Transportation – Page 27 – Things Are Good

Smog Free Bike Cleans the Air While You Ride

Daan Roosegaarde designed another piece for his Smog Free Project and it’s a bicycle that cleans the air as you ride through the city. The handlebars contain a filtration system that removes pollutants which will provide clean air for the cyclist to breath in. As a cyclist myself this sounds amazing because breathing in exhaust from commuters is painful. The filtration technology is a version of what Roosegaarde used in his Smog Free Tower.

“The bike is a perfect model,” Roosegaarde told Dezeen. “It has a double function as it cleans the air and reduces congestion while being healthy and energy-friendly.”

The Dutch designer, who heads up his own firm Studio Roosegaarde, sees the bike being implemented through bike sharing programs in China such as Mobike.

“The bicycle is part of the Dutch DNA of course, and Beijing and other cities in China used to be bike cities,” he said. “We want to bring back its prestige and follow our ethos of making citizens apart of the solution instead of the problem.”

“It will always be connected with big programs of government and green technology and electric cars. They do top-down, we do bottom-up, and we meet in the middle.”

Zero Emission and Autonomous Shipping to Start in Norway

Norway will soon see a fully autonomous ship navigating its waters. A resource company in the country presently uses trucks to transport fertilizer from one port to another, the new ship will replace 40,000 of these diesel truck journeys. The ship is battery powered meaning that it will be zero emission if electricity comes from a renewable resource. The autonomous aspect of the ship means it can run at anytime while improving transportation safety by not needing trucks to go through normal streets. Autonomous technology is already used in the shipping industry to move containers around in port, so it’s only logical that more of the shipping industry operates independently.

“As a leading global fertilizer company with a mission to feed the world and protect the planet, investing in this zero emission vessel to transport our crop nutrition solutions fits our strategy well. We are proud to work with KONGSBERG to realize the world’s first autonomous, all-electric vessel to enter commercial operation,” says Svein Tore Holsether, President and CEO of YARA.

“Every day, more than 100 diesel truck journeys are needed to transport products from YARA’s Porsgrunn plant to ports in Brevik and Larvik where we ship products to customers around the world. With this new autonomous battery-driven container vessel we move transport from road to sea and thereby reduce noise and dust emissions, improve the safety of local roads, and reduce NOx and CO2 emissions,” says Holsether.

An App That Rewards You for Riding a Bike

Bicycle

Biko rewards cyclists with free stuff just for riding their bike! Rewards include small things like coffee to very expensive consumer items. The idea of rewarding cyclist for not killing the environment using cars isn’t new, Stockholm basically pays cyclists. When it comes to using Biko please consider that they collect marketing data from your mobile (contacts, location, and anything else that can track you). It’s just good to see that more and more people consider rewarding cyclists to be a good thing.

Biko, a free mobile app that launched in Bogota, Colombia, in 2015, has launched in Toronto today (May 10). The app tracks a userâ€™s movements through GPS to earn digital rewards, which can be traded in for actual rewards such as discounts and freebies from local businesses. For every kilometre travelled, users earn one Biko point.

â€œIncentivizing cycling through rewards can help reduce Torontoâ€™s carbon emissions, and we have the data to prove it,â€ says Emilio Pombo, the cofounder of Biko. â€œOur users have collectively reduced carbon emissions by 2,608 tonnes globally.â€

Big Brains Encouraging Bringing Bicycles into the Mainstream

Bicycle

Bicycling is a fun and healthy way to get around town, but some people still aren’t convinced that bicycling is a solid transportation solution. Outside magazine asked some rather smart people who love bicycling what would make bicycling more attractive for cities. Some answers are neat and others are very practical. I suggest you get out there and ride!

6. Solicit Public Input
Brian Wiedenmeier, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

Pilot projects can help us learn about how treatments are applied, and we should solicit feedback from people walking, driving, and biking in and around new infrastructure. This spirit informed the design and construction of San Franciscoâ€™s first physically protected intersection at Division and Ninth Streets. Popular in Europeâ€™s most bike-friendly cities and increasingly seen in progressive U.S. cities, protected intersections take the chaos out of crossing the street. With physical barriers and wider turns for drivers, these protected intersections reduce speeds, calm traffic, and offer bicyclists and pedestrians a clear, protected route through the intersection.

Lower Your Risk of Cancer and Heart Disease by Cycling to Work

Bicycle

We all know that encouraging bicycles as daily transportation is good for cities, economies, and traffic flow. Cycling is really good for you too and the evidence that you should bike more is more prevalent than ever. The most recent contribution to why riding a bike to work is good for you comes from Glasgow. Researchers there found that over the course of five years people who biked regularly had lower instances of cancer and heart disease!

But, during the course of the study, regular cycling cut the risk of death from any cause by 41%, the incidence of cancer by 45% and heart disease by 46%.
The cyclists clocked an average of 30 miles per week, but the further they cycled the greater the health boon.
Walking cut the odds of developing heart disease but the benefit was mostly for people walking more than six miles per week.
“This is really clear evidence that people who commute in an active way, particularly by cycling, were at lower risk,” Dr Jason Gill, from the University of Glasgow, told the BBC News website.