National Links: We Have a Bad Parking Addiction
Housing construction on commercial strips, resistance to Paris’ new low-emission zone, the ill effects of our parking addiction and more in this week’s National Links.
Tag Archives: cars
HOURCAR Is Serving More People, in More Places (and Yes, It’s Challenging)
HOURCAR was groundbreaking when it launched in 2005. Despite road bumps — detailed recently in Streets.mn — the company is serving the underserved, its CEO says.
National Links: Reducing Lithium Mining and Low Traffic Neighborhoods
A comprehensive study on the effectiveness of low-traffic neighborhoods in London and how reducing and reusing lithium can curb climate change – these topics and more on this week’s compilation of National Links.
From ‘Car-Heavy’ to ‘Car-Lite’: An (Involuntary) Experiment
After comfortably living with three cars, being forced to use only one can reveal many of the pros and cons of living a “car-lite” lifestyle.
It’s Not Equitable to Protect Cars on Summit Avenue
A recent editorial argued that bike advocates left out the marginalized in their advocacy for new bike infrastructure on Summit Avenue. What if we applied that analysis to cars?
Abolish the Police Car
Until we can change the city charter, we must pay the salaries of about 730 police officers. However, nowhere in there does it specify what is necessary equipment for the officers to have. I will argue here that police cars are not only unnecessary but also actively harmful, and should no longer be funded by […]
The 150th Anniversary of People Being Killed By Cars
Mary Ward was the first person to be killed by a vehicle that we would recognize as a car. The 150th anniversary of her death was August 31, 2019. She lived in Ireland, raised some children, and published scientific work about entomology and the wonders of microscopes, a developing field at the time. You can […]
Twenty-Seven Years of Pickup Truck Design
Former Streetsblog USA writer Angie Schmitt has recently been making the point on Twitter that, despite the extremity of our climate crisis, the transition to sustainable transportation can’t be instantaneous because of our sprawling built environment. We therefore will need both EVs (maybe including ebikes, though she doesn’t address this) and smaller/safer vehicles for people […]
A History of Traffic Management Technology
Earlier I wrote about the history of our Interstate Highway System (Part One and Part Two) and how they were partly a 1930s response to growing urban congestion, as big of a threat to the freedom of mobility as mud and ruts were only a few decades before. However the dream of ending congestion didn’t […]
Chart of the Day: People Per Car for Select Nations, 1900 – 2000
Here’s a fun chart from one of my all-time favorite books, Energy in World History, which you might remember from years ago. I was reminded of Vaclav Smil because he has a new book coming out, and has been making the round with interviews. Anyway, here you go, a fascinating chart that is a bit […]