Author: Adam Clare

Bike Lanes Makes Road Safer for Everyone

The worst mayor in Canada hates people who don’t drive automobiles and thinks cyclists deserve to die. The mayor of Toronto wants to remove bike lanes (while every smart city is installing more) despite the fact that the number of cyclists has increased. So where’s the good news you ask?

It turns out (much to the chagrin of mayor Rob Ford) that bike lanes improve safety for all road users!

The Toronto Cyclists Union has drummed up a City staff report that compares crash data in the three years previous to the bike lanes and the one year with the bike lanes. The report finds that the overall crash rate for Jarvis has actually decreased by 23 percent. That’s for all road users—bicycles, cars, and pedestrians. In fact, the report notes that “most of this reduction can be attributed to the reduction in collisions involving motor vehicle turning movements and collisions involving pedestrians.”

But the bike lanes have also been better for cyclists. While the number of bicycle-car collisions has increased from an average of 7 per year in the three years prior to the bike lane to 15 in the year with the bike lane, the report notes this still represents a drop in the rate of collision when you take into consideration the fact that the number of bicycles increased threefold post-bike lane implementation.

Read more at Spacing.

Loblaws Plans on Removing Artificial Ingredients from its Food

Artificial ingredients have a bad reputation because they’ve been left untested for years. Now, one of Canada’s largest grocery stores is ring to remove all those artificial ingredients from their in-house food line. This follows other pod providers and is a direct reaction to growing consumer concerns over some of their food.

Advocacy groups such as the Ottawa-based Centre for Science in the Public Interest have called for better controls on the use of artificial dyes and flavours and improved labelling laws. In Canada, food companies aren’t required to spell out which artificial colours they use on product labels. Health Canada has floated the idea of changing that.

Members of the medical and scientific communities remain divided about the true risks of artificial flavours and colours. For instance, some studies that found links between hyperactivity and synthetic food dyes have been criticized for using shoddy methodology. But in an era when many equate natural ingredients with better health, some consumers don’t want to wait and are demanding a shift in the food industry.

And the industry has begun responding. For instance, Nestlé has removed artificial colours from Smarties in Canada, while the company announced in March all of its confection items sold in Britain will contain only natural flavours and dyes and no artificial preservatives.

Read more at the Globe.

MIT and Harvard to Launch Full Free Courses Online

This is a really cool way to bring post-secondary education to more people via the internet. Harvard and MIT are launching a new initiative built upon MIT’s expertise in online course delivery to launch a new project called edX that’ll give unbridled access to the knowledge in the two acclaimed institutions.

“Through this partnership we will not only make knowledge more available but we will learn more about learning,” Harvard President Drew Faust said this morning at a news conference at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge. “Anyone with an Internet connection anywhere in the world can have access.”

Faust predicted the venture would “change our relationship to knowledge and to teaching for the benefit of our students and students and would-be students everywhere.”

Standing beside Faust, MIT President Susan Hockfield said: “You can choose to view this era as one of threatening change and unsettling volatility, or you can see it as a moment charged with the most exciting possibilities presented to educators in our lifetimes. Online education is not an enemy of residential education but rather a profoundly liberating and inspiring ally.”

Read more here.

Air Miles Starts Rewarding Eco-Conscious Purchases

Starting today, consumer tracking program Air Miles will begin rewarding people with points when they make environmentally friendly purchases.

But whereas previous initiatives were intended to inspire a single socially conscious decision, “these [programs] have a permanent effect,” Souvaliotis said.

“If you find a way to create a trickle of reward for the consumer, then you’re actually supporting a change in behaviour,” he said. “Not only will these [programs] start to bring a lot more people to this type of behaviour, but they will stick to this behaviour.”

Souvaliotis, an occasional blogger for The Huffington Post, is not shy about the success of — or his vision for — Air Miles for Social Change, which he says is the “world’s first ever — and to this point only — social venture that’s built entirely inside a loyalty points program.”

Read more at the Huffington Post.

Car Free Days in Caracas are a Huge Success

In Venezuela’s largest city they’re looking to make roads usable for people again. The city of Caracas is encouraging people to come out and enjoy reclaimed public spaces on specific days in the city when cars aren’t allowed on a lot roads. Not only is this good for people it’s good for the environment.

Jorge Rodriguez, the Mayor of Caracas, said the project’s goal is to create spaces of “enjoyment and recreation” in the capital, and to “re-create a different city to that rushed metropolis which is full of cars”.

“Caracas is different if you travel it by bicycle, walking in the city is wonderful. There are spaces which have been recovered by the revolution for the enjoyment of all Caracas residents and visitors,” he added.

Venezuelan families turned out in droves yesterday to take advantage of the closed roads, either bringing their own bicycles or borrowing one of the 200 government bicycles made available through a joint manufacturing project with Iran.

Read more at Znet.

Thanks to Greg!