If you build it, they will come. It is a standard trope where I live in Toronto that nobody uses the bike lanes in winter and it is a waste of space that could be used for storing or moving cars; the city is still in the thrall of the late Rob Ford. Now, Tamara Nahal and Raktim Mitra of the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Ryerson University have completed a study, Factors Contributing to Winter Cycling: Case Study of a Downtown University in Toronto, Canada, which lo

It’s a luxury tenfold. A few extra minutes inside your apartment on a windy February morning instead of waiting at the bus stop – all because you accessed real-time transit information on your smartphone. But when you get to the bus stop at the time your phone said the bus was coming, the bus is nowhere to be found. Huh? It turns out that real-time information isn’t as accurate as we think (or hope). Here’s why: Transit agencies typically supply real-time information to passe

As commercial development in the Philadelphia suburbs continues to center around mixed-use communities that can approximate urban walkability and transit access, sprawling office parks seem like a relic from a previous era — but that could soon change. With more value being placed on transit access and walkability, location is more important than ever for suburban development, but precious few parcels of land remain available to develop in areas that make sense. Many older co

Uber is expanding its reach in the Philadelphia region by introducing Express Pool, which will make Philadelphia one of just six cities in the country to offer this bus-like alternative. Express Pool will work like Uber Pool, in that drivers will pick up separate passengers and drop them off at different locations. The difference is that Express Pool will usually ask the riders to walk a few blocks to a pickup location, “dynamically located” to maximize trip efficiencies, sai

Mobility Lab’s Transportation Techies brought tech lovers together last week at the Black Cat nightclub in Washington, D.C., to dig into the troves of data generated by the growing number of bikeshare companies in the capital and its surrounding communities. Among other show-and-tells, Bikeshare Hack Night VIII presenters showed their development of bikeshare user profiles, their creation of new ways to map and check bike availability, and the ways they figured out how to mak

The first thing you might consider after looking at the Twitter feed of Seattle’s chief traffic engineer Dongho Chang is that he may possibly be two, or three, or even four people. It does not seem logistically feasible for one person to be at this many places in the city at once, surveying the installation of bike lanes, supervising the construction of new sidewalks, and guiding the larger decisions that move Seattle residents. And he does it all, for the most part, on a bic

NORRISTOWN >> The state of Montgomery County is strong. That was the prevailing message the county commissioners relayed in their annual state of the county presentations at Thursday’s meeting at One Montgomery Plaza. Commission Chair Dr. Val Arkoosh began the address by explaining the county’s metrics for success: a vibrant economy, healthy communities and the effectiveness with which the county meets the needs of its citizens. She began by harkening back to 2012, when the c

Seattle is the fastest growing city in the U.S., thanks largely to Amazon’s addition of 35,000 employees since 2010. For all the economic benefits that come with growth, it has also created a variety of civic headaches, crippling traffic chief among them. But thanks in part to considerable efforts by the region’s largest employers, the share of commuters driving solo into downtown Seattle is on a dramatic decline. Just 25 percent of workers traveling into the center city drov