cars

Does your car really need that oil change? Probably not.

How often does a car need an oil change? Ask Jiffy Lube, and it's a flat 3,000 miles. According to car manufacturers, however, their products can go anywhere from a low of 5,000 miles to a high of 10,000 before an oil change is necessary. The Stranger crunched the numbers and found that if you […]

Sarah Laskow Energy

How Baby Boomers doomed the exurbs

Homes and strip malls in America's outer-ring suburbs, which contained most of the country's most expensive homes in the 1990s, are now worth less than what it cost to build them. And the land beneath them is worth effectively zero, says Brookings Institution senior fellow Christopher B. Leinberger, in a powerful op-ed arguing that the […]

Christopher Mims Buildings

Guerrilla bike lanes and asphalt devils: Remaking the streets with protest art

Photo: c/o Peter GibsonWhen Peter Gibson first set out with spray paint and stencils into the streets of Montreal, he had protest on his mind, not art. He had little sense that his small act of sabotage would usher him into the boundary-pushing realm of street art — or land him in the back of […]

Greg Hanscom Culture

Why cities should destroy their highways

America has a huge transportation infrastructure deficit, which means lots of our highways are due to be rebuilt. But according to Next American City editor at large Diana Lind, we'd be better off simply knocking them down, especially the ones that blight our cities. It's been done before, reports Andrew Nusca at SmartPlanet: After the […]

Christopher Mims Buildings

Mercedes mows down Occupy protestors

Where's the mayor of Vilnius when you need him? This video shows a Mercedes nearly hitting two Occupy Oakland protestors at slow speed as they cross the street, causing one of them to first make a "stop" motion and then bang twice on the hood — at which point the driver decided to just run […]

Jess Zimmerman Cities

True confessions of a bicycle scofflaw

Photo: mad driversOkay, confession time: I’m one of “those” cyclists. You know, the ones who are giving us all a bad name, the ones who think we’re above the law, who regularly pass through stop signs without stopping — even without slowing down very much. I even ran a red light or two in my […]

Elly Blue Transportation

The facts on Fisker: The media’s latest faux scandal

Having exhausted the Solyndra faux scandal, the media is now trying to gin up another one, casting suspicion on a Department of Energy loan to Fisker Automotive for the production of electric cars. The facts, needless to say, do not support the hype.

David Roberts Economics

New interactive report shows how Americans got trapped in their gas-guzzlers

The New America Foundation has a new, sharp report out on what they call "the energy trap." With prices for gas climbing, many Americans want other, better options for getting around, but they have little choice but to keep pouring money into the gas stations. Just check out the map in the first chapter to watch the country go from light pink (less than $300 spent on gas per month per household) to dark red (greater than $400 spent) in one year.

To understand America's abusive relationship with gasoline and cars, NAF interviewed "scores of people" and conducted a sociological survey about gas prices.