GOOD Magazine: “Reinventing Our Wheels”
Illustration by via GOOD Magazine.
GOOD magazine published its jam-packed, 112-page “Transportation Issue,” devoted to a “drastic rethinking of how we move around, how we design our cities, and how we power our vehicles.”
The articles cover a lot of ground, discussing the problems and solutions of congestion pricing; comparing choices that will make commuting to work more convenient (a dilemma that’s referred to as the “last-mile problem”); and also, reviewing a range of transport projects, like bus rapid transit in Bogota, carpooling in San Francisco, and bicycle rental in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Then there’s a bunch of opinion pieces. Joseph Sussman, MIT professor and external adviser to the Department of Transportation, makes the case for high-speed rail. (EMBARQ Director Nancy Kete and Senior Transport Engineer Dario Hidalgo want the same thing.) Bryn Davidson of Dynamic Cities explains the “peak road” crisis (”we have as much road capacity today as we will ever need.”) The City Fix blogger and founder of Zipcar Robin Chase talks about maximizing the efficiency of vehicles through car sharing and carpooling. And GOOD’s associate editor Patrick James explains why he thinks Detroit’s auto industry must be allowed to fail.
The best pieces are those that have interactive features. The Livable Streets Initiative contributed an interactive graphic (online, with a 2-D print version, as well) that shows the “before” and “after” shots of the ideal makeover for a busy street intersection. The result is a “complete street,” accommodating pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders, instead of just cars. Livable Streets and GOOD partnered up to host a design competition, asking budding urban planners and activists to submit Photoshopped solutions that could help improve their communities. (So far, there are only two submissions published on the GOOD Web site.)
As usual, GOOD created a bunch of cool infographics, showing the most used subways in the world, comparing speeds of different modes of transport (i.e. walking vs. supersonic flight), and calculating how much fuel it takes to move a person 350 miles on different vehicles (i.e. cruise ship vs. motorcycle.) There’s also a ranking of America’s most walkable cities, as measured by WalkScore.com.
Finally, there are a few how-to guides to “choosing your ride”":
- Double your car’s fuel economy for free
- Find the best alternative-fuel car
- Purchase the best bike
