Tag: china

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Business News Transportation

Bikes ORO’s Millennial Founder Looking to Bring One-for-One Business Model to Bikes

A Cincinnati native hosted an Indiegogo, a website similar to Kickstarter, launch party this past Thursday at Rhinegeist Brewery for a company called Bikes of Reckless Optimism (Bikes ORO).

While the main objective of the company is to foster healthier and more eco-friendly lifestyles for everyone, Chelsea Koglmeier, the company’s founder, also hopes to create easier transportation for children in developing countries.

Koglmeier, a former employee at the Over-the-Rhine-based tech start-up Roadtrippers, said that she took a trip to Kampala, Uganda about a year ago and realized that most of the children in refugee camps there had to walk 8 to 10 kilometers (5 to 6 miles) just to get to school every day.

“Sending a seven-year-old out to do that twice in a day is a lot, and having access to a bicycle makes it a lot more reasonable for their families to let their kids go,” Koglmeier said.

In a business model akin to Toms Shoes, Bikes ORO benefits people in need around the world by using the revenues from bikes sold to help provide bikes to those individuals.

With the help of Perth-based design firm Flying Machine, each bike has its own unique design, with manufacturing taking place in Tianjin, China where two prototypes for the bikes have features like Gates Belt Drives instead of chains, three speeds, and an internally geared hub.

Koglmeier says the purpose of what she calls a “lifestyle business” is not to make lots of money or have a massive impact on those in developing countries. Rather, she hopes that by getting more people on bikes, instead of in cars, will help create better communities.

“I’m much more likely to waive at someone on the street than I am to waive at them when I’m in a car,” Koglmeier explained to UrbanCincy. “That means a lot for cities, and I think Over-the-Rhine is a great example of it. It’s powerful.”

After launching the crowdfunding campaign a week ago, Bikes ORO has already raised more than $20,000, with a goal of raising a total of $45,000 by the end of March. Helping the fundraising effort is the fact that the company has already produced several bikes that people can see and test.

“Because she has an actual, physical product, it’s not like people are giving money to invest in a company that will at some point do something,” said Tatiana Parent, a friend and colleague of Koglmeier. “Some of that money is people actually buying bikes, so it makes it a bit different than a typical Indiegogo campaign.”

At the Rhinegeist event, aptly named Bikes and Brews, people were donating money and took a look at some of the bikes.

“It’s great to see Chelsea with a big turn-out like this,” said Mike Morgan, from Covington. “She seems to have a pretty spiffy product and I kind of wish that they were already selling the bikes because I need a new commuter.”

The company launch has already grown beyond the Cincinnati market, with four other parties in three other cities pending.

The growth is something that is telling of both Bikes ORO’s product, but also the founder’s vision for healthier and more engaged communities.

“It encourages us to think about our world and how we’re taking care of it,” Koglmeier concluded. “It also, especially in city situations, creates this sort of community that you don’t get otherwise.”

Those interested in contributing to the campaign can do so by making a pledge through Bikes ORO’s Indiegogo campaign page.

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Up To Speed

The amount of cement China is using will blow your mind

The amount of cement China is using will blow your mind.

A strange combination of events and economic circumstances, combined with China’s rapid urbanization, have resulted in an absolutely massive use of cement. We all know that China’s cities have been growing rapidly over the past several decades, but the fact that the People’s Republic used more cement in three years than the United States did during the entire 20th century is stunning. More from the Washington Post:

It’s a statistic so mind-blowing that it stunned Bill Gates and inspired haiku. But can it be true, and, if so, how? Yes, China’s economy has grown at an extraordinary rate, and it has more than four times as many people as the United States. But the 1900s were America’s great period of expansion, the century in which the U.S. built almost all of its roads and bridges, the Interstate system, the Hoover Dam, and many of the world’s tallest skyscrapers. And China and the U.S. are roughly the same size in terms of geographic area, ranking third and fourth in the world, respectively.

The statistic seems incredible, but according to government and industry sources, it appears accurate. What’s more, once you dive into the figures, they have a surprisingly logical explanation that reveals some fascinating differences between the two countries, and some ominous realities about China.

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Business News

While Limited in Size, Individuals With Limited English Capabilities Perform Well in Regional Economy

In the United States, more than 45 million working-age adults – over 20% – speak a language other than English in their homes.

According to a report released by the Brookings Institute, approximately 19.2 million (almost 10%) of this sub-population are considered “limited English proficient” (LEP). More than 70% of these LEPs participate in the work force, and the Brookings Institute found that they make considerably less (anywhere from 17-135%) than their English-proficient counterparts. These individuals, researchers found, are also more likely to suffer from unemployment and poverty.

While most LEP individuals live in the nation’s large metropolitan areas, like Cincinnati, their numbers are rapidly growing in smaller urbanized regions, like Dayton and Lexington.

In the Cincinnati metropolitan region, the number of LEP adults exceeds 35,000 and has grown 55.1% since 2000. This places the region in the top 25 of the 89 largest metropolitan areas in the nation; however, LEP individuals only make up 2.5% of the metropolitan region’s total workforce. This places Cincinnati 88th out of the 89 largest regions in America.

