US Workers commuting by bicycle increase from 2008 to 2012
US Workers commuting by bicycle increased a larger percentage than any other mode from 2008 to 2012. http://ht.ly/xiQ2i
Modes Less Traveled—Bicycling and Walking to Work in the United States: 2008–2012
American Community Survey Reports
By Brian McKenzie
The U.S. Census Bureau has released a report that focuses on bicycling and walking to work, including strategies that can promote non-motorized commuting. The report includes supplemental tables that present the percentage of workers who walked or biked to work in small-, medium-, and large-sized cities. The U.S. Department of Transportation has also expressed its support for the development of integrated transportation systems that include bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure.
In Dakar, paving streets with many hands and few machines
In Dakar, paving streets with many hands and few machines
http://ht.ly/wplr9
DAKAR, Senegal — A small crew of young men and women are fast at work in the Place de l’Obélisque, turning the central square of this capital city from a wide patch of asphalt and sand sidewalks into a colorfully paved plaza.
The paving program won’t solve all of Dakar’s road problems. There’s not sufficient funding to repave the whole city and even if there was, it would take 20 years to pave all the streets at the current pace.
But the paving is solving some of Dakar’s problems. The pavers are designed to facilitate rainwater drainage. Small spaces between the blocks allow water to filter into the ground rather than run off. In a neighborhood called Grand Yoff, which has suffered from constant flooding during the rainy season since the mid-1990s, streets now drain better as a result of the paving program. Sand streets and sidewalks that used to wash out in heavy rains are now stabilized.
And one thing everyone agrees on is that the newly paved streets look great. The colorful geometric patterns are giving parts of Dakar a distinctive look. On roads where pedestrians previously had no choice but to walk in traffic, there are new paved walkways where adults stroll or sit talking under trees while boys and girls play. “The dream has become a tangible reality,” says Theophile Bama, director of Yelhy Technology Africa. “There is a qualitative change in the appearance of Dakar.”
New STRAVA Metro feature shows City Planners how cyclists are using City streets
New STRAVA Metro feature shows CIty Planners how cyclists are using City streets
http://ht.ly/wH97f
Strava Metro is a new service that pulls from their database of activities, which they say is over 300 billion GPS points and growing, to give cycling advocacy groups and government organizations better insight into where people are biking in their cities. The goal is to help them make better informed decisions about alternative transportation infrastructure like bike lanes.
Perfect timing since next week is Bike To Work Week, which should provide a bit more data on how less avid cyclists might contribute to the load. The link shows “heatmap” visualizations of Metro data for SF, NYC and London, illustrating the available data for some of the largest cities in the world.
Six major U.S. cities to create protected bike lanes
Six major U.S. cities to create protected bike lanes
http://ht.ly/wpkDa
Six U.S. cities have been chosen by a leading bicycle advocacy group to receive guidance with creating protected cycling lanes. Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, and Seattle were selected from 100 applicants by the Green Lane Project, according to its sponsor, PeopleForBikes. Each will receive financial, strategic and technical assistance.
Many urban bike lanes are designated by nothing more than white stripes or green-colored pavement. The lack of any barriers leaves riders vulnerable to collisions with autos that routinely breach their lanes.
The Green Lane Project emphasizes safer designs. It uses curbs, planters and other dividers to physically separate bike and vehicular traffic. The project says separate bike lanes can reduce injuries for cyclists, drivers and pedestrians by up to 50 percent.
In 2012 and 2013, the project worked with Austin, Chicago, Memphis, Portland, San Francisco and Washington, DC, to create dedicated bike lanes. Those efforts helped to nearly double the number of protected urban bike lanes in the U.S. to 142.
Can Cities Change the Face of Biking?
Can Cities Change the Face of Biking? http://ht.ly/vVApV
There’s a growing trend of teaching young people (especially those from demographic groups that historically haven’t embraced biking) how to repair and ride bikes.
Youth bike programs could lead to a higher percentage of city bike commuters, but to achieve large-scale change, the clubs would likely need to expand biking to demographic groups that historically haven’t embraced biking. Many of the nonprofits organize rides through the city or even to other cities, which promotes exercise. Merriam said he would like to see Baltimore schools treat bike repair classes as a hands-on form of physics education. Some schools elsewhere already do. The nonprofit Bike Works Seattle visits a high school each year for a two-week unit on physics concepts demonstrated through bicycles.
