Dozens of cities around the world are working quickly to move towards a goal of zero-emission transportation on their streets. Now London has just announced a plan to make half of its historic center—known as the Square Mile—car-free. According to a new transportation strategy proposed by the City of London Corporation, the city would designate half of these Square Mile streets as “pedestrian priority,” meaning that all motorized vehicles would be banned, unless they were providing access for disabled or elderly people. “The Square Mile is a unique place to travel, therefore radical proposals are required to future-proof this world-class, growing business and cultural center,” said Chris Hay
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) will undoubtedly improve road safety, with computers able to avoid collisions humans cannot. But when AVs face an inevitable crash, how do they decide whether to stay in the lane – and hit a person walking in the crosswalk – or swerve, hitting someone on the sidewalk? This question – how to incorporate morality in AVs’ algorithms – was at the heart of a new study from Germany, where researchers tried to determine which course of action AVs should take before crashes. The answer? Stay in the lane, even if more people will die. Unlike human drivers, AVs in real time can predict the probable risk of most decisions. But some situations are completely uncertain. In this
Memphis was in trouble. In the early 2000s, the city was at or near the top of every major negative index of urban living: obesity, violent crime, poverty, and poor education. All those negatives meant that it was nearly impossible to recruit employees and businesses to the city. And to top it off, this magazine named Memphis one of the country’s worst cities for cycling in 2008 and 2010. City and county leaders knew they needed to do something to turn the city’s fates around—but what? They needed so much: to improve public health, to fix blighted neighborhoods, to assist lower-income residents with basic needs. When a group of citizens first floated the idea of building a 10.7-mile bike pat
In the old days, determining whether a neighborhood was walkable required physically going there. Then, Google Street View arrived, and “raters” surveying a city’s sidewalks, curb cuts, or even graffiti could survey a city from their desk. Now, according to a release from Arizona State University, walkability surveys don’t need people at all. A new tool from the university’s College of Health Solutions and School of Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering, can detect crosswalks, street lights, trees and more. The software uses Street View images, computer vision, and deep learning to identify these so-called microfeatures. Researchers at the college of health are trying to de
Getting people to stop driving alone takes more than just building better infrastructure. When you wake up in the morning, you probably don’t assess every transportation option available to you. Many people just hop in their car without thinking about it. (Which explains why commuting is people’s most entrenched transportation habit, and the hardest to break.) But changing transportation habits is more important now than ever. The transportation sector is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, and it’s private cars – not airplanes or trucks – that’s driving this pollution. Yet our heating climate isn’t enough to get people out of cars and onto bikes or public tr
If you're a bicyclist, the Schuylkill River Trail could soon be the path of least resistance from Philadelphia to Reading, a network of paved and stone pathways, roadways and sidewalks far from snarled highway traffic. Currently the trail ends before you reach Berks County, stopping at Parker Ford in East Coventry Township, Chester County, and picking up again in Pottstown before heading north to Reading. A roughly 5-mile section spanning Chester and Montgomery counties is unfinished, forcing cyclists and hikers to maneuver from one truncated end to the other, or turn around and go back. But the two counties are embarking on plans to complete the missing piece of the trail by 2020, creating
The rise of electric scooters in cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco has led to no small amount of debate and angry community board meetings, but it seems safe to say that the mobility toothpaste has already been squeezed out of that transportation tube. The promise of cheap, easily available, motorized personal transportation is too alluring to be legislated out of existence. So cities will have to design their way toward a solution. This is no small task, as more than a century of urban design championed the car above all else, leading to public spaces where the majority of the space is devoted to private vehicles. This has meant that most cities find themselves in an awkward phas
Will a new development “bring traffic”? That’s a weighty question for cities around the country facing public pressure about development proposals. In response many cities have established “mitigation” rules, that require the developers to, for example, add parking, or widen roads to “relieve” future traffic, before they can construct an apartment or office building, for example. But these “mitigation” efforts rely on pseudoscientific, and disproven assumptions, according to a new report from Smart Growth America. Unfortunately, they have been codified, widely adopted and are rarely questioned. Worse, many common mitigation techniques encourage car use and make walking and other alternatives
Former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx, who helped spearhead federal autonomous vehicle regulations and the Smart City Challenge, would be a good get for any aspiring transit startup. In a recent Medium post announcing his new job as chief policy officer at Lyft, Foxx demonstrated why, as he discussed technology’s potential to transform how we get around, as well as the power of transit to change the lives of everyday Americans. “How much more discretionary money might my family have had if we never owned a car—if there had been a way to pay for the trips they needed instead of the car itself?” he wrote, explaining how his own family could have benefitted from a more affordable
Finding a place to quickly top off your electric car’s battery might get a little bit easier: Google announced today that it’s adding support to Google Maps for EV chargers. Both Tesla and Chargepoint’s global network of EV chargers will be added to the iOS and Android versions of the app starting today, with support for the desktop version of Maps coming in a few weeks. Google Maps will also support different charging networks specific to certain countries. It will display chargers in the EVgo, Blink, and SemaConnect networks in the US; Chargemaster and Pod Point chargers in the UK; and Chargefox ones in Australia and New Zealand. Nearby chargers will show up in Google Maps when a user sear
