I have written about cars before. Up until recently, I drove a 2015 Toyota Prius, and test-drove the Tesla Model 3 and Tesla Model Y. I wanted to get an electric car, but someday, and one that put me in the driver’s seat. The future became the present this summer. With the wildfire smoke burning […]
Every day at The Overhead Wire, we collect news about cities and send the links to our email list. At the end of the week we take some of the most popular stories and post them to Greater Greater Washington, a group blog similar to streets.mn that focuses on urban issues in the D.C. region. […]
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 […]
Every motorist has concerns when driving: This road is too curvy, that bicyclist came out of nowhere, that pedestrian shouldn’t cross the street there. Luckily, there’s a quick & easy solution to most of these concerns: Drive more slowly. Sure, we feel pressure to get places faster, pressure from the annoying driver behind us, social […]
Saturday, September 22 is World Car-Free Day! OurStreets Minneapolis, The Minneapolis Downtown Council and a few local groups are celebrating it on Friday, September 21st. In honor of this blessed event, I’m posting a few car-toons. The U.S.A. (including Minnesota) remain “The Land of the Cars!” Here’s a new American flag proposal so outsiders will […]
We constantly hear that driverless cars are just around the corner. We’re told they will revolutionize transportation and enable us to continue using our car-based transport and land-use system. If they’re made by Tesla, they’ll be powered by magic, solar-powered, super efficient batteries and we’ll all be able to keep living our hyper-mobile, hyper-consumptive lifestyles […]
Today I’m bringing you our 118th episode, a conversation with Dr. Nichole Morris. Dr. Morris is the director of the HumanFIRST Laboratory at the University of Minnesota, and is a researcher and scholar who focuses on the intersection of transportation, technology, and behavior. We sat down a few months ago in her office at the […]
Via City Observatory, here’s a chart that shows a great proxy for the annual VMT (or vehicle miles travelled). It’s pretty self-explanatory. For many years, almost since the year 2000, VMT (the total amount of driving in the country) was at a plateau. With low gas prices and a booming economy, that’s changed. The country […]
A year or so ago, I was invited to a “greet your local legislator” gathering at the Minnesota State Capitol. A casual, brown-bag affair over a weekday noon hour, it seemed designed to draw working types from my politically progressive district. Surprising, then, that the otherwise detailed instructions included parking information only. Not a word […]
Here’s a chart from an excellent ten-year-old report out of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute called “Socially Optimal Transport Prices and Markets” that stands up pretty well today. The 50-page report goes into detail about different country’s incentives for driving, walking, transit, and bicycling in an effort to explain why country’s transportation systems are so […]