SparkPoints: (58,710)
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12/19/11 10:07 A

I certainly hope this trend continues!

current weight: 120.2

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Posts: 20,880
12/19/11 9:56 A

Are Slower Cities Better for Bikers, the Air & Our Mental Health?

www.salon.com/2011/12/17/in_the_future_urb
an_bikers_go_faster_than_cars/

"Look around (if you have a second) and you might notice that a lot of the new ideas seeping into cities are aimed not at making them faster, but slowing them down. The buzziest mode of transport now is a bicycle. Streetcars, a pokey throwback, are returning. Walkable neighborhoods, traffic-calming measures and “slow zones” are catching on, and freeways are being torn down and replaced with lower-speed boulevards. Even things likesit-down pedestrian plazas and pop-up cafes seem to indicate a desire to slacken the pace.

Slower cities have a lot to recommend them. “It’s not just a road safety issue,” says Rod King, the creator of “20′s Plenty for Us,” a movement to reduce London’s speed limit to 20 miles per hour. “There are a lot of peripheral advantages to slowing down traffic.” The advantages include increased biking because roads aren’t so scary, the need for less infrastructure like speed bumps, and better air quality (racing from one traffic light to the next burns more fuel). Add in the public-safety benefits of slower cars (which are hard to overstate — a few extra miles per hour canliterally kill) and putting on the brakes starts to look like a no-brainer."

So much to be said for this...let's hope it's a trend that will flourish! :-)

Don

Pounds lost: 76.0

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