Baltimore is one of a growing number of cities with nonprofits that use bicycles as a youth education tool. The city of Albuquerque, N.M., for example, has its own community-based bike shop, which hosts two-hour classes on basic tune-ups, brake systems, ball bearings and wheel truing. In general, local government isn’t the driving force behind these programs, but it often provides important support in the form of municipal grants or in-kind contributions like Digital Harbor’s garage.
But groups like Baltimore Bike Experience could be attractive to policymakers for another reason: They teach job skills. Hopkins, one of the students, now works on Saturdays as a bike mechanic at Race Pace, a local shop down the street from the school. Shahidi said he’s talking with a handful of other shops about finding summer employment for the students. That experience could come in handy for finding permanent employment after high school.
Youth bike programs like the one in Baltimore also have the potential to convert would-be drivers into lifelong bikers. “Cars are not getting cheaper. Public transportation isn’t getting better, so I want to help these kids ride bikes,” Shahidi said, adding that he hopes to see the club expand to other schools and eventually go citywide.
Ghana Bamboo Bikes Initiative – Resilience & economic empowerment one bicycle at a time
Ghana Bamboo Bikes Initiative – Resilience and economic empowerment sustainably built one bicycle at a time.
http://ht.ly/vwf6Q
Founded by a female entrepreneur, the Ghana Bamboo Bikes Initiative trains and employs women with limited access to education to manufacture bicycles out of bamboo. In one fell swoop, this remarkable organization is providing Ghanaian women with a sustainable source of income while addressing wider challenges like traffic congestion, migration between urban and rural areas, and ever-increasing carbon emissions
6 Freeway Removals That Changed Their Cities Forever
6 Freeway Removals That Changed Their Cities Forever by:Alissa Walker
It seems counter-intuitive, right? Rip out eight lanes of freeway through the middle of your metropolis and you’ll be rewarded with not only less traffic, but safer, more efficient cities? But it’s true, and it’s happening in places all over the world.
Many freeway systems were overbuilt in an auto-obsessed era, only to realize later that cities are actually healthier, greener, and safer without them. Like freeway cap parks, which hope to bridge the chasms through severed neighborhoods—Boston’s Big Dig is a great example—freeway removal projects try to eradicate and undo the damage wrought from highways, while creating new, multifunctional shared streets that can be utilized by transit, bikes, walkers and yes, even cars.
Okay, you’re thinking, but where do all the cars go? It turns out that when you take out a high-occupancy freeway it doesn’t turn the surface streets into the equivalent of the Autobahn. A theory called “induced demand” proves that if you make streets bigger, more people will use them. When you make them smaller, drivers discover and use other routes, and traffic turns out to be about the same. Don’t believe it? Check out http://ht.ly/vdhTe to see freeway removals that have occured in cities all over the world.
Improving Cyclist and Pedestrian Environment while maintaining vehicle throughput
Improving Cyclist and Pedestrian Environment While Maintaining Vehicle Throughput – Before- and After-Construction Analysis http://ht.ly/uTxGi
Reallocating road space to enhance bicycle and pedestrian access is frequently a contentious issue in many American cities. This resistance to the redesign was characteristic in Eugene, Oregon, where a key street segment adjacent to a pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly university was retrofitted to accommodate nonmotorized vehicles better. The intention was to expand pedestrian and bicycle access, so a bicycle lane was actually removed in one direction in favor of implementing a shared lane, and physical barriers between an existing contraflow bicycle lane and a one-way automobile traffic lane were also removed. In addition, two-sided parallel parking stalls were replaced with single-sided, back-in angle parking stalls (a first for Eugene), and sidewalks were widened to better accommodate high pedestrian volumes. Video footage to record behavior along this block before and after the redesign was used to study traffic volume changes by mode and changes in behavior. The results demonstrated that bicycle volumes increased, pedestrian crossing volumes increased, and vehicular traffic volumes showed little change after the redesign. The integration of bicycle and vehicular traffic lanes and removal of physical barriers improved safety for nonmotorized vehicles because the rate of traffic conflicts remained low, no collisions occurred, and the redesign provided new ways for convenient navigation around blockages. Despite a perceived increase in chaos, given increased nonmotorized traffic volumes, this block became no less safe after redesign even though nonmotorized traffic volumes and adaptive use of the space greatly increased. Examination of the particular elements of this redesign provides insight into ways that other multimodal traffic streams could be improved.
