Category: Transportation

Toronto: Bring Back the War on Cars

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.

San Francisco Fluctuates Parking Prices, Reduces Wasteful Driving

Car culture in North America has led to massive subsidies for car drivers that go pretty much unnoticed. One of these subsidies is in the way of “free parking,” which is anything but free. Cars occupy space during the day that could be used for productive means or green space, instead cars sit unused with nobody inside of them most of the time.

In San Francisco they have changed their municipal parking system to reflect market demands for parking space. The result is a drop in people who “cruise” looking for parking spaces. Therefore, car drivers have become a little less destructive in the city.

According to a study published last month in Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, the program has worked. San Francisco’s occupancy goals have been met, and “cruising” for parking — driving around and clogging up streets after you’ve already reached your destination — is down by 50 percent.

The group of researchers — who represent the University of California, Santa Cruz, Carnegie Mellon and transit consultancy Nelson\Nygaard — analyzed the 256 blocks subject to SFpark and compared them to a 55-block control group. With access to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s data, the team had a total of more than 2.4 million data points during metered hours to analyze.

Using a model to simulate a driver looking for parking (the model “cruises” down a street and, if it doesn’t find any open spaces, takes a series of random turns until it does), the researchers estimated that the blocks under SFpark saw a 50 percent reduction in cruising. They also found that the program met its goal of a 60-80 percent occupancy rate for spots. Under the program, if occupancy was below 60 percent, parking rates were cut by 25 cents. If more than 80 percent of spots on a block were occupied during metered hours, rates were hiked by the same amount.

Read more at Next City.

Portland Continues Support For Sustainable Transportation

Portland, Oregon is already known for its amazing support of bicycle riders and pedestrians. Now they have taken their commitment to making their city even better by building the largest bicycle parking in North America. Similar parking for bikes is available in other places like in Amsterdam and Tokyo so seeing this come to North America is a good sign for cyclists.

As reported on the Bike Portland blog, a 657-apartment project planned for Portland's Inner East neighborhood will have a whopping 1,200 bike parking spaces, an acknowledgment of the city's cyclo-centric culture.

One of the architects of the project, which is being developed in a part of town where "mid-century planning principles called for surface parking lots in lieu of dense, walkable communities," explained:

"The demographic that we expect to show up here is going to be young urban professionals and it's going to be, we think, young families as well," said Kyle Andersen of Portland-based GBD Architects. "They all have bikes. When I think about my own neighborhood, the families I see riding there, if you move those people into a building they're still going to have a bike. I think you have to be ready for that demographic to be there, otherwise you're restricting yourself."

Read more here.

Thanks to Mike!

A Scientific Approach to Better Urban Design

Urban design is not an easy activity because of the multitude of variables that impact the overall urban experience. There are buildings, traffic (foot and vehicular), landmarks, natural occurrences like rivers, and abstracted economic forces. Space Syntax is a company has set out to make better urban design by using science to calculate the probability of positive spaces being built.

Stonor says his ultimate goal is for the science to catch on with other design firms and consultancies. In a way, he wants to put himself out of business. He says he wants architects and planners to learn to use space syntax themselves, and not rely so much on his consultancy.

Academically, space syntax has caught on in many other schools and countries. However, the Bartlett at University College of London – where Hillier and Hanson developed the science – is still its primary research center. The academic and business sides work closely, a relationship that Stonor says is vital. The academics feed him new ideas, and his company field-tests their research. In addition, every tool and most of the studies produced by both the business and academic sides of Space Syntax are open access and available online.

Read more at Wired’s Map Lab.

Here’s an example of one their reports:

Space Syntax_Informal Settlements Brochure

Infographic: Footloose and Car Free

Riding bicycles is not only fun, it’s also great for the environment. Readers of this site already know many benefits of switching from a car-fcoused transportation society to one focused on sustainability and humanity. Because the internet is what it is, some people put together this infographic about the benefits that bike riding can bring to the USA.

Did you know that 30+ minutes of biking per day lowers women’s risk of breast cancer? Or how about three hours of biking per week reduces risk of heart disease and stroke by 50%?

From here.