Mayor Gavin Newsom unveiling San Francisco's new bus shelters.
(Credit: Office of the Mayor of San Francisco)San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) have unveiled new energy-efficient bus shelters for the city.
The first of these bus shelters has been put up on the corner of Geary Boulevard and Arguello Boulevard with plans for four more to be rolled out in the coming weeks. The city plans to evaluate the five bus shelters throughout the summer to see what, if any, changes need to be made to the existing design.
Following the evaluation, SFMTA plans to replace a minimum of 1,100 existing bus shelters throughout San Francisco beginning this year, with plans to have them all in place by 2013.
The pilot bus shelters, which were designed by Lundberg Design, incorporate a bright red plastic wavy roof containing photovoltaic panels, two maps, LED lighting, Wi-Fi, space for two advertisements, and a NextMuni display that informs users of impending arrivals.
Many will power lights and info systems via organic dye-based photovoltaic solar film that's free of heavy metals and be encapsulated in bright red plastic made of 40 percent recycled content. The bus shelter structure itself is made from steel consisting of 60-70 percent recycled material.
The LED lights being used in the new bus shelters use about 74.4 watts, making them four and half times more efficient that than fluorescent lighting in the old shelters, which uses about 336 watts, according to the Mayor's office.
The new shelters will be installed and maintained by billboard advertising giant Clear Channel Outdoor.
While the San Francisco bus shelters are progress in terms of energy efficiency, they're arguably not as high-tech as the EyeStop bus shelters recently unveiled in Florence, Italy.
The EyeStop bus shelters designed by Carlo Ratti include touch-screen computers offering real-time mapping of buses, mobile alerts for bus schedule changes, Web access, and tall beacons that brighten as buses near to alert approaching pedestrians in the distance. All the Florence, Italy, bus shelter computers can also be accessed in several languages to accommodate tourists.
Coulomb Technologies charging stations keep the cord with a plug for an electric car locked behind a door for safety and theft prevention. An RFID reader signals the door to unlock when met with a recognized key fob or smart card.
(Credit: Coulumb Technologies)The city of San Francisco is installing three EV (electric vehicle) charging stations across the street from city hall as part of a two-year pilot project to promote electric vehicle use, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday at a press conference.
The Smartlet Networked Charging Stations supplied by Coulomb Technologies will serve hybrid electric plug-in vehicles from Zipcar, City CarShare, and the city's municipal fleet, according to a statement from the mayor's office.
Because the EVs will be readily available for daily rental, skeptics and enthusiasts alike will have a chance to see what it's like to drive an electric car for a day.
"Electric vehicles are the future of transportation and the Bay Area is the testing ground for the technology," Mayor Newsom said in a statement to the press.
"Now, for the first time, the public can plug-in to the next generation of cars through car sharing organizations and take them for a drive in San Francisco," he said.
As part of the two-year pilot project, the Coulomb Technologies networked car charging system will include a "Fleet Management Portal," which texts drivers to inform them when their car needs charging and when it's fully charged and can be unplugged.
The installation of the three networked charging stations are part of San Francisco's nine-step plan for making electric vehicles popular in the Bay Area.
Along with Mayor Ron Dellums of Oakland, Calif., and Mayor Chuck Reed of San Jose, Calif., Newsom pledged last November to make the Bay Area the "EV Capital of the United States."
San Jose became the first city to test Coulomb Technologies' charging stations last June.
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