Jason Varone
Jason Varone battles the streets everyday during a 9 mile commute on his bicycle from downtown Brooklyn to the Upper East Side. In addition to his efforts on Streetsblog, he is an artist making work related to the environment and technology. Examples of his work can be found at www.varonearts.org.
Recent Posts
World Cities Adding One Million People Every Week
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Syndicated columnist Neal Peirce asks whether our planet will be able to absorb the population "mega-surge" currently underway in Africa, Asia and Latin America. From Common Dreams: The problem is that the global population base has increased so radically that even seemingly modest birthrates can have momentous consequences. Joel Cohen (head of the Laboratory of […]
Brit’s Liberal Dems Want to Ban Cars Fueled By Gasoline
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Britain’s Liberal Democrat Party unveiled a detailed plan to tackle climate change which includes a ban on fossil fuel powered cars by 2040. The Guardian reports: The Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, and the party’s environment spokesman, Chris Huhne, unveiled the proposal today as part of a package of measures designed to make Britain […]
New “People’s 311” Site Maps Street Hazards
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Carrie McLaren and Steve Lambert are working on a public service photo project called "People’s 311." They want New Yorkers to submit shots of things like potholes, bike lane hazards, dying trees and broken traffic signs. People’s 311 is a "crowdsourcing" response to the Street Conditions Observation Unit (SCOUT) program, a new team of inspectors dispatched […]
Delivering the Goods to a Growing New York
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In June, NYU’s Wagner Rudin Center of Transportation Policy & Management teamed up with the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council to host an event focused on current and future freight needs in the New York metro region. Their report cited increased consumption and congestion as serious challenges to moving goods in and around the city: […]
Dying to Get to Work
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As New York State sets up a commission to study the costs and benefits of New York City’s congestion pricing proposal, a new study by the Clean Air Task Force finds that, for many New Yorkers, the greatest exposure to dangerous and unhealthy air pollution comes during the daily commute. "Although we spend only about […]
Americans Vote for Fuel Efficiency. Why Do They Buy Guzzlers?
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With new fuel economy standards under consideration in Congress, James Surowiecki ponders why Americans continue to buy gas guzzlers when polls show that the majority would like to see the government mandate big increases in fuel efficiency. What does all of this have to do with professional hockey players wearing helmets? This was in last […]
The World’s First Sustainable Parking Structure
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James Howard Kunstler‘s Eyesore of the Month of July is the nation’s first LEED-certified, "sustainable solar-powered parking structure." Yep. Only in California. Kunstler writes: Apparently nobody informed these idiots that happy motoring is not a sustainable activity, and neither is the parking that necessarily attends it. This is apart from the sheer appalling monumental ugliness […]
The Suburbanist Paradox
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The Atlantic Monthly’s Matthew Yglesias argues that high-density living is a key strategy to fight climate change. Yglesias takes issue with fellow Atlantic Online blogger Ross Douthat and author Joel Kotkin, who defend suburban sprawl — what James Kunstler has famously called "the most destructive development pattern the world has ever seen, and perhaps the […]
Just What India Needs: The $3,000 Car
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The Sierra Club points out that in India, there are currently about 7 cars per 1,000 persons (as compared to nearly 500 per 1,000 in the US). With the advent of the $3,000 car, that is surely about to change. The Independent’s Andrew Buncombe reports: If India’s roads seem cluttered and inadequate, things are set […]
David Byrne on Bicycling in NYC
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Transportation Alternatives’ Noah Budnick and David Byrne prior to the Manhattan Borough President’s "Manhattan on the Move" conference, October 2006. Former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne writes about his 30 years of cycling in New York City on his website. Byrne is an avid bicyclist, and an alternative transportation advocate: I have been riding a […]
Addicted To Oil: Ranking States’ Vulnerability
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A new NRDC report ranks U.S. states on their level of oil vulnerability measured by how heavily each state’s citizens are affected by increases in oil prices. States are also ranked on their implementation of solutions to reduce oil dependence. The report found that while oil dependence affects all states, some are hit harder economically […]
Albany Fiddles Over Congestion Pricing…
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… as NASA Scientist James Hansen and six other scientists publish a new global climate change study that concludes, "The Earth today stands in imminent peril and nothing short of a planetary rescue will save it from the environmental cataclysm of dangerous climate change." Steve Connor writes in The Independent (via Gristmill): "Civilisation developed, and […]