Skip to content
Grist home
All donations DOUBLED
  • Transit workers stop train to save toy bunny

    Casey Carey-Brown, a Boston woman who blogs about her daughter “Roozle,” has chronicled a harrowing story about childhood trauma narrowly averted by big-hearted transit workers. It concerns Roozle’s toy bunny Nummy, pictured above. (Roozle is the human child, Nummy is the bunny. I just don’t want you getting confused and thinking this was almost way […]

  • 4 out of 5 top transit cities are on the East Coast

    Walk Score put together a list of the country’s top transit cities, based on the company’s transit scores for more 1 million locations in the largest 25 cities with open public transit data. (Lack of data meant Atlanta and Phoenix were left out.) And, surprisingly, four out of the top five are on the East […]

  • Great idea: Bike accident report cards

    Bike lawyer Josh Zisson, of Bike Safe Boston, had these cards printed up so that bikers would have immediate legal recourse if they got in an accident. The cards sport a clear graphical representation of Massachusetts' bike laws, and space to record the details of the accident, the driver's plate number and insurance information, and […]

  • Top 10 greenest cities in North America

    It seems like we get a new list of greenest, most climate-change-prepared, most bike-friendly etc. cities every week or so. But we never really get tired of looking at these rankings, and checking them against each other to decide where we should fantasize about moving. Today, it's a list of the top greenest cities in North America from Siemens and the Economist Intelligence Unit. This ranking takes into account carbon emissions, land use, transportation, energy usage, buildings, water and air quality, waste, and environmental governance.

    Drumroll please for the top 10:

  • This clean air ad was deemed too hot for Boston public transit

    Man, is this ad from 350.org ever edgy! First, it has a big picture of Scott Brown -- granted, just his face, not even his pecs or anything, but you know what's implied by a picture of a congressman. Rowr! And just look at those naked facts, parading themselves around so shamelessly. No wonder the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority refuses to post it on trains.

  • The world’s top 10 walking cities [SLIDESHOW]

    Photo: Miss KA great city is a great walking city. So which is the greatest of them all? Travel book publisher Lonely Planet just surveyed its readers and asked them to pick the best walking cities in the world from a list of 186. Take a stroll through the top 10, counting down to the […]

  • Tearing down urban freeways to make room for a new bicycle economy

    This is the second column in a series focusing on the economics of bicycling. Here’s one way to fund bicycle infrastructure: Stop building freeways in cities. Better yet, tear down the ones we already have. Cities are starting to catch on that becoming bicycle friendly is one of the best investments they can make. Cities […]

  • Car free in Boston, for all the wrong reasons

    I’m currently in transportation transition. By the end of the month, I will have transferred my aging VW into my partner’s name, and canceled my own insurance. I will have tuned up my bike, spent a good chunk of money on a metro pass, and signed up with the local car-sharing business. But I’m not […]