There has been a growing interest in this topic recently, with some organizations going as far to organize workshops to help non-native English speakers with business start-up and management training.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the report found that the most commonly spoken language by LEP individuals is Spanish. Across the nation, that percentage is 66.3%, but represents just 41.9% of the LEP population locally.

The Cincinnati region does, however, have a relatively high percentage of Asian and Pacific Island language LEP workers (35.2%), with Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japanese following Spanish as the top languages spoken. French speakers come in next at 3.9%.

It should be emphasized that while Germans represent the region’s predominant historical migrant community, the German language did not rank amongst the top five languages spoken within Cincinnati’s LEP community. This, however, may be the result of Germans immigrating to the region several generations ago. It also speaks to the complexity of the issue of immigration and the need for a comprehensive study of the matter.

Following national trends, the Brookings Institute found that LEP workers in Cincinnati are most likely to work in industries like manufacturing, accommodation and food service. Cincinnati’s LEP workers, however, were found to be slightly more educated than the national average, with a smaller percentage of individuals with less than a high school education and a larger percentage of individuals with an education level of at least some college or a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Those positive numbers seem to translate into better economic performance for the region, with more than 76% of Cincinnati’s LEP workers active in the regional workforce – a rate that is slightly better than the national average.

With demographers predicting that almost all growth in the U.S. labor force will come from immigrants and their children over the next half-century, these statistics have a large impact on the overall well-being of the American economy.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Listen to our podcast with Alfonso Cornejo, President of the Cincinnati Hispanic Chamber, and Kristin Hoffman, an Immigration/Administration Lawyer with Hammond Law Group, to learn more about the region’s efforts and needs to become more welcoming to immigrants and foreign language speakers.

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Up To Speed

Beijing to Moscow has better passenger rail service than Cincinnati to Chicago

Beijing to Moscow has better passenger rail service than Cincinnati to Chicago.

A route has been identified for a new Trans-Siberian high-speed rail route that would connect Moscow with Beijing. An existing route has been in place for more than 50 years, but takes six days to complete. The new route, by contrast, would complete the trip in just two days. For some perspective, the current Trans-Siberia route (4,350 miles) operates twice per week, which is the same level of service connecting Cincinnati and Chicago (300 miles). More from The Daily Mail:

The project would cost more than $230bn and be over 7,000km long – more than three times the world’s current longest high-speed line, from the Chinese capital to the southern city of Guangzhou. The railway would be a powerful physical symbol of the ties that bind Moscow and Beijing, whose political relationship has roots dating from the Soviet era and who often vote together on the UN Security Council.

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Business News

Take a Look at CVG’s Abandoned Concourse C Through Ronny Salerno’s Lens

Ronny Salerno has established himself as one of the region’s best photo journalists. He covers the stories not often given light in the typical news cycle. The stories he publishes on his website, Queen City Discovery, aren’t often current events, but they are always topical.

One of his more recent features that garnered national attention uncovered the history of a ghost ship left stranded downstream from Cincinnati in a small tributary to the Ohio River. Salerno has become well-known for his thoughtful coverage of abandoned buildings and their stories they hold.

The most recent feature of his looks at the now abandoned Concourse C at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG). While Concourse C was once a symbol of CVG’s prominence and significance, it is now a visual reminder of how far the airline industry in general, and the airport in specific, have fallen over the past decade.

Regional air travel, which is what Concourse C catered to through its Comair service, is becoming more and more a thing of the past. Throughout Europe, China, Japan and Korea, where inter-city high speed rail is prevalent, regional air travel has already fallen by the wayside. In North America, inter-city bus travel has grown in popularity while Amtrak sets ridership records each year.

But still, no sign of comprehensive inter-city high speed rail seems to be anywhere in the near future for Canada and the United States. What will that mean for metropolitan regions with millions of people, like Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Cleveland, now being left off the map? Smaller regions, like Birmingham, already lack expansive air service and must rely on larger metropolitan regions nearby for service.

Many cities and regions are being left off the map and have fewer and fewer transportation options to get from one city to the next. Who knows what that will mean for these people and regions in the future, but for now please take a look back at the history and stories of CVG’s Concourse C.

The Concourse: Part 1 – Island in a Stream of Runways
The Concourse: Part 2 – Unaccompanied Minor
The Concourse: Part 3 – The Film (embedded above)

The fall of 1994 was a good time for regional airliner Comair, the company had just opened a second hub in its hometown at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Regional Airport (CVG). Dubbed “Concourse C,” the building was an island in a stream of runways, accessible to passengers only via shuttle busses and the flights they arrived on. The concourse was always a center of human activity amongst the tarmac – featuring shops, eateries and over 50 gates to destinations across the continental United States.

It was a place where people reunited, strangers shared drinks between travels and employees fought the daily grind.

Comair was purchased by Delta Airlines in 2000 and both airlines plunged into bankruptcy protection by 2005. After emerging from bankruptcy in 2007, Delta began to scale back Comair flights and eventually relocated all operations to another section of the airport in 2008. Concourse C was left abandoned. In 2012, Delta completely folded Comair.

Today, Concourse C still remains out in the middle of the runways: no passengers, few visitors and closed off to the general public. It’s eerily quiet state is a stark contrast to the sea of humanity that once flowed through it. On a recent exclusive tour of the facility, I was able to make this short film in addition to several photographs.