Transportation

Solar Roads Could Provide Electricity

- Adam Clare

There are six days left for the Indiegog campaign for Solar Roadways and they have already met their goal! The $1,000,000 goal has been reached and passed – which is quite impressive! The idea behind the successful campaign is to turn roads from heat-producing to energy-producing. A network of roads equipped with solar panels can revolutionize energy networks.

Solar Roadways is a modular paving system of solar panels that can withstand the heaviest of trucks (250,000 pounds). These Solar Road Panels can be installed on roads, parking lots, driveways, sidewalks, bike paths, playgrounds… literally any surface under the sun. They pay for themselves primarily through the generation of electricity, which can power homes and businesses connected via driveways and parking lots. A nationwide system could produce more clean renewable energy than a country uses as a whole.

Thanks to Stu!

New Speed Limit in Paris: 30 km/hr

- Adam Clare

This week Wired published an article about the 20 deadliest US cities for pedestrians and they write:

There, low-density neighborhoods “rely on wider streets with higher speeds to connect homes, shops, and schools—roads that tend to be more dangerous for people walking,” the report says. More than half of all pedestrian deaths recorded from 2003-2012 occurred on wide arterial roads designed to move cars quickly.

Paris, is known for its boulevards that accommodate fast moving traffic (in theory) and good pedestrian walking. Over the past few years Paris has had some of the worst traffic problems in the world. They have experienced seemingly never-ending smog and congestion. Their most recent way to curb these problems is to reduce the speed limit.

As traffic speeds are significantly brought down across the city, a number of very important things occur as a direct result: substantially fewer accidents, significant reduction in serious injuries and deaths, energy savings, reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels, local air pollution reduction, quality-of-life improvements all those who live and work, and play and study there, improved conditions and local accessibility for local business, significantly reduced carbon stress on climate, and the long list goes on.

Read more about Paris’ plan here.

It’s worth noting that Toronto’s crack-mayor with crack-supporters stopped a similar speeding policy in Toronto.

More Americans Are Biking to Work

- Adam Clare

Bicycling in urban areas has increased in the developed world over the last decade and the USA is no exception. The obvious health benefits from riding a bike and the increased attention to bike infrastructure contributes to the growth in riders. More people bicycling the better as it gets people out of their cars and cleans the air.

The increase comes as cities add bike-share programs and lanes to encourage cyclists. Portland, Ore., which boasts 319 miles of bikeways, has the largest share of bike commuters among big cities, about 6 percent. (Insert Portlandia joke here.) Madison, Wis., (5 percent) and Minneapolis (4 percent) are right behind. In some smaller cities, bike commuting is even more common: One in 10 Boulderites ride to work in Colorado, and the number approaches 20 percent in Davis, Calif. The trend is good news for the bike industry and the people who make this suit.

Read more.

High Speed Rail Coming to……Texas?

- Adam Clare

Texas is an American state best known for its gun-loving, big truck driving, cowboy, remember the Alamo culture. It is the last place I’d expect high speed rail infrastructure to actually get support in the USA. The good news here is that not only are Texans in favour of high speed rail – the private sector is going to fund.

This is a great contrast to other states where governments are even apprehensive to do feasibility studies. The private company will use Japanese technology and pay for building the infrastructure. With luck, this Texas push for rail will spread further than that state’s borders. Getting more people onto trains instead of driving everywhere is good for everyone.

Five years ago, the company started work on bringing Japan’s bullet train to the U.S. It studied 97 potential city pairs.
Which route would pay for construction and operating costs and generate a return for investors? Which would serve as a showcase so the model might be replicated elsewhere?
Weigh all the factors, and Dallas to Houston was the top choice.
“This is a golden market to deploy our system,” said Richard Lawless, CEO of Texas Central Railway and a former CIA employee who served in Asia and Europe.
Dallas and Houston are the ideal distance for high-speed rail, about 230 miles apart. A one-way rail trip is expected to take less than 90 minutes.

Read more here.

Toronto: Bring Back the War on Cars

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

This year Toronto is witnessing a mayoral race between the worst mayor the city has ever seen and a few people who want his job. Not one candidate has come out to support bicycle based transportation (instead they debate how to better get cars through the city and not people). This isn’t a good thing. Last year in Toronto roughly 40 people were killed by car drivers, more than murdered by non-car homicides.

Local online press, Torontoist, has reacted to this by calling for people in the city to bring back “the war on the car”. People in Toronto ought to join this growing chorus of people demanding an end to car-dominiated culture and crack-smoking mayors.

Toronto should learn from every other major city in the world and build for people-not cars. Just look at all this good news about bicycles and all this good news related to reducing car use.

The hard lesson from New York and dozens of progressive European cities is that you can’t make gains for cyclists, pedestrians, and the life of the city as a whole without restricting car use—removing lanes, widening sidewalks, lowering speed limits, and redesigning intersections. And as JSK and others have proven, that is not a politics for wimps: we need warriors.

Read more at Torontoist.

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