Like so many inventions, the scooter was a child of necessity: Specifically, the need to get a bratwurst without looking like an idiot. One night in 1990, Wim Ouboter, a Dutch-Swiss banker and amateur craftsman, was “in the mood for a St. Gallen bratwurst at the Sternengrill in Zurich,” or so the story goes. He wanted to get from his house to the brat place and then to a bar, stat, but the stops seemed too far apart to walk, and too close to drive. What he really needed, Oubo

The Netherlands, land of bikes and good design, is no stranger to clever takes on the bike lane. Some of them glow, while others are paved with asphalt made with recycled toilet paper. Now you can add the world’s first bike lane made from recycled plastic to the list. A new 100-foot stretch of bike lane in Zwolle is made from 70 percent recycled plastic, which includes waste from plastic bottles, festival beer cups, packaging, and plastic furniture. The material, which looks

Mobility Lab has now been writing about the little-know excellent idea of PARK(ing) Day for six years. And despite the stragglers who find it impossible to accept change, the concept is beginning to take hold. Although the mission of PARK(ing) Day (which occurred Friday) is to create temporary parklets, one day per year, where people can congregate in places traditionally designed for cars, we’ve always wondered why that idea needs to be so modest. Takoma Park, Md., is taking

The southwestern Florida town of Babcock Ranch bills itself as the nation’s first solar-powered town. Now, it can add another big high-tech notch to its belt: The first city to test autonomously driving school shuttle buses. This fall, the planned community has partnered with Transdev to launch a pilot program for self-driving shuttle buses that can transport up to 12 children at a time. Like other autonomous shuttles that are popping up across the country, the EasyMile Easy1

Organizations in the transportation industry are obsessed with safety. When those organizations are heavily focused on cars, drivers, and highways, that makes a lot of sense. And while safety is obviously still important for people on transit and on bikes and feet, unless cars get in those people’s way, those people are largely extremely safe. Still, it’s not surprising that so many people have a fear or concern when they hear their loved ones are preparing to walk or bike so

The world is building mass transit networks faster than ever before, and ridership is increasing to match. But the United States continues to lag behind both Asia and Europe in mass transit. New York is the only North American city to rank among the global top-ten busiest transit systems. That’s according to a new report published by UITP, the International Association of Public Transport, which takes a close look at mass transit systems in 182 cities across the world. It def

The sociologist Richard Sennet describes cities as “places where strangers meet.” This defines the city both as larger than a village or neighborhood (where you might know or recognize everyone), but it excludes many of the areas that Americans label “cities.” Even if these “cities” have the mass of people necessary for there to be strangers, there are precious few places where one can encounter someone you don’t already know. In a car-centric city, a worker can go straight t

Bus-only lanes are one of the most effective ways to improve bus service. However, they do no good if constantly impinged on by traffic, as happened with Washington, DC’s recent experiment with a priority bus lane to replace a shut-down portion of Metrorail. This largely failed when “parked cars freely blocked the right of way” while trucks “weaved in and out of traffic” according to the Washington Post. The good news: enforcement is relatively easy and at little cost. We jus