Bit by bit, for the past 40 years, the city of Copenhagen has done something revolutionary: The Danish capital has reduced its parking supply. Cutting the total number of parking spaces by a small percentage each year stands in stark contrast to the more common pattern of cities adding more and more parking to accommodate private cars. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Trend
To Curb Driving, Cities Cut Down on Car Parking
Posted in Transportation, Urban Planning
Tagged Livable Streets, National Geographic, Parking, Trend
Reimagining Auto Retail for Electric Cars
For independent electric car companies, it’s so long, automobile row. Some electric vehicle manufacturers have jettisoned the old model of franchise auto dealerships in an effort to change not only how we drive, but also how we buy cars. Continue reading
Bike-Share Schemes Shift Into High Gear
Around the world, cycle-hire operators are rolling out bicycles that were tucked away for the cold and rainy months. Hundreds of new bikes and docking stations will join existing fleets, while many more cities, from Kailua to Tel Aviv to the Big Apple are joining the bike-sharing wave for the first time. Continue reading
Posted in Collaborative Consumption, Transportation
Tagged Bike Sharing, BIXI, National Geographic, Trend
Driving the Limit: Wealthy Nations Maxed Out on Travel?
Fewer cars are projected be on the road this summer in the United States, partly because of higher gas prices — but the leveling off of road travel in several countries goes beyond yearly fluctuations. Researchers now think the world’s most developed nations might have put the brakes on travel. Or, at least, on personal travel fueled by petroleum.
In the United States, Germany, Japan, and other countries that rank among the world’s wealthiest, there are signs that driving has reached a kind of saturation point, as I’ve reported in this article for National Geographic News.
Posted in Transportation
Tagged Gas Prices, National Geographic, Oil Demand, Peak Travel, Trend
Smarter Parking: New Ways to Feed the Meter
After circling block upon block in search of a rare vacant parking space, or scrounging for quarters at a blinking meter, many drivers may arrive at a common thought: There’s got to be a better way of doing this. UCLA professor Donald Shoup, an authority on parking management and author of “The High Cost of Free Parking,” agrees. “We have neglected parking as a policy issue for far too long,” he says. Continue reading
Posted in Policy, Transportation, Urban Planning
Tagged AOL Autos, Livable Streets, Trend
BMW Rolls Toward Zipcar’s Turf With Hourly Rentals
BMW's Mini Cooper is among the most frequently requested models in Zipcar's fleet.
A new pilot program from BMW will let customers rent any current BMW model by the hour from the company’s event center in Munich, Germany. In this piece for GigaOM’s Earth2Tech blog, I explore how “BMW on Demand” fits into much larger trends of innovation around providing mobility as a service — and growing competition for the current car sharing heavyweight, Zipcar. Continue reading
Posted in Auto, Collaborative Consumption, Transportation
Tagged Analysis, BMW, Car Sharing, Daimler, Earth2Tech, Mobility on Demand, RelayRides, Reuters, Spride Share, Trend, WhipCar, Zipcar
New and Next Big Things in Ridesharing
New rideshare services match commuters using Facebook, text messaging, GPS, and iPhone 3G. What’s next? Devices that provide not only real-time information (about traffic and approaching buses, for example), but also anticipate a commuter’s travel patterns and suggest personalized transportation alternatives. That’s the vision, at least, of transit scholars at the University of South Florida. I spoke with John Zimmer, founder of rideshare startup Zimride, as well as a pair of urban transportation researchers from USF a for this post on Sierra magazine’s Green Life looking at the growing number of ventures hoping to reinvent carpooling. The article also appeared (through syndication) on The Huffington Post.
Posted in Transportation
Tagged Green Life, Huffington Post, Ridesharing, Trend, Zimride