London to trial “intelligent” pedestrian crossings
London to trial “intelligent” pedestrian crossings – Time allowed changes with number of people waiting to cross.
http://ht.ly/uwavu
Ever walk halfway across a road only to have the light change and force you to make an undignified rush to the other side? The answer is almost certainly yes. If you’re in London, that may soon be a thing of the past however, with Transport for London (TfL) announcing upcoming trials of an “intelligent” pedestrian crossing. Called the Pedestrian Split Cycle Offset Optimisation Technique (SCOOT), it’s part of a £2 billion to £4 billion (US$3.3 billion to US$6.6 billion) program to improve roads over the next ten years and decrease traffic fatalities in the capital by 40 percent by the year 2020.
SCOOT addresses the problem of how to properly time pedestrian crossings in such a way as to make sure as many people as possible cross with the lights, as well as keeping traffic flowing as smoothly as possible. This is especially difficult in high traffic areas. Ideally, the light should be timed to allow everyone to cross, but pedestrian traffic isn’t uniform and what might work for two people might not work for a dozen. Worse, there’s the problem of pedestrians pressing the request button and then crossing against the lights or simply walking away, which creates needless delays.
Pedestrian SCOOT seeks to remedy this by using video cameras to count the number of people in a digital “box” on the crossing pavement. If a large number of people are detected, the system alters the timing of the green walk light to allow more people to cross safely. In addition, if no one is at the crossing, or if someone presses the request button and then crosses against the lights or walks away, the system switches to “call cancel” and doesn’t activate the walk light.
Bicycle-Friendly Cities: The Relevance of Urban Form and Infrastructure
Bicycle-Friendly Cities: The Relevance of Urban Form and Infrastructure
http://ht.ly/uszvP
VTI, the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, has released a report that explains how urban form and the design of the transportation system can explain a population’s rates of cycling.
The analysis showed that all aggregate variables that were included in the statistical meta-analysis had a significant impact on bicycle use. The main contribution of this work is in providing a quantitative measure of their effects. Distance was the most important factor associated with levels of bicycle use and the association was negative (r = -0.61 to -0.40), as would be expected. The other variables included in the analysis were positively associated with bicycle use. Land use, which was operationalised as measures of density and accessibility, was the second most important variable (r = +0.03 to +0.47). Other variables in the analysis included the transport system (r = +0.11 to +0.29), the urban environment (r = 0.12 to 0.27), and safety (r = 0.08 to 0.21). The transport system variable was represented by measures of the street and bicycle network density, and the presence and quality of infrastructure for cycling. The urban environment covered various properties such as type of housing and neighborhood, but also aesthetic qualities and attractiveness, and safety included both safety and security. The findings agreed well with the results from the analysis of conclusions in published reviews addressing these issues.
In practical planning, the relative importance of the identified variables, and factors included, need to be evaluated in each specific case, since current conditions have a large influence on what effect can be expected from different measures. Deficits in one area can not be compensated with measures in another. Instead, comprehensive programs and interventions in urban and transport planning are highly important to motivate increased bicycle use. Such an approach, however, requires a common understanding and expectations of city and traffic development in policy and planning, involving both citizens and other stakeholders.
A brilliant composting island concept for New York’s Municipal Solid Waste
A brilliant composting island concept for New York’s Municipal Solid Waste http://ht.ly/ulyEC
These islands could add 125 acres of open space to New York City and compost waste at the same time. By Tyler Falk
In 2012, New York City spent $85 million to send organic waste to out-of-state landfills. Since then, the city has been steadily expanding a curbside-composting program. Last year, it collected organic waste from 30,000 households and this year more households have already been added to the program. But as the city collects more and more organic waste it will need to find more locations nearby to process the waste in order to achieve the program’s stated goal of diverting “organic material from disposal for beneficial use.”
Boring municipal talk, right? Not if Present Architecture gets their way.
The New York-based architecture firm has developed a concept that would not only keep some of that organic waste — 30 percent of NYC’s waste stream — local instead of trucking it to landfills in faraway places, but also create places people might actually want to visit.
The idea, called Green Loop, is a network of compost islands that float in New York’s waterways and connect to the city’s waterfront. In addition to composting waste, these islands would also serve as green space with waterfront walkways.
“New York City has less open space per person than almost every major city in the country, and the Green Loop alleviates two major urban problems at once,” the project’s website says. The network of composting islands would provide New Yorkers with 125 acres of public space. And below the elevated park is the composting facility. We’ll have to wait to see if this idea ever becomes a reality. And while it’s certainly ambitious and maybe even a little crazy to imagine it ever happening, it’s far from the craziest infrastructure projects proposed for the city.
