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
A Crash Course on Driver Safety for Parks Dept. Employees
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A Parks Dept. truck crashes a Central Park wedding Following Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe’s recent reminder for "Parkies" to drive safely and the revocation of parking permits on Central Park’s East Drive, the Parks Dept. recently sent out another mass e-mail to employees noting that "in the last few months we have seen an increase […]
Congestion Pricing News of the World
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We can barely keep up with the international congestion pricing headlines these days: Mumbai, India to Charge Fees for Driving (Mumbai Newsline) Finland: Half of Helsinki Backs Congestion Charge (Newsroom Finland) New Zealand: Pricing Could Ease Traffic Jams, New Study Suggests (Scoop) Singapore: LTA to Expand Electronic Road Pricing (Channel NewsAsia) Charleston E-ZPass Bill Sets […]
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 […]
Ich bin ein Bicyclist
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In a report for CBSnews.com on Berlin, Germany’s booming bike culture, Christine Lagorio expresses shock at the sheer number of bikes she saw in Berlin and the way in which motorists and cyclists share the road "gracefully." This, she says, is something she has never experienced in her home town of New York City. In […]
Make Your Own Subway Advisory
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The SUBWAYblogger found a potentially useful new tool for users of Facebook, a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. The Subway Status application, which was not developed by the MTA, is a user generated subway alert system. Now you can forget about those wet mornings […]
Crowds Heed Amtrak’s ‘All Aboard’
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It looks like Aaron and Susan Donovan are just two of many that have recently replaced air travel with train travel. Daniel Machalaba of The Wall Street Journal reports on a significant increase in ridership on the passenger rail system over the last year, and the trend seems to be intensifying. Meanwhile, Amtrak has improved […]
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: […]
Improved DOT Rolls Out Improved Web Site
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Yesterday afternoon the Dept. of Transportation launched a new and improved web site loaded with features designed to make information more available to the public. Now you can use the DOT’s site not only to watch traffic cams and sign up for e-news updates, but also to request different types of permits, report potholes, file complaints […]
Staten Island PlaNYC Panel Tonight
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Join Transportation Alternatives and the Citizens Committee for NYC at Everything Goes Book Café in St. George on Staten Island for a screening of Contested Streets, a one-hour documentary about New York’s traffic crisis and how congestion pricing can solve it. They’ll be following up with information about transit improvements coming to Staten Island as […]
Incredible SFPD Training Video: “Bikes Belong in Traffic”
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This training video was a collaboration between the San Francisco Police Department and the SF Bicycle Coalition. The video is intended to increase police officers’ awareness of cyclists’ rights and responsibilities, and it is really effective. Here in New York, cyclists who complain of motorist intimidation and assault are often brushed off by the police. Perhaps the […]
The Urban Transportation Report Card
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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 […]
Pedicabs Protest New Regulations
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Pedicabs took to the streets yesterday to protest the City’s new regulations on New York’s greenest for-hire transportation industry. In a press release, The Green Transport Association says that City Council Speaker Christine Quinn "dealt pedicabs a crushing blow capping our number at 325 city-wide" — a reported 35 percent reduction in the pedicab workforce: Pedicabs are […]