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Blog

The U.S.: Left In the Dust by European and Asian Transit

Very few Americans use trains for their transportation needs. It’s not because they don’t want to, it’s because rail travel isn’t a viable means of travel in the U.S. There are few routes and not many destinations, thus train travel takes longer than cars and airplanes, and is usually not a way to [...]

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Making Carfree Events More Effective – a Perspective from India

The  Carfree movement has caught the imagination of the people across the world. Perhaps it is is hassle faced by city-dwellers on a daily basis while commuting that motivates them to take an active part in such movements. The hardship is not only for those who are using an automobile – due to traffic jams [...]

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The Environmental Impact of Cars and Trains

Vehicles impact the environment in numerous ways from their production, use and disposal. Below are some of the ways vehicles harm us and our environment.
Production
Manufacturing vehicles is harmful to the environment. The average U.S. vehicle (in 2007) required 1129 gallons of gasoline to produce. That’s equivalent to two years worth of gas bought by [...]

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Bicycle Portraits

When we started the project, ’Bicycle Portraits’ aimed to be a study of South African commuter culture, and we wanted to find out who rides bicycles, why they ride bicycles, if and why they love their bicycles, and of course why so few South Africans choose bicycles as a transport option. But ’Bicycle Portraits’ has [...]

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Community Gardens Near Cycling and Pedestrian Routes: Complementary Community Amenities

Leslie St. community allotment gardens in light industrial area by Toronto’s Waterfront bike-pedestrian path beside entrance to Leslie St. Spit. Gardens in existence over past 15 years. 2011. Photo by J. Chong

Community gardens can satisfy more than just their gardeners’ nurturing  instincts for food and Nature. They add instant visual beauty [...]

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Top 5 ways to Occupy Big Oil

Wall Street is the best immediate target for a huge protest movement, since it was the freewheeling gambling of big banks that pushed the economy over the edge in 2008 and started the Great Recession.
Now, as Occupy movements pop up around the US and across the globe to draw attention to economic [...]

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Railroad Lines That Are Flourishing

For those looking to go “carless” and find alternative ways to travel, there is good news: many railroads are currently flourishing. Additionally, for those who go carless for reasons regarding the environment and traffic reduction, many others are joining you, and it’s working. Firstly, there is Amtrak, which despite [...]

Blog

30 Car-Free Years: Cycling Pumps Money into My Wallet

I’ve been wanting to write this article for awhile:  how cycling can change your spending habits.  I should know –I haven’t lived in a household with a car for over the past 30 years. Yup. It really has been a car-free joy “ride” to financial liberation.
I have been cycling  over the past [...]

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WHAM!

In 1993, in central London, I witnessed an upsetting accident.
I didn’t see what happened, but …
I heard it. On the pavement, mid-street, when, suddenly, close to my shoulder nearest the gutter – WHAM!  Forceful enough for me to believe, fleetingly, that I’d been struck. I  stopped and turned. A man lying in [...]

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Global Renaissance

When modern humans began creating settlements that could flourish because their people were farming the land, a remarkable growth of culture began to occur.  Before the development of farming, modern humans were hunter/gathers that spent much of their time looking for food.  Agriculture made it possible to provide so much [...]