2015 Int'l Eco-Mobility Forum in Kaohsiung
Chen Chu, Mayor, Kaohsiung City Government
SD Ling, Director, Institute of Transportation (IoT), Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MoTC)
Giuseppe Izzo, Vice Chairman, ECCT & General Manager, ST Microelectronics Taiwan
Choongkwan Kim, Deputy Mayor, Changwon, South Korea
Francis Eric Knight Britton, Professor, Sustainable Development Institute, Superior de Gestion Paris
Moderators:
Liu Shyh-fang, Executive Director, ICLEI, Kaohsiung City Government
Raoul Kubitschek, Director, Low Carbon Initiative (LCI), ECCT
Sammy Su, Assistant Director, LCI, ECCT
Chen Ching-fu, Director, Transportation Bureau, Kaohsiung City GovernmentSpeakers:
Sanhosh Kodukula, Eco-Mobility Alliance Programme Manager, ICLEI
Thomas Fann, President, Ford Lio Ho
Dr Cheng Tsung-chieh, Performance Material Division, BASF
Franck Vitte, Regional Vice President, Asia & Middle East, Blue Solutions, Bollore Group
Robert Lohmann, Chief Operations Officer, 2getthere
Kent KT Wang, President, iPass Corporation & President ITS Taiwan
Liang Yuelin, Head, Transport Consulting, Greater China, Siemens
YC Chang, Managing Director, Far Eastern ETC
Wu Yichang, Kaohsiung City Councilor
Chris Ho, General Manager, Rail, Greater China Region, TÜV Rheinland
Liu Jui-lin, Senior Specialist, Taipei Transportation Bureau
Chu Chien-chiuan, Senior Specialist, New Taipei Transportation Bureau
Chang Hsin-fu, Deputy Minister, Taoyuan Transportation Bureau
Wu Yuan-chan, Section Chief, Transportation Planning Section, Taichung Transportation Bureau
Chang Cheng-yuan, Chief, Tainan Transportation Bureau
Satoko Yanagihara, Policy Supervisor, Toyama City
Ryo Uemura, Assistant Director, Urban Development and Construction Bureau, Kumamoto City
Trinnawat Suwanprik, Representative, Chiang Mai, Thailand
Opening remarks
In her opening remarks Mayor Chen Chu said that Kaohsiung had joined ICLEI in 2006 and established the ICLEI Kaohsiung Capacity Center in 2012 to promote sustainable development in the city and cooperation with other ICLEI member cities, particularly those ICLEI members who are part of ICLEI's Eco-Mobility Alliance. In a demonstration of the city's commitment to the further development of eco-mobility, Kaohsiung will take over chairing responsibilities of the alliance for the next four years. The mayor went on to cite some of the city's recent efforts to improve eco-mobility in the city, including setting up 750 kilometres of bicycle paths and a bicycle rental system, expansion of the MRT system, the introduction of electric buses and the brand new light rail system that is about to be launched.
In his remarks, ECCT Vice Chairman Giuseppe Izzo noted that this was the second event of this kind that the ECCT was participating in in less than a month, following the chamber's co-hosting of a Smart Mobility Conference together with the Ministry of Transportations' Institute of Transportation on 9 September. Besides sharing insights from ECCT members on how to make the transportation sector greener and smarter Izzo said that members were also eager to hear about recent developments in Kaohsiung such as the new light rail system.
In his opening remarks SD Ling said that Kaohsiung had made a lot of progress in its efforts to become greener. Referring to the IoT-ECCT Smart Mobility Conference, Director Ling said that the conference had provided some good ideas on how to fast- track further progress and increase cooperation. He noted that the MoTC has policies to improve transportation, promote sustainable energy and carbon reduction. These include promoting green transportation and cycling (more bicycle lanes and paths), reducing the number of cars on the streets.
In his remarks Changwon Deputy Mayor Kim spoke about the Eco-Mobility Alliance, which was created by a few ICLEI members in October 2011 in Changwon, South Korea. Kaohsiung was a founding member of the alliance, which now has 12 members from eight countries. The alliance aims to engage public and private actors from different sectors and regions all over the world, as well as promote and advocate ecomobility at a global level. Alliance cities host and participate in alliance workshops to work towards specific goals and quantified targets they intend to achieve.
