The Guardian, Smart cities need thick data, not big data, By Adrian Smith, Professor of Technology and Society at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, Wed 18 Apr 2018 Talking about noise in Plaça del Sol Photograph: Making Sense Residents living around Plaça del Sol joke that theirs is the only square where, despite the name, rain is preferable. …
World’s first electrified road for charging vehicles opens in Sweden
Stretch of road outside Stockholm transfers energy from two tracks of rail in the road, recharging the batteries of electric cars and trucks Daniel Boffey in Brussels Thu 12 Apr 2018 Play Video 0:57 How world’s first electrified road charges moving vehicles – video The world’s first electrified road that recharges the batteries of cars and trucks driving on it has been …
Electric buses at Schipol, Amsterdam Airport, “top off” their batteries during pick-ups
Amsterdam Airport Uses Heliox Chargers to Power Fleet of 100 Electric Buses: In a shift towards greater sustainability, Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport has chosen roof-mounted, Heliox chargers to power its large fleet of buses. By, Mia Bevacqua Apr 14, 2018, FutureCar.com author: Mia Bevacqua A lineup of electric buses tethered to roof-mounted chargers is quite a site to see. Travelers will stumble upon …
Integrated Transport and Health Impact Modelling Tool (ITHIM)
ITHIM refers to a range of related models and tools developed at CEDAR to perform integrated assessment of the health effects of transport scenarios and policies at the urban and national level. The health effects of transport policies are modelled through the changes in physical activity, road traffic injury risk, and exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution. Some …
Costa Rica’s New President Vows ‘Emancipation’ From Dirty Transport
Carlos Alvarado Quesada, the president-elect of Costa Rica, plans to continue the country’s extraordinary stewardship of the environment with a pledge to decarbonize its transportation sector. On Sunday, he promised that one day Costa Rica will “celebrate its emancipation from petrol and diesel in the transportation system, replacing them with clean energy,” Climate Change News quoted him saying. “That transformation would be the ‘abolition of the army’ …
On National Walking Day, a look at how putting cars first kills people who walk and drive
By Lloyd Alter, 5 April 2018 National Walking Day was started by the American Heart Association as a way of promoting healthy hearts, but all the good achieved through that exercise might be offset by the thousands of walking people who get killed every year. That’s why good pedestrian walking infrastructure is so important- so that people can walk safely, …
Excerpt from Transport section of 2017 “We are still in” report
Excerpt from Transport section of 2017 “We are still in” report With the largest (China), fourth largest (Germany) and sixth largest (India) vehicle manufacturing nations(164) announcing they are going to phase out the internal combustion engine, and with other countries like Britain and France joining in,165 the auto industry can see their future is in EVs manufactured at scale. Medium- and heavy-duty vehicles …
Vastly few cars, deaths and accidents + greater health in Germany. Cleveland extends bike greenways.
March 2918, by Lloyd Alter, Treehugger A study comparing the two countries shows vast differences in how cars are used. The modern highway was invented in Germany, and Germans love their cars. Daimler, Volkswagen and BMW make rather nice ones. But as Eric Jaffe of Citylab notes, Compared to Americans, Germans own fewer cars, drive them shorter distances and less frequently, …
A 1.5C world requires approximately two to three times larger reductions in CO2 from buildings and transport than in a 2C world
5 March 2018 Carbon Brief In the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, nearly every country on Earth pledged to keeping global temperatures “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels and to “pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5C”. However, at the time, scientists had only modelled energy system and carbon mitigation pathways to achieve the 2C target. Few studies …
Integrated planning and partnerships help deliver Smart Cities projects and savings
Integrated planning also can help uncover opportunities such as smart LED street lighting, which can simultaneously reduce energy and maintenance costs, increase public safety and security, and promote healthy lifestyles (well-lit bike paths) while providing a connected platform for networked sensors, broadband communications and other community services. El Paso, Texas, is a good example of a city that took advantage …