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Minneapolis, despite its frigid winters, has surged to the top of national rankings for urban biking and was the only U.S. city included last year on a global index of bike-friendly communities. Since 2000, the percentage of bike commuters here has jumped 170 percent [...]
Minneapolis' bike-friendly reputation advanced on the saddle of key elected officials, grassroots advocates and critical investments that over the past decade helped transform it into a mecca for biking.
— The Des Moines Register
Related news from the cycling beat:Germany opens first stretch of new cycling superhighwayPoor street design makes California city liable for damages in cyclist's deathCar-free events significantly improve air qualityJakarta's "car-free days" are only the start of the city's long journey to... View full entry
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said the government would remove hurdles to developing autonomous vehicles and set further guidelines for them within six months. [...]
The government’s new support includes a request in President Obama’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year for $4 billion, to be spent over 10 years, to finance research projects and infrastructure improvements tied to driverless cars.
— nytimes.com
This is the first time the federal government has actively engaged in the regulation and implementation of driverless vehicles. State governments had previously been putting forth their own standards – see this handy wiki from Gabriel Weiner and Bryant Walker Smith at Stanford University... View full entry
"Robots hate litter," reads a health and safety sign. "Please don't give them any more reasons to overthrow mankind." It's also fair to say that naming your robots makes the whole process of constructing cars vaguely ridiculous. "Wolverine and Iceman lift the cars to tramline two," our tour guide informs us with the zeal of a true believer, adding, as he did after virtually every sentence, that this is 'kind of amazing'. — wired.co.uk
Related stories in the Archinect news:Multitasking Musk: the busy life of Elon MuskA look inside Tesla's growing Gigafactory: "It will blow your mind."Dawn of the self-driving car: testing out Tesla's autopilot function View full entry
The idea behind the Chinese-built 184 is that users will simply get in, power it up, select their destination using a 12-inch touchscreen tablet display, then press the 'take-off' button. The drone's automated flight systems will take over from there, managing tasks such as communication with air traffic control and other aircraft, obstacle avoidance, and of course navigation... — gizmag
Self-driving cars, self-driving bikes, the Hyperloop slowly becoming a reality, what's next for urban mobility? Self-driving passenger drones, of course. Smart-drone enterprise Ehang unveiled a single-seat, battery-powered Autonomous Aerial Vehicle (AAV) called the Ehang 184 at the... View full entry
The dream of a Brooklyn-Queens light rail is quickly moving into the realm of reality. A non-profit advocacy group called Friends of the Brooklyn Queens Connector has officially formed to address the need for a more robust transportation system that could connect underserved, and now booming, areas of Brooklyn and Queens. They’ve just released a detailed proposal revealing the route and the potential design the modern streetcars could take on. — 6sqft.com
The newly opened portion is just 5km (3 miles)— but the completed highway is set to span over 100km and will connect 10 cities and four universities .... Almost two million people will live less than a mile from the new cycling autobahn [...]
the bicycle highway will be 13-feet wide—or almost double the width of normal cycle paths—and have no crossroads or traffic lights. [...]
it’ll also be greener. RVR estimates that the route will take 50,000 cars off the roads every day.
— qz.com
More on cycling infrastructure:As bicycle ownership in North Korea rises, Pyongyang introduces bike lanesBoris Johnson greenlights London's "Crossrail" bicycle superhighwayGensler proposes "Underline" bike paths in London's abandoned tube tunnelsAtlanta plans big for bikes, and Atlantans turn out... View full entry
For the first two weeks of the year, private cars with even-numbered license plates are allowed on the roads only on even-numbered dates, and those with odd-numbered plates on odd dates. The restrictions have noticeably reduced traffic in a city with 9 million cars, more than double that of a decade ago.
In 2014, the World Health Organization found New Delhi’s air to be the dirtiest of 1,600 cities it studied. Scientists blame the high levels of pollutants [...] for thousands of deaths a year.
— latimes.com
Previously: Delhi’s air pollution is worse than Beijing's. A new app measures the air quality in real time. View full entry
[...] one year after announcing the concept of its game-changing MULTI elevator technology, ThyssenKrupp unveils a fully-functional 1:3 scale model at its Innovation Center in Gijn, Spain. The MULTI system uses linear motors instead of ropes, enabling horizontal movement and transforming conventional elevator transportation into vertical metro systems. — bloomberg.com
Previously on Archinect: ThyssenKrupp's cable-free elevator test tower tops out in less than 10 monthsUp and Down, Side to Side; ThyssenKrupp's cable-free MULTI elevator to begin testing in 2016 View full entry
This is the work of Canadian architectural photographer Chris Forsyth who has been sharing his pictures on Instagram, looking to show how beautiful design is all around us. [...]
