After Svante Myrick, 25, became the youngest-ever mayor of Ithaca, N.Y., he gave up his car to join the estimated 15 percent of his city's residents who walk to work. As mayor, however, Myrick has a prime downtown parking spot reserved for his exclusive use. So instead of letting it stand empty, last week he began to, as he put it, “turn the Mayor's parking space into a park space.”

A version of this article originally appeared on Transportation Nation.

Subway and bus ads are the latest battleground between New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s health department and soda makers. The newly formed New York City Beverage Association is taking a huge mass transit ad buy as part of a $1 million campaign to rebut the city’s claim that soda is unhealthy.

For months, the city has been running public service announcements linking sugary drinks to mountains of fat and waterfalls of sugar, including a graphic video (below) that claims drinking a can of soda a day can add 10 pounds in a year by showing a man pouring fat out of a can of soda and drinking it.

The Segway wasn't always just the transportation of choice for out-of-shape mall cops and tourists who can't be bothered to walk from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. When it was introduced, the idea was that it would render cars obsolete, making "walking" so quick and effortless that urban planners would be forced to start building cities at human scale.

Instead, a decade later, we're asking "hey, is there any way we could have a similar technology, but even lazier?" Honda has your answer. Its Uni-Cub is battery-powered and balance-controlled like a Segway, but instead of steering by shifting weight from foot to foot, you sit down and steer by shifting weight from cheek to cheek. Phew! All that standing still was getting really exhausting.

Last week, I wrote about my quest to buy a new car. We're sick of our minivan/land yacht and want something smaller and more fuel-efficient that will nonetheless fit our whole family (and our dog) for our daily city commute.

I received all sorts of helpful advice/tips/info in the comments on that post. It made me appreciate anew the great community we have here at Grist.

After so many years of doing this, I've even come to appreciate the more ... enthusiastic feedback. I learned that I should get a new wife because mine complains too much, that I should get rid of my dog, or leave the dog at home, that I should stop being a cosseted hypocrite and start getting my kids to school and doing my errands by bus or bike, and that above all, I should never, ever say anything nice about cars generally or any car specifically and that by doing so I have disgraced myself, disgraced Grist, and most likely disgraced the baby Jesus.

The Copenhagen Philharmonic really knows how to make a subway commute more beautiful. Musicians took over a train car during what looks like the morning rush hour, and gave riders a surprise performance of "Morning Mood" from the Peer Gynt suite (aka the music that plays any time a cartoon shows a sunrise).

If you worked in President Bartlet's White House, you would not have to worry about dying an early death from sitting all day, because the West Wing staffers are always walking! And talking! And walk-and-talking! About things like how no one realizes that the president actually can't fix gas prices.

And after you watch this West Wing reunion video from Funny or Die, you too will want to walk. Because President Bartlet gave an inspiring speech that referenced Greece, and due to the President Bartlet magic, it's effective even though he is old now and Charlie has a gross mustache. But if you need a real reason … well, as the staff says, walking helps prevent diabetes, stroke, all sorts of cancer, and depression. (They said it very quickly, so maybe you missed it.)

Apparently this adorable bike-guarding dog lives in Nanning, China, where he's known as Li Li the Bike Hugging Dog.

Drivers are always complaining how craaaazy bike riders are, what with their wanting to "share" the "road" and "biking" in "bike lanes." Well, it turns out that drivers are really bad at using the roads, too. And especially at using their TURN SIGNALS.

According to a new study from the Society of Automotive Engineers, 25 percent of the time, drivers do not use their turn signals when turning. And 48 percent of the time, drivers do not use their turn signals when changing lanes. 

Happy No-Pants Day! (Photo by James Calder.)

When it comes to transit, even the best of us have a bad attitude. In my own case, I ride the commuter train because it’s the lesser of evils: Driving to work sucks, and the train sucks a bit less. Among those with stronger environmental devotions, transit can be an obligation: We ride the bus or train because it’s the right thing to do, not because we enjoy it.

It doesn’t have to be that way, argues urban planner Darrin Nordahl. His potent new e-book, Making Transit Fun!, has all the enthusiasm for buses, trains, and bike lanes that its title’s exclamation point implies. Can transit incorporate art? Yes! How about playground equipment? You bet. Even … sex? Oh yeah, baby.

The automobile industry has employed the best designers and marketers (and even Posh Spice) to make driving cars cool, sexy, exhilarating -- and piss on transit options like biking. “Here is where we transit advocates need to take a lesson from Corporate America,” Nordahl writes. “You cannot get sufficient numbers of people to buy a product or service if it doesn’t excite them.”

Photo by Paul O'Donnell.

One man's trash is another man's airplane fuel.

Adventure-seeker Andy Pag aims to obtain funding and become the first person to fly a trash-fueled plane from one end of the U.K. to the other. His aircraft, a microlight plane, will be powered by gasoline made from un-recyclable plastics like bags and packaging.

The fuel is made by a British company using Fischer–Tropsch synthesis--a process of making synthetic fuel that dates back to before WWII. Pag says the fuel is worth highlighting because it produces limited CO2, and reduces the volume of plastics that otherwise would go to landfills.