cars

The same design features that kill and maim pedestrians are what automakers rely on to appeal to consumers.

It's fitting that the Palo Alto headquarters for Elon Musk's flagship company, Tesla, has an epic logistical problem caused by the spatial inefficiency of its core product.

Crossposted from City Observatory.

Think the origins of "jaywalking" in 1920s car industry propaganda are too esoteric for a mainstream audience? Watch this clip from truTV's "Adam Ruins Everything" that adapts research from Peter Norton's Fighting Traffic, a history of how motordom conquered American streets in the early 20th century. It's a good sign when productions backed by the entertainment industry start devoting attention to topics like this.

The City of Chicago wants to set up a centralized, online taxi dispatching system that would accept anyone's request for a cab. This new tool could let the local taxi industry catch up to the user-responsiveness of increasingly popular taxi alternatives like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar. Those companies' easy-to-use apps, and sometimes lower fares, are tempting riders out of conventional taxicabs

This photo pretty much says everything that needs to be said about the absurdity of the flying car.

Special guest Damien Newton of Streetsblog LA joins Jeff and me on this episode to tell us all about the Los Angeles DOT's new strategic plan, which includes a Vision Zero goal: zero traffic deaths by 2025, a vision all of our cities should get behind. He walks us through the oddities of LA politics and the pitfalls that may await the plan, as well as one really good reason it could succeed. (Her name is Seleta Reynolds.)

Quick quiz: What city is the world leader in highway teardowns? San Francisco? Portland? Madrid?

This is an excerpt from "Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save the Economy," by Elly Blue (Microcosm Publishing, December 1, 2013, bikenomics.com). See our interview with Elly from spring 2013.