Handover ceremony of the ICLEI Eco-Mobility Alliance Chair
Following the opening remarks, there was a handover ceremony to formalize the transfer of the chair of the ICLEI Eco-Mobility Alliance from Changwon to Kaohsiung. The chair represents the alliance at international events and contributes to the coordination and implementation of alliance initiatives. Mayor Kim and Mayor Chen signed handover documents and, in a symbolic gesture to formalize the handover, Mayor Kim handed over the alliance's flag to Mayor Chen. After the ceremony, they exchanged gifts.
In his remarks following the handover ceremony, Professor Eric Britton shared some insights about cities based on his experience of over 50 years. Britton is the founder of global car free day in 1994. Brittan described the problems associated with the dominance of internal combustion vehicles (ICE) in cities as rarely acknowledged and not properly understood. He said that we need to improve knowledge and find solutions to address these problems. The first car free day was held in Toledo Spain in 1995. Within a year many others followed. Brittan said he was gratified that most cities did so at their own initiative, without asking for advice. Some have even expanded beyond one day to whole week, and in the case of Italy, a whole month. Brittan is writing a book about the contradictions of transport in cities. He expressed the view that the priorities of transportation policies are usually not the right ones and the primary objective should be to save the planet. If enormous progress is not made to address climate change, many low lying areas of the planet will be flooded and we cannot wait for 2030 or 2050 to take action. He also made the point that while governments are moving in the right direction by making carbon reduction commitments, they are not doing nearly enough. As a general rule of thumb, he expressed the opinion that governments should take their current budgets for green developments and multiply that number by 10. Only then could real progress be achieved.
In his remarks, Professor Jason SK Chang said that Kaohsiung had made a lot of improvements in the greening of public spaces and increasing green transport options such as bicycles and public transport but the reality is that motorised vehicles still occupy most of the roads. Moreover, highway development is still the main focus of most urban developers, which have adopted a culture which values and promotes the use of cars. He made the point that popular culture glamorizes cars while public transport, even when it is clean and efficient, does not have the same appeal. However things are changing. He showed some ironical images that compare the popular forms of transportation in Geneva and Beijing in 1970 and the 2015. While bicycles were the main option in Beijing in 1970, compared to motorized vehicles in Geneva, the situation has reversed as citizens in Geneva now prefer bicycles while those in Beijing prefer motorcars and scooters. Other cities, such as Hong Kong have good and well-used public transport systems, which have reduced the use of cars. Taiwan however, has 14 million motorbikes and seven million motorcars, which is almost one for every citizen. While ICE vehicles promise convenience, they come at a big price in terms of pollution, noise and, as cities become more crowded, traffic congestion.
Keynote speech
Topic: Vision and mission of eco-mobility: Transforming mobility in our cities
Speaker: Sanhosh Kodukula, Eco-Mobility Alliance Programme Manager, ICLEI
The term eco-mobility was coined by Konrad Otto-Zimmerman, Creative Director of the Urban Idea in Germany and initiator of the Eco-Mobility Alliance and festival series.
Kodukula said that the Eco-Mobility Alliance would play key role as a consultant for Kaohsiung's hosting of the eco-mobility festival in 2017.
While many cities have followed the American development model, whereby cities are designed for cars, some cities are reversing the trend and taking back some streets. For example, Bangkok authorities have completely pedestrianized some of the city's streets. The results have been remarkable as sales volumes of shops on these streets increased by 30%. On the other hand, he said that Bangkok has an "obsession" to expand motorways to cater to more cars. While more motorways help in the short term to reduce congestion, over the long they only encourage an increase in cars.
India, like Taiwan, has an increasing number of two-wheelers, made possible as more people emerge from poverty and are able to afford to upgrade from bicycles. People should not be blamed for wanting a better life and a more convenient way to get around. It is authorities which have the responsibility to create the right environment and infrastructure to encourage the use of public transport. This is clearly lacking in countries like India. More vehicles are leading to greater pollution (and more health problems associated with pollution) and a loss of public space. Parking is like a cancer for cities, according to Kodukula, because so much space is filled (wasted) by parked vehicles. The more you provide roads the more people will use cars and motorcycles. On the other hand, if you provide more cycling lanes you will encourage more use of bicycles. Public transport in India also has an image problem. As long as buses are old and in bad condition, people will not want to use them.
