Roads in Philippines unfairly benefit the 2% who own cars

rappler : "Transport experts and urban planners have lamented how less than 2% of Filipinos own cars – and yet, most of the roads are dedicated to vehicles."

Cars do not pay for roads

Momentum Mag: "What if I told you that by driving a car you become a freeloader, a drain on the economy? That people who bicycle instead are subsidizing a road system that they are largely not welcome on? In order to break even on the cost of roads and pay for every driver who uses them each year, we would need 54% of commuters using a bicycle as their sole means of transportation."

False flag ops losing their punch

Many so-called terrorist attacks are actually false-flag ops -- security forces in a country staging or faking an attack against its own country to create an excuse to attack someone else. This trick has been used throughout history and is well known to military experts.

The west has been using these a lot lately against Muslims in MENA, to provide an excuse to bomb them and steal oil.

Theses ops are not working like they used to. The wide exposure of the lies of the 9-11 attacks have made people skeptical. But more importantly, the Islamic State is now a real, organized opposition fighting for Sunni Muslims.

The IS doesn't bother to get involved in proving which attacks are organized by western security agencies. To them its a waste of time. They know that the west is just hurting themselves and reducing their own very low credibility.

By not taking the bait, they are making these ops moot. And people are reacting by focusing on the real problem -- the real terror -- massacre of civilians by big powers trying to steal oil.

What we’re doing to the Earth has no parallel in 66 million years, scientists say

The Washington Post: "In any case, the result was a hothouse world from pole to pole, some 5 degrees Celsius warmer overall. But now, new research suggests, even the drama of the PETM falls short of our current period, in at least one key respect: We’re putting carbon into the atmosphere at an even faster rate than happened back then."

Sudden climate shift likely

The New York Times: "The basic claim of the paper is that by burning fossil fuels at a prodigious pace and pouring heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, humanity is about to provoke an abrupt climate shift."

US winning hearts and minds with bombs in #ISIS cities -- It's Vietnam all over again

الموصل ... pic.twitter.com/VcByfWTSI0

— موسى العمر (@MousaAlomar) March 20, 2016

Candidate in one of India's largest cities promises free buses

The Hindu: "Promising free bus travel for the residents of Chennai, Pattali Makkal Katchi’s Chief Ministerial candidate and former Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss on Wednesday said the city needed an integrated public transport system for better connectivity."

Why highways are called freeways

Vox: "They also decided to call these roads "free roads," a term that was later replaced by "freeways." Norton argues that this naming shift was essential in persuading the federal government — and the public — to shift away from tolls. "It started with calling the roads drivers pay for 'toll roads,' and calling the ones that taxpayers pay for 'free roads,'" he says. "Of course, there's no such thing as a free road.""

Human transportation in the US is an unfair apartheid system

gizmodo : "There’s plenty of talk about how housing has become dramatically less affordable in the US, but hardly anyone talks about the transportation crisis, which is the direct result of failing to build enough places for people to live. Because cities have become too expensive, the transit-dependent have been forced to move further and further away. These are the Americans without a smartphone in their hands, who don’t have a car at home, who might live below the poverty line. These are the people who are riding those buses for hours a day to get to their jobs or their school. These are people who would kill for a car that could finally give them some stability in their lives."

Another study showing that cars are bad for your health

Times of India: "Adults who commute to work via cycling or walking have lower body fat percentage and body mass index (BMI) measures in mid-life compared to adults who commute via car, the study found.
Even people who commute via public transport showed reductions in BMI and percentage body fat compared with those who commuted only by car. This suggests that even the incidental physical activity involved in public transport journeys may be important.
"

Mexico City turns to #freetransit to fight smog

bt.com : "Mexico City authorities are banning more than one million cars from the roads and offering free public transport as the first air pollution alert in 11 years stretches into a third day."

Demand for meat makes land a net source of green-house gases

the conversation: "We wanted to know how human activities on the land are affecting these sinks and sources. Globally, the land currently absorbs more CO₂ than it produces (we don’t include fossil fuels in this), so it is considered a carbon sink. But we found that this is overwhelmed by production of methane and nitrous oxide, so overall the land is a source of greenhouse gases."

