transportation

Shai Agassi says his electric cars can save the world. People are listening.

There’s a lot to chew over in Wired’s profile of Shai Agassi, the entrepreneur engaged in an audacious experiment to electrify an entire nation’s transportation system, and in the process rewrite the automotive industry’s business model.

The nation in question is Israel, with Denmark and Hawaii possibly to follow. Agassi’s idea is that electric cars should be sold on a subscription model, like cell phones, with fees used to underwrite a network of intelligent electric outlets that ensure batteries are always topped up.

By Eric de Place

I'm a bit late on this, but it's still worth mentioning. Via the NY Times:

Traffic deaths in the United States declined last year, reaching the lowest level in more than a decade, the government reported Thursday. Some 41,059 people were killed in highway crashes, down by more than 1,600 from 2006. It was the fewest number of highway deaths in a year since 1994, when 40,716 people were killed.

Ottawa has introduced "a new GPS fleet tracking system on OC Transpo buses to improve service". Even with such a system, there may be significant challenges to running buses precisely on time with variable traffic.

Once buses are GPS equipped, however, it is possible to provide estimates of when the next bus will actually come. Guelph, Ontario, and Thunder Bay, Ontario are already doing this, thanks to a company called Next Bus. Here is a live example, showing when the next bus will come to a particular stop in Guelph.

The Texas highway department says no.

I thought this was interesting.  The Texas highway department – Texas, no less! -- says that
roads simply don’t pay for themselves:

A couple years ago, I wrote a piece Why We Need An X Prize for Eco-Friendly Air Travel, encouraging a competitive approach towards innovating a way to slash air travel emissions:

Air travel presents one of the stickiest problems we face.

On the one hand, in a rapidly globalizing world, we need to fly to do business, build networks and see loved ones. Indeed, to many people (including myself, to be honest), the ability to travel easily and keep a global community is one of the greatest accomplishments of our civilization.

On the other hand, air travel is frying the planet. While air travel contributes only 3% of humanity's total CO2 emissions (making them a problem only a few times larger than, say, coal fires), air travel is growing at an astounding rate. ...

40 cities, 2,058 neighboords, and one Walk Score to rule them all.

By Eric De Place

It's here! The biggest 40 cities in America ranked by their walkability. Plus, every single neighborhood in those cities -- all 2,508 of them -- rank-ordered for your walking pleasure.

** In a surprise upset, San Francisco edges out NYC for top honors in walkability. Who else made it into the Top 10?