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(Photo credit– State of Washington)
Renton officials have been coordinating with King County, Washington State, and the Federal Government to install charging stations in preparation for the newest chapter in personal transportation; mainstream all-electric automobiles. While the vehicles are expected to have a range of over 100 miles on one charge, enough for most commuters to make it to work and back, there will still be a need for public charging stations for motorists traveling across the state. Ultimately, as more and more drivers opt for all-electric vehicles, we would expect to see private filling stations springing up to help address this need. Note that there are generally three types of charging stations; 110 volt trickle charge, 220-volt faster charge, and high-speed charging. The high-speed charging will be part of a second phase of this plan, and will require public/private partnering.
Our County Executive issued a press-release on the County-wide plan back in September. You can read the press-release here. The press release includes county-wide details on where all of the charging stations are planned.
Thirteen public charging stations have been proposed for Renton:
Two in the Renton Landing Parking Garage
Three at Renton City Hall
Two at Valley Medical Center
Two in the Renton City Center Parking Garage
Two at the Renton School District Headquarters
Two at Renton Technical College
The county-wide project is part of a state-level “Electric Highways” plan that is being managed jointly by the Washington State Department of Commerce and the State Department of Transportation. They are getting their initial funding from federal stimulus dollars. Here is a website with more information in the state-wide program.
The project has been enabled by new legislation enacted in Olympia. You can read the new law on this topic here
Ford CEO Alan Mulally, who worked many years here in Renton as Boeing’s Commercial Airplane Chief, introduced the automaker’s first-ever zero-emissions vehicle earlier this month in his keynote address at the 2011 CES convention in Las Vegas. (Photo owned/hosted by CNET )
It’s a start!
This is a great step forward.
Now all we need are the vehicles to charge.
Anyone know where I can get an electric delivery van?
so all the taxpayers keep on paying for all this wasteful spending happening in Renton.
sweeet
So if this is Phase 1 (not the high speed charging), will there be a Starbucks and a bathroom installed at each station for the hours it takes to charge?
🙂
On a more serious note, while this is looking to the future, where is Renton on community WiFi today? You can serve a much larger group of citizens, and save them a whole lot of money right now, with community WiFi. We are getting ripped off every day for big bucks by Comcast, while Renton does what? (waits to win a Google contest?!) Lots of other cities are doing it, even Federal Way:
http://www.federalwaywireless.com/AboutUs.aspx
How ’bout it Randy? Without my huge Comcast bill, I could put that $700 per year into the local economy for a few extra lattes, etc. So could thousands of other Renton residents (do the math).
Renton does have a city wide wifi system in place called the Crown network:
http://rentonwa.gov/government/default.aspx?id=6122
It was built out a while ago, and there’s not much bandwidth, and there’s severe port blocking. However – I do know of two DRT business that use it in leu of DSL.