I've had to be in London four or five times over these past few years. Whenever I've seen cyclists there slogging through traffic under leaden skies they've always looked like a valiant but bedraggled endangered species. Something fighting to stay alive in a hostile environment. That may be changing.
On Monday London launched two new “cycle superhighways” designed to give bike commuters secure and direct access to the city center. Ten more will be put in by 2012 (see map here). Mayor Johnson is quoted on the BBC calling for a militant “cycling revolution.” Johnson? Militant cyclist? Really?
There is no question that we are seeing a transition in the way that cities see cyclists. London is following in the footsteps of cities like Montreal, Portland, and New York City,...
by Noah Kazis
It's amazing how much a strong transit system can reshape the city around it. And not just through the physical changes that transit brings, but the mental ones too. A transit system can reshape the way we imagine or understand our surroundings. In some cities, for example, you identify your location with the nearest subway stop, not a neighborhood. "I work near Metro Center" is a pretty common statement in Washington D.C. When you spend enough time on transit, individual stations start to take on meaning, shared or personal.
The Train Stop Guide website would allow you to rate and describe every train stop in Chicago. (Image: Carfree Chicago)
As a way of exploring the cultural resonances that build up around transit, you couldn't do much better than this exercise...
Looking back one, two and five years ago today on Worldchanging:
2009
Making Buses Cool Again
Joe Romm looks at bus rapid transit (BRT) as a solution to curbing "the world’s emissions—from industry as well as transportation—without preventing poor countries from developing and lifting their people out of poverty"...
2008
Al Gore, Clean Energy and A Better Nation
Although Alex Steffen normally tries "to think in planetary terms and avoid parochial nationalism," he writes that "today a global perspective actually leads me to believe that what happens in America over the next 18 months is the most important global uncertainty we face." He introduces and discusses Al Gore's speech, which shows what an American determined to lead would look like...
2005
Inveneo
Jamais Cascio...
In Airline Business,Asky Airlines:...is part-owned by Ethiopian Airlines (which we recently did a cover profile on) and the two airlines are working together to create a West African hub at Lome. The start-up is led by former Ethiopian commercial vice-president Busera Awel...This is a regional carrier, which is good for the continent. Africa needs more point-to-point services, helped along by the support of a strong and well-respected partner...[continue reading]Related articles by ZemantaBattle for African Skies as Ethiopian Airlines Gets Ready to Join Star Alliance...
by Eric Hess
Last December, Alan Durning and Eric de Place co-authored an article in the Tyee calling for Pay-As-You-Drive car insurance in British Columbia. One reader was so inspired, he made this six-minute video encouraging viewers to sign a petition to bring PAYD to BC:
It's definitely worth a watch; a good rundown on the benefits of PAYD, and the challenges it faces. Live in BC? Help spread the word.
This post originally appeared on Sightline Daily.
More on PAYD in the Worldchanging archives:Pay-Per-Mile Car Insurance: It's Coming
Insurers Can Have A Constructive Role in Fighting Global Warming
Netherlands Plans Massive Road-Pricing Scheme
Worldchanging Interview: Nancy Kete on the Future of the American Transportation System
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Helium-powered ships could be carrying freight – and even passengers – in as little as a decade's time.
(An example of the future of airship freight, a carrier by German company CargoLifter)
by Juliette Jowit
Fresh fruit, vegetables, flowers and other foreign luxuries could be part of a global revolution by carrying cargo around the world in airships instead of planes, one of the UK's leading scientists has predicted.
The government's former chief scientific adviser, Professor Sir David King, now director of the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at the University of Oxford, told a conference that massive helium balloons – or blimps – would replace aircraft as a key part of the global trade network as a way of cutting global warming emissions.
Despite...
In Bankelele, formalizing the informal:There was a small advert in the Nation this week for a private placement to raise Kshs 600 million ($7.5 million) as investments in the public service vehicle (PSV) transport business.The promoters, PSV Investments, say they have already investment in PSV’s commonly known as matatu’s through transport companies, savings & credit societies (SACCO’s), and individual owners. They are selling 6 million shares at 100 shillings each, with a minimum investment of 5,000 (~$62) for individuals and 100,000 (~$1,250) for institutions, and the Vice Chairman is Dickson Mbugua who’s often on TV defending the Matatu Industry as an official and a spokesman. It opened on May 17 and closes on July 3...[continue reading].Watch related video on Kenya's...
Here's a nice catch, from alert reader Callie Jordan: transportation guru Reid Ewing discussing his new, comprehensive study of the links between community design and transportation. Here's Ewing:
The best way to minimize driving appears to be to develop in existing centers near the core of the metropolitan area, in areas of high destination accessibility where there are a whole lot of jobs near by...[O]ther factors like mixed-use and intersections and block size...fall into a second group that is less important than destination accessibility...
