ModeShift - Part 35

Urumqi’s Bus Rapid Transit Lines Are Steps In Right Direction

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 29, 2012September 29, 20120

Urumqi, the largest city in the Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region, last year opened a 42-kilometer bus rapid transit network, fueled by natural gas and composed of three lines and 55 station stops. It’s a beautiful thing in a traffic-jammed city with risky levels of air pollution. Photo/Keith Schneider URUMQI — The first time we boarded the bright orange articulated Line 3 buses of this desert city’s year-old Bus Rapid Transit network, we got lost. As an …

China’s Marine Aquaculture Shellfish Industry: Really Big and Apparently Safe

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 27, 2012September 28, 20121

On a still Aoshawei Bay, lines of marine shellfish bouys stretch shore to shore. Photo/J. Carl Ganter, Circle of Blue QINGDAO — At dawn the surface of Aoshawei Bay is a grid of black spots, line after line, straight as the rays of the rising sun, from one shoreline to the other. The spots are bouys that support the submerged platforms and thick netting that grow scallops and clams, oysters and mussels, and enclose immense …

China’s High-Speed Trains Seen As National Pride and Safety Risk

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 22, 2012September 29, 20120

China plans a 16,000-kilometer high-speed rail network. Already, 13,500 kilometers have been built, including the line between Beijing and Qingdao. Photo/J.Carl Ganter, Circle of Blue QINGDAO — It’s 670 kilometers, about 420 miles, between Beijing and this Pacific coast city of glass towers, 10-lane boulevards, sandy beaches, and 8 million metropolitan residents. On China’s high-speed white and blue bullet train, the trip takes four hours and 20 minutes. Whoosh! In the United States, meanwhile, the …

Jeremy Lin Is Big Brand In China

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 19, 2012October 2, 20120

Though no longer a New York Knick, Jeremy Lin is a brand in China as big as this building sign in Qingdao. Photo/Keith Schneider QINGDAO — Granted I’ve spent decades loving the New York Knicks, even though they’ve been hapless for over a decade. Plus, I’m convinced the NBA is the most exciting sports league in the world. Yet even with such personal predilections, it’s easy to argue that the best story in America this …

Danger in Attacking China Is The Big Hurt It Would Put On US

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 14, 2012December 6, 20140

China’s steady growth relies, in part, on its capacity to build new rail lines, a transportation option available here in Beijing and throughout the country. Photo\Keith Schneider BEIJING — The Bureau of Labor Statistics, one of the U.S. government’s marvelous data gathering groups, has spents months making public facts about job and business growth that tell an unexpected story about the American economy. Two of the biggest generators of new jobs and rising incomes in …

The People & The Olive Charts Traverse City’s New Global Focus

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 12, 2012January 31, 20136

Bravo to Aaron Dennis, Jacob Wheeler, and all the rest of the Run Across Palestine crew for producing an event and a piece of courageous journalism that matters to the world. In The People & The Olive, a 70-minute documentary that received its premiere Monday night in Traverse City’s downtown State Theatre, Aaron and Jacob join camera, reporting, and story-making skills to explore the dangerous irony of a native people, Palestinian olive farmers, walled off …

Rust Rubbed Off Ohio River Valley, Narrative of Economic Revival in New York Times

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 6, 2012December 6, 20141

Luke Patterson, the 31-year-old pilot of the towboat Mike Weisend. Photo © Keith Schneider PADUCAH, KY. â€“ On a mile-wide reach of the Ohio River, just upstream from where it converges with the Mississippi, Ray McKinney, the 54-year-old first mate aboard the Mike Weisend, a year-old towboat, pounds the slack out of steel cables that lash 15 barges together in a long tow headed upriver. The heavy pipe in his hands, and the tangle of …

Wind Energy Successes in Michigan

by Keith SchneiderAugust 21, 2012August 23, 20120

The farm fields and rolling hills near Ludington, Michigan, sport new decoration now: big wind turbines that take advantage of the gales of nearby Lake Michigan. Consumers Energy, Michigan’s statewide utility, is constructing the $235 million, 56-turbine, 100-megawatt Lake Winds Energy Park with Danish-designed Vestas equipment, some of which arrives in Mason County by rail. The winter white towers and turbine blades soar above orchards, forest, and cropland, powerful sentinels of Michigan’s capacity to reckon …

Climate Change, Water Levels Confound Great Lakes Shipping Companies

by Keith SchneiderAugust 17, 2012August 17, 20120

Over at Circle of Blue, we’ve spent much of the year reporting on the transition occurring in the Great Lakes as a result of changes in climate and energy markets. The newest article, on shifting water levels and the Great Lakes port and transport sectors, posted here today. On average, two big ships call every day at the docks of this Lake Erie city. The route to one of the busiest ports in the Great …

U.S. Energy Boom: Reprieve and A Reckoning, Says NYT’s Friedman and ModeShift’s Schneider

by Keith SchneiderAugust 8, 2012August 8, 20120

North Dakota is producing more than 600,000 barrels of oil daily, second most in the U.S. behind Texas. A tanker truck loads oil aboard a tanker train near Williston, ND. Photo by Keith Schneider Over the weekend Tom Friedman of the New York Times wrote a good piece, Get it Right on Gas, about the short-term promise and potentially long-term economic and environmental peril prompted by the U.S. energy boom. Friedman’s article made quite a …