This video captures school buses, fuel trucks and a lot more:

By Gary Strauss, USA TODAY
Gasoline prices, on the rise for more than three weeks, could top all-time highs by Memorial Day.
Nationally, a gallon of regular averages $3.81 — up 10 cents in the past week and nearly 96 cents above year-ago levels. Industry experts say prices could surpass July 2008’s record $4.11 as seasonal demand, speculators and political uncertainty in Libya and the Middle East propel crude oil prices.
“We could easily tack on another 30 to 40 cents a gallon,” says Darin Newsom, senior analyst at energy tracker Telvent DTN.
In some areas, gas has already hit those levels. In Los Angeles, regular averages $4.20 a gallon. In Chicago, it’s averaging $4.17.
Typically, prices peak around July 4, the height of the summer driving season. But escalating prices are already crimping demand and could derail vacation travel, says Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service.
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Related: 4 months ago; National gas price average breaks $3 barrier https://www.baltimorespokes.org/article.php?story=20101223185040673
Continue reading “Gas prices could soon break July 2008 record”

[B’ Spokes: Keep in mind that Baltimore County (Green Tree Ln) is the worst example of a road diet in that they made cycling conditions worse not better, but that is not the norm.]

Moving Beyond the Automobile: Road Diets from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

What’s a road diet? Quite simply, traffic-calming expert Dan Burden told Streetfilms, “A road diet is anytime you take any lane out of a road.”

The first time people hear about a road diet, their initial reaction likely goes something like this: “How can removing lanes improve my neighborhood and not cause traffic backups?” It seems counterintuitive, but taking away lanes can actually help traffic flow smoother while improving safety for everyone.

Road diets are good for pedestrians: They reduce speeding and make vehicle movements more predictable while shortening crossing distances, usually through curb extensions or center median islands. They’re good for cyclists: Many road diets shift space from car lanes to create bike lanes. They’re good for drivers: Less speeding improves safety for motorists and passengers, and providing left-turn pockets allows through traffic to proceed without shifting lanes or waiting behind turning vehicles.

And here’s something to keep in mind during this era of lean budgets: Road diets are a highly-effective infrastructure improvement that can be implemented quickly and at low cost.

Continue reading “Road Diet “

Author: Philip Langdon
New Urban Network
Adult pedestrians can accurately judge the speeds of vehicles traveling toward them at up to 50 mph, say researchers at Royal Holloway College, University of London, England. But for elementary school children, it’s a different matter. Children simply don’t have the perceptual ability to make an accurate judgment.
“This is not a matter of children not paying attention, but a problem related to low-level visual detection mechanisms, so even when children are paying very close attention they may fail to detect a fast approaching vehicle,”said John Wann, a professor in the university’s Department of Psychology.
Wann led researchers who measured the perceptual acuity of more than 100 elementary school pupils, the university said in a news release describing the study’s results. The judgments of children of primary school age "become unreliable once the approach speed goes above 20mph, if the car is five seconds away," the university said.
“These findings provide strong evidence that children may make risky crossing judgements when vehicles are travelling at 30 or 40 mph," Wann concluded. He emphasized that "the vehicles that they are more likely to step in front of are the faster vehicles that are more likely to result in a fatality."
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Continue reading “30 mph traffic is too fast for children to judge accurately, study finds”

By Christopher Hume
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One also can’t help but notice that the devastation wrought by Louisianans upon Louisiana far outweighs anything a hurricane can do. The mighty Mississippi, invisible behind vast levees, is lined with trailer parks and oil refineries. The bayous are degraded, the cypress swamps compromised beyond recovery. It is a landscape of desolation, broken only by the exquisite remnants of 19th-century plantation culture, as refined as it was corrupt.
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And despite the vast differences between New Orleans and Toronto, the automobile has brought a startling degree of sameness, similarity, even homogeneity, to the two centres. Notwithstanding the modernist architecture that turned cities around the world into copies of one another, it is the car that reduces even the most idiosyncratic urban form to a monotony of asphalt and empty spaces, not to mention congested highways and traffic reports.
And despite the vast differences between New Orleans and Toronto, the automobile has brought a startling degree of sameness, similarity, even homogeneity, to the two centres. Notwithstanding the modernist architecture that turned cities around the world into copies of one another, it is the car that reduces even the most idiosyncratic urban form to a monotony of asphalt and empty spaces, not to mention congested highways and traffic reports.
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Not until one leaves the isolation of the automobile does the rest of the landscape reveal itself — the palm trees, the heat, the smells, the architecture … . Not until one steps out of the car does one cease to be an observer and become part of the landscape.
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Continue reading “Which Was Worst: Katrina, or Car Culture?”