City planners need to throw out the prevailing models and design cities for people, not cars. To cite one example, pedestrian overpasses are ostensibly built to provide safety to pedestrian but what they actually do is give the privilege of the road to vehicles while causing great inconvenience to pedestrians. This makes car owners assume that they are the kings of the road. This mindset has to be reversed and the vicious cycle of automobile dependency leading to ever more demand for road space has to be disrupted.
The traditional thinking of urban planning engineers is to build more roads and fly-overs but this kind of development encourages urban sprawl, increases travel distances and eventually will lead to even more congestion by commuters who live in suburbs and work in cities.
Many European city planners had the foresight to realize this. After the second world war, when many cities had to be rebuilt, unlike the US model, many cities in Europe chose the compact model of city development with small roads, which discourage cars and instead encourage walking and cycling. Unfortunately too many also adopted the US model.
ICLEI supports socially inclusive, environmentally-sustainable, economically-feasible urban mobility which includes the right mix of public transport and electric vehicles, introducing new business ideas. It is cooperating with institutions such as Michigan University in eco-mobility research, in the realization that there is no single solution. The Eco-Mobility Alliance is one of ICLEI's programmes which started with six cities (Kaohsiung was a founding member). The alliance aims to share information on ideas that work and learn from mistakes. The alliance also works with other partners such as non-governmental organisations and experts.
According to Kodukula the alliance will soon expand to 17 member cities in 10. The Eco-Mobility World Festival is a month-long car-free initiative, which has been held in cities in South Korea. The next one will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa in October 2015, whereby the city will close the central business district to cars for a month. The plan has the support of businesses and residents but it will still be a challenge to run. Kodukula said that he will monitor the project and share the results with the Kaohsiung City Government.
Kodukula concluded that it is possible to shift from ICE vehicles to green mobility solutions but this requires strong leadership, technical support and increased government and public awareness. It is the purpose of the alliance to work on all these aspects.
Topic: 2017 Eco-Mobility festival in Kaohsiung
Speaker: Chen Ching-fu, Director, Transportation Bureau, Kaohsiung City Government
Chen shared some information on the current situation and future prospects for Kaohsiung's transport sector and spoke about the 2017 Eco-Mobility Festival to be hosted by the KCG.
Kaohsiung City is home to 2.01 million scooters and 860,000 cars, 163 bus routes, 39 MRT stations and 755km of bike paths. The first line of the light rail system, to be opened shortly, will have 14 stations and cover 8.7km. In the second phase the number of stations will increase to 22.
The city is still highly dependent on private vehicles. According to Chen, only around 4% of residents use public transport regularly for commuting. According to Chen, currently industrial emissions account for 80% of the city's total emissions while transport only accounts for 6%. He said that Mayor Chen wants to cut emissions by 30% by 2020 compared to 2005 levels by using low carbon technology and establishing a low carbon industrial park and increasing the use of privately-owned bus companies and bus routes. In addition, the city is installing solar-powered bus stations (solar power is used for lighting) and phasing out diesel boats in favour of solar-powered boats on the Love River. It has already introduced a public bicycle sharing system is working on introducing e-buses and e-scooters.
The city has also started a parking fee system for scooters in selected areas. This has clearly worked as it has led to a 50% increase in MRT ridership. The plan will therefore be expanded in future.
On the 2017 festival, Chen said that the city has identified a potential area for the festival but this has not yet been finalized.
Session A: Low carbon vehicles for the next generation
Topic: Smart mobility
Speaker: Thomas Fann, President, Ford Lio Ho
Fann said that a smart car is like a big mobile phone with four wheels. The car of the future will make decisions for you. This will require a lot of sensors, many times more than current models. Besides vehicles, complex systems will be needed to analyse data. The next step is vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, which help vehicles to communicate with one another and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), whereby devices fitted to bridges, railings, overpasses, light posts and traffic signal posts can monitor things like vehicle flows and feed the information to the cloud for analysis to be fed back to vehicles. Data about traffic jams will need to come from V2I and the cloud. If only one car has a smart system, this will not prevent accidents, which is why all cars will eventually need to be smart.
