Gibraltar - Free bus service for all

Gibraltar Chronicle - The Independent Daily First Published 1801: "Gibraltar Government yesterday announced the restructure and shortening of bus routes plus the introduction of a free bus service for all on all routes with the exception of the frontier route. In a statement to the Chronicle, Minister for Transport Joe Holliday said these measures will bring about “a significant improvement in transport infrastructure, traffic flow and parking in Gibraltar.”"

Peak oil - in simple graphics

The private auto? Don't need it.

Streetsblog Capitol Hill » Five Media Myths That Perpetuate Car Culture: "The economy depends on the auto industry. The popular, business, and political media alike echo the fallacy that a healthy US economy depends on a healthy auto industry. This chorus helped justify the 2009 bailouts of GM and Chrysler. But the auto industry knows that the dependency is reversed: it needs economic growth, tax breaks and subsidies, and vibrant credit markets to sell cars. A nation more reliant on transit and active transportation would be one in which households had lower debt and more discretionary income to spend on housing, leisure, and other products, enriching a wide swath of industries. It would also be a nation, in the next downturn, less hostage to how a single industry’s fate might affect entire communities and supply chains."

Arab people tired of being pawns for oil-puppets

Sprawl collapse continues

Fuel Prices Shift Math for Life in Far Suburbs - NYTimes.com: "In Denver, housing prices in the urban core rose steadily from 2003 until late last year compared with previous years, before dipping nearly 5 percent in the last three months of last year, according to Economy.com. But house prices in the suburbs began falling earlier, in the middle of 2006, and then accelerated, dropping by 7 percent during the last three months of the year from a year earlier."

TheSpec - Walkability and the new urbanism: "car dependence is taking a big chunk out of household budgets. Leinberger says the average suburban American family is spending 25 per cent of its income on its cars. Dropping one car can increase a household’s mortgage-carrying capacity by more than $100,000, he says."

Free public transport, please - The Malaysian Insider

Datuk Jema Khan is a former Sabah Umno Youth leader. He is now a businessman pushing the Agenda Liberal Melayu inFacebook .

Free public transport, please - The Malaysian Insider: "Public transport is about moving as many people as possible in the shortest period of time. It is not a money-making proposition but it is a social good. Therefore why should we charge for it? Make it free, clean, comfortable, secure and efficient within the urban areas and ridership will increase substantially and traffic jams will be much reduced."

Thanks to the private auto, the human race is roadkill

WHO | Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020: "Governments, international agencies, civil society organizations and private companies from more than 100 countries are launching the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020. From Tanzania to Sri Lanka and from Namibia to Mexico, presidents and prime ministers are expressing their commitment and launching national plans for the Decade. To symbolize the launch, national monuments are illuminated with the road safety 'tag', the new symbol for the Decade, from New York City, to Rio de Janeiro, Warsaw, Sydney, Moscow, Colombo and Geneva. These events mark the start of the Decade which seeks to save 5 million lives over the ten-year period."

Big Oil's Big Pay Day | Mother Jones

Big Oil's Big Pay Day | Mother Jones: "The oil giants—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, and Shell—recently released their first quarter reports. Together, the big five's profits were 38 percent higher in the first quarter of 2011 than the same period last year. A new report from the Center for American Progress finds that several of these companies used quite a bit of that extra money to buy back shares of their own stock, increasing the value of their shares and enriching their shareholders, boards of directors, and senior managers at a time when most Americans are dealing with extremely high gas prices."

Seoul, South Korea - 50,000 March on May Day 2011

Photo: Reuters