According to a new report from the United Nations’ scientific panel, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), humanity has about 12 years to avoid the most dire consequences of climate change. To avert catastrophic sea level rise, food shortges, and widespread drought and wildfire, emissions must be reduced by 45 percent from 2010 levels, and by 100 percent by 2050. To accomplish this daunting feat, the global transportation sector will need a major overhaul. In the U.S., the world’s second-largest producer of greenhouse gases, transportation makes up the largest share of emissions. In cities, passenger vehicles and public transit fleets will have to move from fuel-burning engin
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is excerpted from “Building the Cycling City,” by Melissa and Chris Brunlett, published by Island Press. In it, the authors elevate examples from five Dutch cities as “blueprints” for creating an accessible urban cycling culture and explore how those examples have inspired other cities around the world. As the home of Royal Philips Electronics for more than 125 years, the southern Netherlands city of Eindhoven — now the country’s fifth largest, with more than a quarter-million residents — once epitomized the industrial heart of the country. During that period, its design, development, and economic vitality were inextricably linked to the electronics giant — long
Started in 1997, International Walk to School Day now counts tens of thousands of students in 40 countries—including students at 5,100 schools in the U.S. alone—who pledge to walk and bike to school on the same day each year. Walk to School Day also brings attention to the dismal conditions under which many students must walk and bike to school every day. That is, if their parents even allow them to walk or bike. Where I live, in Los Angeles, it’s not hard to understand why most parents don’t. Here, on streets designed for the fast movement of cars, traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for kids aged 4 to 15. At least once a month when I’m talking to fellow parents, I hear a differe
A landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released Monday spelled out a grim planetary future in no uncertain terms. If greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere by as much as 1.5 degrees Celsius, the most dire effects of climate change will be unleashed. Coastlines will be submerged, droughts and wildfires exacerbated, coral reefs exterminated, severe food shortages and poverty deepened. And humanity has only a fast-closing 12-year window to make the changes necessary to avoid this fate. Previously, the IPCC’s work had focused on the effects of 2 degrees Celsius of warming, which scientists once considered the threshold for these nightmarish effects. But that half-deg
Lime pledged on Tuesday to make its entire fleet of electric bikes and scooters completely “carbon free.” The San Francisco-based company said it will purchase renewable energy credits from new and existing projects to ensure all of its dock-free bikes and scooters are carbon neutral. It is part of a new sustainability effort the company is calling “Lime Green.” While bikes and scooters are certainly greener alternatives to cars, there is growing attention being paid to the proliferation of alternative modes of transportation in cities across the globe. Most of the focus has been on ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft, but bike- and scooter-sharing companies also want to show they are m
ROXBOROUGH — A new swath of trails is opening up in the Roxborough area along the Schuykill River. The trails are on the 340 acre property of the Schuykill Environmental Center. Named the River Trail Gateway, an ornate stone staircase on the Schuykill River Trail leads past a trail map kiosk and up the steep slope into the woods of the Center's property. The trails are ideal for those who love to mix biking with hiking or running. At the gateway, there's spot to park your bike. The trails are for hikers only. Click here to read the full article: https://patch.com/pennsylvania/norristown/s/gizyz/swath-of-new-trails-opening-off-schuylkill-river-trail?utm_term=article-slot-2&utm_source=newslett
Join the Montgomery County Planning Commission (MCPC) at one of three free public events to learn about Bike Montco: The Bicycle Plan for Montgomery County. Bike Montco envisions the creation of a future on-road bicycle transportation network throughout Montgomery County. This planned future network and new policies in Bike Montco will work toward achieving improved bicycle access and mobility all across the county—a major goal of the county’s comprehensive plan, Montco 2040: A Shared Vision. Bike Montco is a new bicycle plan for Montgomery County, PA that provides a vision of a safe and efficient bicycle network for everyone. This vision will take time and effort. The results will be unique
Ride-hailing giant Uber, which helped jumpstart the ongoing revolution in mobile technology and urban transit by popularizing a new way to move about cities, has decided cars aren’t always the best way to get around. In a blog post, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced a three-tiered plan to support sustainable mobility by reducing congestion, supporting car-free transit, and funding transit innovation. “We recognize we need to step up and support cities that take bold steps to solve their transportation problems,” Khosrowshahi writes. “We are in a unique position to have a meaningful and positive impact on the communities we serve across the globe.” Uber will spend $10 million over three ye
If you’re familiar with the Washington, DC neighborhood Georgetown, then you know that M Street – a beautiful, brick-paved avenue – is the worst for walking. The worst for walking quickly, that is. The sidewalks are too narrow to accommodate the large numbers of people window shopping and hustling to catch buses along the busy thoroughfare. On narrow sidewalks like M Street’s, one slow walker or a group of friends have the power to reduce overall pedestrian speed, a new study from the University of Sydney found. The researchers observed people walking on a wide sidewalk and a narrow sidewalk. They found that people using smartphones or walking with others walked more slowly than those walkin
The city of Santa Monica, California has welcomed a new competitor to its scooter-filled streets. Jump scooters, a new service owned and operated by ride-hailing giant Uber, will officially begin operating Wednesday morning, after a soft launch Monday afternoon. The fleet of 250 cherry red dockless electric scooters, the first such Uber-operated vehicles to hit the street, joins 500 similarly branded Jump electric-bikes already in operation. Uber is using this trial to showcase its recent commitment to sustainable mobility and car-free transit, and catch up with the micromobility revolution pioneered by companies such as Bird. The company hopes to show that by integrating cars-for-hire, elec
