Each chapter in my next book, The New Technology Elite, has a case study or a guest column. The text is going through the publisher’s edits and subject to change. Here are some excerpts from the Roosevelt Island case study in Chapter 3.
In the summer of 2011, Jonathan Kalkin submitted an entry in the One Prize Competition (photo from entry below). The competition invited creative ideas around linking New York City’s five boroughs with transit hubs; expanding waterborne transportation; providing in-water recreation, educational events, and cultural activities; and promoting climate resilience. In April 2010, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched the New York City Waterfront Vision and Enhancement Strategy (WAVES), a citywide initiative that will create a new sustainable blueprint for the City 578 miles of shoreline. Planning Commission Chair Amanda Burden had said: “Water is so important that we need to think of it as the sixth borough.”
Kalkin is a resident of Roosevelt Island which sits between the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Queens in the East River. Kalkin recently served a three-year term as a Director of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation of the State of New York (RIOC).
His entry in the One Prize competition proposed a hybrid/solar fuel cell ferry, fuel cell buses, bike sharing stations and interesting proposals about smart parking.
What business does a tiny island only 147 acres in size and with a population of just over 13,000 have thinking that big?
For starters, it has Kalkin who is a self-described geek, an optimist in technology being able to solve almost any problem. Kalkin says he spent most of his childhood designing and building projects the size of his room with Construx (the Fisher-Price plastic building toys) and using computers and the internet at a young age to track and pick investments so he could save up enough to buy a robot. The company that made the robot went out of business by the time he had enough funds to get it, but he used this knowledge in design and technology to help him as a principal in the financial industry and later as a director at RIOC.
Kalkin has a good base in the island to start from. The island has the only aerial commuter tram in the country that takes residents across the river to Manhattan in just 4 minutes. Kalkin oversaw the state-of-the-art tram redesign in 2010 as the Chair of the Operations Committee. Verdant Power has been using the river – during ebb and flood – to generate tidal power with an initial demonstration array of six turbines to a planned full field of units that could generate up to 10 MW of power. The island has an Automated Vacuum Collection System. Residents drop trash down a chute, anywhere on the island, and the garbage, depending on the density, shoots through pneumatic pipes at 30-60 miles per hour. No messy streets, and importantly no garbage trucks clogging the narrow streets of the island. Each of these has been going on for years – the garbage system since 1975, the aerial tram since 1976, the tidal power generation since 2002.
And the RIOC board has been busy in other ways since Kalkin joined in 2008. Free fiber wifi is coming first to the island’s parks with a second phase wrapping most of the island courtesy of Verizon, which is also gearing up its FiOS broadband service for local residents and businesses. The Red Buses which meet the tram described above and take residents across the island are tracked real-time by NextBus. It uses GPS and predictive analytics to inform residents via their smartphones or by text message about when the bus is likely to arrive so they can whether decide to wait for the bus or walk to the tram. In March 2011, Stanford University submitted a tentative proposal to build a campus for applied science research and graduate education on the island, with the intent that the campus would serve as a hub for innovation and economic growth.
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More significantly, the RIOC has tackled the parking congestion issue by bringing in a vendor called Streetline. Streetline brings together all aspects of parking management technology in one integrated system — from street-level sensors to mobile apps, analytics and system management software — to help cities more effectively manage their parking resources and help motorists find parking more quickly and efficiently.
Zia Yusuf, president and CEO of Streetline says, “Roosevelt Island is setting the stage for a new world of efficiency and improved services for its citizens. Smart parking solutions can significantly reduce traffic and congestion in cities, improving air quality and in turn quality of life.”
Experts estimate that 30% of urban traffic is caused by motorists looking for parking. Additionally, vehicle emissions and drivers looking for parking are so closely linked that a yearlong study found that drivers in a fifteen block district in Los Angeles drove in excess of 950,000 miles searching for a space and produced 730 tons of carbon dioxide.
Streetline’s patented ultra-low power sensors and Meter Monitors™ communicate via a wireless mesh network to deliver valuable real-time information, such as how long a car is parked, when a car enters and leaves a parking space, and whether or not payment has been received for metered parking areas.
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Kalkin (explaining his Competition entry) “The basic concept is to create a transit hub where ferries, buses, cars and bicycles can converge and use the tidal energy we have already been leveraging and adding to electric power additionally from solar and wind sources from the roof. This will eliminate the common argument that electric transportation is not really green because the power comes from fossil fuels. It also will consolidate several forms of transportation in one area which saves energy and is more convenient to citizens.”
“The floors of the parking garage can be made charge station ready’ and the power from the stations can come from tidal energy. If a person moves (and in New York City, people move quite often). they can take their portable Level 2 charging station (like the Leviton Evr-Green series with them. As level 3 charging stations become the standard the transformer on each floor simply has to be modified because most parking garage lighting has the same or similar voltage of level 3 stations. This is a scalable and future proof solution to a city parking garage that can be upgraded by floor rather than by each parking spot and commercial size charging station with little change to the electrical infrastructure.”
“The parking garage in the hub would also be a place to service/convert and sell electric cars. As an example, used hybrid plug-vehicles (say from Zipcar) can be sold after two years of shared use on site. Used gasoline vehicles with engine issues can be donated for green transit credits and converted to plug-in hybrids like the successful Ford Escape plug-in conversion and/or converted to run on biodiesel in the “conversion shop’. The conversion shop in the garage and the tools would also be powered by tidal and other renewable energy. Or the converted vehicles could be used for car shares to gain a second life. When renting the vehicle for a car share the person will be given the electronic option to be put on a waiting list to purchase when the car reaches the end of its 2 year rental cycle. We can get away from wasteful test drives and vast car dealer showrooms . This would also allow people to become comfortable with electric cars before they make the investment in them. This would create a recycled “electric car city” powered by tidal energy.”
Another concept in our proposal is a bike sharing station. You can use them as stationary bikes and when pedaled the energy can be used to create power for the hub. In addition to calorie counters to show how long you have exercised, we would reward you with credits based on the Project Verde card described below based on reduced carbon emissions. The station would be located on the roof of the parking lot, so users can enjoy views of the harbor. Of course, you can also remove the bike and use it to ride around the island.”
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Tiny island, mighty goals. After all, President Franklin D Roosevelt who the city is named after, said in a commencement address “The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”
Photo Credit: Jonathan Kalkin
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