Photo by padawan.
China: China’s Olympic anti-pollution plan to start in July[AFP]
China: Beijing Stops Construction for Olympics[New York Times]
United States: Push for Urban Parkland Takes Root[USA Today]
New York: ‘Biking Is the New Golf!’[New York Observer]
Washington DC: Metro Accessible Ball Park Anchors An Areas Revival[New York Times]
Photo by Hossam all line.
The New York Times reports today that noise on Cairo’s streets averages 85 decibels, the equivalent of standing just 15 feet from a passing freight train. And that’s just the average. In the loudest parts of the city it can reach 95 decibels, only slightly softer than the noise produced by a jackhammer!
The loud noise on the city’s streets is not just a nuisance:
It can cause elevated blood pressure and other stress-related diseases. It can interfere with sleep, which almost always makes people more irritable. “People need a chance to sleep, to have a chance to think, in quiet,” said Dr. Nagat Amer, a physician and researcher with the national center.
By walking twenty minutes each way from the metro in Atlanta to her job at the American Cancer Society, Lois Fletcher has lost more than thirty pounds. It’s a remarkable story about how tweaking your day to day routine can have profound influences on your health. But as researchers who study public health will tell, its really not all that surprising. Below are the conclusions of several studies that clearly illustrate the link between good transit and public health:
In a recent post here on TheCityFix.com, Sudhir Gota documented the plight of ‘Transport Challenged People’ in Bangalore, India. In his piece, Sudhir explains how Indian transportation policy’s often myopic focus on car infrastructure can reduce the mobility (and thus the quality of life) of those unable to afford automobiles themselves.
Another example of the link between social justice and transport policy is the plight of Delhi’s ‘wastepickers’ – informal sector trash collectors that make their living collecting and sorting garbage. According to Bharati Chaturvedi, Director of Chintan, a community group that advocates for wastepicker rights, new transport policies in Delhi and other Indian cities have often favored the transportation needs of private automobile owners over those of the wastepickers. Read the rest of this entry »
Photo by Christopher Chan.
Yesterday, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver announced that Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing bill would not move through Albany, a huge blow to New York City’s livable streets movement and Bloomberg’s ambitious PLANYC, which had congestion pricing as its centerpiece. The congestion pricing plan, which had the support of New York City’s City Council, called for charging drivers $8 for entering Manhattan below 60th street. Using the funds generated by charging drivers, New York City planned to inject an infusion of cash into the mass transit system which is strapped for cash and experiencing increasing ridership. With congestion pricing killed, it’s unclear where the funding for the city’s mass transit infrastructure will come from.
See our friends at Streetsblog for more coverage.
The government of Maharashtra, India is planning to introduce a congestion charge in Mumbai, India’s largest city, to relieve the traffic problems that plague the streets. If the plan goes through, Mumbai will follow in the footsteps of cities like London, Stockholm, and Singapore that have already implemented such a charge.
In the transport world, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is a hot topic. Akin to a cross between a bus and a metro, this increasingly popular form of mass transit is fast, efficient, and a fraction of the cost of its better known cousins – metro and rail. As a result, BRT systems are sprouting up all across the globe.
But if you don’t spend your free time reading about the latest and greatest in transportation infrastructure (or haven’t had the chance to use BRT yourself), you might have a hard time picturing exactly how this technology works.
The video above does a great job of illustrating BRT in action. The clip, taken by EMBARQ’s Dario Hidalgo, offers a drivers-eye view of Istanbul’s new BRT system, known as Metrobüs. The video clearly shows some of the key features of BRT: special lanes reserved exclusively for buses, high speed travel along normally gridlocked traffic corridors, and high capacity bus stations, instead of traditional bus stops.
Check back for more “Sustainable Transportation 101” on TheCityFix.com in the near future.
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