Climate Transportation
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Breaking: George Will takes the train, may have been collectivized
Its power is spreading.Photo: travisA few weeks back, as we wrote here, Newsweek columnist George Will wrote a screed against rail travel in which he made a startling suggestion about the true motivation behind the Obama administration’s support for rail transportation: [T]he real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ […]
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Arnold Schwarzenegger and the mayor of London walk into a bike share …
That's not a joke setup, it's just Thursday. The Governator and the London mayor tooled around on two-wheelers today, looking awkward and getting hollered at by photogs, to promote Mayor Boris Johnson's new bike share plan for the city. Schwarzenegger praised bikes' ability to let you "eat a few extra wiener schnitzel and … get […]
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Bike-lane-hatin’ Rep. Anthony Weiner hates paying parking tickets, too
Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) hates bike lanes. He also, Roll Call discovered, hates parking legally — or paying the penalties when he gets ticketed for doing it illegally. Until very recently — that is, until someone caught him at it — Weiner owed $2,180 in unpaid tickets to D.C. How exactly does he suggest we […]
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Pedaling away from the health care crisis
This is the third column in a series focusing on the economics of bicycling. In the United States, we have the most expensive health care system in the world. We collectively invest more than 15 percent of our GDP — that’s around $2 trillion, or $5,700 per person — into health care every year. The […]
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Why Car Drivers with a Clue Support Bicycle Infrastructure
Photo courtesy of therozblog via Flickr Imagine what it would feel like to accidentally maim, cripple for life, or kill a bicyclist (daughter, wife, mom, son, husband, dad, teenager or kid) with your car, regardless of who got the traffic ticket. On top of that guilt, imagine the potential for an emotionally and financially devastating […]
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Minn. state Rep. Mike Beard prepares to devastate Twin Cities transit, economy, residents
Rep. Mike Beard.Minnesota state Rep. Mike Beard (R) is famous among people who enjoy laughing at stupid things politicians say. A sampling: You may recall his argument against high-speed rail: “We already have highways.” His argument that coal mining hasn’t done any damage to the earth: “When we were done, we put it all back […]
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Batteries are not the future of green cars, says smartest guy in room
Elon Musk is a dizzyingly accomplished badass as well as a quirky workaholic, which makes him kind of like Nikola Tesla minus the full-contact pigeon fancying. And hey, that’s exactly what he named his electric automobile company, Tesla Motors. Musk, who has built Tesla’s entire business on the advanced, computer-controlled battery technology his engineers developed […]
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Plug-in Prius not worth it, economically
Bengt Halvorson of Green Car Reports did the math on whether or not it’s worth it to buy the forthcoming plug-in version of the Toyota Prius, and the math is ugly: The Prius has a small battery that holds only enough charge to take the vehicle 14 miles, but that battery charges relatively quickly — […]
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How women rode the bicycle into the future [SLIDESHOW]
“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel.” — Susan B. Anthony, 1896How important was the bicycle in changing the role of women in […]
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Police apologize to cyclist for all the wrong reasons
Well, this is a first: On Tuesday, New York City-dwelling cyclists who were ticketed for speeding in Central Park got their tickets retracted and personal apology visits from the police. But the police were only apologizing because of a trivial breach of protocol, when in fact the tickets were apparently unfair from start to finish. […]