On the subject of electric vehicles, the uptake is still slow. For example, in China, out of 23 million cars sold annually, only about 50,000 are battery-electric vehicles. It will take some time for EVs to become main-stream. In the meantime the drive is to make other vehicles more fuel efficient and smarter and build infrastructure EVs such as solar-powered charging stations, smart grids for charging. If every EV car were to be plugged in at the same time, the grid would not be able to handle it. Therefore, smart systems need to be installed to control the amount of power that can be used at the same time.
New business models are also needed such as car sharing. There are many schemes and pilot programmes in place. Ford has launched its own car sharing scheme in London, utilizing its dealerships in the city. Another business model is fractional ownership, which the company has employed in India and a car sharing model, whereby one person buys the car, rents it out and uses rental fees to pay off the car loan.
Topic: Eco-efficiency of lightweight plastics in the automotive industry
Speaker: Dr Cheng Tsung-chieh, Performance Material, BASF
Cheng noted that 52.8% of oil is being used as fuel, 25.8% is used for heating and 14.5% by the chemical industry, of which 7% is used to make plastic materials. Of this only about 0.5% is used for auto parts. This shows that there is still relatively little use of oil as a material for automotive components. Given that 85% of the energy used by vehicle is determined by the weight of a car, using light-weight materials to replace vehicle parts goes a long way to reduce fuel consumption and emissions. According to Cheng, a 100 kilogram (kg) weight reduction can reduce CO2 emissions by up to 10 grams per kilometer. One way to reduce weight is to use new composite materials, such as those produced by BASF.
The company has conducted comprehensive analysis of the whole production process, which takes into account the materials used and the environmental impact to produce its products, the resources used in production (such as the energy used) and the amount of energy saved by utilizing the products.
It made the following conclusions: carbon fibre is expensive at the moment but it will get cheaper if more industries start to use it (thanks to economies of scale); using BASF materials in various components can reduce the weight of a vehicle by around 100kgs. Besides being lighter, crash tests conducted on the company's new seats, made from light-weight material, show high endurance. The company is experimenting with replacing steel rims with light-weight plastic composite versions, which are about 30% lighter. However, this is still in the conceptual phase as the idea of using plastic wheel rims is still not widely accepted.
Topic: Car sharing systems
Speaker: Franck Vitte, Regional Vice President, Asia & Middle East, Blue Solutions, Bollore Group
Vitte's company produces lithium metal polymer batteries, which have a unique solid state with no liquid electrolytes, making them very safe and hard to set alight. The company has developed many applications for e-mobility including cars, buses, trams and boats.
Blue Solutions has the largest car sharing system in world: the Autolib system in Paris, which has 3,000 EVs. It is launching a new system in London of a similar size.
What makes the system adopted by Autolib so good is that everything was developed in-house to ensure simple, seamless and easy-to-use cars and service. Blue Cars are small but perfect for car sharing. They have a range of 250km on one charge and their speed is limited to 110km/hour. Besides the need for a good car and charging system, good customer service is an important component of success. Following the success of the Paris system, 78 cities and towns have signed up for the service. There are now about 900 charging stations in Paris and surrounding areas, each with about five charging posts. There are now around 100,000 rentals per week.
The system works easily. Anyone can sign up as long as they have a credit card and a driver's licence. It is very easy to sign up as user and to rent, use and drop off a vehicle. The rental stops as soon as car is plugged in. Using a dedicated App, users can book a car in just three clicks. The booking is then held for the next 30 minutes. Users can also book a parking bay at their intended destination, which is reserved for an hour and a half. By pressing the blue button on the car's dashboard, users can talk (hands free) to the call centre.
The success of car sharing systems depends on having the right system as well as critical mass. Vitte noted that this was clearly evident by looking at the Autolib example. In the initial stage there were not many cars, stations and users. Now cars and stations are everywhere and usage has grown in line with the convenience of having a station near one's home.
Vitte summarized the key success factors of a car-sharing system as political will and leadership, excellence in operation, excellence in technology and excellence in marketing, all of which leads to a high customer satisfaction rate and continued usage.
Topic: Autonomous vehicles
Speaker: Robert Lohmann, Chief Operations Officer, 2getthere
Many cities dominated by individual cars are dysfunctional. Public transport is the solution for long trips but does not solve the problem of the last mile. In addition, public transport tends to be slow. The typical journey has lower average speed because there are stops at every station. The last mile is the most difficult problem to overcome. While walking and cycling are options for very short distances, they are not always the best options while sometimes people don't want to walk.
