Climate Transportation
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Russia lets VIPs ignore traffic laws
Do you hate sh*tty drivers? Well, in Soviet Russia, sh*tty driver hates YOU! Moscow's road rage problem is epic, perhaps due to the fact that their traffic solution involves giving special police-style sirens to "VIP" drivers (read: 900-plus important people, government officials and so forth, and the 900-plus folks who can get a hold of them in some other way). However poorly the U.S. is doing at managing traffic, Russian solutions make our roads look like a buggy path in Amish country.
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Cardboard bike helmets are safer than plastic
Yeah, it sounds a little Calvin & Hobbes, but riding around with corrugated cardboard on your head can actually be safer than the plastic and Styrofoam concoctions you get at the bike store. The Kranium cardboard bike helmet absorbs four times more impact energy than equivalent polystyrene. One helmet was smashed five times in a row and still had enough muscle to pass a standard safety test. And yeah, it's waterproof.
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A thrilling tale of bicycle revenge
K.C., who writes the blog A Girl and Her Bike, is a girl with a bike. She's also a District of Columbia police officer. But the second part's not so obvious when she's riding on a Capital Bikeshare bike, out of uniform and just trying to get home from work. Which is probably why some […]
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Bikes are now the hottest accessory
Bike lanes and bike riders may be controversial, but bikes as an image are marketing gold right now. Want to sell it? Put a bike on it! Transportation Nation found bikes for sale or used as display elements at Kate Spade, CB2, Club Monaco, Anthropologie, the Gap, Urban Outfitters, and Brooklyn Industries. Sure, those bikes […]
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Montreal has so many cyclists, it has bike traffic now
Like a shortage of bikes in a new bike sharing project, congestion in bike lanes is a problem cities should want to have, at least temporarily. And Montreal has that problem! So many people have begun using the city's most popular bike routes that more than 20 bikes often get backed up at red lights. […]
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This guy crashed his bike into a taxi for you
Casey Neistat moved out of the bike lane to avoid an obstruction — like a deliberately parked cop car? MAYBE — and got busted for not riding in the lane. But he's a good citizen; he paid his $50 debt to society and resolved to never, ever deviate from the bike lane again. Here is […]
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Bike shares are the new black
You know that bumper sticker on your Prius that says "My Other Car is a Bike"? You might want to slap on another next to it that says "And It's Not Even My Bike," because bikesharing systems are totally hot right now. There are now 400 bikeshares in western Europe, up from "a few" 10 […]
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Weiner’s bike lane position shows he’s an ass as well as a dick
Like everyone else, we've entered Super Head-Shaking Mode over Rep. Anthony Weiner and his penis picture problem. We'd be sorry to lose him, from a policy perspective — he's had a pretty good voting record on environmental issues, although his colleages apparently cannot say with certitude that he isn't a dick. But on the subject […]
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The grand tour: How bike tourism helps local economies
This is the eighth column in a series focusing on the economics of bicycling. Bike-friendly cities, off-road paths, and scenic country roads where cyclists can spin along in comfort aren’t just good for the people who live in those places. They also attract tourists. And tourists mean money for the local economy. Tourism is one […]
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How bicycles are fighting illiteracy and empowering women in India
The Indian state of Bihar has only a 33 percent literacy rate for women — the lowest in the country. But the state government, headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, is turning education for girls around — with bicycles. In 2007 Kumar instituted a plan to give schoolgirls money to buy bicycles once they successfully […]
