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Rhubarb, Spinach, Cabbage!
I talk about Copenhagen a lot on this blog, but Helsinki is another one of my favorite “green” cities. Check out this live public transit map that they developed. You can see where buses and trains are in real time. The map has some really nice functionality; letting you click on the moving icons and see when a bus will arrive at a stop and so on. It’s pretty awesome.
See it here.
winter_groupshot, originally uploaded by ronitbez.
Today when I was putting my banana peel in the compost container and my sparkling mineral water bottle in the recycling bin, I realized that our office is a pretty “green” place to be. We went through paper at my last job as if we were trying to waste it and that drove me totally nuts. Now I’m lucky to work in a place where people care about the environment and actively make small changes in the workspace to be more energy efficient and less wasteful. Everybody there either bikes to work or takes public transit, so we have the commute to work part down as well. Damn, I love this job. Today we got a grant that will go towards funding my position there for the next year- hooray!
Want to be more green at work? See links below!
Treehugger list on how to be green at work
Based on my research, I can divide public transit layout into two different kinds of “designs”: 1) a system with a core, usually in the form of a circle, that corresponds to the densest area of the city, and lines that radiate outward from the core, or 2) a system without a core that winds and meanders through the city.
I’ve been researching different layouts for subways in major cities ever since a friend of mine mentioned the subway map for Tokyo. The Tokyo system is interesting because it falls into neither category. There exists a centralized core where a lot of lines cross over one another, but there definitely isn’t a circle or loop line. The map posted below is only a piece of the vast Tokyo subway system and doesn’t even include the extensive rail system. A more complete picture can be found here.
On this video, there is a shot of the Tokyo subway map that looks more logical than the map posted above.
The most regimented looking subway map I’ve seen is of the Moscow public transit. The brown circle allows for easy transfer between the lines that reach out from the core of the city. It looks like a beautiful piece of infrastructure although I don’t understand the stops clustered at the end of each line? I am curious about the distance from the circle line to the stops at the end of the colored lines.
I know that I said in a previous post that you just can’t compare New York public transit to Chicago. For the sole purpose of being contrary to my previous argument, I will put the subway maps alongside one another here for you to judge. The New York City subway doesn’t really have a core or any centralized circle route. New york has far more service lines that saturate the area of the city, while Chicago’s el has a dense core with long fingers reaching to the outskirts of the city. I must admit that Chicago’s el system looks pathetic next to the New York subway map.
Chicago’s el would be greatly improved if they were to build that damn circle line. There has recently been a stink about the connection between Evanston and Skokie on the el. Evanstonians are complaining that they would like for there to be stops along the “skokie swift” yellow line between the Howard stop and Skokie. I would like to throw tomatoes at this idea. The CTA wastes so much money on the purple and yellow lines that connect Chicago to the ‘burbs. I think it is the financial responsibility of the RTA (regional transit authority) and the Metra to connect suburb to city and suburb to suburb. The CTA (chicago transit authority) should be focused on creating better service in the city proper and ensuring that people can transfer easily to the Metra for commuting to the ‘burbs. The CTA is already pouring money into the brown line expansion project to plump up a line that has reached capacity. I would actually like to see the CTA spend money on increasing express lines on the existing lines. The blue line desperately needs an express train during rush hour. I’ll rip the CTA a new one in another post….
Mexico city has a pretty efficient subway system and their design (or lack of design) has no core; lines just run all over the place.
I can’t say which type of layout is best. I will say good public transit responds to the needs of the city- creating dense service where people are clustered, making it easy for people to commute quickly to where the jobs exist, providing many options when rush hour occurs, etc. – instead of merely fixing problems as they come up. I think that you can also frame an argument against Chicago’s Loop after looking at these layouts. More on this later….
The interview was fine, but I’m still in the running with 5 other people. It’s amazing to me that I made it through so many cuts and I’m pretty happy to have made it to this point. The final candidates are being sent to the Executive committee for review. Anyway, now all I have to do is wait for the yes or no. Instead of mulling over (read: obsessing over) the interview, I wanted to post about other things going on in my head.
I went to El Cid for breakfast on Memorial day. Patrick loves that place. I am, however, lukewarm about their vegetarian offerings. I had the Heuvos a la Mexicana and Patrick had the Chilaquiles. It was quite tasty. We went to Tastee Freez (yes, that’s a picture of the actual place- it’s so cute) and I got the hugest cheapest mile high chocolate-vanilla twist soft serve ice cream cone I’ve ever had. We ate ice cream and walked to Rinconcito Sudamericano- a Peruvian restaurant at Armitage and Damen. I had some lobster tail with a fried potato, rice, and shrimp. It was mighty tasty, but way too much food. The hot sauce served with the bread was out of this world! It was some kind of pureed jalapenos with cream? rice? I couldn’t really tell. I’ve never had anything like it. Their selection of pescetarian items was exceptional.
In other news, I’m sure you’ve heard about New York’s green taxi fleet. It’s a step in the right direction, but I dislike car-oriented development anyway. Perhaps people in the city will stop owning personal vehicles all together and rely instead on green cabs, car sharing, walking/cycling, and public transit. Wouldn’t that be nice?
I wish every city would get rid of plastic bags like San Francisco did.
I took some plastic bags and re-used them by crocheting them into new bags. You can do this, too.