The solution, promoted by Lohmann's company is small networks of small automated cars that follow fixed routes. Lohmann cited examples such as Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport where automated cars pick up people from parking lots where they have parked their cars and transport them to the airport's terminals. These vehicles have a capacity of 20 people and travel at a maximum speed of 40km/hour and have battery ranges of 75kms. The vehicles have sensors that detect objects, including people and animals (they even have horns to scare away animals).
In the planned city of Masdar in Abu Dhabi, much smaller vehicles transport people around the city. The cars are air-conditioned and have shown to be even more successful than originally envisioned because, contrary to original perceptions that people would be unwilling to share vehicles and that each vehicle would have just one or two occupants, average occupancy has turned out to be 2.4 people per vehicle.
2getthere has done a case study with Hsinchu City and has identified a potential network for automated vehicles between the railway station and the university which currently does not have good connections.
The company is now developing the next (third) generation of automated vehicles, which will be completely bidirectional and faster (speeds of up to 60km/hour) which should be available by 2017.
Session B: New technology for green transportation
Topic: Applications and prospects of electronic tickets
Speaker: Kent KT Wang, Chairman iPass Corporation & President ITS Taiwan
The speaker gave an overview of the status and challenges faced by iPass, the prepaid card which is a competitor to Taipei's Easycard. The advantage of the iPass is that it can be used in all cities in southern Taiwan as well as in Taipei.
Topic: Connected products in a smarter world
Speaker: Giuseppe Izzo, General Manager, ST Microelectronics & Vice Chairman, ECCT
Izzo began by saying that we need to move beyond mere smart things to sensibility, whereby people are at the centre of future development. Cities are becoming more and more crowded and will become unlivable unless we change them.
ST has identified three main domains of growth: Smart driving, smart environments and smart things. Smart cities are defining car technologies of the future thanks to ubiquitous computing, that fact that almost everything can be connected and societal changes (societies are demanding better traffic management and living conditions and safer driving).
There are five important things that will enable smart cities: smart sensor systems, smart personal devices, smart actuating systems, big data processing and smart energy. The building blocks of smart systems are sensors and actuators (such as motion MEMS, environmental sensors and microphones), processing, connectivity, interfaces and power.
Cities of the future will employ many smart solutions such as smart street lighting, which dims or turns off automatically when no one is around and turns on or brightens when people are present. This not only lowers power consumption but also helps to make people feel safer. Street light poles will also serve as technology and communication terminals.
Sensors in connected rubbish bins that monitor the amount of rubbish can enable cities to manage collections more efficiently and provide better services. By having the data, rubbish only needs to be collected when necessary. Cities can thereby avoid overfilled containers (which would lead to user frustration and dumping) and can improve their rubbish fleet management.
Smart driving entails improving driving efficiency (map-assisted guidance, geo-localization and, eventually, autonomous cars). The connected car is a technology hub that will revolutionise the world of transport. To be smart will require a lot of sensors (300-400 sensors including, gyroscopes, motion sensors, radar and environmental sensors). Assembling a smart car is like assembling a puzzle of applications. The car of the future has to combine all functions: telematics, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and vehicle to vehicle (v2v) and vehicle to cloud and vehicle to infrastructure (v2i). There will first be a convergence of ADAS with intelligent mapping – an intermediate step towards intelligent cars. The next step is completely autonomous cars.
Smart cities will have smart homes. Connected appliances open the way for numerous possibilities to improve efficiency and convenience. Smart metering will provide real-time information for consumers, real time consumption, quality and outage information for providers and allows for more flexible tariff schemes and billing.
Another trend is smart and automated factories. The automotive industry is one of the first industries to have factories without human beings which are fully automated and greener.
Topic: Applications of big data in green transportation
Speaker: Liang Yuelin, Principle Transport Consultant, Siemens AG, Head of Transport Consulting, Greater China
Liang talked about software for green transport, which he described as an important backbone for infrastructure. Drawing on his experience in China he noted that traffic congestion causes pollution, wastes time and results in huge economic losses. Good transport is therefore vital for cities.