More on the Green Loop concept:
http://ht.ly/ulzeH
Urban Cycling as Seen Through Google Glass
Urban Cycling as Seen Through Google Glass
http://ht.ly/uk9Dw
Authored by: Florian Lorenz
Smart glasses like Google Glass are the latest gizmo available on the tech market: what if we combined the bicycle-specific sense of place and space with them?
Becoming smarter through glasses?
If you are old enough: did you think in 1995 that 20 years later you would be equipped with mobile advanced computing and communication devices allowing you to instantly access all the information of the planet and to talk with almost everybody around the globe? Moreover, could you imagine being able to do all of this while riding a bicycle?
This is the perspective one may take on smartglasses as new technology. Technological innovation often comes unexpected and is leading quite often to unexpected cultural adaptation and further innovation. Our cities are the places where such innovation and adaptation is taking shape, in some cases even from the back of a bicycle. It would be a pity not to use the potentials of smartglasses in a creative way and to think about how this technology can be used for building sustainable cities.
In this sense: Let’s look clearly into the future.
If you are at all athletic – or aspire to be – this is a great motivational video
If you are at all athletic – or aspire to be – this is a great motivational video. http://ht.ly/tbH9N
Commit to a competitive event in 2014 and Just Do It! – Rise & Shine indeed!
The car-free city and other innovative solutions to keep pedestrians alive
The car-free city and other innovative solutions to keep nearly 270,000 pedestrians from dying every year. http://ht.ly/szDFT
One of the main culprits in pedestrian fatalities, the car, could also be one of the solutions. Volvo has become a leader in pedestrian safety with the release of technology that uses radar and cameras to scan the road for pedestrians (and bikes). If a pedestrian steps out in front of the car, it automatically applies the brakes to avoid a collision. But in case of a collision, Volvo is also prepared by rolling out cars with external airbags for pedestrians to reduce head injuries.
But not all solutions to pedestrian safety have to be innovative. The biggest steps that the World Health Organization suggests, in a pedestrian study last year, that cities make to increase pedestrian safety are straightforward enough and include:
-Adopting and enforcing new and existing laws to reduce speeding, curb drinking and driving, decrease mobile phone use and other forms of distracted driving;
-Putting in place infrastructure which separates pedestrians from other traffic (sidewalks, raised crosswalks, overpasses, underpasses, refuge islands and raised medians), lowers vehicle speeds (speed bumps, rumble strips and chicanes) and improves roadway lighting.
Still, these types of changes aren’t happening fast enough.
“More than 5000 pedestrians are killed on the world’s roads each week. This is because their needs have been neglected for decades, often in favor of motorized transport,” said Etienne Krug, WHO Director of the Department of Violence and Injury Prevention and Disability. “We need to rethink the way we organize our transport systems to make walking safe and save pedestrian lives.”
How Bike Lanes Increase Small Business Revenue
How Bike Lanes Increase Small Business Revenue
http://ht.ly/sfWaI
Magnolia Street in Fort Worth is the sort of story that urban planners dream of.
In 2008, this mixed used street was re-striped. The street had featured two lanes in each direction, both of which had been mainly used by cars, plus a few fast and fearless cyclists.
In its new incarnation it still had four lanes, one in each direction for cars, and one for bicycles. “It was the first ‘road diet’ of its kind in Fort Worth, and has been a genuine success,” Kevin Buchanan, a local musician and author of the Fort Worthology blog, told me.
The best measure of this success was in the bottom line: after the road was rearranged, restaurant revenues along the street went up a combined total of 179 percent.
“Not to imply causality,” Buchanan added, “but clearly removing car lanes and replacing them with bike lanes had no ill effects on businesses, and of course it can be argued that the safer, slower street and better cycling/walking environment helped business.”
The effort to revitalize the street included adding lots of new parking. A 320 space car parking garage went up in the heart of the district; shortly afterward, bicycle parking staples were bolted into the concrete in front of every business, providing spaces for 160 bikes.
The total cost for the parking garage was over 5 million dollars. The total for buying and installing all the bicycle parking came to just over $12,000—less than the cost of a single space in the garage.
On the spring weekend I visited Magnolia Street in 2012, the garage was nearly empty, but bike racks outside neighborhood restaurants and bars were overflowing. A coffee shop on the street, needing yet more capacity, had built their own bike corral, a row of bike staples drilled into the public right of way. The new spaces more than doubled the shop’s previous parking capacity.
