Public Health

Transportation Alternatives has teamed up with cycling advocates from Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle to issue the Urban Transportation Report Card (PDF), which rates these cities' progress on greening their transportation systems. The report notes that transportation accounts for 20-60% of carbon emissions in major U.S. cities, so it is very encouraging that in each city the most significant growth occurred in bicycling, with Chicago registering an 80% increase in cyclists from 1990-2000.

In the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, a group of teenagers is transforming a drab, cinder block wall into a three-story mural to memorialize three children killed on dangerous Third Avenue and to remind motorists to drive safely. The mural is being organized by Transportation Alternatives and Groundswell Community Mural Project and painted under the guidance of acclaimed social activist artists Christopher Cardinale and Nicole Schulman.

Mary-Powel Thomas is President of the Community Education Council for School District 15 in Brooklyn. Back in June Thomas organized a pedestrian safety forum for schools, community groups and others who live and work along Brooklyn's dangerous Third and Fourth Avenue corridors where numerous pedestrians, kids and elderly people in particular, have been injured and killed by motor vehicles in recent months.

New York State Assembly Member Deborah Glick represents Chelsea, Greenwich Village, Tribeca and a good piece of Chinatown and Lower Manhattan. Encompassing the Holland Tunnel, Canal Street and a section of the Westside Highway, her district suffers from some of the worst traffic congestion in all of New York City. Transit-rich and offering some of the city's most walkable and bike-friendly streets (Jane Jacobs lived and worked in this Assembly district) Glick's constituents would likely be among the greatest beneficiaries of any traffic reduction plan.

Sheridan Swap is a new blog covering the Mother of All Livable Streets projects -- the long-running campaign to convert one mile of little-used highway running along the Bronx River into affordable housing, parkland, greenway and economic opportunity for one of the city's most beleaguered neighborhoods. The blog is run by the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance. The state, it seems, is getting ready to weigh in on the merits of the project:

Grist recently produced a list of the world's 15 greenest cities. Streetsblog favorites Copenhagen, Curitiba, London, and Bogotá all made the grade. StreetFilms' posterchild Portland captured the number two spot right behind geothermal-powered Reykjavik, Iceland. San Francisco and Austin were the only other U.S. cities to make the list with Chicago meriting runner-up status.

As if USA Today featuring the "Complete Streets" movement on its front page weren't enough to make one realize that walking is the biggest new way to earn your "green" points, a cool web site, Walk Score, rates the walkability of any location in the United States on a 0-100 scale. Based on the number of retail businesses and amenities near an address, this site analyzes how frequently one is likely to need to drive in the daily course of life. The closer things are to the places you're likely to need, the better your score. Finally, a site that attempts to quantify the economic, environmental and social benefits of living in a city.

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 six percent of our day commuting to and from work, it is during that time when we receive over half of our exposure" to diesel exhaust, researchers found.