urban transit
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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 […]
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One-wheeled electric motorcycle is like a Segway, but cool
Sure, the RYNO looks like the hideous progeny of a motorcycle and a unicycle (nobody likes to talk about that night behind the circus tents), but it could be your new means of urban transportation. It runs off a lithium-ion battery that recharges in 90 minutes, has a smaller footprint than a Vespa, and is […]
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How do you design a bike that will make people give up cars?
Oregon Manifest is a challenge, sponsored in part by Levi's, to bike designers and constructors to build "The Ultimate Modern Utility Bike." The bike must have features like built-in anti-theft devices, fenders, lighting, load-carrying capability, and kickstand. Bikes entered into the contest will be tested on a 50 mile course that covers city and dirt roads, asphalt, gravel, hills, and stairs. The winner receives a $3,000 prize.
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New report quantifies just how much a car commute crushes your soul
The Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University has released its annual Urban Mobility Report, which includes data on how much time, money, and mental health urban-area car commuters lose to congestion every year. Spoiler alert: Car commuting is expensive, crazy-making, and bad for the environment.
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Six reasons free parking is the dumbest thing you didn't know you were subsidizing
The U.S. has as many as eight parking spaces per car. That's more than a billion parking spaces, or one for every person in China, should they need them once they're done buying all our post-crash assets for jiǎos on the yuán. This isn't just overkill -- it's stupid, destructive, expensive overkill.
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Follow-up on Seattle's proposed deep-bore tunnel
A roundup of basic info on the impending decision to build a huge, car-centric mega-tunnel under downtown Seattle.
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Seattle's impending car-centric mega-tunnel: a chat with urbanist Cary Moon
Despite their ostentatious talk on climate, many Pacific Northwest political leaders don't seem to be making the transportation connection. Nowhere is that more evident than in the fight over how to replace Seattle's crumbling Alaskan Way Viaduct, a two-mile-long elevated stretch of State Route 99 running along the city's waterfront. The alternative with the most momentum is a gigantic bored tunnel -- a concrete-heavy, emissions-intensive, multi-billion-dollar piece of old-school highway infrastructure devoted almost entirely to cars, shuttling suburban drivers past the urban core. Sustainable urbanism advocate Cary Moon explains WTF.
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Will Los Angeles ever be something besides a "suburban metropolis"?
In the Los Angeles Times, architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne writes about the widening gap between those who favor a denser, more pedestrian-friendly LA and those who would prefer to remain in their cars.
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Does new public transit increase gentrification and lower ridership?
Smart Planet points us to a report from the Dukakis Center at Northeastern University that concludes that new transit can lead to gentrification.