BYD continues to make inroads in the US with news of the delivery of the first two of a total of 42 buses to Anaheim Resort Transportation (ART). The new buses represent one step forward into the future for the transit company tasked with moving 9 million annual passengers around the greater Disneyland area in central Anaheim, California. “We applaud ART for its bold action in fighting climate change,” said BYD North America President Stella Li. “We are excited about our continued partnership with Anaheim Resort Transportation and their commitment to Anaheim’s residents and visitors.” The area is a bustling tourist hub for the area, with millions of guests flowing through not only the Disney

In 2021, Seattle will have a new hockey team. And when hockey fans head to a game at the new arena where the team will play, they could choose to sit in some traffic on the freeway and pay for parking downtown, or they could hop on a bus or light rail—completely free of charge. NHL Seattle (the team doesn’t have a name yet) will be the third sports franchise in the country to offer free public transit to those going to games, as a way to ease traffic congestion in the city, increase access for fans, and do something good for the environment. “We’re a very environmentally focused city,” says Rob Johnson, NHL Seattle’s vice president of transportation and a former Seattle City Council member a

Germany doesn’t have a single goal to improve the pedestrian experience on its streets — it has seven. That’s right: Germany not only has a comprehensive National Walking Plan — something American street-safety advocates only dream of — but its transportation leaders are holding themselves accountable to seven distinct benchmarks for measuring how their policies affect the safety and comfort of people on foot. Seriously, just check out this infographic, which spells out exactly how walkable Germans want their cities to become by 2030: It’s a shocking contrast to the American approach to pedestrian policy and goal setting. The Federal Highway Administration doesn’t even have national pedestri

The city's transportation department rolled out electric bikes last year, and after some initial problems with missing bikes, it's back again this year. Some 300 e-bikes are already appearing on city streets. Aaron Ritz, manager of the Philadelphia Transportations Program, says this year's e-bike fleet is more than double what it was last year. "They attracted new people into the system, new people didn't know the standard procedure which is you check it out, you ride it, you return it," Ritz said of the ebikes that were not returned. Since last season, some changes were made. For instance, gift cards from big retailers will not be acceptable to ride, and only credit cards can be used. And h

Transportation planners in several cities are considering putting bus lanes in the center lanes of some main roads, with new concrete islands for passenger boarding and deboarding. Because they would not be in the right lanes along curbs, buses would be less likely to be held up by other traffic attempting to park or making a turn. Also, state transportation officials say they’re considering letting buses run exclusively on the shoulders of certain highways. Neither concept is exactly novel. Many cities around the world and even in the United States already feature center-running bus lanes, a key facet of systems known as “bus rapid transit.” One was once even considered in Boston, on Blue H

E-bikes, e-scooters and motorized skateboards have caught on as cheap, convenient ways to get around cities faster. But their presence has caused some to worry about their safety and others to worry about the potential for chaos on the sidewalks as the vehicles share space with slower pedestrians. A just-released report by the International Transport Forum should put fears about the former to rest. It also offers recommendations for minimizing the latter. As reported in Metro Magazine, the “Safe Micromobility” report by the ITF’s Corporate Partnership Board finds that e-scooter users face no greater risk of injury than cyclists do. It also finds that motor vehicles are involved in 80 percent

Climate change is the greatest challenge of our generation. As citizens of this planet, we cannot sit idly by while it goes up in flames. In order to cut down emissions, preserve our environment and ensure public health for all, we need a bold solution. The Transportation and Climate Initiative is that bold solution. The transportation sector accounts for a whopping 38% of Connecticut’s greenhouse gas emissions, more than any other source. This disproportionate rate of emissions is largely due continued sprawling land use, car-centric zoning codes and a stubborn reliance on low-occupancy motor vehicles. The Transportation and Climate Initiative is a collaboration of 12 Northeastern states an

The car-free 14th Street Busway is a real lifesaver. No, literally. The benefits of the city’s transit-priority pilot program between Third and Ninth avenues in Manhattan are well documented: buses are moving much faster and ridership is up as a result of the improved service. But the project is having a much greater, and much-less-heralded, safety impact.In the four months since the busway began in October, total crashes are down 53 percent and injuries are down 63 percent compared to the same four-month period a year earlier. Crashes that resulted in injuries are down 68 percent. Here are the raw numbers: Total crashes Oct. 2018-Jan. 2019: 90 Oct. 2019-Jan. 2020: 42 (a decrease of 53 perce

The 270 million vehicles in the United States are parked over 90 percent of the time. There are far more parking spaces than vehicles. How many spaces? The data is imprecise. There could be 500 million parking lot spaces and 1 billion spaces on streets. Add parking in home garages, carports and driveways, and another estimate is 2 billion parking spaces. Many cities allocate more space for cars than people and that includes cities desperate to create more housing. Many wasted spaces are being put to better use, thanks to forward-thinking city executives, urban planners, corporate facilities planners and innovative thinkers. More space for sustainable mobility San Francisco converted parking

Another world-class city has proven that Vision Zero isn’t just wishful thinking — and its example puts the pressure on American communities to stop street carnage now. City leaders in Helsinki, Finland, recently announced that they’ve achieved the seemingly impossible (to car-loving Americans, at least): zero pedestrian and cyclist fatalities on its streets in an entire calendar year. That makes them the second Scandinavian capital to eliminate walking and biking deaths lately — Oslo, Norway, announced last month that no one died on its roads in 2019 either, save a single driver who crashed into a fence (three motorists died in Helsinki, according to the city’s urban environment division, w

From public transport to cycling, sustainable transport is on course to overtake driving in the world’s biggest cities within a decade, according to a study released on Monday. Private car trips will drop by 10% on average by 2030 to make up less than half of all city journeys, while public transport, walking and bicycle will all increase in popularity, the Mobility Futures study found. “It’s a job for every mayor, for every city government to do something,” said Rolf Kullen, mobility director at research consultancy firm Kantar, which produced the study, based on surveys in 31 cities. “Cities are beginning to understand that you do not build your city around a certain means of transport ...

