Congress for New Urbanism Video

Here's a great video by John Paget. It won a contest held by the Congress for New Urbanism (or as the film says AKA traditional urbanism) on the connection between urbanism and the environment.

Pogue on Electric Cars - It's the system not the car!

The NY Times' David Pogue has a great blog post about a group of people developing a 'system' for making electric cars happen. The basic idea is that they rent you the batteries for your electric car. He titled his posting Electric Cars for All! (No, Really This Time) that about covers it don't you think?

IBM Smarter Planet: Traffic

IBM has been advertising on the New York Times site for its Smarter Planet program. There are several infomercials on interesting subjects (at least interesting to people like me) including food spoilage (in fact, that one goes very well with Michael Pollin's book Omnivore's Dilemma) and traffic congestion.

The traffic congestion film is short (30-seconds) and focuses on Copenhagen's congestion charging program. Of course the problem with congestion charging is not technological, but social ... people don't want to pay for something they view as having paid for and are used to getting for free. That's my criticism of the IBM program, they seem to underestimate the social aspect of introducing innovative new programs based on technology.

On the other hand, the Smarter Planet program looks like an effort to educate people and begin talking about the social factors that need to be addressed before programs like congestion pricing can be implemented. I think that the IBM Smarter Planet Copenhagen Congestion Charging Film should be shown during the Super Bowl rather than internet links from the NYT!

Congestion Pricing from Freakonomics

One of my favorite ideas for improving transport is congestion pricing. There were two great guest articles on the subject in the New York Times Freakonomics blog a couple days ago and today. Here are the links:

Why You'll Love Paying for Roads That Used to be Free - Part 1 and

Why You'll Love Paying for Roads That Used to be Free - Part 2.

Both articles are by Eric A. Morris a researcher at U.C.L.A.’s Institute of Transportation Studies - a sibling organization to UC Berkeley's ITS where I studied in the 1980s. He explains why charging variable tolls to use highways makes sense in clear, easy to understand language.

Physics for Future Presidents

Here's an Wired Science interview of UC Berkeley physicist Richard Muller, author of the book Physics for Future Presidents. It's quite an interesting short interview and the book sounds great.