transportation
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Everyone in Beijing is ditching bikes, except for the foreigners
In 1986, 60 percent of the citizens of Beijing rode bikes; now 17 percent do.
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Car-centric neighborhoods linked to childhood obesity, finger-wagging
It should come as no surprise that children who live in neighborhoods that aren't walkable, lack playgrounds, and are full of fast food joints are twice as likely to be obese as kids in pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods with access to healthy foods.
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Americans walk less than any other industrialized nation
Here are the juicy bits of Tom Vanderbilt's new series on walking.
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Young people drive 23 percent less, bike 40 percent more than they used to
The kids are all right: Between 2001 and 2009, the average number of miles that young’uns spent tooling around in a car dropped from 10,300 miles per capita to 7,900.
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How the new NYC taxi is bike-friendly
New York City's new taxis have sliding doors, so that there's no danger that a tourist from the flyover zone will thoughtlessly door a passing cyclist when he or she hops out.
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One mile on a bike is a $.42 economic gain to society, one mile driving is a $.20 loss
Copenhagen, the bicycle-friendliest place on the planet, publishes a biannual Bicycle Account, and buried in its pages is a rather astonishing fact.
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Watch today’s solar flare erupt from the sun
Two solar flares burst out of the sun on March 6. NASA notes: “One of the most dramatic features is the way the entire surface of the sun seems to ripple with the force of the eruption.” Badass! The first flare was the second largest of this solar cycle (which started in 2009), and it’s […]
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Critical List: The gas boom scam; Bieber’s electric car
In Rolling Stone, Jeff Goodell looks at “the scam behind the gas boom.” What really makes money for a natural gas company? “Buying and flipping the land that contains the gas,” Goodell reports. A team of scientists has discovered how to use wastewater’s bacteria to create electricity. For his 18th birthday Justin Bieber received (among […]
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Critical List: State Department working to reduce emissions; transportation bill vote delayed
The State Department is going to announce this morning a program to reduce shorter-lived greenhouse gases, like methane. The House won’t vote on Republicans’ transportation bill of horrors quite yet. Worldwide, 92 percent of freshwater water goes to agriculture. Mining in Mongolia — good for China, maybe not the best idea for the desert environment […]