Car Culture

On his frequent runs and bike rides around his Jackson Heights neighborhood and nearby Corona and Elmhurst, Will Sweeney recently started noticing something strange: a lot of license plates from North Carolina. Sweeney writes:

Sean Roche of Newton Streets and Sidewalks sends along a good one: 

When George Monbiot, the popular columnist for the UK's Guardian newspaper, gets interested in something, he digs and digs until he's found what he's satisfied is the truth. Monbiot is interested in global warming, and presents in Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning (U.S. Edition: South End Press, May 2007) a heavily footnoted 215-page brisk and compelling case for why we should all be very worried. This is probably the clearest and broadest book yet published about global warming, with doses of skepticism, inquisitiveness, sobriety and optimism. Every Streetsblog reader should read it. More important, every Streetsblog reader should get it into the hands of five Streetsblog non-readers and ask each of them to do the same.

A tipster sends along this snapshot of the parking lot... I mean, sidewalk, outside the High Bridge Recreational Center prior to the meeting last night to discuss plans for the revitalized High Bridge. The talk inside, she says, "was much more encouraging" than the government employee parking situation outside.

Streetsblog editor Aaron Naparstek will be talking with Brian and others about why motorists, cyclists and pedestrians don't seem to get along too well these days. Feel free to call in. 93.9 FM. From the WNYC web site:

According to a new U.S. Census Bureau analysis of data from the American Community Survey, most Americans drive to work -- alone, and public transportation commuters are concentrated in a handful of large cities. From the Bureau's press release:

The Staten Island Advance ran an article last Thursday about a "perfect storm" of crushing Staten Island-bound traffic on the Gowanus Expressway and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. To give you a sense of the frustrated tone of the article, it was entitled "21-Month Nightmare: Agency Offers Zero Solutions for Verrazano Lane Mess." Here's how it began: