PSU DELFT DAY 5 - Energy Production in the Greenhouses - The Netherlands

Our students enjoyed Friday's trip to the North Sea and the beach. There was a bit of mist in the morning, but by the time we got to Monster (that is the actual name of the place) it was warm and playing on the beach was a nice reward for cycling the 18 miles through the cities and towns between Delft and the sea. It was quite a bit different for me than last year because the kids weren't with us on the ride. We had great weather (we couldnt say that last year) and the visit to the Greenhouse was enjoyable.

A few takeaways from the Greenhouse:

In the winter months they do quite a bit of warming, so energy consumption was a cost of doing business
Burning kerosene was the old way and plants that were near the burner grew faster (due to CO2
Now that CO2 is piped in to increase production, plants eat it up!
Tiny roots are still started by hand (mechanical processes have been developed in the past three years but the costs of the equipment are very high)
There are royalties for the creation of plant species of $0.06 cents (is that Euros?)
The greenhouse produces 3 million plants a year
The plants are now designed to be ready in les than 8 weeks (7 plantings a year)

Greenhouses in the Electricity Production Role
The greenhouse makes as much money on power generation (depending on prices and peak demands) as they do on their original core business.
The Dutch energy system is more robust because of all these local farmers burning CNG to provide power or using thermal sources. We asked about brown outs and they sort of shrugged it off as something they are unfamiliar with.

The biggest takeaways for me was the power production that they are involved in. A fascinating development and diversification of their business

Future considerations could be whether they will incorporate solar (they obviously use it naturally in the greenhouse) and storing energy in battery systems to address peak demands.

They do a bit of shipping from the facility and they have rucks thaf do this. Taking a look at the vehicles I noticed they have guards on the wheels to reduce the likelihood of cyclists getting pulled under a wheel.

Bike Overcrossings in Rotterdam - Complete with Supersized Escalators

      

Our leisurely Sunday bike ride provided us some further insights on the lengths the Dutch will go to provide an efficient and effective connection for people on bicycles. We decided to travel south through Rotterdam to evaluate some of the treatments in and around the third largest freight port in the world.  We turned up some very nice infrastructure without really looking for it. This and the Benelux tunnel post shows what sorts of accommodation is built alongside major highway upgrades.

This portion of the ride was the south most part of our effort.

This particular facility (shown in the pictures) was built alongside the A4 & A15 freeway to freeway interchange at the intersection of Vondelingenweg and Oud Pernisseweg. The facility provides access to Pernisserpark which is a nice outdoor space next to two very busy freeway facilities in a heavy industrialized area. We were there Sunday and the traffic was constantly buzzing on the freeways with a good amount of noise, so I can imagine it is louder during the week.

The screen capture shows the GPS track that was part
of the overcrossing of the rail tracks.

The overcrossing is in the southern portion of Rotterdam in the area called Hoogvliet and continues into Schiedam to the north. The short back tracking from the north to the south resulted in backtracking to take pictures of the highway A 15 below. The tracks match closely to our use of the ramp down in the northbound direction. 

A view from the top of the structure looking back at the separation.
Rail on the left and the "elevated right turn" we just made.

The cover for the escalator reminded me of the
sand crawler vehicle the Jawas used in Star Wars. 

This is the entrance to an escalator that allows people on bicycles to make a right turn over several freight railroad tracks. Obviously, it wouldn't be desirable for a cyclist to cross the heavy rail at grade, so this escalator is a facility that gets people up to the grade where they can crossover without any conflict. It uses the old road right of way ( I am assuming) that was vacated after the A4 highway was built.  Similar to the Benelux tunnel, one could argue whether this sort of facility (I almost called it an amenity) is necessary. There are many examples of interchange ramps where there isn't special provision for cyclists of this magnitude that work just fine. I will be interested in exploring this with the guest speakers we have and I am hoping there is someone that might discuss the specifics of this type of investment.   

12th Avenue Overcrossing on Mayor's Blog

By taking the time to understand the situation on the ground, the project team crafted a proposal that balances a variety of functional demands and results in an all-around improved situation for trucks, autos, bicyclists, and pedestrians.
Mayor Adams weighed in on the project, saying, “This is the type of project I expect to see more of in Portland. We identified areas that needed improvement, tested the proposed changes, used fact-based analyses to make improvements, and came up with a solution that works better for trucks, helps out two important manufacturing companies in the city, and makes the street safer for bicyclists and pedestrians going to school.”

Leading Bicycle Interval

We arrived in Amsterdam and the first thing I did upon arriving is visit the closest traffic signal to our hotel. I was interested to compare the experiences in Denmark with the Dutch practices. This was a minor street connecting with a more significant street adjacent to the Rijksmuseum. The first thing noticeable about this signal was that the indications for the bicycle are nearside. The second is that there are two separate indications (a large head mounted at around 3 meters) and a 10 cm (4 inches) indication. My guess is that the redundant signal head is used for the same reason we use multiple displays, but can't be sure. The third and most interesting from an operations perspective is the leading bicycle interval. I tried to take as many pictures as I could one after another to guess at how much time the intervals was for the bikes (it was about five seconds based on my camera time stamp). It seems that the reason for a Leading Bicycle Interval (LBI) is that the crosswalk is very large and it would be a nice thing to allow people on bicycles to establish themselves in the intersection across the crosswalk and to make the turn if they were so inclined. This might reduce the potential conflict point at the intersections which you can see just past the crosswalk and out of the shade of the curb tight building. The fourth application which we have used very sparingly in the U.S. is mirrors. In this application, I am guessing it helps freight and other motor vehicles determine if there are pedestrians coming up along the sidewalk and bikes approaching. It's another cue for encouraging the safe movement of traffic. I can already hear the complaints of maintenance staff if we proposed these at intersections.

Assuming that a community only wants to spend so much for a traffic signal (I doubt the Dutch love their signals any more than we do), in the U.S. (and in Portland), I would like to do an assessment of what elements of traffic signals cost us the most money (foundations for signal poles and the mast arm signal poles themselves) and what yields the highest safety benefits. There are distinct costs for traffic signals that require to be mounted over the lane lines and that is a function of the assumed speed of traffic and reaction times and so many human factors issues that it would be very helpful to know the tradeoffs between actually safety elements we design at intersections and their cost. I would be willing to wager a strong cup of coffee at Water Avenue that we could save ourselves a lot of money if we traded the costs of foundations and invested in better detection, marking on the pavement, and maintenance resources.