Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

Bike Sharing’s Upgrade Problem

May 29, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
bicing-program

The technology behind New York's two day-old bike sharing program is already outdated. Is that a problem? A bike share initiative in the country's largest city adds a note of legitimacy to a once-crunchier, Portlandier idea (if it can make it there, it'll make it ... etc). And the bikes themselves remain century-old technology, the basic design of which hasn't been improved on in awhile. But bike share architects haven't solved a key headache of bicycle travel: building an affordable, reliable, easy-to-use lock. How do bike share systems keep the two-wheel fleets intact, operable, and ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Culture, Culture & Society
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Commuting to an Early Grave

April 12, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: EGD/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Got a killer commute? You just may. Thursday in Los Angeles (appropriately), social geographer Erika Sandow presented her latest slice of commuting scholarship, which finds that some workers with long commutes—more than 31 miles (50 kilometers) one way—die sooner than people who live closer to their job. Sandow, with Sweden’s Umeå University, outlined her as-yet-unpublished work during the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers. There’s already enough academic research on the perils of commuting to fill a minivan, or at least a Mini. Sandow noted existing ... Read More

More like this: Health, The 101
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What Uber, Lyft and Sidecar Can Learn From the Jitney Cars of the 1910s

December 26, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
A "jitney" in New York circa 1910 (Library of Congress)

There's nothing hotter in Silicon Valley right now than "disrupting" the taxi industry. Of course, people in the tech world can't get enough of the buzzword disrupt, but in this case the aggressiveness of the word actually seems to fit. Services like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar are all disrupting the taxi industry with smartphone apps that allow you to hail and pay for rides from taxicabs, limos and sometimes even just regular people looking to "ride-share." Virtually every major city in the country is trying to shut down Uber, with taxi regulators up in arms over their brazen disregard for ... Read More

More like this: Time Machine
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Why California Needs High-Speed Rail, in Real Time—Updated

August 6, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Right now my mother is on the Amtrak Coast Starlight, paralleling California’s Highway 101 south, on her way to visit me in Santa Barbara. Her train was scheduled to leave Emeryville, California, at 8:25 am. The train left four hours and five minutes late, at 12:30. I just checked Amtrak’s estimated arrival time into Santa Barbara: instead of the normal 6:02 arrival, Amtrak tells me today's train will arrive at 9:18 p.m. Yeah, that isn't going to happen. Mom just texted me from Salinas, California. Which means that the train she is on has traveled 100 miles, at an average speed of 29 ... Read More

More like this: The 101
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Bicycle Studies Pick Up Speed in Academia

July 25, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Bicycle Studies

Not so long ago, the term "cycling studies" would have been seen as puzzling in the United States—why study what were effectively perceived as toys? But the world has changed—Britain’s queen has just congratulated Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins, Los Angeles has wrapped up its third CicLAvia, New York City is launching its massive bike-share system this summer, and Portland is aiming at having 25 percent of trips by bicycle in 2030—and universities and think tanks have finally caught up with it. More than 100 academic studies related to cycling have been ... Read More

More like this: Education
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Our Streets Aren’t Hard Enough (to Save Fuel)

June 18, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

The roads are getting some heat for their interactions with our tires. The problem? Pavement has gone soft—or rather has been too soft from the beginning. Researchers at MIT, who recently conducted a study looking at the space between the rubber and the road, compare the present interaction to walking barefoot in the sand. The vehicle’s load ends up trailing behind the travel path due of the way the energy is dissipated. But by swapping in stiffer materials, the researchers found, the United States could reduce fuel consumption by as much as 3 percent—a savings of more than 250 ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Findings
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House Puts Transportation in Partisan Crossfire

February 8, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

The U.S. House transportation bill released last week by Rep. John Mica contained a number of provisions that immediately alarmed transit and smart growth advocates and their Democratic supporters on Capitol Hill. The bill would cut subsidies to Amtrak, eliminate dedicated money for bike and pedestrian programs, and scrap guaranteed funding for mass transit. Throw in controversial plans to pay for some of the legislation with domestic oil drilling, and America has, yet again, a partisan dogfight. Transportation, though, is supposed to be different. There is a long history in Washington of ... Read More

More like this: Politics, The Idea Lobby
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China’s High-Speed Crash Leads to Legitimacy Crisis

July 29, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

As their peers elsewhere, young Chinese readers have devoured the Harry Potter series. They would doubtless flock to see the final film that debuted in dozens of other foreign markets July 13. But in China, the film's release has been delayed — and not for the usual political reasons. Harry Potter, after all, features a story Chinese leaders should enjoy: a small band of committed followers triumphs over great odds (shades of the Long March and the road to the 1949 founding of the People's Republic of China) and a time of chaos gives way to peace and prosperity (reminiscent of China's Reform ... Read More

More like this: Politics
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How High-Speed Rail Died in Texas, Thrived in Spain

June 8, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Once upon a time there was sharp controversy in Spain over a plan for a high-speed rail line from Madrid to somewhere in Andalusia, which lies southeast of the capital, toward Morocco. Critics derided it as "train to Africa," meaning no one would ride it, anticipating the "train to nowhere" jokes about bullet trains in California. And when then-Prime Minister Felípe González finally routed it to his hometown of Seville, the Andalusian capital, critics called it a vanity project for the ruling class, which would ride on the backs of the Spanish people. This was in the late '80s and ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, European Dispatch
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High-Speed Rail Can Cover Its Operating Costs

June 1, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Just three weeks after Florida Gov. Rick Scott made a point of thumbing his nose at $2.4 billion in Washington subsidies for a short high-speed rail line, saying it would be a money hole, his own state's Department of Transportation released a study claiming quite the opposite. The Florida DOT had commissioned an independent study on ridership and profitability for the proposed high-speed link between Orlando and Tampa. The research groups, Wilbur Smith Associates and Steer Davies Gleave, projected healthy ridership for the train and a $10.2 million operating surplus for 2015, the line's ... Read More

More like this: European Dispatch, Politics
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