"What draws me to the architecture in the metro system is its variety from station to station. I love the colours, the architectural styles and influences, and above all its very bold graphic appearance." [...]
Forsyth uses long exposures to blur the motion and to remove traces of people passing through the shot.
— bbc.com
For more work by the architectural photographer, you can follow Chris Forsyth on Instagram @chrismforsyth, with more shots of the Montreal Metro through #mtlmetroproject. View a selection of photos below: View full entry
The plateauing and decline in U.S. vehicle miles traveled per capita that occurred between [2005-2014] was described by some hopeful commentators as a dramatic shift that was indicative of the preferences of a new workforce...Marginal changes in the way a new generation behaves...cannot overcome the realities of a country where more than three-fourths of jobs are located more than three miles from downtowns and where only one-fourth of homes are in places that their residents refer to as urban. — The Transport Public
More about car transit on Archinect:Welcome to Evanston, Illinois: the carless suburbiaDawn of the self-driving car: testing out Tesla's autopilot functionFrom California to Texas, car culture is losing its monopolyCan a loss of driver autonomy save lives?Designers imagine a world of self-driving... View full entry
The same is happening in other UK cities, which have decided that signal junctions are better for traffic flow and safer for cyclists. [...]
After a century of resistance, US cities are finally learning to love the roundabout – the Bronx just got its first – believing them to be safer and better for traffic flow. [...]
“Traffic lights are so fascist and dictatorial, telling you when to stop and go,” says Beresford. “Roundabouts are quintessentially English and democratic in their etiquette.”
— theguardian.com
More from Archinect on street design:Humanizing street design with 'shared space'More roads won't ease traffic, but charging drivers more at peak hours will4,114 Stoplights in Los Angeles and the Intricate Network that Keeps Traffic MovingFrom California to Texas, car culture is losing its monopoly View full entry
The future of urban roads may be one where motorists, pedestrians and cyclists act as one. Spaces where these usually segregated members of the population live -- or move -- by the same rules. Most importantly, these rules would be social, not formal, to befit the increasingly popular trend of 'shared space'.
"Shared space breaks the principle of segregation," says Ben Hamilton-Baillie, a street designer who [...] brought these spaces to the U.K., which now hosts more than any other country.
— cnn.com
Related on Archinect:MIT's "Placelet" sensors technologize old-fashioned observation methods for placemakingDriving in the US is coming to a standstill, and that's a good thingNY Mayor de Blasio's Times Square overhaul runs into massive opposition View full entry
even given that the Hyperloop whitepaper was a rough sketch, the most important elements of the plan—its speed and price—have been vastly oversold. [...]
But there’s a final reason to be skeptical, not just of the technical details of the Hyperloop, but of the supposedly utopian motives behind it: It may not even be Musk’s idea.
— fortune.com
More on the much hyped (and griped) world of Hyperloop:Elon Musk launches Hyperloop Pod Competition to university students and engineersLA's Arts District now home to Hyperloop World HeadquartersThe town that Hyperloop builtDon't write off Elon Musk's Hyperloop yet...Designing the Hyperspace: UCLA... View full entry
Beginning in 2017, the London transit hub that's been described as "a dingy, grey, horizontal nothingness"* will undergo a massive redesign to incorporate a new high-speed rail line connecting London and Birmingham.The first phase of the so-called HS2, connecting London and Birmingham... View full entry
Ask a cyclist what it’s like to ride in Indonesia’s capital – a sprawling megalopolis of 10.2 million people...More than likely, they’ll tell you it’s outright dangerous...Car-free days may be popular, but there is almost no [cyclist] infrastructure... [However, there] is hope among cyclists that bike lanes will become a priority after the city’s [mass rapid transport] system is finished in 2019. In the meantime, several young innovators are taking matters into their own hands. — The Guardian
More on Archinect:Australia's "biggest bike-lane skeptic" plans to remove a popular Sydney cyclewayAs bicycle ownership in North Korea rises, Pyongyang introduces bike lanesCopenhagen could ax its pioneering city bike program by month's endWhy a bike city? Why not a mix of biking and transit? View full entry