Underfloor generators, powered by “heel strike” and designed by British engineers, may soon be installed in supermarkets and railway stations. The technology could use the footsteps of pedestrians to power thousands of lightbulbs at shopping centres. It works by using the pressure of feet on the floor to compress pads underneath, driving fluid through mini-turbines that then generate electricity, which is stored in a battery.
Apparently, this technology can also be used to harness power from anything that regularly moves due to environmental factors: train & car bridges, antennas, buildings, etc.
Everyone is strutting their best transpo Ts here at the Towards Carfree Cities conference. Here are a few highlights…
Official Carfree conference t-shirt. We’re trying to get our hands on a couple of these babies.
Lots more after the jump. Updated many times so check back for new ones…
Lots of critical mass t-shirts, from many different cities. Budapest, above.
And Rome as well. This shirt is donned by Chris Carlsson, author of Nowtopia.
Another one by Carlsson. According to him, he has a whole closet full of these. This one’s a little blurry, but you can make out “one less car” in neon in the shop window.
A commentary on the inherent conflict between bicycles and streetcars. TOPP’s Art Director Carly Clark had a little run-in with the tracks on our way home last night; don’t worry, she’s fine.
Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Clarence Eckerson
And, of course, the Street Fight shirt we made to go along with our talk today.
This shirt is from an organization in Guadalajara called “Ciudad Para Todos” (city for all), that formed around the city’s proposal to turn an arterial street into an at-grade highway, dividing two neighborhoods permanently. They were able to broker a compromise, however, that leaves normal use mon-fri. Unfortunately, on the weekends, the street is used as a highway.
Large latin american contingent here in Portland.
A spanish take on the classic..
A carfree take on the “Evolution of Man” illustration…
… and another.
This shirt if from a car-free day in Toronto. The shirt reads: “no cars, bikes go with caution, people walk freely”.
You might notice that most of these t-shirts are about bicycling. At one of the sessions I attended, we had an interesting conversation about bike vs. ped advocacy, and the fact that it seems to be easier to find a dedicated constituency around bicycling than around pedestrian issues. If you look at the landscape of advocacy organizations here in the US, that certainly seems true, although here in NYC nearly everyone is a walking advocate, whether they know it or not. Anyway, this design is a good one to close on: “Pedestrian Power” from Threadless…
The opening keynote speaker at the Towards Carfree Cities conference is Mia Birk, from a bike/ped planning firm here in Portland called Alta Design. Check out the short episode of “Big Ideas for a Small Planet,” above, featuring Mia talking about the pedestrian & bicycle planning movement in Portland — she’s very eloquent and the makes the argument for bike- and pedestrian-friendly cities in a very accessible way.
Next to our table, we found a real estate broker from Portland who gives bike tours of houses for sale. What a great way to see neighborhoods and get a taste of what it might be like to live in a place!
