Burgerville – Fresh. Local. Sustainable

CEO, Jeff Harvey Considers the Future of Transportation

Commuting Pacific NW Style

I have to admit that the practice of sharing what goes on in my head as broadly as this makes me a little self conscious, but I am willing to jump in. Over the last couple of months transportation has been on my mind and the challenge of transforming a region/culture to more sustainable means of getting people and products from point A to point B in creative, efficient and environmentally friendly ways. This has been an interest of mine for years and through previous careers. It came to the forefront recently starting with our preliminary work to embrace the bicycle culture of Portland/Vancouver with our restaurant drive through lanes. This was followed by my participation in an eco-challenge put on by the Northwest Earth Institute where I gave up my car (mostly) for two weeks in favor of public transportation. I recently attended an event held in Portland where the bicycle Ambassador from Copenhagen presented an excellent and compelling over view of their transformation over the last 30+ years to a very robust bicycle culture. A few weeks ago I became a Zip Car member and have started utilizing their transportation tools. In short I have been gathering information. What I have learned really excites me.

Through these experiences and others I have been reminded how much I counted on, and enjoyed the public transportation system that I used every day I lived in the Bay area. It was easy to access and consistent, every 5 to 15 minutes. My experience of giving up my car for two weeks in favor of our local public transportation was more challenging. Routes to and from Camas/down town Vancouver were straightforward, but the schedule was sparse and did not allow for the variability of my commitments. Similarly the connections between downtown Vancouver and Portland were complex and required several transfers in order to get me to my appointments. I know that this is nothing new to those of you who use this system every day, but my experience has me curious about a couple of things. What is businesses’ role in forwarding a truly accessible system for public transportation and how do we get our hands around the depth of benefit to local business of this system? How does our experiences and work with our distribution partners in moving ingredients as efficiently and directly as possible contribute into this question? How can creativity and innovation break through the apparent limitations of time and money in our more traditional bureaucratic processes?

I am compelled to say that I am completely enamored with everything I heard about the bicycle culture of Copenhagen. I am not a deep bicycle devotee, but it is a lifestyle I want. I find that accessibility and safety are the main reasons that I hold back. They have effectively addressed these issues in Copenhagen. I think that we can address them as well. Again it leaves me curious about how business can more powerfully compel this kind of transformation?

Finally, I am optimistic and excited about the prospect of electric vehicles that we should start to see here in our area in the next two years. I have to admit that most of my transportation needs fit easily inside of the projected performance limits of the next generation electric vehicles that are coming. I will use this technology! I am asking myself how a distributed business model like ours can support the infrastructure requirements of this technology?

Great things are coming and there are some amazing opportunities on the horizon.