transportation
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Bipedal? Curious? Americans give walking and biking a try
More Americans are opting to walk or bike, rather than driving a car. Apparently, that message hasn’t gotten through to Congress.
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House Republicans’ transportation bill contains zero good policy
House Republicans are going to unveil their transportation bill today, and it is expected to have a ton of backwards ideas in it. These include: Spending more money on highways than anything else Encouraging private companies to expand highways and charge for the use of those lanes Funding highway work through oil and gas drilling […]
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Swedish cities could connect via bike superhighway
In Sweden, city planners and the country’s traffic authority are looking into building a four-lane bike superhighway between the university town of Lund and Malmö, Sweden’s third-largest cities and one of its most diverse. Cities like London have invested in protected lanes that they call “bike superhighways,” but this one would be one of the […]
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Mexico City cuts crime by banning cars
Banning cars from Mexico City's Centro Historico and replacing streets with pedestrian pathways has increased nighttime foot traffic and decreased crime, say local business owners. Before the street got pedestrianized, neighborhood business owners used to strike "unspoken" agreements with the local thieves, says Rogelio Murrieta, who owns a printing business on Regina. "The thieves who […]
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2012 will probably best record-setting 2011 for gas prices
This year broke all previous records for amount spent by the average American household on gasoline — us car-having suckers spent $4,155! As Jonathan Fahey pointed out in the Associated Press, in an unusually informative and clear-eyed look at the pedestrian impact of the planet's slow-motion oil crunch: "That is 8.4 percent of what the […]
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Merry Bikesmas: A 1970s Schwinn livens up a family holiday
Photo: Joe Penniston This year, as we have in years past, my wife and I packed up the kids and flew across the country to spend the holidays with her family in suburban Baltimore. Christmas at the Thomas house is always a festive affair: crab soup, wine by the bottleful, quality time with grandma and […]
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Highway to hell: More roads = more traffic
Photo: Cyril PlapiedCross-posted from Sightline Daily. Tuesday’s news carries a story that I’ve been expecting for a while: Connecting Washington, a task force convened by Washington’s governor, has called for $21 billion in new transportation investments over the next 10 years. I haven’t seen the recommendations themselves, only the news report. But it looks like […]
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Cities: Not quite as awesome as we like to think
Photo: David Graham If you Google the term “a scholar and a gentleman,” the first result to pop up is a picture of Witold Rybczynski — or it would be if there were any justice in the world. Rybczynski is an architect, author, and professor of urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania. He has written […]
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Green giants: Seattle gets even greener, starting with its biggest buildings
Brian Geller, executive director of the Seattle 2030 DistrictPhoto: Greg HanscomSeattle, a.k.a. the Emerald City, looms Oz-like in the imaginations of eco-minded architects and designers. Its reputation for being uber green drew architect Brian Geller to the city from New York a few years ago. Now, he looks at the skyline rising above Elliott Bay […]