By all measures, these improvements were an excellent investment. So much so that other Fort Worth streets were slated to get the same treatment—replacing car capacity with bicycle capacity both on and off the road.
Minding the 2% rule: The best tool to measure sidewalk cross slopes
Minding the 2% rule: The best ways to measure sidewalk cross slopes – Including a tool to do just that
http://ht.ly/sb7pW
Question: What is the “official” way to measure a cross slope on a sidewalk to ensure it complies with the ADA’s 2% or less rule? Should this 2% be measured over the entire width (from the back of the walk to the face of the walk)? Also, should the 2% be measured at 1-foot segments or at 2-foot segments of the sidewalk cross slope? — Scott, Tennessee
Answer: Scott, a great question. My answer is twofold:
It is best to measure from the back of the walk to the face. Since the most recent Public Right of Way Accessibility Guidelines (PROW) require a 4-foot-wide sidewalk, I suggest using a 4-foot-long ruler or at least a 36-inch-long digital measurement ruler as your measuring tool.
There are no specific guidelines as to using 1-foot segments versus 2-foot segments. However, the more measurements the better.
Put your digital ruler on wheels – Mike Ross is an engineer in the street maintenance division of the City of Overland Park, Kan. He and his staff developed a simple, wheeled device in which you can insert a digital ruler and then roll the device along the sidewalk for readings without constantly bending over and picking up the ruler and putting it down again. It is important to advance a short distance and then stop so an accurate reading is possible. The actual digital readout, of course, faces the person pushing the device.
This tool will also help with measuring the slope of curb ramps, linear slopes of ramps, trail slopes, etc. Most digital rulers also allow you to remove the actual measuring tool in the middle of the ruler to measure small areas.
You can easily make your own version of this tool. If you inspect the pictures of both the Overland Park Public Works and HDR tools included in this article, you’ll see that the way the ruler is inserted is slightly different, but both do a wonderful job.
Take care and best wishes to each of you trying to do your best to improve the world we use and to fulfill the lives of everyone!
How the Complete Streets Movement is Improving our Communities
How the Complete Streets Movement is Improving our Communities
http://ht.ly/s91Ei
The Complete Streets Movement aims for pragmatic, incremental improvement, not utopia – streets should safely accommodate not just automobiles but also pedestrians, bicyclists and public transit users. If you live in one of the hundreds of communities (such as Roanoke) that have recently adopted policies favoring such measures as new types of crosswalks, slower vehicular traffic in areas where there are pedestrians, and more prominent bicycle lanes, chances are you have noticed that many streets look and feel different – more thoughtfully designed, with more than just cars in mind.
The complete streets movement has been as successful as it has been precisely because of its laser-like focus on the accommodation of different types of street users. The book stresses that the movement aims for pragmatic, incremental improvement, not utopia:
“This book . . . does not paint a vision of an ideal future or provide a template for the ‘perfect complete street.’ This book is not the cutting-edge design manifesto that some people may expect. Plenty of others have created beautiful, innovative templates for multimodal streets and compact, walkable towns and neighborhoods. But I’ve found that those finely crafted visions are not of much immediate use in the communities I see as my baseline: Atlanta and the small towns across Georgia and the suburban United States. These places, and so many more across the United States, have been shaped by sprawling development. It will be quite a while before they reach any sort of smart growth ideal— if ever. But the people who live there still need to be able to reach their neighborhood schools safely and walk to and from the bus stop.”
As Barbara writes, some of the most effective implementation strategies for improving streets on the ground lie not in big capital improvement projects but in the most mundane repair projects and in the details of development codes. The book explains the advantages of bringing about change “not through big signature projects but through small, gradual improvements.”
Walk On: Strategies to Promote Walkable Communities
Walk On: Strategies to Promote Walkable Communities http://ht.ly/s1wbl
Walk On: Strategies to Promote Walkable Communities is designed to help public health professionals and community advocates make the case for making our communities and streets walkable. Walk On explores the nuts and bolts of planning and Complete Streets policies and includes case studies on rural and urban communities that are making real strides to encourage walking.
How to measure sidewalk cross slopes
How to measure sidewalk cross slopes http://ht.ly/rGwt9
Our Americans with Disabilities Act consultant explains the right way to meet the ADA’s 2%-or-less rule AND how to make your own wheeled digital ruler.
•It is best to measure from the back of the walk to the face. Since the most recent Public Right of Way Accessibility Guidelines (PROW) require a 4-foot-wide sidewalk, I suggest using a 4-foot-long ruler or at least a 36-inch-long digital measurement ruler as your measuring tool.
