Transportation

Autonomy In Brazil: Below And Behind The June Uprising

November 22, 2013 Raúl Zibechi, roarmag.org Strategize! Anarchism, Brazil, Transportation

The huge mobilizations in June 2013 in 353 cities and towns in Brazil came as much a surprise to the political system as to analysts and social bodies. Nobody expected so many demonstrations, so numerous, in so many cities and for so long. As happens in these cases, media analyses were quick off the mark. Initially they focused on the immediate problems highlighted by the actions: urban transport, rising fare prices and the poor quality of service for commuters. Slowly the analyses and perspectives expanded to include the day-to-day dissatisfaction felt by a large part of the population. While there was widespread acknowledgement that basic family income had risen during the last decade of economic growth, social commentators began to focus on economic inclusion through consumption as the root of the dissatisfaction, alongside the persistence of social inequality. In this analysis, I would like to address the new forms of protest, organization, and mobilization from a social movement perspective. These new forms emerged within small activist groups composed mainly of young people that began organizing in 2003, the year Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took power. Unlike political parties, trade unions and other traditional organizations formed in the early eighties, the new social movements are key to the June mobilizations because of their ability to organize beyond their local scene, to involve the broadest sectors of society in the struggle and to employ forms of action and organization that sets them apart from the groups that went before them.

Privatized Ridesharing Is a Parasitic Business Model

October 28, 2013 Darwin Bond-Graham www.alternet.org Educate! Transportation, Worker Rights and Jobs

Ridesharing companies encourage unregulated, hyper-privatized transactions among precarious laborers. Their business model relies on marketizing formerly non-economic spheres of life, like giving a friend a ride in your car, and they have aggressively externalized costs like gas, insurance, payroll, etc. so that profits are maximized and expenses are as close as possible to nonexistent. In doing so they undermine the very existence of the taxi industry, but they also undermine public infrastructure in toto.

VIDEO: Where Bikes Are Like Water To A Fish

October 23, 2013 Michael Graham Richard, www.treehugger.com Create! Climate Change, Environment, Transportation, Video

Here's another great short film by our friend Clarence Eckerson. He already blew my mind with his recent film on Groningen in the Netherlands, and now he's doing it again with one of the best videos on Amsterdam's past and present bike culture that I've ever seen (and the others were probably made by Clarence too, so that says something). Amsterdam is widely considered to be one of the very best cities for cyclists in the world. That didn't happen by accident, and seeing images from a few decades ago when the city was choked with cars really brings the point home. The locals took some very specific steps to get to where they are today, something that many other cities around the world could learn from.

Mayors Around the Globe Leading an Urban Green Revolution

October 6, 2013 Stephen Leahy www.ipsnews.net Create! Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Housing, Transportation

With presidents and prime ministers failing to take meaningful action to avert a planetary-scale climate crisis, the mayors of cities and towns are increasingly stepping up to enact changes at the local level. “Cities are on the front lines of climate change,” Richard Register, founder and president of Ecocity Builders, an organization that pioneered ecological city design and planning, told IPS. With the backing of their residents, many cities and towns around the world are becoming cleaner, greener and better places to live by banning cars, improving mass transit, reducing energy use and growing their own food while adding public and green spaces. “Getting cities right solves many problems,” Register said. Cities are truly ground zero for action on climate change, protection of ecosystems, biodiversity, energy use, food production and more because that’s where most people live today, he said. Cities consume about 75 percent of the world’s energy and resources. They are directly or indirectly responsible for 75 percent of global carbon emissions.

How the Sharing Economy Will Change Cities

August 21, 2013 John Kuo, www.nerdwallet.com Create! Finance and the Economy, Transportation

The sharing economy benefits from, and probably has greater traction in, urban areas, but that’s not to say that it couldn’t be used as a driver towards building stronger communities in suburban and rural areas as well. Suburban areas, in part because of their low density, are difficult from a sharing economy point of view and one thing that is very interesting about suburban areas now is that there are increasingly people of lower incomes, and immigrant groups who don’t initially go to the city as in the past. They go straight to suburban or small city America. With the rise of the sharing economy (car share/bike share requires a credit card etc), you probably have more issues related to the separation of income and cultural groups. But, the converse would be that sharing economy-type of projects if designed well would be good for integrating these groups in small city and suburban America.

