US Road crisis as commuters come out of recession

With reports suggesting that America's financial crisis is being solved, the road out of post-recession is causing problems of its own - on the roads themselves.

With more and more motorists returning to using their cars, traffic queues and jams are becoming the norm once again, and that's causing a whole lot of wastage according to a 2010 Urban Mobility Report.

It reports that Americans had to travel 4.8 billion hours more due to congestion and had to fill an extra 3.9 gallons of fuel at the rate of $115 billion.

That translates roughly to an average motorist spending a whopping extra 34 hours and $808 in traffic in 2009.

Of course some areas are worse than others - the worst affected were motorists in Washington DC and Chicago who spent an average of 70 hours in peak traffic losing $1738 and wasting 57 gallons of fuel.

The study claims that with more and more drivers taking to the roads, the emphasis has got to be on providing a better infrastructure including more public transport, tolls and mass commuting facilities.


One glimmer of hope was the finding that public transport networks like train and bus saved 785 million hours of wasted time spent in traffic. Clearly where the smart money was then.

Read the full report at Green Packs.

If you're interested, you can read how one commuter in Derbyshire, UK has found delight in various public transport ticket deals for his daily 40 mile commute - read more here

photo credit: nicholas whitaker

Commute by Bike - even if the view is a little scary

Thanks Treehugger for posting this piece about a video comparison of cycling or driving to work.

There's a thrilling 2 minute (speeded up) journey in the rush hour by bike in the 4th largest city in the Netherlands where they have a 33% bike modal share.

It's not all plain pedalling though - the number of bicycle thefts is also great and of 45,000 that are stolen annually, and despite a Police implemented bike registration programme, only a few hundred of the stolen bikes have been returned to their owners.

Still, cycling's pretty popular it seems - the dutch city of Groningen boasts 60% of journeys being made by bicycle.

Click here to see Treehugger's full article and those very scary videos.. and if you're out cycling this weekend or you commute by bike, don't forget your cycling helmets.

photo credit: baudman

Tringa - ling! Eco tricycle for the green commuter on 3 wheels

If you put your mind to it you can achieve anything. Wise words (I forget from which film) but someone has come up with a folding tricycle for the commuter that doesn't fancy two wheels.

Whilst any effort to make cycling more commuter friendly is fine by us - I'm contemplating getting my bike out for the odd day trip to work now the summer is on its way - I'm not entirely sure that folded down, this trike is the easiest bit of kit to haul around.

Still, a valiant effort and I look forward to seeing the first ones on our streets soon. The design uses an innovative rope pulley system rather than a chain.

More pictures and details at Ecofriend.org