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10.4 billion

That’s the number of trips that Americans took on mass transit in 2011, a 2.3% increase over 2010, according to the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). That’s the second-highest number of trips taken since 1957, after only 2008, when gasoline had hit a record average high of $4.11 a gallon. The increase in transit ridership [...]

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Share Your Ride

Like a lot of Brooklynites—just about 54%—I don’t own a car. In fact, I’ve never owned a car. Before New York I lived in Hong Kong and Tokyo, two cities that are even denser and easier to get around car-less than New York. In college there never seemed much of a need for a car, [...]

A Quiet Green Win for Obama on Auto Efficiency

Many of President Obama’s progressive supports have soured on him in recent months, as the debt crisis and a Republican House has forced him to embrace deep spending cuts, and environmentalists are among them. There’s still unhappiness among greens over the White House’s perceived failure to push hard for carbon cap-and-trade legislation—legislation that was a major [...]

Transportation: GM Goes Green, Gets Green

When executives from General Motors visited the trading floors of JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley—the two firms handling the auto company’s initial public offering—they were given a standing ovation from the bankers. Maybe the rest of us should join in. Less than a year and a half after the company declared bankruptcy and seemed headed [...]

Energy: The Government Looks to Raise Fuel Economy Standards

Environmentalists can take President Obama to task for more than a few disappointments over the first two years of his Administration—and some of them have—but one area where the White House has fulfilled its green pledges is in auto fuel efficiency. In May 2009 Obama brokered a deal with the auto industry that saw Corporate [...]