Proof That Bike Lanes Boost Business

August 15, 2013 Lloyd Alter, www.treehugger.com Create! Environment, Finance and the Economy, Transportation

Every time anyone proposes the installation of bike lanes and the removal of parking spaces, local retailers complain that it will kill their business. In fact,study after study show that building pedestrian and bicycle friendly streets increases sales. A new study of two bike lanes in Seattle by Kyle Rowe shows in one case, an increase in retail sales of almost 400%. Rowe writes: The results of this analysis are in the graph above, again with the bicycle lane signifying the construction of the project and the removal of the parking. Leading up to the construction and just afterwards NE 65th St performed very similar to both controls, however two quarters after the project was finished NE 65th St experienced a 350% increase in sales index, followed by another jump to 400% sales index the following quarter.

8 Ways Privatization Has Failed America

August 6, 2013 Paul Buchheit, www.commondreams.org Educate! Corporatism, Energy, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Food and Agriculture, Transportation, Worker Rights and Jobs

Some of America's leading news analysts are beginning to recognize the fallacy of the "free market." Said Ted Koppel, "We are privatizing ourselves into one disaster after another."Fareed Zakaria admitted, "I am a big fan of the free market...But precisely because it is so powerful, in places where it doesn't work well, it can cause huge distortions." They're right. A little analysis reveals that privatization doesn't seem to work in any of the areas vital to the American public. As summed up by US News, "Private industry is not going to step in and save people from drowning, or help them rebuild their homes without a solid profit." In order to stay afloat as a nation we need each other, not savvy businesspeople who presume to tell us all how to be rich. We can't all be rich. We just want to keep from drowning.

Popular Resistance Newsletter – Creating The New World

July 25, 2013 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Energy, Finance and the Economy, Food and Agriculture, Housing, Transportation

An important component of resistance is building systems based upon our desired values and principles to replace the current dysfunctional systems. This is a powerful and positive way for communities to work together to solve local problems and meet their basic needs. People around the world are engaged in this constructive resistance. We will share some of the most recent efforts to build the world we want. Landfill Harmonic OrchraestraWe are inspired by the human potential to create, even in dire economic circumstances, illustrated by this story of children from a slum dwelling in Paraguay. Out of the trash in the landfill their community is built upon, they created the “Landfill Harmonic Orchestra.”

How to Fund Transit Without Raising Fares or Cutting Service

July 19, 2013 Eric Jaffe, www.theatlanticcities.com Create! Transportation

When Mark Aesch became head of the Rochester-Genesee Regional Transportation Authority, back in 2004, the metro area's bus system was in terrible shape. The agency carried a $4.5 million deficit and on-time performance was stuck at 76 percent. Officials wanted to approach the problem the way so many other city agencies were handling similar situations at the time: with a fare hike. Aesch said no. "There was no way in my judgment we could ask the customer to pay more for an underperforming experience," he recalls. Not only did Aesch keep his pledge not to raise fares, but in 2008 he actually lowered them. By the time he left the position, at the end of 2011, Aesch and his creative approach had transformed Rochester's bus system into a total winner.

The Bike Boom

July 2, 2013 Ron Scherer, www.csmonitor.com Create! Transportation

The bike craze is being driven by a confluence of forces – perpetually high energy prices, the green movement, and an enduring fitness craze. At the same time, a new generation of mayors is pushing bike lanes, bike-share programs, bike garages, and other accouterments to wean people from their cars and couches onto the seats of Schwinns and Peugeots. In some cases, the municipal chief executives are engaged in friendly – but fierce – competition to get their city labeled the most "bike-friendly." The result, on any given morning, is a growing legion of people in spandex, skirts, and Brooks Brothers suits coursing down urban streets from Minneapolis to Charlotte, Miami to Seattle in a way that is changing how the country travels to work.

