisioning. Improvisioning––for want of a better word or, perhaps, as the best word to describe this practice beyond words—unifies notions of diverse improvisatory practices with what those practices express, the vision—aesthetic, social, intimate, unspeakable––that only an embodied, live, improvised performance can bring into being. Improvisioning implies not only the active elements in creative practices based on improvisation, but also the seeing into things (the envisioning) that improvisation makes possible, the calling forth of the unexpected, the making present of a response that could not have been predicted except in that moment, there in that specific context. The epigraph to Fischlin's essay––from orator, social reformer, abolitionist, and author Frederick Douglass’s (1818-1895) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845); as part of an extended passage on 19th century musicking made by American slave populations––reminds us of two things. One, that music made in the key of slavery and oppression literally sees into the nature of things (in this case the “horrible nature of slavery”) in ways that other discourses do not—cannot. Two, that musical meaning is made out of specific contexts that challenge listeners’ capacity to take what is apparently “unmeaning jargon” and grasp its intent. “Jargon” here designates the very sign of difference upon which the social practice of slavery was predicated––those who can’t understand the “unmeaning jargon” are diminished by their incapacity. But this jargon also marks the utterly unique response, the singularity of the musical vision that captures and “impress[es]” minds with the unspeakable nature of oppression. Song, in this sense, improvisions: it sees, literally and figuratively, into things in an utterly distinctive fashion and reveals embedded truths about realities in powerfully affective ways.

Note on the Possibility of Flight by Human Power

1937 ◽  
Vol 41 (319) ◽  
pp. 609-611
Author(s):  
H. C. H. Townend
Keyword(s):  
Wind Tunnel ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Wind Tunnel Experiments ◽  
Dynamic Soaring ◽  
Human Power ◽  
Made In

The object of this note is to draw attention to a few facts which, taken together, suggest that, from a purely aerodynamic point of view, the difficulties involved in flight by human power may not be as great as is generally supposed.Some years ago, in a lecture delivered to the Royal Aeronautical Society, the German soaring pilot, Lippisch, referred to an account of dynamic soaring given by Lanchester in his “ Aerodonetics ” and to some wind tunnel experiments made in Vienna.

scholarly journals Exploring xenophobic and homophobic attitudes in Malta: Linking the perception of social practice with textual analysis

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stavros Assimakopoulos ◽  
Rebecca Vella Muskat
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Local News ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Made In

AbstractReporting on research undertaken under the auspices of the C.O.N.T.A.C.T. project, the present paper investigates the roots of xenophobic and homophobic attitudes in Malta and the extent to which these can be pinpointed in the lexical choices made in discriminatory comments posted online in reaction to local news stories pertaining to migrants and members of the LGBTIQ community. Adopting

Research on translation review in China from the perspective of Bourdieu’s Sociology

FORUM ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-238
Author(s):  
Jun Wen ◽  
Shaojing Wang ◽  
Wenhe Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Theory Of Practice ◽  
The Future ◽  
Made In

Abstract Translation review, as book review on translated works, aims to introduce, recommend and review translated works. In China, while great achievements were made in translation criticism since the 1990s, translation review was quantitatively understudied in translation studies, though it is, as a social practice, more practical and enjoys wider readership. Based on Bourdieu’s sociological theory of practice, namely, field, capital and habitus, this paper examines translation reviews in China Reading Weekly from 2010 to 2014 and argues that China fails to establish a translation field of its own, and translation review in China is subject to the multiple influences of the economic and cultural capital of the country, the symbolic capital of translators and reviewers, and the cultural capital and habitus of reviewers. The paper also puts forward some suggestions for the development of translation review in the future.

