Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
But if I could get to the bus stop, a mile and a half away, I could board a comfortable air-conditioned bus with connections to many points downtown and elsewhere in the county. Stops are much closer along the routes, but the nearest route is inconveniently far away. I hope someday to see a bus line closer to home. Until then, I consider my neighbors and I to be Transportation Disadvantaged.
“I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.” Perhaps Walt Whitman had this week’s guests on Sea Change Radio in mind when he wrote those words, as we talk to two entrepreneurs who, in very different ways, are using nature’s bounty for innovative purposes.
Walking advocates once focused primarily on physical health —spurred by mounting evidence that physical activity is key to preventing disease—but now are stepping up to promote social, economic and community health. Their ultimate goal is to transform towns and neighborhoods across America into better places for everyone to live.
In a fast-changing world, it is no longer possible to automatically assume that what one is used to will endure. People want stability and predictability, but, as they say, good luck with that. We are witnessing out-of-control evolution of a rapid, uncertain sort.
Transportation accounts for nearly a third of the country’s carbon emissions, of which 84 percent is attributed to cars and commercial trucks, the EPA reports. So, as Moyer sees it, it’s obvious that climate change and infrastructure should be tackled in tandem.
More importantly, the days spent on crossing by sail put nothing into the atmosphere except the breath of the sailors. Today’s commercial passenger fleet is responsible for 3 to 5 percent of climate forcing, on its way to 15 percent according to some IPCC projections. Clearly it is going in the wrong direction.
All over the world, bicycles from renewable materials are gaining ground. Egyptian Karim Creta is experimenting with a local variety: palm midribs.
Today, it takes a more energy intensive combination of automobiles, trucks and airplanes to do what a single passenger train was able to do in 1950. Furthermore, we lost a level of convenience in our lives that is in some ways unmatched today, and we lost a sense of community that our passenger rail system helped build and hold together
Transportation investments can create jobs, growth and opportunity in the short term while at the same time not only paying for themselves but making our cities, and our nation, financially stronger in the process. America needs a transportation revolution. Here is how we propose that be done.
Our declining car use gives us an opportunity. If we can adjust our car ownership patterns to match our actual needs, we can plan our lives and cities in ways that don’t revolve around a mode of transport that no longer serves us like it used to.
The healthiest cities in the world have one thing in common; a network of trains, trolleys, trams, subways, buses, and other ways of getting around that don’t depend on everyone having a personal vehicle.
Cities of all sizes now have bike share systems. But many of these systems often only have one or two types of bikes, and these may not be suitable for people with certain physical disabilities. We connected with Jon Terbush from bike share provider Zagster to find out how cities can create accessible bike shares.
