A few months after moving into our current home, we found ourselves needing to buy our own lawnmower for the first time. We learned that electric lawnmowers were a thing and figured that taking that route might be the most responsible thing to do from an environmental perspective, especially once we realized we could buy a string trimmer from the same company and use the same batteries for both. Both purchases have served us well, but our first battery didn’t last as long as we’d hoped, and with a second one currently on the fritz, I’m starting to suspect that the amount of e-waste that we’ve generated so far is outweighing any environmental benefit that we’ve created by not using gasoline to mow our lawns.

I know that all kids parrot what they hear their parents say to a certain extent, but kiddo has gotten very pro-public transport lately, and it makes me very happy.

Today, after a brief appearance on campus to teach one class, I begin a convoluted trip to Pittsburgh to attend a conference for work. As this trip has gotten closer, I’ve looked at the details of my trip and slowly realized that I messed this up good in terms of deciding how to get to Pittsburgh and back. This post is a confession of my sins!

I’m fairly transport conscious—at least for an American. I checked Amtrak to see if there was a reasonable way to get there by train, and I’m pretty sure I also checked Greyhound to see what travel by bus would be like. I do this for any conference I attend, but I usually get the same result: American trains and buses just aren’t well developed enough to support this kind of trip. At some point, I must have also done the math on driving versus flying… or at least I hope I did—maybe that’s another sin to confess. At any rate, at some point I gave in to the inevitability of flying and worked with my employer’s travel office to get some tickets booked.

I had never heard of the tram driver Olympics before, and I love it. [gift link]

Seeing an official publication of my church advocate for public transit is a beautiful combination of two of my favorite things. I’m very pleased!

After nearly thirteen years of life as a one-car family, we’re buying a second car today. I wish we didn’t have to, but I keep reminding myself this is as much a natural consequence of the systemic failures of American public transit as it is a deliberate family decision.

J’ai appris cette semaine que les transports publics de ma ville sont soutenus par la RATP, ce qui m’étonne pas mal.

Enilda is great, and I appreciate her thoughts here.

Love the paper tickets, and this makes me sad.

Twelve years ago, I spent a summer in Geneva completing an internship at the NGO Geneva Call ( « Appel de Genève » ). Being the bookworm that I am, I naturally grabbed a few books to bring with me. I know that I read through Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar that summer—I had just started using Ubuntu and was wildly (over)optimistic about the ideals of open source.

Thanks to Reddit and Wikipedia, I learned this morning that Cincinnati has an abandoned, partially completed subway system. Grew up just south of Cincy but never heard this until now.

Wild article. We once knew how to do trains, so why can’t we figure it out better now?

Ça fait quelques années que mon frère regarde la chaîne YouTube Not Just Bikes, qui parle des vélos, des transports publics, et de l’infrastructure qui les soutient (où pas). Il m’en parle assez souvent, mais ce n’est que récemment que j’ai enfin décidé de regarder quelques vidéos. Vu mon amour pour les sujets abordés dans les vidéos (les vélos, les transports publics, l’Europe), ça m’étonne que je n’ai pas découvert cette chaîne avant. J’ai surtout apprécié ces vidéos sur le vélo en Suisse, les pistes cyclables à Paris, et les trains de grande vitesse en Italie (surtout parce que j’avais déjà regardé cette vidéo sur la service Frecciarossa entre Paris et Lyon).

I will only accept complaints about gas prices from people who also bemoan our failure to invest in public and alternative transportation.

Yes for more transportation funding, but not if it’s all going to cars.

School buses are the most common form of public transit around here, and we still can’t do that right.

Public transit forever. Lexington is considering BRT, and I’m really hoping it comes through. Would give me some more commuting options.

Five flats between two bikes in six weeks (four in the last two) can’t be a world record, but it’s a personal best that I’m not interested in beating anytime soon. Wishing the bus came closer to my house, even though that commute is even longer.

There’s something about stepping onto a new bus that makes me feel like I’ve stepped into the future. I don’t need jetpacks, just clean seats and an electric motor.