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cars

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    Did we just hit peak cars?

    Phil Goodwin, a transport economist at Oxford University, has a pile of statistics saying that car use is already on the decline — in the U.K. In its place, walking, bicycling, and trains are roaring back to life.  Transport economists never predicted the precipitous drop-off in use of rail or buses in the early part […]

    Christopher Mims Cities

  • Arcimoto is an electric car for the Facebook generation

    Marketers are learning that kids don't want cars anymore. They blame it on Facebook — kids don't need cars to socialize — instead of facing up to the reality: cars suck. They are boring and dirty and no longer integral to teenage courtship rituals. This car, however, does not suck: Announced just last week, the Arcimoto […]

    Christopher Mims Technology

  • The solution to the parking problem is charging through the nose for it

    Normally, when a resource is scarce, we let the market set its price. So why not do the same with parking? That's what the city of San Francisco has decided to to, because it is populated with geniuses who own iPads and still manage to get a tan. By using “demand pricing” — in which […]

    Christopher Mims Buildings

  • Desperate sprawl developer gives away cars with houses

    Desperate measures.My head nearly exploded at the breakfast table on Saturday morning. I was reading a piece in The New York Times about an Illinois developer who has finally found a way to unload the new houses he has built some 50 miles from downtown Chicago, in a place he has seen fit to dub […]

    Sarah Goodyear Buildings

  • The iPad of electric cars will be available in 2012 — for as little as $8,000

    The Mitsubishi i-MiEV is so button-cute it makes the BMW mini look like the smash-faced cyclops from Jason and the Argonauts, and if you are one of a handful of lucky Americans, you might be able to pick one up at a price that matches its diminutive size. The list of requirements you have to […]

    Christopher Mims Technology

  • Thinking ‘like an Avon Lady’ to get suburban workers on transit

    Making a greener office park.Photo: Keith CuddebackFascinating case study in The Atlantic about getting people out of their cars and onto transit for their commute. Lisa Margonelli writes about a program at a suburban California office park that has had huge success in encouraging workers to leave the car at home — by emphasizing the […]

    Sarah Goodyear Housing

  • Surprise! Times Square air cleaner now that cars are gone

    Refreshing, isn’t it?Photo: Ed Yourdon Despite positive reviews from local business owners, area workers, tourists, and other human beings, New York Post columnist Steve Cuozzo won’t stop frothing at the mouth about the pedestrian plazas in New York’s Times Square, lamenting that the once car-clogged streets have become “asphalt loitering grounds,” and that the redesign […]

    Sarah Goodyear Health

  • Walk this way: How to get a crosswalk on your street

    Too many American streets and roads are missing something.Photo: Nicholas_TCreating an environment where people can get across the street without being killed by a driver should be a top priority for the people who design our streets and roads, don’t you think? Sad to say, it isn’t always so. You only have to take a […]

    Sarah Goodyear Culture

  • The economic case for on-street bike parking

    This is the fourth column in a series focusing on the economics of bicycling.  Bicycling and driving have one thing in common that is almost universally frustrating, time consuming, friction causing, and potentially expensive. Parking. No matter how seamless your ride across town, no matter how well-timed the traffic lights or low-conflict the bike lanes, […]

    Elly Blue Technology