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Connections (July 2010)

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In this segment I try to connect you with recent items relevant to reinventing urban transport. 

From a public domain image at Wikimedia commons
  • Robin Chase suggests a cap-and-trade approach to residential parking permits. An idea with potential I think.
  • Charting Transport provides fascinating graphical analysis of journey-to-work mode shares in Melbourne.
  • Cycling in Singapore blog highlights fruits of the slow shift towards more positive bicycle policy in Singapore (bike paths aimed at local, low-speed bicycle users but I worry about their quality and design).
  • Human Transit marvels at the new Paris commitment to giving buses priority and space in the streets, even narrow ones.
  • New York Times reports on the Guangzhou BRT. Great quotes from ITDP folks. The BRT was reported to have set a new BRT record of 800,000 trips a day. Hat tips Streetsblog and Transport News.
  • Tokyo by Bike discusses confusion over Japan's bicycle laws. Twice.
  • Copenhagenize warns of the dangers of listening to 'Cycling's Secret Sect' (the 'vehicular cycling' movement, which objects to segregated bicycle infrastructure).  
  • This blog suggested that conventional planning treats parking like toilets (every building is required to have a certain number, so that we don't need to do 'it' in the street). But the analogy breaks down. Planning parking like toilets is a bad idea.
  • The CityFix sorts through a menagerie of animal names for pedestrian crossings and infrastructure (building on debate triggered by a question from India on the sustran-discuss list).
  • Six-minute video on the work of Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP). 
  • Slate's Nimble Cities series puts parking under scrutiny, via How We Drive.
  • A meta analysis asks: Do the health benefits of cycling outweigh the risks? Answer: yes, at least in the Netherlands. 
  • Robin Chase ponders personal mobility vehicles, hoping for motorcycle-like vehicles with car-like safety for their occupants (somewhat similar to the idea of personal mobility devices).
  • The June G20 meeting reached a 'mixed bag' of an agreement on phasing out fossil fuel subsidies. Something to watch and monitor. Progress is highly unlikely without ongoing political pressure.


Connections is a helpful public transport term highlighted at Human Transit blog. It is a more positive and illuminating term for what are sometimes called 'transfers'.
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