Determination of the effect of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to unit labour cost: G7 countries examples

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-129
Author(s):  
Serdar Ozturk ◽  
Lutfi Bicimveren
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Labour Cost ◽  
G7 Countries ◽  
Vector Autoregressive ◽  
Human Power ◽  
Causality Tests ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Made In

Following the realisation of the revolutions in various fields on Earth, the field of information and communication has also been incorporated into these developed fields. Where information and communication technologies (ICTs) are not enough for human power, they are confronted as a field that seizes work, or even accelerates them in practice. The main purpose of this study is to determine whether there is a relationship between investment of ICTs and unit labour costs (ULCs) in the G7 countries between 1990 and 2010. In the study panel, vector autoregressive and Granger Causality tests were applied. As a result of the analysis made, a negative and significant relationship has been determined between the investments made in the ICTs and the ULC.Keywords: ICT, labour cost, causality, relationship.Jel Classification Codes: O3, J2.∗

Preliminary economic appraisal of personal rapid transit (PRT) and urban gondola feeder systems serving a university campus and its surrounding major attractions

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-79
Author(s):  
Shahram Tahmasseby ◽  
Lina Kattan
Keyword(s):  
Energy Use ◽  
High Reliability ◽  
Operating Cost ◽  
Noise Pollution ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Rapid Transit ◽  
Modal Shift ◽  
Capital Costs ◽  
Personal Rapid Transit

Personal rapid transit (PRT) and urban gondolas are two types of driverless transit vehicles that are increasingly attracting attention as viable mass transit alternatives in urban environments. Both systems are identified with high reliability of travel time, as they have their own right of way and, thus, do not interact with vehicular traffic. They are also associated with environmental benefits, resulting from their low emissions, energy use, and noise pollution. The objective of this study is the investigation of the potential economic viability of the implementation a PRT feeder line linking the University of Calgary to its surrounding major attraction centres, compared to that of two types of urban gondola systems. The main focus of the research is the examination of the thresholds and feasibility of these emerging urban transit systems relative to certain important inputs, such as capital costs, ridership levels, and modal shift from other modes. The VISSIM microsimulation tool was used to simulate the operation of these systems to replicate more closely the on-demand nature of PRT and to get better estimates of the operating speed, reliability, and passengers waiting, boarding and alighting times for both types of examined systems. The project efficiency was analyzed given the calculated economic cash flow for a certain period (e.g., 30 years). The results indicate that the three examined systems differed widely in terms of their capital cost, maintenance and operating cost, capacity, and their anticipated benefits.

ECONOMIC IMPACT OF SUBSIDY POLICIES TO ELECTRIC VEHICLE SOCIETY IN TOYOHASHI CITY IN JAPAN — A CGE-MODELING APPROACH

2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (02) ◽  
pp. 409-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
YUZURU MIYATA ◽  
HIROYUKI SHIBUSAWA ◽  
TOMOAKI FUJII
Keyword(s):  
Economic Impact ◽  
Electric Vehicle ◽  
Computable General Equilibrium ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Solar Power ◽  
Ferrous Metal ◽  
Commodity Prices ◽  
Modal Shift ◽  
Modeling Approach ◽  
Cge Modeling

In this paper, we explore the economic impact of promotion and realization of an electric vehicle society (EVS). More concretely, this paper emphasizes a computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling approach to evaluate the following issues: economic impacts of subsidies for promotion of an EVS, the possibility of price reductions, industrial structure change toward an EVS, and modal shift occurring toward an EVS. Our simulation results demonstrate that after applying 5–25% up subsidies to five industries, such as electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing, EV transport, solar power, cogeneration and other transport, the total industrial output and city GDP increase. A large growth rate is found in industries where subsidies are introduced alone with non-ferrous metal industry. However, it is interesting that decreasing proportions are found in oil and coal product, mining, heat supply and gasoline vehicle (GV) transport industries. Moreover, all the commodity prices decrease since subsidies are given to some industries. Hence Toyohashi City’s economy shows a direction where the demand for conventional vehicles and energy use are decreased, conversely, the demand for EVs and renewable energy are increased illustrating a different life style from the current one. However, it does not mean that the total CO2 emission is decreased. EV society makes some industrial outputs larger. Due to the fact that some industrial outputs are increased, CO2 emissions of EV manufacturing and nonferrous metal are increased more than decreased industries. Thus, introducing 5–25% subsidies to EV manufacturing, EV transport, solar power, cogeneration and other transport can really represent a realistic alternative society to EVS if the total CO2 emission can be reduced. Therefore, we have to think what can make the total CO2 emission reduced.

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