Two Wheels

An editor recently forwarded the results of the Sustain Lane 2008 U.S. City Rankings, asking me to please not gloat about the fact that the city I’ve lived in — and loved — since 2001 is the most sustainable city in the nation. Whatever, dude! We’re number one! Although the easy-to-read dartboard design makes it obvious how well Portland scored in a variety of categories, I’ll run down a few of our car-related kudos for those who are unaware of our awesomeness.

• Curbside EV Charging. The local electric utility company, PGE, just this summer began installing curbisde charging stations in the Portland metro area. Right now, there’s a total of two of the new EV chargers, but most other cities don’t even have a plan yet (though Boulder is one-upping us with its vehicle-to-grid system).
• A chain of EV dealerships. So it’s only a chain of two. EcoMotion has been one of the top sellers of ZAP vehicles in the country — and its been open for just a year. The shiny, new EVs are out front, but the back room holds a trove of used high-mileage, low-emissions SmartWay-certified used cars.
• The OEVA. The Oregon Electric Vehicle Association, part of the national EVA, is active in the area. The offer assistance to those who want to buy electric or convert a car on their own, and they have a presence at almost every green event in town — and there are a lot of those.
• The MAX. While Seattle was building the famed, and failed, monorail system, Portland was laying down tracks for light rail. The latest completed addition, the Yellow Line, finished early and under budget. More light rail connections are being built as we speak.
• Bikes everywhere. Portland has miles and miles of bikeable streets, with designated bike lanes, for the thousands of people who commute using pedal power. Any bike shop has a map of bikeable routes available, and people are even stretching their biking season into the first rainy months of the year.

Okay, PDX is not perfect. There are some safety issues on MAX, especially in the suburbs, and there are notorious and sometimes violent clashes between drivers and bikers almost every month. But there are also a lot of good green car things about Portland that I didn’t even mention, like its bid to build an electric car factory in the future, or the fun and inclusive scooter scene.

I’m done gloating. Check out the rest of the sustainability rankings to find your city. If it’s low on the list — or not on it at all — get moving. Every location on here can always do better. Even Portland.

Photo by Doug Geisler.

Last week, two Penn State patrolmen took their new rides for a spin: electric-powered Vectrix motorcycles. The central PA campus is the first in the nation to add EV motorcycles to its police force, and the first cop shop in the state to do so, as well.

The bikes will be used most often to patrol parking lots on game days, which attract over 100,000 fans to watch the Nittany Lions play. The pair of motorcycles are expected to last 8-10 hours per charge, or about 60 miles. According to Steven Shelow, director of University Police, the department has been eyeing motorcycles for about three years. When he saw the EV models at a law-enforcement convention over the summer, he decided they would work well on campus, as they are quiet enough to operate while classes are in session.

The Vectrix used on the PSU campus costs less than $9,000, comparable to a gasoline-powered motorcycle. Like most EVs, it plugs into either a 110- or 220-volt outlet to charge overnight. Top speed is around 60 mph, if the police should need it. The one hitch in the plan is the same hitch that affects all motorcycle cops: winter. Snow falls in big, cold, wet flakes pretty often in Pennsylvania, which means these two patrolmen will need to borrow a cruiser or pull on their warmest waterproof boots.

Photo from wjactv.com.

I recently got a copy of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Motor Scooters to review. Here’s the one-sentence review, in case you’re pressed for time: If you’re new to scootering, this is a great place to start, but if you’re an old hand, you won’t find much you don’t already know.

The Idiot’s Guide books are similar to the Dummies books, but they seem to rely less on lists and cartoons to get the reader through the information. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Motor Scooters is arranged logically, from history to extreme scootering, and the “Contents at a Glance” pages at the front of the book make it easy to jump to the section that interests you. The end of each chapter lists “The Least You Need to Know,” in case you’re reading up on a subject as you run out the door to the scooter shop to buy an armored jacket.

TCIGMS, as we’ll call it for brevity, is an excellent resource for newbies, especially if you haven’t bought your scooter yet and are overwhelmed by the choices. It helps potential buyers decide between vintage and new; 50 cc, 150 cc, or larger engines; two-stroke or four-stroke; and more. It lists necessary gear and has pages and pages of optional gear, including decals and the like for customization (I prefer punk-rock stickers myself).

The book also deals with common questions about getting started, like registration and motorcycle endorsements on your driver’s license. It does not deal with the more advanced stuff, like scooter repair (see Part I of this post for my recent success with taking scootering to a new level), though it does have some pretty in-depth maintenance how-tos. It also includes a section in the back with tech specs for just about every scooter on the market today, which is helpful for buyers and owners alike.

The authors speak with authority. Bev Brinson is the founder of Scooter World magazine, and Bryce Ludwig is a longtime writer for the mag. They’ve written a guide to getting a scooter, riding it safely, and maintaining it. Anything beyond that is entirely up to you, scooter commuter. Armed with this kind of information, there’s nothing you and your scooter can’t do.

Greetings from the land of scooter commuters! After two months of sitting under the carport, alone but for the spiders weaving their webs all over her, my scooter, a 2002 Kymco People 50, is finally operational again, thanks to my first-ever at-home repair!

The summer saga began when I took the Kymco out for the first time, in May. I drove it a few miles and parked it while I volunteered at my local humane society. While I was volunteering, the entire contents of the gas tank leaked out onto the pavement. The maintenance guy stood watch to make sure it didn’t burst into flames, then used his forklift to put it in the back of a pickup truck to drive me home.

(Eco-recap: gas on the ground and running into a nearby rainwater grate is absolutely not good for the earth. Neither is strapping a scooter to the bed of a half-ton pickup truck.)

The guy at the shop where I bought my scooter in 2002, which by now has 4,500 miles on the odometer, said that Kymcos of a certain age can have leaky fuel filters. I asked if I could repair it myself, and he said, “You can do anything yourself, just be sure not to strip the rubber gasket when you tighten the filter.”

Cool, I thought, I can do this myself. Except that I’d never repaired anything mechanical before, and I was intimidated by the very idea.

Until last Sunday. I downloaded the repair manual for ten bucks, got out the socket wrenches, and took pictures as I went — kind of like digital breadcrumbs, in case I got lost. I found out that the hose was cracked, not the fuel filter, and bought a replacement part at the scooter shop for another ten bucks. All in all, from start to finish, it took a grand total of about two hours, three tools (socket wrench, allen wrench, and pliers), and $20.

So, if gas prices have you considering a scooter, go for it! They get great mileage (mine gets about 80 mpg) and are simple to repair — by you or your local shop.

In Sioux Falls, South Dakota — just up the road from this week’s Sturgis Motorcycle Rally — one Harley-Davidson dealership has taken a bold step in the future of bikes. J&L Harley-Davidson has added Vectrix electric motorscooters to the mix on its showroom floor.

A recent story in the Argus Leader said Harley riders were open to the idea of an electric bike. The browsers quoted in the story didn’t say they were ready to give up their hardtails and ape-hangers for a 60-mph electric scooter, but they did like that the Vectrix was a zero-emissions vehicle.

Keep in mind, though, that Harleys are no slouch in the mileage department themselves. The 2009 Sportster 883 Low, to pick a model at random, gets 54 mpg in the city and 60 when you get your motor runnin’ and head out on the highway. But what comes out the other end, while hard to pin down with exact numbers, is apparently bad enough to warrant a California emissions fee of a couple hundred bucks.