Tag Archives: car

Bike Parking Can Change America

Cars have been dominating the USA (and all of North America) for decades now, and we know all too well what makes a good city for cars. Now climate change and other factors are forcing North Americans to address the problems of their oil-guzzling death machines running amok through cities. The solution is rather simple: apply what we know about car commuters to create more bicycle commuters.

Why do these measures matter? Because parking helps make commuters—a lesson long ago learned with cars. Studies in New York found that a surprisingly large percentage of vehicles coming into lower Manhattan were government employees or others who had an assured parking spot. Other studies have shown the presence of a guaranteed parking spot at home—required in new residential developments—is what turns a New Yorker into a car commuter.

On the flip side, people would be much less likely to drive into Manhattan if they knew their expensive car was likely to be stolen, vandalized, or taken away by police. And yet this is what was being asked of bicycle commuters, save those lucky few who work in a handful of buildings that provide indoor bicycle parking. Surveys have shown that the leading deterrent to potential bicycle commuters is lack of a safe, secure parking spot on the other end. (In England, for example, it’s been estimated that a bicycle is stolen every 71 seconds.)

A number of American cities are now waking up to the fact that providing bicycle parking makes sense. Philadelphia, for example, recently amended its zoning requirements to mandate that certain new developments provide bicycle parking; Pittsburgh’s planning department is weighing requiring one bicycle parking space for every 20,000 square feet of development* (admittedly modest compared with the not-uncommon car equation of one parking space per 250 square feet); even the car-centric enclave of Orange County, Calif., is getting in on the act, with Santa Ana’s City Council unanimously passing a bill requiring proportional bicycle parking when car parking is provided. In Chicago, Los Angeles, and other cities, pilot projects are investigating turning car-parking meters—once semireliable bike-parking spots, now rendered obsolete by “smart meter” payment systems—into bike parking infrastructure.

Bake Cookies in the Heat of Your Car

If you have an automobile that sits around in a parking lot for a long time then you should start baking! Here’s a simple way to bake cookies in your car. Turn that empty car interior into something useful and delicious 🙂

It is scorching hot here and to put that heat to good use (i.e. to give me a reason to go outside and leave the air conditioning), I decided to bake up another batch of cookies, using my car as a oven. Baking cookies in a car is very easy and has the added benefit that you don’t heat up your house at all, but still get to eat freshly-baked cookies. I’ve posted some tips on how to bake cookies in the car before, but the most important things you need to know are:

It should be about 100F outside and the car must be in direct sunlight
Put a potholder or something under the baking sheet so you don’t damage your dash
Cut cookies into an even thickness so they cook at the same time
And, ideally, use an oven thermometer to make sure that your car gets up to about 180F (which it will as long as the windows are up and it’s 100F or more outside)
I like to use slice-and-bake cookies to ensure I get an even thickness, and this batch was Oatmeal Chocolate Chip, instead of the regular chocolate chip I’ve used in the past. The cookies baked up very well in the 180F+ car “oven” and even retained a hint of chewiness. If you don’t use a car, these can be baked in an oven, too. Mini chocolate chips make slicing the log of dough easier, but I actually used a mixture of regular-sized white and semisweet chocolate chips for these. They took a while to bake through, but since my car smelled like cinnamon when they were done, it was well worth it.

How to Make the Suburbs Livable

Peter Calthorpe is a man on a mission to make the suburbs of North America a place where people can live (seriously, you should see what books he’s written).
The car-dominated culture of the suburbs has produced a series of housing developments that pretends the environment and other people don’t exist, and in the 21st century this lifestyle is confronting reality. Recently, Calthrope has been asked to make a suburb of Toronto, Markham, into a modern city and Markham is moving ahead with the plan. The key component of the plan is to make a more urban setting that revolves around good transportation.

“We’ve had a 50-year experiment with sprawl,” Calthorpe argues. “Now it’s over. Everything’s changing. There’s a huge demographic shift happening. If you include externalities and eliminate subsidies, sprawl is not affordable. The key to unlocking the potential is transit.

But as Calthorpe also points out, successful transit is regional transit. That’s surely true at Langstaff. Cut off by hydro easements, highways, railway tracks and cemeteries, the missing connections to the external world can only be created through transit. Extending the Yonge subway to Hwy. 7 is critical to the project, as are the locations of the new stations.

“If you want to get people out of cars,” says Calthorpe, “you’ve got to get them close to transit. And transit must be there to support walkability, not the other way around. Destinations have to be nearby.”

Times Square Goes Car-Free

New York City is famous for grid lock and horrendous traffic – but that’s the past. New York is really trying to green itself and become friendlier to sustainable forms of transportation. They are even going so far as to make times square car-free.

Vehicles are being barred between 42nd and 47th streets at Times Square and 33rd and 35th Streets at Herald Square.
City officials say the move will reduce pollution and pedestrian accidents and ease traffic flow in the area known as “crossroads of the world”.
…
“It’s good for traffic, it’s good for businesses and we think it is going to be great deal of fun,” city transport commissioner Janet Sadik-Khan said last week.

The symbolism of the financial heart of the American empire discouraging the use of the automobile will hopefully be noticed.

May is EcoDriving Month in the USA

The nation that brought the world the Hummer is bringing the world EcoDriving Month. The Auto Alliance (whoever they are) is sponsoring the month to promote a more efficient use of transportation. Heck, if you want to be really nice to environment clean the air while getting to work by biking 😉

During National EcoDriving Month, the Auto Alliance and its 11 global automakers are working to educate consumers about the benefits of EcoDriving through www.EcoDrivingUSA.com. Practicing EcoDriving produces the highest mileage from every single vehicle, regardless of size or age—potentially affecting the United States’ entire fleet of 245 million automobiles. As a result, the possible benefits of the program are significant, and many fuel-saving EcoDriving practices are surprisingly simple, such as:
• The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that using cruise control for 10,000 of the miles driven in a year could save a driver nearly $200 and more than 60 gallons of fuel.
• Observing the speed limit and not exceeding 60 mph, where legally allowed, can improve mileage by up to 23 percent.
• Traffic lights are often synchronized so that a motorist driving at a specific speed will pass through a series of green lights without stopping. Driving at a steady speed can help drivers avoid red lights, therefore keeping their vehicles moving more efficiently.