Green Options » pedestrians

Walkscore’s New Transit Rating and How You Can Help

Becky Striepe — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:00:04 +0000

Walkscore rates a neighborhood’s walkability on a 1 to 100 scale based on a number of criteria such as proximity to restaurants and grocery stores. Now, they’ve added a transit rating which takes into account a neighborhood’s public transportation options!

Awesome, right? The idea is to “measure how easy it is to live a car-lite lifestyle,” so adding a transit component makes sense. Maybe you can’t hoof it to the grocery store, but you can walk to a train station that takes you to a farmers market. You can still do your thing car-free!

So why do they need our help?

Read more of this story »

#6 Groningen, Netherlands: Great Bicycle City Photo Tour

Zachary Shahan — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:23:27 +0000

Groningen would be number one on this list if we were looking at percentage of residents who bicycle for transportation purposes. About 57% of travel in Groningen is by bicycle!

The city has been named the world’s best bicycle city a couple of times (1993 and 2006). It is a university city which is part of the reason why it has so many people bicycling, but it has done amazing things to make the city more bicycle friendly as well. The bicycle facilities you can see on the following pages will probably blow your mind away.

Read more of this story »

NYC Giving Times Square to Pedestrians

Becky Striepe — Wed, 27 May 2009 07:00:39 +0000

New York City barricaded Broadway around Times and Herald Squares on Sunday night, turning stretches of Broadway into pedestrian plazas.

[Times Square Billboards. Creative Commons photo by Matt Mendoza]

With pedestrian traffic in Times Square up over 200% from 1980, the area was as riddled with people jams as it was with traffic jams. City officials think that re-routing auto traffic to Sixth and Seventh Avenues will open the area up, ease air pollution, and help businesses.

Read more of this story »

Thoughts About Walkability

Becky Striepe — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:00:10 +0000

[Image credit: Toni at Flickr under a Creative Commons license]

Cars are among this country’s greatest polluters, emitting 20 pounds of CO2 for every gallon of gas they burn along with lead, ground-level ozone, and a slough of other greenhouse gases. More walkable neighborhoods mean fewer cars on the road, and that means less pollution. Period. So what makes a neighborhood walkable?

Read more of this story »

Cyclists and Pedestrians - An Uneasy Mix

Mark Seall — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:00:00 +0000

Part of this week’s EcoWorldly cycling series: Cycling and its importance in countries around
the world.

A bicycle, I once read somewhere, is the most efficient form of human transport ever developed. Coupled with the fact that bicycles are relatively cheap and trouble free, and suffer few of the traffic problems that dog other forms of transport it’s no wonder that cycling has never been more popular.

But I’m starting to wonder if this popularity might start becoming a problem?

Read more of this story »