Archive for Cycling
May 3, 2010 · Filed under Active Transportation, Cycling, Revitalization, Traffic, Transit
It’s been more than a generation since the Brazilian city of Curitiba pioneered Bus Rapid Transit. Since then this cost-effective and flexible transit system — which repurposes existing roadways into bus routes rather than constructing capital-intensive new railways — has become a worldwide model for urban mobility in both affluent and developing nations. A new addition to the BRT network was recently launched in India. Last year the northwestern city of Ahmedabad opened the first phase of the Janmarg — the People’s Way. Though still in its infancy, the system has already attracted favorable attention: early this year the U.S.-based Institute for Transportation & Development Policy awarded Janmarg its Sustainable Transport Award.
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Popularity: 32% [?]
April 6, 2010 · Filed under Active Transportation, Authenticity, Beauty, Creative Cities, Cycling, Diversity, Great Streets, Happiness, Nature, Public Life, Social Justice, Social Networks, Uncategorized, Urban Design
Happiness itself is a commons to which everyone should have equal access.
That’s the view of Enrique Peñalosa, who is not a starry-eyed idealist given to abstract theorizing. He’s actually a politician, who served as mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, for three years, and now travels the world spreading a message about how to improve quality-of-life for everyone living in today’s cities.
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Popularity: 63% [?]
March 16, 2010 · Filed under Active Transportation, Cycling, Great Streets, Pedestrians, Public Space, Street Furniture, Urban Design
New York’s ambitious experiment that closed parts of Broadway to vehicles last spring will become permanent, city officials said on Thursday, even though it fell short of achieving its chief objective: improving traffic flow.
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Popularity: 55% [?]
February 12, 2010 · Filed under Active Transportation, Cycling, Health, Mobility, Pedestrians, Planning, Play
A few hours after the public launch of the Active Design Guidelines here in New York, President Obama gave his first State of the Union Address. In an aside which drew the evening’s loudest applause, the President took a moment to acknowledge the First Lady’s new public health campaign to fight the epidemic of childhood obesity. Was it coincidence that the city chose this date to launch the guidelines? Probably not. Just as other municipalities and regions in this country have looked to New York in the past for answers on issues of zoning and historic preservation, for example, New York City is poised to lead in this new initiative as well. And as the debate about how to provide better, more efficient healthcare continues, perhaps designers here in New York City have an answer; a prescription that requires no doctor and no insurance coverage – just a livable, efficient, sustainable city.
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Popularity: 40% [?]
January 19, 2010 · Filed under Active Transportation, Climate Change, Cycling, EcoCities, Happiness, Health, Mobility, Pollution
Imagine visiting a city where the populace steadfastly refused to wear sweaters or coats despite a cold climate. You might tell your friends incredulous stories about how much people complain about being cold while ignoring an obvious solution. You might take pictures of the enormous three-story space heaters the city placed along its waterfront to let people enjoy the outdoors, and marvel at the ugliness and environmental waste of the practice. Why would the residents of this city endure such painful conditions at such cost to their city and their planet while ignoring such a simple alternative?
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Popularity: 36% [?]
November 10, 2009 · Filed under Active Transportation, Cycling, Great Streets, Traffic, Transit
A new report ranking the nation’s most dangerous metropolitan areas for walking finds that ‘incomplete’ streets are a major culprit in the deaths of thousands of Americans every year. Dangerous by Design, from Transportation for America and the Surface Transportation Policy Project, finds that as many as forty percent of fatal pedestrian crashes are in places where no crosswalk was available, and that arterials designed only for cars are the most dangerous.
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Popularity: 27% [?]
October 29, 2009 · Filed under Active Transportation, Crime, Cycling, Safety, Traffic
British Ministers are considering making motorists legally responsible for accidents involving cyclists or pedestrians, even if they are not at fault. Government advisers are pushing for changes in the civil law that will make the most powerful vehicle involved in a collision automatically liable for insurance and compensation purposes.
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Popularity: 22% [?]
October 28, 2009 · Filed under Active Transportation, Cycling, Transit
When we talk about transportation, we tend to talk about things in motion. What is often left unremarked upon, in conversations about crowded highways, is something without which those crowds would not exist: parking. That humble 9-by-18-foot space (the standard size of a spot) is where traffic begins and ends. It is the fuel to traffic’s fire.
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Popularity: 17% [?]
October 5, 2009 · Filed under Active Transportation, Creative Cities, Cycling, Grassroots, Public Life, Public Space
Over the past two decades, first hundreds and then thousands of San Franciscans have chosen to bicycle as a common means of transportation. This has generated a fair amount of heat and noise, whether during the monthly Critical Mass rides (17 years old and still going strong) or during the episodic controversies over bike lanes, parking, Octavia Boulevard planning and other bike-oriented changes. But what gets less notice is the way the simple choice to bicycle by ever more San Francisco residents is gradually reshaping a sense of public space and a sense of a shared city.
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Popularity: 27% [?]
September 26, 2009 · Filed under Active Transportation, Creative Cities, Cycling, Great Streets, Public Art, Public Space, Urban Actions
Whether it’s bike polo, urban golf or scaling public buildings, interesting new urban sports are leaving a distinctive mark on German cityscapes. The metropolitan antics add a twist to traditional sports — and may be cropping up on stretch of tarmac near you soon.
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Popularity: 45% [?]
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