Investment in Public Transit will Deliver Double the Return as it Stimulates Business Sales in Emerging Tech Sector

masstransitmag : If one were to view a community as a business, a new study shows that planned public transportation investments will yield a 2 to 1 return while helping to generate income for local businesses, its workers and neighborhoods. In fact, this investment will yield more than $174 billion in business sales in the three cites examined in a new study commissioned by the American Public Transportation Association called Public Transportation's Role in the Knowledge Economy. The study authors examined the emerging tech sectors in Silicon Beach, CA; Austin, TX; and Durham, NC and looked at public transportation's role in enhancing access to employees and promoting entrepreneurial infrastructure.

The authors noted in this research that communities across America are creating "Innovation Districts" – which are areas that include business incubators, anchor institutions and startups. The study emphasizes that these districts are becoming an important engine of U.S. economic growth. These Innovative Districts require both robust business and transportation infrastructure to be sustained over the long-term.

"Public transportation is the catalyst that attracts knowledge workers who show a preference to be connected with multiple transportation options to high-growth business centers," said APTA Chair Valarie J. McCall. "It allows these Innovation Districts to create dense business infrastructure that preserves key community benefits while mitigating congestion issues and providing businesses greater access to labor.""

Wars over oil have uncorked hundreds of years of anti-colonial anger

Muslim Woman responds to @David_Cameron On English Language Integration & Extremism.

BOOM! Aunty nails it in 30secs pic.twitter.com/nRY3kpMy11

— Majid Freeman (@Majstar7) March 9, 2016

Sharp increase in arctic methane reported

The Independent Barents Observer: "The levels of methane increased sharply from 2013 to 2014, and preliminary results from measurements in 2015 indicate a continued strong increase. The results and measurements show that the concentration in the atmosphere of the main greenhouse gases with high anthropogenic emissions has been increasing over the period of investigation since 2001."

Carbon Dioxide Levels Reach Highest Point in 15 Million Years

Alternet: "Also in January, the Arctic averaged a stunning 13.5 degrees Fahrenheit above average temperatures, which led to a new record low of Arctic sea ice extent for the month.

NASA data shows that the previous 12 months have also been the hottest 12-month period every recorded, using the space agency's 12-month moving average."

US demonizes Muslims to steal oil - evidence

mondoweiss : "A study released in November 2015 by 416 Labs, a Toronto-based consulting firm, reveals that the New York Times portrays Islam/Muslims more negatively than alcohol, cancer, and cocaine among other benchmarked words."

How jaywalking became a crime

The Washington Post: "This wasn’t a matter of chance. Before streets could be physically reconstructed, allowing more room for vehicles, there needed to be social reconstruction. Streets had to become places where cars belonged. Automotive interests and engineers consciously shaped this vision of the city streets; today this image is so rooted that it’s hard to imagine a city otherwise. The history of this process, as well-described by Peter Norton and Clay McShane, suggests, though, that these transformations were less about safety and order than we might guess and more about transforming the way we think about public space."

Americans need a car to work or look for work

A big reason Americans keep a car, even if they have public transit, is they know that they may need to find and job anytime and want to be sure they can get to it, no matter where it is.

In 2007, the asset bubbles burst because people had to choose between the mortgage payment and the gasoline credit card payment. It's a no-brainer, you have to have gasoline to get to work, without work, the mortgage is going to get behind faster.

In 2016, people are weighed down by education loans and car loans. So this crash will be another #autosprawl crash.

Simple solution. Make urban buses fare-free and start the process of breaking the car monopoly.

Supply-side eco activism will fail

There are a lot of people trying to stop pipelines, highways, and sprawl development in general. With few exceptions, these campaigns will fail.

As long as billions of people see the leafy suburb as their goal, the oil, auto, and sprawl juggernaut will continue to ride that wave.

Give people an alternative, car-free cities.

The car century was a mistake. It’s time to move on. by @CarfreeCities

The Washington Post: "Cars were never necessary in cities, and in many respects they worked against the fundamental purpose of cities: to bring many people together in a space where social, cultural and economic synergies could develop. Because cars require so much space for movement and parking, they work against this objective — they cause cities to expand in order to provide the land cars need. Removing cars from cities would help to improve the quality of urban life."-