Media Misleads on BART Workers Strike

July 2, 2013 Allison Kilkenny, www.thenation.com Organize! Media, Transportation, Worker Rights and Jobs

This is BART's first strike in sixteen years. Workers are asking for a wage increase (they haven't received one in five years) and improved safety measures (bullet-proof glass in station booths, better lighting in tunnels, etc.). The union is asking for a 23 percent raise over four years, and BART countered with an offer of an eight percent raise over four years, but the union says this offer falls below cost of living increases. A BART spokesperson called the safety issues a "smoke screen" even though BART police have reported more than 2,400 serious crimes at just five stations in the last three years – crimes serious enough to require reporting to the FBI. The union is also upset about a proposal for workers to pay more into their healthcare benefits.

Brazil to Spend $25bn on Public Transit, Vote on Reforms

June 24, 2013 Staff, www.aljazeera.com Create! Brazil, Education, Government, Health Care, Transportation

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has proposed to set aside $25bn for public transport following days of mass nationwide street protests, in an effort to seize the political initiative. She also suggested on Monday a referendum on broad "political reform" in response to public anger with substandard public services and rampant official corruption in Brazil, the world's seventh largest economy. She also stressed the need for fiscal responsibility and for boosting investments in health and education as demanded by Brazilians who have taken to the streets in the tens of thousands over the past two weeks. "The streets are telling us that the country wants quality public services, more effective measures to combat corruption ... and responsive political representation," Rousseff said.

Sao Paulo Protests Rage In Brazil’s Largest City

June 19, 2013 Bradley Brooks, www.ap.org Resist! Brazil, Finance and the Economy, Government, Human Rights, Transportation

Tens of thousands of Brazilians again flooded the streets of the country's biggest city to raise a collective cry against a longstanding lament – people are weighed down by high taxes and high prices but get low-quality public services and a system of government infected with corruption. "What I hope comes from these protests is that the governing class comes to understand that we're the ones in charge, not them, and the politicians must learn to respect us," said Yasmine Gomes, a 22-year-old squeezed into the plaza in central Sao Paulo. Mass protests have been mushrooming across Brazil since demonstrations called last week by a group angry over the high cost of a woeful public transport system and a recent 10-cent hike in bus and subway fares in Sao Paulo, Rio and elsewhere. The local governments in at least four cities have now agreed to reverse those hikes, and city and federal politicians have shown signs that the Sao Paulo fare could also be rolled back.

What’s Behind Brazil’s Stunning Protests?

June 18, 2013 Alexander Abad-Santos, www.theatlanticwire.com Resist! Brazil, Finance and the Economy, Health Care, Transportation, Worker Rights and Jobs

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Brazil's biggest cities throughout Monday evening, punctuating a week's worth of protests that started with students in São Paulo pushing back against a bus-fare hike. The fare increase was a trigger for young Brazilians who, despite living in one of the richest countries in the world, feel like they have nothing to show for it. Brazil is rich. In 2012, the country overtook the U.K. as the sixth largest economy in the world, The Guardian reported in March. And Brazil is considered a "natural resource superpower" by Bloomberg News because of its supplies of iron ore, hydroelectric power, deepwater oil, and aluminum. But with all those numbers and its international clout, Brazil's people still have hardly seen everything add up in their daily lives.

Brazil Protests Spread in Sao Paulo, Brasilia, Rio 11 Cities Across Brazil

June 18, 2013 Gary Duffy, www.bbc.co.uk Resist! Brazil, Education, Finance and the Economy, Health Care, Transportation

As many as 200,000 people have marched through the streets of Brazil's biggest cities, as protests over rising public transport costs and the expense of staging the 2014 World Cup have spread. The biggest demonstration was in Rio de Janeiro, where 100,000 people joined a mainly peaceful march. In the capital, Brasilia, people breached security at the National Congress building and scaled its roof. The protests are the largest seen in Brazil for more than 20 years. The way these initial marches were policed - with officers accused of firing rubber bullets and tear gas at peaceful protesters - further incensed Sao Paulo residents and shifted the focus from rising transport costs to wider issues. "We don't have good schools for our kids. Our hospitals are in awful shape. Corruption is rife. These protests will make history and wake our politicians up to the fact we're not taking it anymore," a protester explained.

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