Public Health

As attention turns to the next federal transportation bill, and livable streets fans scan the platforms of presidential candidates for glimpses of what to expect from Washington over the next four years, Alex Steffen, editor and CEO of the blog WorldChanging, has posted an essay-in-progress called "My Other Car is a Bright Green City." Steffen says that reining in fuel standards and auto emissions, for instance, is not nearly as important to present and future generations as developing communities that behave more like cities, which are, by environmental measures, much cleaner than commute-intensive suburbs and exurbs. Here are some excerpts.

Barack Obama is a long-time cyclist (Photo: Chicago Tribune)

An op/ed by Eduardo Porter in today's New York Times makes a passing suggestion that by reducing the number of people who do solo car commutes, congestion pricing would make New Yorkers happier.

Filed by April Greene

Construction is underway on what may be the nation's most advanced urban greenway system.

Writing in this month's Reader's Digest, Matthew Kahn, an environmental economist at UCLA's Institute of the Environment, analyzed data from 141 nations and ranked the planet's greenest, most livable places.

Community activists in Jackson Heights have been complaining about congestion at the corner at 73rd St. and 37th Ave. (right) for years. A major traffic study of the area is underway, but according to a DOT spokesman, the department didn't want to wait to implement "short-term initiatives" that could ease the problem. Problem is, some of the activists--including Will Sweeney of the Western Jackson Heights Alliance--aren't necessarily thrilled with the department's solution.

Airline safety has improved dramatically in the last 10 years, after two 1996 crashes killed 375 people.