Density turns out as less important than land-use mix...If you’re trying to minimize vehicle miles traveled and maximize walking and transit, you’re better off emphasizing mixed-use and destination accessibility than just bumping up...
Today is "Dump the Pump" day in the U.S. and Americans are encouraged to ride public transit instead of driving. The purpose of "Dump the Pump" day is to raise awareness for all the financial and energy-saving benefits of using public transportation -- nothing wrong with that! Increased use of public transportation is integral to bright green cities. In addition to the personal financial and energy-savings benefits of taking public transit it is also the single most effective way to cut one's personal quotient of carbon dioxide pollution. Of course, one of the biggest obstacles to people using public transportation is learning how the system works--where to go, when to go, etc. There are a few online mapping tools that can help, such as Google Transit, and here's another:...
In 2007, Erica Barnett wrote a story about the Toyota Prius that generated a big discussion in the comments section about the high, and misleadingly hidden, net energy and life cycle costs of hybrid car batteries. Today, I read "When Electric-Car Batteries Die, Where Will They End Up?" in The New York Times, which explored recent developments in post-auto uses for extending the life of hybrid- and electric-car batteries. As the author Don Sherman wrote, the disposal and lifespan of these car batteries are very important to managing the positive (or at minimum: the better than bad) environmental impact drivers of these cars seek:
A decade from now, owners of electric cars, having driven their share of clean and green miles, may encounter a dashboard light flashing an unwelcome...
Here are two recent stories on unexpected ways to grow biking in America that caught my eye:
More Immigrants, Please
Roger Valdez at Sightline writes:
I’m starting to think that maybe more immigrants might help our country’s [the U.S.] transportation systems and culture, especially after reading a recent study by UCLA professor Michael Smart entitled US immigrants and bicycling: Two-wheeled in Autopia which found that immigrants—legally or illegally in the US—are twice as likely as Americans to travel primarily by bicycle.
[...]
So however new people arrive in our country, and whatever their status when they are here, clearly they are bringing a bike and alternative transportation culture with them. And we can learn from them. One important implication of the study is that...
Looking back one, two and five years ago today on Worldchanging:
2009
Parking Policies Can Reduce Car Use
Roger Valdez wonders: Does parking determine your transportation choices?...
2008
Common Sense, Freely Available
Download a free-yet-attractively-designed PDF of Tom Paine's Common Sense of your very own...
2005
Seed Banks and the Global Crop Diversity Trust
Alex Steffen examines the Global Crop Diversity Trust as an answer to the struggles many seed banks are experiencing trying to preserve a global crop of diverse seeds...
Other recent "look backs":
June 4
June 7
June 8
Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!
(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Transportation at 10:00 AM)...
Looking back one, two and five years ago today on Worldchanging:
2009
Bike Safer, Bike Smarter, BikeWise
To help make biking safer we need to make it smarter. Enter Bikewise, a new collaborative information site where bike commuters can enter reports about thefts, crashes and hazards...
2008
Nothing for today!
2005
What Does Peak Oil Look Like?
James Cascio looks the "Peak Oil" conversation; he provides a useful visual companion to the peak oil argument via Green Car Congress and links to political blogger Kevin Drum's three-part series of posts that go into more detail about peak oil arguments, while avoiding the energy industry jargon that often infects them...
Other recent "look backs":
May 27
May 28
May 31
Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!
(Posted by WorldChanging Team...
Flying dwarfs any other individual activity in terms of carbon emissions, yet more and more people are traveling by air. With no quick technological fix on the horizon, what alternatives — from high-speed trains to advanced videoconferencing — can cut back the amount we fly?
by Elisabeth Rosenthal
In most departments I have excellent green credibility, and my carbon footprint is small. I have not owned a car in more than 20 years and commute to work by subway. I walk to the market and generally no longer buy produce flown in from far away. I recycle. I have an air-conditioner, but use it only on the hottest of days. I have gone paperless with all my bills.
But my good acts of responsible environmental stewardship are undercut by one persistent habit that will be hard to...
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by Noah Kazis
New York City residents save at least $19 billion each year by driving less than other Americans, according to a new report from the non-profit CEOs for Cities. "New York City's Green Dividend" [PDF] makes the case that investing in transit, walking, and cycling isn't just better for the environment, it's great for our wallets and essential for the local economy.
(Graphic: CEOs for Cities)
As Pete Donohue reported in the Daily News, the report also shows how New York City simply doesn't have the space for car-dependency. To match the car-ownership rates of the average American urban area -- not even the worst of the worst -- New York would require room for 4.5 million more cars. If each car was given only one very small parking space -- and cars demand more than...
[Image: Strato Lab; photo via Gregory P. Kennedy]
The Strato Lab project was a manned, high-altitude balloon project from the 1950s that ascended with its crew above 80,000 feet several times. The pilots performed scientific observations there, including taking observations of Venus through an on-board telescope.
