FLEET-FOOT Fridays: New Subway Lines See Light at Tunnel's End

New lines and more walkable areas are the theme of new mass transit lines going up around the world. Boston's transit agency is building the Assembly Square station on the Orange Line, serving a blighted part of East Somerville (which would have been less-blighted if small, but vocal opposition hadn't driven a proposed IKEA away and out to the car-dependent suburbs).

New York is continuing to build a subway under Manhattan's Second Avenue, but train trips are five years away.

In Toronto, new stations are being built on the Toronto-York Spadina line, extending the line from Downsview to Vaughn Corporate Park. Still no direct service to Toronto's International Airport--not a real priority unless you're worried about the carbon footprint of the airport and its impact on global-warming.

Oh, and if you happen to be heading to Xi'an, China, perhaps to see the Terracotta Warriors, the city just opened its first subway line.

WHEELS Wednesdays: New York's Gettin'em; Canada's Gettin' Rid Of'em

Guess which city is welcoming bike lanes? And guess which one is set to remove them? If you guessed some European or Canadian city for the first one, and a U.S. one for the second question....well, you'd be wrong.

New York City, according to DNAinfo.com (the Ameritrade founder's nifty news operation) is adding bike lane's to busy First and Second Avenues in Manhattan--the capital of traffic congestion (and Calgary; San Mateo, Calif., and Salem, Ore. are also adding lanes). Toronto, of all places--progressive, flat, Canadian--may be removing lanes on busy Jarvis Street, InsideToronto.com reported.

One theme of recent transit spending--better late than never--is funding links from central business districts to airports, which are a huge source-point of carbon emissions from all those taxis, buses and cars feeding airplane passengers to the terminals--as well as taking them away to the ground destinations.

So, it's not surprising that the feds are handing out $1.58 billion to 27 transit projects, including a light-rail link from downtown Denver, CO to its airport--reducing the carbon footprint of that massive facility, the Environment News Service reports. Other projects including a New York rail connection from Long Island commuter lines to Grand Central station (the lines now go to Penn Station), further work on connecting DC to its Dulles International Airport, and a Minneapolis-St. Paul light-rail connection, which would (by implication) connect Minnesota's capital city to the Twin City's airport (MSP) via an existing link that runs from downtown Minneapolis to MSP.

By the way, rail links to LAX's (busiest airport on the west coast of North America) terminals are not even in the planning stage.