Written by Zachary Shahan
Published on October 22nd, 2009
Bogota is a true testament of how a city can be transformed. Through “radical” action for a better city and clean green transportation, Bogota has become a leader in bicycle transportation.
One step ahead of Basel, Switzerland on this list, Bogota boasts an amazing transformation in the transportation infrastructure and alternative transportation usage of a modern city. Unlike many cities that are renovating primarily for cars or, more admirably, mass-transit, Bogota made sure to put a lot of focus on improving their city for bicyclists and pedestrians as well, the greenest transportation modes!
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Written by Zachary Shahan
Published on October 21st, 2009
If a picture is worth a thousand words, this series of photo tours is going to be worth about a hundred thousand.
You have probably heard before that the cities on this list are great bicycle cities, but the following photo tours will give you a better and more entertaining visual explanation of why they are considered to be so great.
From public art to art on bikes, seas of bicycles to bicycles that could carry a swimming pool, high heels to naked bicyclists, check out these upcoming photo tours of some of the world’s greatest bicycle cities.
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Written by Zachary Shahan
Published on September 30th, 2009
England is working to combine two of the world’s cleanest methods of transportation through a new initiative.
A handful of strongly funded programs are geared to get more people bicycling to and from rail stations in England.
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Written by Tom Schueneman
Published on August 27th, 2009
Two cargo ships set out last week from the port of Vladivostok to traverse Russia’s Northeast Passage, marking the first time commercial ships have attempted the normally ice-bound route across Russia’s Arctic shore without the aid of icebreakers.The two ships, Fraternity and Foresight, owned by German shipper Beluga Shipping GmbH, received permission to travel the route last Friday.
Bound for the Netherlands from South Korea, the route will cut 4,000 nautical miles from the typical 11,000-mile route through the Suez Canal, helping realize a “considerable” reduction in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, said Niels Stolbert, president and CEO of Beluga.
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Written by Zachary Shahan
Published on July 24th, 2009
New Zealand is considered a world leader in environmental topics of all kinds. It is a leading producer of organic produce, it conserves vast amounts of natural and ecologically diverse land, and it has taken a leading step in goals to reduce greenhouse gases and stop or slow climate change. As early as 1992, New Zealand became a part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. However, a report released by the New Zealand government this month shows that they have experienced a sharp rise in greenhouse gas emissions since last year. The reason? Climate change.
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Written by Susan Kraemer
Published on July 21st, 2009
In a macabre When Life Deals You Lemons – Make Lemonade kind of news item: Researchers are considering that perhaps we could safely reuse radioactive land: to grow crops for biofuel.
Growing food is still too dangerous in southeastern Belarus because the region is still so contaminated by fallout from Chernobyl that crops grown there cannot safely be eaten by humans for hundreds of years, until the radioactive isotopes decay.
Yet 1.5 million mostly older people have not left, and some are in fact growing some grain on the contaminated land anyway. The radioactive material concentrates in roots and stalks, which they just plough back into the ground after harvesting. As a result; the soil is still almost as contaminated now as it was after the accident.
Things could not be much worse there than they are now and the Belarus government is open to new ideas. So when an Irish company had the idea of remediating the soil by planting a biofuel crop, Belarus was more open to the idea than you might imagine:
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Written by Rhonda Winter
Published on July 8th, 2009
That was one of the many probing questions that the visionary former mayor of Bogotá Colombia, Enrique Peñalosa, asked a packed auditorium in San Francisco last night. How do we define what makes a good city, what is our criteria? What makes an urban environment desirable and livable, and how do we judge the quality of life? What is socially and environmentally sustainable?
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Written by Bryan Nelson
Published on July 7th, 2009
The first of many roadside electric charging stations in Brazil is set to be installed in the Barra de Tijuca neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, and it’ll be solar-powered.
The neighborhood was chosen because it has the highest number of electric motorcycles certainly in circulation. The battery charging point will serve a mainly symbolic purpose at first, “awakening environmental awareness by showing people that it is possible to use energy without harming the environment,” said spokesperson Edimar Machado.
Brazil has been a worldwide leader in reducing the impact of the transportation sector on the environment, with 90% of new cars sold in the country being flex-fuel– capable of running on ethanol or gasoline in any proportion. Now the hope is that they can also lead the world in infrastructure for electric vehicles. Once they become more financially viable, Machado hopes to have an electric charging station positioned every 30km across the country.
That could soon allow every electric motorcyclist the capability to travel the entire length of Brazil’s major roadways if they wanted, even if their battery length is only around 40km, like most of the bikes currently in circulation there. Machado also suggested that used batteries could be exchanged for already-charged ones at the stations for the same price as a full charge, in case roadsters can’t wait around for the standard 4 hours it takes to charge the batteries. That would make the time it takes to “fill up” your electric vehicle no longer than it would take to fill up a gas tank.
Even better, the charging stations will generate their electricity from solar energy. The charging point captures solar energy by means of an array of 28 photovoltaic panels that generate 184 volts of direct current, which is transformed into triphasic alternating current. Output is at 110 or 220 volts [1]. And on days when there isn’t much sunlight, or at night, the stations could still derive electricity from the grid system.
The Brazilian Electric Vehicle Association says the market for electric vehicles is already growing by about 50 percent a year, and with new charging stations located conveniently around town that number is expected to increase dramatically. They also project that electric vehicles will consume barely three to five percent of the country’s total energy in 2030, meaning as the system expands it shouldn’t be a significant strain on the country’s electricity. Meanwhile, car fuel consumption will be reduced by 10 percent.
Although that nationwide system of stations is still far from practical, the implementation of this first station is symbolic of what can be envisioned with the right political will and incentive.
Source: IPS News
Image Credit: Diego_3336 on Flickr under a Creative Commons License
Written by Dr Vandana Prakash
Published on June 30th, 2009
When I was looking at Delhi’s environment almost a decade back, Delhi was entering its bitter battle against being the ‘fourth most polluted city’ in the world. Much thought and action (or shall we say reaction) was devoted to the problem. Delhi was able to remedy both its ‘fourth most polluted’ status and its air quality with unprecedented ‘hyper-activity:’ remarkable for being so well concerted across the different levels and different arms of the government.
Picture: Delhi Smog in January 2009
As I revisited the problem more recently, I was both shocked and saddened to see a decline so visibly and so quickly. Examining Delhi’s data, in January this year, I found an increase in vehicular pollution. I was not expecting this to happen in face of the phenomenal and difficult measures that Delhi had undertaken: like relocation of industries out of residential areas (something that had come about as a result of the developmental dream for Delhi in the 1950s) and conversion of the entire fleet of Delhi Transportation Corporation (DTC) buses into Compressed Natural gas or CNG (resulting in the largest CNG-operated public transportation in the world).
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Written by Keith Rockmael
Published on June 8th, 2009
