The solution, or so the city’s traffic planners hope, is to encourage people to cycle for longer distances by creating the cycling equivalent of freeways, which will provide fast, direct routes of up to 22 kilometers into the center. A total of 28 highways are planned, providing 495 kilometers of dedicated bike tracks... Nine routes are under construction and should be completed by 2015 at a cost of 208 million krone, or $36 million, divided equally between central and local government. — nytimes.com

In our previous post, we published the winning projects of the 2013 Burnham Prize Competition: NEXT STOP-Designing Chicago BRT Stations. The brief asked designers to envision iconic, functional and sustainable stations for Chicago’s planned Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system.

One of the finalist entries, the concept "Hurry Up and Slow Down" by Ann Lui and Craig Reschke, was recognized with a Citation for proposing a counterpoint to a RAPID transit system: the Slow Line. — bustler.net

The Chicago Architectural Club and the Chicago Architecture Foundation recently announced the winners of the 2013 Burnham Prize Competition - NEXT STOP: Designing Chicago BRT Stations.

An exhibition of winning designs and all competition entries is currently on view at the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s Atrium gallery (224 S Michigan Ave) until June 28. — bustler.net

Every day, more than 600,000 thousand rail commuters navigate the crowded maze of tunnels and tracks that is Penn Station. Mass transit advocates would like to replace the aging station with a world-class transportation hub. But there's a big obstacle: Madison Square Garden, the arena that sits directly on top of Penn Station. And the Garden's owners show no signs of moving. — npr.org

and I watch everybody, every move. It's nerve-wracking, your blood pressure goes up ten points going through the door... - Jim Fahey (Assistant Chief in the Operation Control Center) — Charlie Rose

Major construction is currently under way in Reading, England as part of the Reading Station Area Redevelopment. In this new construction update video, Mark Middleton, partner at Grimshaw Architects, is on site at Reading Station and explains how the redevelopment will double its capacity and relieve a major bottleneck in the rail network west of London. — bustler.net

As it turns out, infrastructure really matters. Your chance of injury drops by about 50 percent, relative to that major city street, when riding on a similar road with a bike lane and no parked cars. The same improvement occurs on bike paths and local streets with designated bike routes. And protected bike lanes – with actual barriers separating cyclists from traffic – really make a difference. The risk of injury drops for riders there by 90 percent. — m.theatlanticcities.com

Grab a helmet and check out these 15 cities where drivers use all five fingers when they wave at you. — cnn.com

On Tuesday at Google’s headquarters, the governor of California, Jerry Brown, signed into law a bill to legalize driverless cars. The bill had overwhelmingly passed the State Legislature. Google, which has been building the cars, says they are safer because they nearly eliminate human error. They could also be more fuel-efficient, the company says, and place California and the United States at the forefront of automobile innovation. — bits.blogs.nytimes.com

Drawings showing a futuristic raised glass open-top tunnel, that have drawn comparisons with New York's High Line, could become a reality as soon as 2015.

Sam Martin, 43, the landscape architect who came up with the idea with a colleague two years ago, said discussions between the Mayor and Network Rail were 'going well' since an initial meeting in May and that feasibility studies over potential sites were already underway. — dailymail.co.uk

Take Korea's Incheon International, for example. Built on top of a landfill 40 miles outside of Seoul, it features its own skating rink, cultural museum, and an assortment of other lavish amenities — all worthy investments for an airport that transported 34 million passengers and 2.5 million tons of cargo last year. — artinfo.com

The cycle superhighway, which opened in April, is the first of 26 routes scheduled to be built to encourage more people to commute to and from Copenhagen by bicycle. More bike path than the Interstate its name suggests, it is the brainchild of city planners who were looking for ways to increase bicycle use in a place where half of the residents already bike to work or to school every day. — nytimes.com

...how would you like something that can never crash, is immune to weather, it goes 3 or 4 times faster than the bullet train... it goes an average speed of twice what an aircraft would do. You would go from downtown LA to downtown San Francisco in under 30 minutes. It would cost you much less than an air ticket than any other mode of transport. I think we could actually make it self-powering if you put solar panels on it, you generate more power than you would consume in the system. — theatlantic.com

Yes, it's still a bus shelter, but the idea is to make it both more useful and more of a social space. People may come here for a range of things other than catching the bus, so that social interaction and the life of the street intermix with waiting to produce a more vibrant, interesting, and safe environment. — humantransit.org

Some of the names might already sound familiar to Houston design aficionados. Interloop principles Mark Wamble and Dawn Finley are professors at Rice. Denari received his undergraduate architecture degree from UH. Snøhetta is a finalist for the upcoming contemporary galleries at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and SHoP Architects are behind the current renovations for the Blaffer Art Museum. — houston.culturemap.com