Inland cities work on plan to expand use of small electric cars
Soon residents may be able to zip all the way from Norco to Moreno Valley in small electric cars.
Corona, Moreno Valley, Norco and Riverside are working together on a plan to let residents drive through the region in neighborhood electric vehicles, or NEVs.
Similar to golf carts, NEVs are driven by electricity and have a top speed of about 25 mph. Unlike golf carts, they are street-legal. The vehicles must be registered at the DMV, and operators must have driver’s licenses. With safety features similar to cars, they can be legally driven on any street with a speed limit of 25 mph or less.
NEVs are perfect for most western Riverside County residents because so many of their car trips are only a few miles, said Paul Rodriguez, a principal with consulting firm Urban Crossroads and one of the plan’s creators.
“Why would you jump in an SUV when you could jump in an NEV? It’s fast, it’s convenient and you’re not burning fuel,” he said.
The plan, which started coming together in November, is a response to two pieces of California legislation. One calls for redesigning communities to discourage driving and encourage use of public transit, walking, cycling and use of alternative transportation, such as NEVs. The other calls for local municipalities to adopt plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2011.
Some locals, such as 26-year-old Riverside resident Nolen Forrester, are eager to see the plan in action.
“If people were to use them on a large scale, that would be a good solution. Not everybody needs to go on the freeway,” he said.
Forrester rides an electric motorcycle he built himself to his classes at Riverside City College.
The plan has one major drawback, Forrester said — the price of an NEV.
The cheapest costs $8,000, and expensive ones can run more than $20,000, said Gary Allenbrand, the vice president of sales in the western U.S. for Columbia Parcar Inc., an NEV manufacturer based in Wisconsin with an office in Corona.
Allenbrand said they cost a lot less than an electric or hybrid car and are cheaper to use and maintain.
An NEV will go between 40 and 60 miles on one charge, and a full charge costs 48 cents, he said. It takes five or six hours to fully charge the vehicle by plugging it into a household outlet.
Some cities allow for the electric vehicles by adding lanes for them.
Nobody has released an estimate of the cost yet, but Urban Crossroads designed the plan so cities could put it to use in two phases.
The first phase will be cheaper. It will add lanes to already existing roads, allowing NEVs to travel next to cars on roads with high speed limits.
The second phase will include building roads where none exist now. This phase is more expensive and can be built out whenever the city governments want.
In Lincoln, a city of 50,000 near the Sierra foothills 25 miles northeast of Sacramento, special roads were created for the residents’ more than 800 NEVS. “You got young families driving the kids to school, going to the store, to the playground,” Rodriguez said.
Palm Desert has a similar network of roads for golf carts, said Mark Diercks, a transportation engineer with the city. “It’s been pretty successful,” he said.
Special lanes on the roadways and other specially designed paths link the city’s many country clubs and golf courses, he said.
More than 150 golf carts are registered in Palm Desert.
Slow-moving vehicles mixing with fast-moving traffic usually creates a problem, but Palm Desert’s plan works fluidly, said Deputy Herlinda Valenzuela of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.
In 2009, only one of the 635 traffic collisions on Palm Desert streets involved a golf cart, according to Valenzuela.
Last month, Beaumont adopted a plan similar to Palm Desert’s. Its new golf cart lanes are set to open for use this summer, according to a city staff report.
Though the Neighborhood Electric Vehicle Plan is nearly complete, the four cities involved must still review and adopt it. This process will likely start later this month, Rodriguez said.
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