Taxi Hybrid
I arrived in Vancouver Thursday morning in time for the workshop I wrote about yesterday. I took a cab from the airport to my hotel, The Four Seasons, where the conference was held. As the car pulled away from the terminal, I noticed that something was different. Looking at the dash, I saw a display that was monitoring the vehicle’s fuel efficiency. I confirmed with the driver that the vehicle was indeed a hybrid.
It was my first ride in one. The engine was dead silent when we stopped at a traffic light. The driver informed me that there were a lot of hybrid taxis in Vancouver. As he put it, “We wouldn’t be able to stay in business otherwise.”
That makes a lot of sense to me, and it made me hopeful. Every city should be working towards making all public transportation hybrids or otherwise alternative fuel vehicles. That encounter was repeatedly brought to mind throughout the conference as three of the six keynotes centered around sustainability and how design can play an important part in solving our current, wicked problems.
