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Crunching the Numbers ($$$) on Bike Commuting
Michael Graham Richard, Treehugger
“I knew I was benefiting myself and the environment by commuting without a car, but to see the real impact is very amazing.”
If you want to get around faster than your feet can take you while doing as little harm as possible, the bicycle is your best option. An unnamed author has recently started documenting his experience with becoming a bicycle commuter, and the results are interesting (and hopefully encouraging enough that others will do the same!). In a recent post, he does a little math to see how much money his new green commuting habits are saving him (without forgetting all the non-monetary benefits).
His whole post is worth reading (especially if you’ve never seen the math done on commuting by bike vs by car), but here are some highlights:
In two months I have had the following impact:
* I’ve saved $47 in gasoline expenses and the equivalent of $457 in fixed costs for a total savings of $471.49 when accounting for bus costs.
* Burned 22,356 calories which if I had been eating a normal diet is the equivalent of 6.4 pounds of fat!
* I have kept 543 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere (19.546 lbs per gallon and my car gets an average of 21 MPG).
Image: CarFree.us
(09 March 2010)
Want to Foster Walking, Biking and Transit? You Need Good Parking Policy
Ben Fried, SFStreetsBlog.org
The high-water mark for American parking policy came in the early 1970s, when cities including New York, Boston, and Portland set limits on off-street parking in their downtowns. They were compelled to do so by lawsuits brought under the Clean Air Act, which used the lever of parking policy to curb traffic and reduce pollution from auto emissions. This level of innovation went unmatched over the ensuing three-and-a-half decades. Only now are American cities implementing effective new parking strategies that cut down on traffic.
A report released today by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy [PDF] highlights the new wave of parking policy innovation that could pay huge dividends for sustainable transport and livable streets. If your city aspires to make streets safe, improve the quality of transit, and foster bicycling, your city needs a coherent parking policy.
“There was a 35-year parking coma during which the federal government, cities, and environmentalists forgot why parking was important,” said John Kaehny, who co-authored the report with Matthew Rufo and UPenn professor Rachel Weinberger. “This study shows people are starting wake up and understand that parking is one of most important influences on how cities work and what form of travel people choose to use.”
Graphic: ITDP
(23 February 2010)
Streetfilms: Fixing the Great Mistake of Planning for Cars
Elizabeth Press, SFStreetsBlog.org via Worldchanging
“Fixing the Great Mistake” is a new Streetfilms series that examines what went wrong in the early part of the 20th century, when our cities began catering to the automobile, and how those decisions continue to affect our lives today.
In this episode, Transportation Alternatives director Paul Steely White shows how planning for cars drastically altered Park Avenue in New York City. Watch and see what Park Avenue used to look like, how we ceded it to the automobile, and what we need to do to reclaim the street as a space where people take precedence over traffic.
View movie
(04 March 2010)
Korea unveils the ‘future of transport’ — the Online Electric Vehicle
Andrew Salmon, The Times
Its inventors believe that this is the future of urban transport — but it was hard not to be underwhelmed as the test vehicle trundled around a circuit on the edge of the South Korean capital.
The first public demonstration of the Online Electric Vehicle, or Olev, was, however, as much about the road on which it travelled as the prototype bus itself. Electric power strips have been buried 30cm (12in) under the surface and connected to the national grid.
They provide electromagnetic power to the vehicle, wirelessly, charging an onboard battery and powering the bus’s electric motor. The power strips need to be embedded in only 20 per cent of the length of a road to keep the vehicle running.
The system’s creators, at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, say that the technology not only eliminates pollution, but also alleviates the problems usually associated with hybrid vehicles such as heavy batteries, lengthy charging and limited range…
(10 March 2010)
Streetfilms: Seattle’s Link Light Rail — The Start of Something Big
Clarence Eckerson Jr., SFStreetsBlog.org
Right now, Seattle is making as serious a commitment to transit as any city in the nation. Recently, Streetfilms got to take a tour of the newest addition to the city’s network — the 13-station Link Light Rail, which opened in mid-2009.
The route is beautiful, swift, and has great multi-modal connections. Service is frequent, with headways as short as 7 minutes during rush hour, and never longer than 15 minutes. And like many of the newest American light rail systems, the stations feature copious art….
(03 March 2010)
New York Plans Transitway on 34th Street, but It’s Not BRT, for Better or Worse
Yonah Freemark, The Transport Politic
When American transit planners begin working on a new transit capital project, they’re often required to undertake what’s called an alternative analysis, a study whose purpose is to identify the appropriate route and technology for a specific corridor. It’s an open secret among people in the industry that while these reports often provide useful information about where exactly to place a new line, the choice of vehicle mode is almost always predetermined.
This leads to a sometimes bizarre situation in which, for instance, a city planning a one-mile extension of its rapid transit lines “considers” whether high-speed rail or local buses might work in the same corridor — even though everyone knows that if the money ever shows up, the rapid transit line will be the only thing built. The process, in other words, is often a charade.
Such was the case recently for New York City, whose Department of Transportation is intent on improving the public transportation offerings in Midtown Manhattan, the nation’s largest business district. Despite the fact that the DOT has been on an all-out crusade to improve bus service, has no money for more subways, and has demonstrated little interest in light rail or streetcars, it evaluated all four in its recent study for the 34th Street corridor. It threw in an elevated automated people mover for consideration as well in case anyone cared…
(04 March 2010)
