davidzipper.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Urban life would be infinitely better if minicars replace goliath-like SUVs and pickups.

submitted 16 hours ago • 12 comments

New study of active travel (biking/walking) & climate: "For each add'l mile of daily active travel, an individual’s GHG emissions from travel [fall] 48 % if trip lengths are allowed to change (w/a fixed number of daily trips), and by 51%with no constraint on daily trips." doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...

submitted 19 hours ago • 0 comments

The data is pretty clear: group by continent and North/South America transit systems sink right to the bottom in terms of ridership recovery. Why is that? www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

submitted 5 days ago • 13 comments

New NBER paper: Shifting from the gas tax to a vehicle-miles-traveled tax would disproportionately benefit rural/Republican parts of the US. Reasons: 🔹 Higher EV uptake on the coasts (EV owners don't pay gas tax) 🔹 Gas cars in urban/Dem areas get better gas mileage www.nber.org/system/files...

submitted 1 day ago • 3 comments

Just finished one of the best bike rides of my life: Gdańsk to Sopot, along the Baltic. What a fantastic coastal cycle way.

submitted 2 days ago • 5 comments

With the S90 discontinued, Volvo is the latest carmaker to stop selling sedans in the USA. www.caranddriver.com/news/a644437...

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

Guerrilla crosswalks drive city officials crazy, but they're a remarkably effective street safety tactic. Sympathetic media coverage is all but guaranteed -- esp when local leaders overreact.

submitted 5 days ago • 5 comments

If I'm being cynical, I'd wonder if Uber is reinventing the bus so it can benefit if transit deteriorates in big US cities (i.e., service cuts caused by budget deficits).

submitted 5 days ago • 6 comments

UPDATE: TRB has posted its new, shrunken committee structure. Beyond ignoring equity, it has nothing related to climate change or pollution. I guess they're now unrelated to transportation? nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/oth...

submitted 6 days ago • 3 comments

Something I learned today at Volvo's car safety center in Gothenburg, Sweden: Volvo runs certain crash tests with dummies not wearing seatbelts -- specifically to reflect conditions in the US.

submitted 6 days ago • 8 comments

Unsurprising but important finding: Neighborhoods easily traversed by bike or on foot have lower car ownership and less PM2.5 pollution. doi.org/10.1016/j.jt...

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

For decades, the US was the gold standard for car safety regs. Not anymore -- that title now belongs to Europe. In Bloomberg, global auto reg exec @davidjward.bsky.social and I discussed why cars have grown safer around the world – but not in the US.

submitted 7 days ago • 4 comments

Big changes underway at @trb.org, which has canceled numerous research projects exploring how race, gender, and poverty affect transportation. Hopefully "back to basics" doesn't mean "pavement and asphalt."

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

Ambling through Gothenburg, Sweden, it’s refreshing to be in a place that prioritizes comfortable seating in public spaces. So many enticing benches and chairs! Quite a contrast with US cities these days.

submitted 8 days ago • 5 comments

Protected bike lanes have a near-magical ability to produce cyclists. This new study of 28 US cities finds that census block groups w/protected bike lanes expanded bike commuting almost 2x faster than those w/standard bike lanes & >4x faster than those w/o new lanes. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

submitted 8 days ago • 16 comments

Design vehicles to fit cities. Don’t design cities to fit vehicles.

submitted 12 days ago • 6 comments

Instead of driving in central London for free, EV owners will get 25% off the city's congestion charge. That makes intuitive sense. Like all cars, EVs cause congestion and create tire pollution, but they don't emit harmful tailpipe emissions. EVs' negative externalities are lower than gas cars.

submitted 13 days ago • 3 comments

Vision Zero is the opposite of this

submitted 14 days ago • 1 comment

A few months ago, @wesmars.bsky.social half-jokingly proposed a study examining how NACTO conferences catalyze street upgrades in the cities that host them. Unrelatedly, @nacto.bsky.social's annual meeting in DC is 2 days away, and I'm currently admiring this brand new cycleway on Eckington Place.

submitted 15 days ago • 5 comments

Getting ready to travel to Gothenburg, Sweden (first visit) and Gdansk, Poland (first visit in 25 years) Actively seeking tips for museums, restaurants, and bike paths

submitted 16 days ago • 12 comments

New paper compares the values of time for passengers using ridehail and transit. Findings: 🔹 In-vehicle trip time is more negative for transit than ridehail 🔹 The opposite is true for wait time (more negative for ridehail than transit) doi.org/10.1016/j.tb...

submitted 17 days ago • 5 comments

New paper: Availability of workplace charging influences EV adoption far more than public charging stations doi.org/10.1016/j.tb...

submitted 17 days ago • 1 comment

Good news: This week Texas officially legalized kei cars.

submitted 18 days ago • 16 comments

At the risk of stating the obvious, the deadliness of biking deters countless Americans -- esp women -- from cycling at all. doi.org/10.1016/j.ci...

submitted 19 days ago • 8 comments

More Americans died while biking than in any previous year -- ever. (Sources: @bikeleague.bsky.social & injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicl...)

submitted 19 days ago • 23 comments

Car YouTuber Matt Farah backs shrinking Pacific Coast Highway lanes from 12 to 10.6 ft: "I love this. The same number of cars can get through, but won’t be able to go so fast." Use the space for bike lanes, he says. www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a64646022/pacific-coast-highway-needs-change

submitted 21 days ago • 5 comments

It’s also because bloated American SUVs/pickups often flunk European safety rules that protect pedestrians.

submitted 24 days ago • 16 comments

My heart is still beating so fast. Thank you @pulitzerprizes.bsky.social Thank you @bloomberg.com and especially the CityLab team @kristoncapps.bsky.social @nicflatow.bsky.social and David Dudley Stories here! www.bloomberg.com/features/des...

submitted 36 days ago • 111 comments

More evidence that car bloat is killing people: New metaanalysis examined 600k+ crashes over 35 years. Conclusion: Cyclists/pedestrians were 44% more likely to be killed if struck by an SUV/pickup than by a smaller car, and children were 82% more likely. injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/earl...

submitted 40 days ago • 7 comments

Wonderful essay from Alain Bertaud proposing Casablanca as the quintessential urban movie: "A Zoom meeting room could never take the place of the dealmaking that happened in Rick’s Café. We need the informality and randomness of being in person—and these are inherent aspects of successful cities."

submitted 41 days ago • 3 comments

"The Highway Trust Fund is broken. EV fees aren’t going to fix that." -- @ucsdave.bsky.social blog.ucs.org/dave-cooke/t...

submitted 41 days ago • 1 comment