Category: Transportation

Lets’ Ban Private Jets

private jet during sunset

A forward-looking individual decided to start a campaign to ban private jets and it’s gaining steam. The movement to get rid of private jets is growing and now celebrities like Elon Musk and Taylor Swift are getting lambasted in the press about their planet-destroying transportation options. Given how much damage the air industry does to the planet, focussing on banning private jets, which are used by a very tiny percentage of people, should be socially acceptable by everyone.

Maybe we should start championing private trains instead 😉

The argument in favor of banning private jets is a simple one. If you were trying, for whatever reason, to have as large of a carbon footprint as possible, the first thing you would do is fly in a private plane. You would especially do so for very short flights, because taking off is the most energy-intensive part of any flight. A common model of a private plane burns 226 gallons of jet fuel an hour on average. And jet fuel—which is typically not taxed—emits more toxic gasses than gasoline.

Not only is flying in a private plane just about the worst thing one can do for the planet, it is also one of the habits with the easiest substitutes. Private jets emit approximately seven times as much greenhouse gasses as a business class ticket on a commercial airliner, 10 times as much as an economy seat, and some 150 times more than an electric train journey. Although “ban private jets” sounds like a radical argument, it is really quite modest, since rich people would still have any number of ultra-luxurious alternatives at their disposal and plenty of money to hire security guards to ensure the privacy they say flying private ensures.

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Boston’s Mayor: Free Transit for All for a Better City

streetcar

The new mayor or of Boston, Michelle Wu, knows what it takes to improve life in the city. She sees free transit for everyone has a way to increase the liveability of the city, its economic performance, and the city’s climate resilience. The pilot routes of free transit in the city has increased ridership by 48%!

One of the motivating factors for Wu is making the city a better place for families. By offering free transit it provides increased mobility for youth and decreases the costs of living in a city for everyone.

Our plan is to continue demonstrating that this works and that this is an investment where we very quickly see the returns. I have spoken with so many families who have said it’s been life-changing to not have to worry about how to cobble together enough change in your pocket for that day to get to class, and to know that this is a service that is truly available to everyone. So we picked three routes that serve communities of color in our lower-income neighborhoods, but also that connect with planned or already implemented infrastructure improvements. To show that we can deliver faster service that is actually affordable for everyone.

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13 Year Long Study Confirms Bike Lanes Make Streets Safer for Everyone

Good Street from Streetmix

Bike lanes not only protect cyclists from negligent drivers, they protect drivers and pedestrians too. A longitudinal study reveals that it’s not the cyclists which make the streets safer, rather it’s the infrastructure that separates cyclists from giant metal slabs that matter. Bike lane only made of paint did nothing to change the dangers of driving; rather, physical barricades protecting people from cars are what make the difference.

It’s simple: protected bike lanes = a safer city.

After analyzing traffic crash data over a 13-year period in areas with separated bike lanes on city streets, researches estimated that having a protected bike facility in a city would result in 44 percent fewer deaths and 50 percent fewer serous injuries than an average city.

In Portland, where the population of bike commuters increased from 1.2 to 7 percent between 1990 and 2015, fatality rates fell 75 percent in the same period. Fatal crash rates dropped 60.6 percent in Seattle, 49.3 percent in San Francisco, 40.3 percent in Denver, and 38.2 percent in Chicago over the same period as cities added more protected and separated lanes as part of their Vision Zero plans.

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Get Paid to Report Bike Lane Blockers

Austin spent millions on improving their infrastructure and now they are looking to citizens to enforce the rules of using that infrastructure. Anybody who reports a vehicle blocking a bicycle lane will now get a bounty when the driver of the vehicle is charged. Yes, it’s a Wild West bounty program in the 21st century.

This program makes sense since police don’t always enforce traffic laws (and in the city I live police refuse to enforce traffic laws) and it encourages more reporting. When drivers block bicycle lanes not only do they endanger every cyclist they are also causing traffic jams, which slow down all vehicles on the road.

The program, inspired by one in New York City, would allow Austinites to use the 311 mobile application to report photo evidence of cars obstructing bike lanes. The person reporting the infraction would then receive 25 percent of the revenue collected by the city for the citation.

“The city spends millions of dollars to make these facilities, and these facilities get blocked all of the time,” said Mario Champion, Urban Transportation Commission chair and author of the proposal. “A successful transportation system doesn’t just move cars, it moves people.”

Champion said the proposal isn’t too dissimilar from other programs already used by the city. One program uses citizens trained by the police to find and cite cars illegally parked in accessible parking spaces around Austin.

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This Electric Truck Sees You

Let’s be honest, trucks cause a lot of harm but current infrastructure means we rely on them to deliver both long and short distances. Many companies are looking to replace the reliance on trucks with better trains and more efficient long haul journeys. When trucks get into cities a new challenge arrives which electric trucks are better suited for.

Old school trucks powered by dead dino juice need large engine compartments which block the driver’s view of humanity. New electric models will make our roads safer by literally letting the diver see more.

Electric trucks are a good thing all on their own. But what makes this company’s offerings interesting are that they are specifically focused on safety in urban environments. As Ars Technica explains: “The truck features a central driving position, with a minimum of blind spots, that places the driver at an appropriate height to spot vulnerable road users like cyclists.” Safety isn’t an incidental consideration, either. Volta is foregrounding safety—for people outside the vehicles—in its official marketing, as seen on the company’s Twitter feed.

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