Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Air Quality

Building a Better Bike Lane

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This weekend’s Wall Street Journal has an massive, full-page report on bike friendly cities in Europe. Initially the arguments for more biking were mostly about health and congestion, but in the last year concern for the environment has become an important factor compelling people to travel by bicycle: Flat, compact and temperate, the Netherlands and […]

Black Clouds Over China

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The balloon says: Drive one day less and look how much carbon dioxide you’ll keep out of the air we breathe. While the Chinese economy is booming, the skies above its cities are blackening. China will actually pass the United States as the world’s biggest source of greenhouse gases this year. The World Wildlife Federation […]

Streetfilms: Little Legs for Green Streets

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Little Legs For Green Streets A StreetFilm by Clarence Eckerson Jr. Running Time: 2 minutes 41 seconds This Streetfilm celebrates the students at P.S. 321 in Park Slope who are going green. The entire school participated in an Earth Day walk-a-thon to raise money for Transportation Alternatives, Amazon Watch, and Added Value.

What $13 Billion Looks Like

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  With the above chart and these comments in mind, here’s some food for thought from the PlaNYC Transportation chapter: Only 4.6% of working New Yorkers commute to Manhattan by car. The vast majority of trips made in New York are not to Manhattan; even among commuters, nearly twice as many outer borough residents work […]

How Green Is Our Mayor

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Bookending his much-vaunted Earth Day speech with congratulatory video clips from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Mayor Mike Bloomberg called for New Yorkers to take the initiative in the international fight against global warming, positioning himself as a leader on the issue. "Climate change is a national challenge, and meeting […]

They Come to Bury the BQE, Not to Praise It

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The Brooklyn Paper reports that there’s talk brewing about seizing an opportunity to bury the section of the BQE that runs underneath the Promenade, rather than simply repair it (right, the Atlantic Ave. overpass where the roadway rises near the site of the proposed Brooklyn Bridge Park and the One Brooklyn condo development): Some Brooklyn […]