Changing commuter behavior is not just about engaging with drivers heading to work, but their employers as well. This has been the approach taken in Columbus, Ohio, where the Smart Columbus program is working to reduce single-occupancy trips by boosting public transit ridership and electric vehicle adoption, among other reforms. Part of this transformative effort established the Ignite Action Fund, a roughly $600,000 pot of money to seed programming aimed at developing traffic reduction programs within companies. The fund was created to get "companies committed to the program, get them to move,” said Jordan Davis, director of Smart Columbus for the Columbus Partnership in Ohio. Officials wit

There are many things about New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) that are worth complaining about, but its new subway car design may not be one of them. Last week the MTA provided a first glimpse of the new R211 cars designed by Kawasaki Rail Car Inc., which was awarded a $1.4 billion contract for the project in 2018. The new cars are revolutionary for their open-gangway design: Rather than being separated by doors, the cars will flow into one another, creating more square footage in which to fit passengers. (The same plastic seats will remain in each subway car.) While this design has been used in many other metro systems around the world (including those in London, Toronto,

In 2018, Madrid banned most cars from its city center. In 2019, Oslo finished its own redesign to get rid of most cars. In 2020, Barcelona is planning its next “superblocks,” or car-free neighborhoods. Now a smaller city will be among the next to limit urban traffic: York, a U.K. city with a population of around 150,000, plans to ban most cars from its medieval city center by 2023. The city, like hundreds of others around the world, declared a climate emergency in 2019. It also committed to becoming carbon neutral by the end of this decade, and recognizes that changing transportation is one part of that goal, and in late December, voted for a motion committing the city to the traffic ban. “L

Traffic planners now have numbers to back-up what we've all been seeing. A new survey shows too many cars heading downtown with just the driver on board. 60 percent of commuters are driving downtown alone. But that doesn't mean they liked it. Some are already weaning themselves from their cars. “For example they would drive to a park and ride and then take transit and then maybe walk from the transit station or the bus stop to their office,” says Kate Harrington, director of outreach and engagement for Movability, a transportation management association that works with employers to develop alternatives to those drive-alone commutes. Harrington adds, “A lot of downtown employers are motivated

Even by Dutch standards, the city of Utrecht is stunningly bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly, but there are plans to make it even more so. Whereas in much of the rest of the city motorists are treated as guests on “fietstraats”—or bicycle streets—there will be almost no cars whatsoever in the soon-to-be-redeveloped district of Merwede; shops, schools and other amenities will be within easy walking distance, and central Utrecht, one kilometer to the north, will be a short bike ride away. An urban development plan to radically transform a canalside industrial estate has been drawn up by the municipality of Utrecht together with ten landowners. Subject to agreement by locals, the 60-acre site co

Transport is the world’s fastest growing source of energy-related carbon emissions. It accounted for 23% of energy-related GHG emissions in 2010, and, within that, urban transport was the largest single source. Depending on where you live, transport also contributes anywhere between 12-70% of urban air pollution, while at least 184,000 deaths in 2010 could be specifically attributed to air pollution from vehicles. Lengthy commutes also eat into productivity and leisure time – such as India’s average 1.5-hour daily commute. This comes with economic costs – in Beijing, motorized transport’s congestion, air pollution, crashes, and noise cost 7.5%-15% of its GDP. Because of these profound effect

The future of street design has arrived in Pittsburgh. At Hazelwood Green — the massive mixed-use former brownfield development underway along the Monongahela River — Pittsburgh will get to see what Complete Streets look like. The idea is to design and operate a street for everyone — with safe access for all users, including bicyclists, pedestrians, motorists and transit users alike. The newly-opened Lytle, Beehive and Eliza streets include protected sidewalk-level bicycle lanes, a shifting center line with alternating on-street parking, raised intersections, floating bus islands and a general focus on green infrastructure and landscaping. “I think the biggest thing is the notion of ‘people

In eight years, the world will descend on Los Angeles for the 2028 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. Due to the estimated magnitude of attendees and pressures for transportation efficiencies, the city is already looking at how to ready its roads and rails. So far, local officials have plans to offer more driving alternatives and to cut emissions for improved air quality. With hundreds of thousands of athletes, coaches and spectators set to occupy the already congested city, the looming 2028 deadline may propel efforts to pursue and finalize private and government partnerships that could defray some of the plans' costs. "We hope [the Olympics] unlock a spirit of collaboration and possibili

Americans put over 13,000 miles on their vehicles every year. If car commercials are to be believed, this is all done off-roading into the woods and driving sports cars through empty, rain-slicked city streets. In reality, much of this mileage is racked up commuting to work. And, according to Texas A&M’s Urban Mobility Report 2019, the average auto commuter spends an extra 54 hours in his or her car every year on top of the time it should actually take to get to the office. If you live in a city like Los Angeles, San Francisco, or New York, that figure doubles. In Los Angeles, for example, commuters spend 119 hours each year delayed in their cars—that’s almost three full weeks spent idling.