Transportation

Changing a Mall from Useless to Useful

- Adam Clare

Dead malls are a problem in too many communities and these malls are occupying large tracts of land that can be used better. Suburbs in North America have to confront the obvious change in front of them and some communities are doing a good thing by making the malls livable for people instead of just for cars.

The redesign will be in line with many new urbanism projects. There will be shops, cafes and offices connected by walkways. Storefronts will be on the first floor and residential units will occupy the top floors. There will also be a mix of cottages, multi family homes, and condos in the neighborhood as to add variety. Parking will still be present but will be hidden behind the retrofitted mall, away from the storefronts.

More info and pics here.

A Simple Change in Signage can Save Time, Environment

- Adam Clare

Here’s a TED Talk that explores how creating a new road sign can make a huge impact on the roads of America. Gary Lauder breaks down the impact of a stop sign at a T intersection on time, money, cars, and of course the environment.

It’s a fun five minute video:

Subways to (Kinda) Power Themselves

- Adam Clare

Most hybrid cars capture energy excerpted while braking and use it to help refill the battery. A company that makes flywheels will be working with New York City to apply the same kinetic energy capture concept to subway cars, meaning that the subways will become an even more efficient way to travel. Every time a subway car enters a station and applies the brakes its capturing kinetic energy to get it started again.

The difference is that the power generated would reach into the megawatts. A 10-car subway train in New York’s system might require a jolt of three to four megawatts of power for 30 seconds to get up to cruising speed, according to Louis Romo, vice president of sales at Vycon. That’s enough to power 1,300 average U.S. homes.

And when one train leaves the station, another one comes in right on its heels. While delivering walloping surges in power like that to downtown stations is feasible, remote stations can experience drops in power. Train departures have to literally be staggered to accommodate the availability of power.

“Almost every rail company in the U.S. has a station where voltage sag is a problem,” said Romo.

Vycon claims it can help smooth out this problem by effectively getting the trains to act like Priuses. When drivers hit the brakes on their hybrids, the kinetic energy of the moving car gets transformed into electric power that then gets stored in the battery.

Read more at Green Tech Media.

Happiest Commuters Walk or Cycle to Work

- Adam Clare

Many cyclists can go on for hours about how great riding a bicycle everyday is (I know I can), and it has been proven that walking can make you happier too. It comes as no surprise then that walking or bicycling as your preferred commuting solution makes you happier.

What is surprising is that this conclusion of happy commuting comes from Statistics Canada!

Two-thirds of cyclists said they were very satisfied with their commute. Only 6 per cent were dissatisfied, according to a Statistics Canada survey of more than 6,000 people across the country.

It’s a striking difference from their car and transit-riding brethren. Only 32 per cent of drivers and 25 per cent of public transit users were very satisfied with their trip to work.

Read the rest of the article.

Good Bikes on the Streets of Toronto

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

The Good Bike project is bringing colour to the streets of Toronto. Bright neon bicycles are celebrating aspects of Toronto, they really are eye-catching.

Over the past few weeks, more than 30 brightly painted bicycles, a few featuring baskets of potted plants, have popped up all over the city—orange at Queen and Dovercourt, blue at Dundas and Sackville, and pastel pink at College and Robert, among many others. On their own, the bikes may seem like isolated or even arbitrary acts of street art, but in reality, they’re part of a citywide network of bikes, their colours and locations carefully and specifically chosen to commemorate a piece of history, an urban hot spot, or a personal memory.

As with any infestation, even the nice ones, it started small—Vanessa Nicholas and Caroline Macfarlane, two OCAD U Student Gallery employees, found a creative way to deal with their distaste for a rusty, derelict bike abandoned on the street outside their place of work by painting it bright orange and planting flowers in its basket. They were met with enthusiasm from passersby but also with a big, angry ticket from the City of Toronto calling for its removal. With support from fans and friends interested in protecting public works of art, accelerated by media reaction and councilors Gary Crawford (Ward 36, Scarborough Southwest) and Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina) City Hall eventually changed its mind and even Rob Ford hopped on the idea to turn the now-famous Orange Bike into a citywide project, in partnership with Macfarlane and Nicholas, known as the Good Bike Project.

Read the full article at Torontoist.

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