Here Are the Urban Highways That Deserve to Die
The Congress for New Urbanism ranks the most-loathed urban freeways in North America—and makes the case for tearing them down.
Transportation
Cuomo questions viability of congestion pricing, throwing subway overhaul into doubt
The MTA had been hoping to start tolling drivers who enter Manhattan’s central business district starting in January 2021. The tolls to enter Manhattan south of 60th Street were supposed to support the MTA’s $51.5 billion overhaul plan, which, in turn, was supposed to include substantial subway signal improvements and improved station accessibility.
But the MTA needs federal approval for congestion pricing because some of the impacted roads are federally funded. To get that federal approval, the MTA needs to do an environmental review — either a lengthy, typically yearslong environmental impact statement, or a more abbreviated environmental assessment.
The MTA and City Hall have been asking the federal government which study it should pursue since April, as POLITICO reported. The federal government has yet to give them guidance. Some officials have quietly suggested the MTA should have just assumed the federal government would want the more in-depth assessment and begun work on it immediately.
But on Thursday, Cuomo said he assumed the federal approval would be “perfunctory.”
How Cars Divide America
Urbanists have long looked at cars as the scourge of great places. Jane Jacobs identified the automobile as the “chief destroyer of American communities.” Cars not only clog our roads and cost billions of dollars in time wasted commuting, they are a terrible killer. They caused more than 40,000 deaths in 2017, including of some 6,000 pedestrians and cyclists.
But in the United States, the car plays a fundamental role in structuring the economy, our daily lives, and the political and social differences that separate us.
Life Kit : NPR
Xcelsior CHARGE™ How it Works – New Flyer of America
Quick Charging of Electric Cars | PluginCars.com
I am glad that I had a manual transmission and learned to drive stick shift years ago
I am glad that I had a manual transmission and learned to drive stick shift years ago. Probably in 25 years with electric cars children won’t understand why cars had gears you had to shift or transmissions at all. Electric cars don’t have torque bands or gears because electric motors don’t need them as they have 100% torque at any speed, only limit on torque is current supplied to the motor. Even big electric buses, trucks and trains have only one gear.
Gas engines have to be turning at least 2,000 rpm to have much power and 3,500 rpm for full power. Electric motors have full torque at 1 rpm or 3,500 rpm, the only limit in torque is current supplied. Technically you don’t need to gears with a gas engine with a high stall speed torque converter as the slip in the torque converter can allow the engine to spin at a speed faster than the wheels, a feature aggressively exploited in an early automatic transmissions with one or two gears but allowing a lot of slip wastes a lot of energy. Buick made a one speed automatic transmission in the early 1960s – the car was painfully slow and got 6 MPG on a good day. Modem automatic transmissions limit the time they are slipping by having multiple gears and having gears that fully lock at highway speeds.