Out of Town

GOOD Magazine profiles five innovations in urban transportation that you don't find in America, yet. Josh Jackson reports:

Toronto City Council member Glenn De Baeremaeker bicycles 26 miles each way to work at City Hall, all year round. Thirty-five minutes into his ride, De Baeremaeker finally reaches a bike lane. The Toronto Star profiles his ride:

We don't understand a word of it, but in this video compilation from the Netherlands, we see what a well-funded television ad campaign to encourage cycling might look like. Or not. Check out the ad about three minutes in: It appears to show an Al Qaeda operative a Saddam Hussein-like guy on a bicycle with a machine gun strapped to his back chasing three Western politician businessman types. It's probably not the best sales pitch for the US market but you get the idea.

Walking the walk in Cambridge

Looking toward a future in which more and more people will travel by bike, the city of Seattle is launching several efforts to improve cycling conditions and increase motorist awareness of cyclists' rights. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports:

Saturday afternoon traffic congestion on a London street near Covent Garden with dimensions and land use almost identical to Prince Street in Manhattan.

The Independent reports that European CO2 emissions are rising not falling, casting doubt on the EU's touted Emissions Trading Scheme:

As New York City government employees rabidly defend the carte blanche parking privileges that enable their daily driving habit, the mayor of Mexico City has decreed that officials there bike or take transit to work once a month.

Yesterday marked the opening of the Sexy Green Auto Show at the Eden Project bio theme park in Cornwall, UK. It's a display meant to demonstrate that "green" cars (like the Ford Focus Flexi Fuel bio-ethanol number at right) don't have to fit the clunky Birkenstock stereotype. As the Guardian notes,