Siemens in China works to combine and blend the best concepts solutions from both Europe and China to find the best solutions for China. It is working with the Chinese government to develop a number of green transport options including trains and electric buses, all of which will help to lower carbon emissions.
To realise a greener future requires an understanding of all the solutions, an improvement in public awareness and to be cost-effective. It would be useless to build public transport systems if few people used them. We have to make sure that people will use public transport once built. In addition, public transport systems have to be safe and properly integrated with other transportation systems. For example, one city in China had a lot of accidents with its tram system. The solution was to give light rail systems the priority right of way on city streets. Proper planning is needed to make sure various transport systems are connected. Using big data can help cities to plan better. For example, Siemens helped the Singapore government to plan its low carbon transport system using big data to tell how much carbon can be reduced with the right transport systems. It is also helping a city in Malaysia to surpass the low carbon goals of Masdar. To get the best results, requires careful planning and consideration of the entire life cycle of a project, from conception to construction, running and eventual recycling. Sustainability has to be integrated into every stage.
Topic: Intelligent transport systems
Speaker: Chang Yung-chang, Managing Director, Far Eastern Electronic Toll Collection System
The speaker gave an overview of his company's Electronic Toll Collection (e-tag) system, which is already being successfully used in Taiwan. According to Chang, 94% of cars and trucks in Taiwan (6.3 million) now have e-tags. There are about 14.5 million transactions per day with an accuracy rate of 99.97%. The e-tag system has important environmental benefits because the previous toll collection system, which used toll booths and coupons was expensive, resulted in long queues at toll booths, which wasted a lot of time and led to far higher fuel consumption and emissions as a result.
The second day of the forum featured the following sessions and speakers:
Session C: Public transportation in urban areas
Topic: Low carbon life with light rail transport
Speaker: Chris Ho, General Manager, Rail, Greater China Region, TÜV Rheinland
Ho spoke about the environmental benefits in terms of air and noise pollution that will be brought about by the Tamshui light rail transit (LRT) system as well as the light rail system in Macau, which is now under construction.
TÜV Rheinland was the consultant to the Macau government to assess the light rail system. It will be an automatic driverless system which connects and covers the most populous areas of mainland Macau and Taipa island. It uses rubber tyres to reduce noise. The body and seats are made of light-weight aluminium to reduce energy consumption. In addition, carriages will have double-layered bodies and be fitted with LED lights and low UV-radiation glass windows to improve thermal insulation and thereby reduce the need for air-conditioning. The use of recycled materials has been optimized and regenerative braking technology will be employed, which makes use of the momentum when braking to generate electricity, which is fed into the grid.
TÜV Rheinland's role in LRT projects is to validate and verify many product standards in telematics, carriage systems and construction. Independent verification and validation (IV&V) and Independent Safety Assessment (ISA) includes inspection processes, auditing and testing. Verification is to ensure that every phase is done according to specifications while validation is to make sure that the project meets its goals or objectives. IV&V and ISA are required by many parties including manufacturers, purchasers, insurance companies and government agencies.
TÜV Rheinland was also involved in the construction of an LRT system in Chonqing China, which is regarded as China's quietest LRT line. TÜV Rheinland also measured and certified the carbon footprint of Taiwan High Speed Rail Corporation (THSRC).
Other speakers
Other speakers from session C, D and E were as follows:
Dr Jason SK Chang, Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, National Taiwan University; Director, Advanced Public Transport Research Center, NTU & Senior Vice President, ITS Taiwan
Wu Yichang, Kaohsiung City Councilor
Session D: Governance of the Eco-mobile city
Chu Chien-chiuan, Senior Specialist, New Taipei Transportation Bureau
Chang Hsin-fu, Deputy Minister, Taoyuan Transportation Bureau
Liu Jui-lin, Senior Specialist, Taipei Transportation Bureau
Wu Yuan-chan, Section Chief, Transportation Planning Section, Taichung Transportation Bureau
Chang Cheng-yuan, Chief, Tainan Transportation Bureau
Session E: International urban eco-mobility
Satoko Yanagihara, Policy Supervisor, Toyama City
Ryo Uemura, Assistant Director, Urban Development and Construction Bureau, Kumamoto City
Trinnawat Suwanprik, Representative, Chiang Mai, Thailand
