Click on the headline (link) for the full text. Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Pedaling to Prosperity: Biking Saves U.S. Riders Billions A Year
Tanya Mohn, Forbes
New data highlight that bicyclists in the United States save at least $4.6 billion a year by riding instead of driving.
The analyses were released on Friday to coincide with National Bike to Work Day, part of National Bike Month, which occurs each May.
The average annual operating cost of a bicycle is $308, compared to $8,220 for the average car, and if American drivers replaced just one four-mile car trip with a bike each week for the entire year, it would save more than two billion gallons of gas, for a total savings of $7.3 billion a year, based on $4 a gallon for gas.
The findings were announced by the League of American Bicyclists, Sierra Club, and the National Council of La Raza, an advocacy organization for the Hispanic community, to reflect the strong economic and health benefits of bicycling, and its importance as a safe and efficient mode of transportation…
(20 May 2012)
Link to the factsheet
New York’s New Marketing FAIL
Mikael Colville-Andersen, Copenhagenize
They’re at it again, those New Yorkers. The city’s DoT has chucked another bunch ‘o money at a fancy ad campaign aimed at maintaining the status quo of the automobile’s role in society.
Seriously… I can’t think of any other city on the planet in recent times that has spent so much advertising money on finger-pointing and “behavioural” campaigns aimed at the vulnerable traffic users of their city. Desperately trying to cement, in the public consciousness of it’s citizens, the rather outdated philosophy that cars rule supreme and everyone else are mere pawns to be swept aside without regret. Stand in the way of a Queen, you’re stupid. You’ll get taken. And you know what? We can afford to lose you.
This New York Postian attitude from the DoT towards a city that otherwise has great potential for being much more pedestrian, public transport and cyclist friendly is the primary reason why New York is so far off reaching any sensible level of liveable citiness. Paris makes New York like a Le Corbusier nightmare…
(22 May 2012)
Paris: “the bus stop of the future”
Jarrett Walker, Human Transit
Now that Paris has bus lanes on almost every boulevard, we can expect their transit agencies to continue investing and innovating around their frequent and popular bus services. Today we get “the bus stop of the future,” where designer Marc Aurel has packed in every convenience that will fit in the space, plus a few more.
Yes, it’s still a bus shelter, but the idea is to make it both more useful and more of a social space. People may come here for a range of things other than catching the bus…
This is what a major bus stop or station might look like if you really, really valued buses…
(21 May 2012)
Pictures at blog
Long commute time linked with poor health, new study shows
Theresa Juva-Brown, USA Today
New evidence shows that a long commute by car not only takes hours out of your day, but could take years off your life.
A study published this month in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that the longer people drive to work, the more likely they are to have poor cardiovascular health.
“This is the first study to show that people who commute long distances to work were less fit, weighed more, were less physically active and had higher blood pressure,” said Christine M. Hoehner, a public health professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the study’s lead author. “All those are strong predictors of heart disease, diabetes, and some cancers.”…
(23 May 2012)
Link to report abstract