The specific experiments interest me less, however, than the architectural possibilities of inhabited balloons in the stratosphere. The Strato Lab was a kind of sky-throne, regal and airborne over the continents below.
[Image: Strato Lab as sky-throne; photo via Gregory P. Kennedy]
Historian Gregory P. Kennedy has the story over on his website; he includes technical details about how the Strato Lab worked, as well as some thoughts about its position in design...
What’s infrastructure?
Colleagues at the Berkman Center have spent a lot of intellectual energy on this question lately. They’ve been lucky enough to have Christian Sandvig, communications scholar and technology critic, with them this past year, and he’s convened a group dedicated to the discussion, dissection and understanding of the infrastructures that make our contemporary world possible.
I, for reasons of a transportation infrastructure that makes it expensive, environmentally irresponsible and inconvenient to commute the 300 miles round trip to Boston more than a couple of times a month, haven’t been part of Christian’s infrastructure group. And so I don’t know whether my definition of infrastructure is wrong, derivative or merely flip:
Infrastructure is the...
If Katla (above: she's Eyjafjallajökull's much bigger sister) blows, and grounds flights forever, will this finally be Dr Storkey's moment?
The blogwaves are already filled with links to Seat 61. But as I've Cassandra'd repeatedly (yes, I've made it into a verb) train travel is not all that light once total system costs are factored in.
As the graph shows, the best motorized way, by far, to move long distances is by coach. Buses produce 29g of CO2 for every passenger kilometer traveled, compared with 52g for trains and 170g per passenger km for cars and airplanes.
[Plug-in electric cars are very popular with politicians and car companies: they embody the myth that we can all carry on driving around in private vehicles as normal, and the planet gets saved. It's a dangerous...
(March 2010)
Top stories from our Canadian blog:
YikeBike, the first of the minifarthings | Mark Tovey
"In the tradition of the Segway and Dominic Hargreaves' folding mountain bike, comes the Yike. Like the Segway, it's a very compact, electric way of getting around. Like Hargreaves' invention, it folds into a compact form. However it's smaller and lighter than both of them. It weighs less than 10kg, and you can carry it in a shoulder bag."
The World's Free Virtual School: an interview with Salman Khan | Hassan Masum
"Salman Khan is the man behind Khan Academy, a 2009 Tech Award winning site with 12+ million views and 1200+ 10-minute "videos on YouTube covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, chemistry, biology and...
The BBC reports:The Rwanda 'Biodiesel Express' runs entirely on oil plants, animal fats and even used cooking oil from restaurants..."Using 100% biodiesel reduces carbon monoxide emissions by 48%," says Jean Baptiste Nduwayezu, head of the Institute of Scientific and Technological Research (IRST)...researchers estimate that 225,000 hectares of oil plants - such as avocado, moringa and jatropha - would be needed to supply the whole of Rwanda with bio-diesel.More herevia Innovation...
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In the United States, designated bike lanes and a growing bike culture have started to garner mainstream attention. And bicyclists now have a giant ally—Google.
At the 10th Annual American Bike Summit in Washington, D.C. two weeks ago, Google announced their maps feature will include bike routes for 150 U.S. cities. The feature includes 15,000 miles of off-street bike trails gathered by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that has collected trail info for its website since 2007.
Google made the decision after receiving a petition with more than 50,000 signatures for bike routes to be added to its maps. Google Maps introduced driving directions in 2005, and in 2007 the site added transit routes. Pedestrian navigation followed a year later....
"...Map Kibera trained 13 youth, one from each village of Kibera, in the tools and techniques of OpenStreetMap. Over three weeks, assisted by local GIS professionals, the youth collected data with GPS units and edited their map using open source software. Since we were newcomers to Kibera, this was made possible through strong local partnerships with Kenyan organizations Carolina for Kibera and SODNET (Social Development Network). We also engaged widely with the technical and international development communities in Nairobi, building relationships for the project and involving participants from the wider society..."-websiteRelated articles by ZemantaMap Kibera Is An Initiative To Create A Digital Map Of Kenyas' Biggest Slum (techmasai.com)Nairobi: Mapping Party (ushahidi.com)Faces of...
Chevy Volt designer Jelani Aliyu discusses his love of cars, design and more:photo courtesy of Motor Trendvia African...
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Bixi – Montreal's innovative approach to bike sharing – just keeps expanding. The system began in Montreal in 2009. Plans to bring it to Toronto, Ottawa, New York, Chicago, London were reported last Fall.But it seems that Melbourne and Minneapolis have beaten at least some of them to the punch. Both cities concluded negotiations with the Montreal based non-profit that manages Bixi earlier this month. Bikes are scheduled to be rolling in Melbourne in May and in Minneaplis by June.There are also plans to allow Bixi users from one city to use bikes in other Bixi cities. What a great idea. The systems is based on a network of solar powered bike rental nodes that can be easily installed and moved depending on usage. The nodes also update bike availability info in...
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