Mike Ross is an engineer in the street maintenance division of the City of Overland Park, Kan. He and his staff developed a simple, wheeled device in which you can insert a digital ruler and then roll the device along the sidewalk for readings without constantly bending over and picking up the ruler and putting it down again. It is important to advance a short distance and then stop so an accurate reading is possible. The actual digital readout, of course, faces the person pushing the device.
This tool will also help with measuring the slope of curb ramps, linear slopes of ramps, trail slopes, etc. Most digital rulers also allow you to remove the actual measuring tool in the middle of the ruler to measure small areas.
America’s Most Walkable Cities – NYC most pedestrian-friendly, Charlotte least
America’s Most Walkable Cities – New York City most pedestrian-friendly, Charlotte least, ratings indicate http://ht.ly/rz1pU
If you’re headed to the Big Apple, ditch the car and bring comfortable shoes. According to 2014 rankings issued by Walk Score, which rates and promotes walkable neighborhoods, New York is the most pedestrian-friendly U.S. city, followed by San Francisco and Boston. New York neighborhoods best explored on foot include Chinatown, Little Italy and NoHo.
The least walkable – and most car-dependent – U.S. city is Charlotte, North Carolina, followed by Jacksonville, Florida, and Nashville, Tennessee. All three are in the South, where cities have a reputation for sprawl.
Janette Sadik-Khan: New York’s streets? Not so mean anymore
Janette Sadik-Khan: New York‘s streets? Not so mean anymore with Pedestrian Plazas, Protected Bike Lanes & Speedi-Buses http://ht.ly/r57ht
In this funny and thought-provoking talk, Janette Sadik-Khan, transportation commissioner of New York City, shares projects that have reshaped street life in the 5 boroughs, including pedestrian zones in Times Square, high-performance buses and a 6,000-cycle-strong bike share. Her mantra: Do bold experiments that are cheap to try out.
As commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation, Janette Sadik-Khan is responsible for the smooth running of a New York that hides in plain sight… the streets, highways, bridges, signs and lights that make up the bustling metropolis.
Bikes Are Officially More Popular Than Cars in Europe
Bikes Are Officially More Popular Than Cars in Europe
http://ht.ly/qJUZa
Sales of two-wheeled vehicles are outstripping four-wheeled vehicles across the continent. Now we’ll get to see what a widespread biking culture really looks like.
Mercedes-Benz may have just put out a cheaper new “luxury” model to attract the commoners, but in most European countries, more people are interested in buying bikes.
On Friday, National Public Radio published an analysis of vehicle sales in 27 European Union member states showing that bicycles outsold cars in every single country except Belgium and Luxembourg.
Some of this trend could be linked to the dip in car sales due to the global recession, since the most extreme differences were seen in countries with lower GDPs than their more prosperous EU peers. Lithuania sold nearly 10 times as many bikes as it did cars. In Greece, new bike sales outnumbered car sales by more than five to one. The same held true for Romania and Slovenia, while bike sales in Hungary quadrupled those of cars.
Still, a similar pattern held true for Spain, Italy, France, Britain, and Germany, all countries that also witnessed more bikes than cars sold in 2012. As NPR noted, this was the first time more bikes than cars were sold in Italy since World War II. In the U.S., car sales are actually doing well for the first time in six years, but that’s no indicator of what’s to come, NPR noted.
As we’ve written in the past, the next generation of car owners just isn’t all that into four-wheel drive, or luxury items, for that matter. Plus, with dreams of the Hyperloop making mass transit sexy again, conventional gas-guzzling cars suddenly seem a little passé.
Starpath spray-on coating lights your way without electricity
Starpath spray-on coating lights your way
http://ht.ly/q4dFp
UK company Pro-Teq is trial-testing a glow-in-the-dark spray applied elastomeric coating that could prove a cheaper alternative to conventional street lighting.
We’re used to seeing solar-harvesting technology being installed primarily on rooftops, but other sufficiently irradiated surfaces, including sidewalks, are also being explored for their energy harvesting potential.
Starpath doesn’t produce electricity, but it does offer a possible alternative to street lighting, with very low installation and maintenance costs, as it can be just sprayed onto an existing surface and then further coated to make it waterproof. According to the company, the coating absorbs and stores UV light during the day and releases it at night, when its particles are able to adjust to the available natural light, and glow with the appropriate level of intensity
GoProGreen.com 