“So you think you can garden?” The next TV explosion!
Guerrilla gardeners planting vegetables in in downtown Calgary (from Wikipedia)
- Build a compost bin that is stylish and functioning
- Planting a color coded or themed garden
- Creating a garden for an apartment dweller
- Urban guerrilla gardening
So my question is: will this have an impact on our food independence and will we see more gardens in the ‘burbs? Can’t wait to find out!
Note: check out The Victory Garden for an existing TV show about gardening.
Hybrids: no more free rides in the HOV Lane
Effective immediately, Caltrans has rescinded the 85,000 yellow Clean Air Vehicle Stickers that have been issued to hybrid vehicles throughout the State of California. Hybrids must now meet the vehicle occupancy requirements to drive in all high occupancy vehicles lanes.
As noted on the California DMV website:
Carpool lane use may be restricted at any time by state and federal law for all Clean Air Vehicles carrying fewer occupants than the posted minimum requirement, if their presence is determined by the California Department of Transportation to contribute to increased traffic congestion, increased travel times, decreased sustained travel speeds, or other factors affecting any carpool lane or segment of that lane.
Single occupant vehicles displaying the White Clean Air Stickers will continue to allowed in high occupancy vehicle lanes.
SF Giants Transit Riders Get In Free!
To raise publicity and awareness of the Giants new ticket pricing policy, market pricing, all transit riders will get into all three pre-season games against the Oakland Athletics, April 1-3rd, for free! Details below the link. Read more…
Food scraps – not for the dumps anymore!
Photo by Olivia Bucks/The Oregonian
Portland is testing a food scrap/composting system for residential areas of the city. While we have lagged behind some of our other Cascadia neighbors, we are hoping for a curbside composting system that will rival Seattle! Only 2,000 participants will be involved in the first pilot, but results from a 2007 public survey showed strong support for the program.
Link to article on <Composting in New York>.
How can we make our communities more livable?
Portland, OR is thinking about this question. Their Portland Plan is asking residents what values are important to them and Portland. If you can’t make one of the public meetings, visit their website (Portland Online) and take the survey to tell them how to make Portland more livable and sustainable.
[UPDATE]
The deadline for the survey for Phase 1 is tomorrow, March 31st. But Phase 2 begins soon after!
The link to participate in both <surveys for the Portland Plan>
Thanks Eden for the update!
Light Rail On the Rise in Seattle
Photo from wings777 via Flickr
As dust kicked up by Eastlink clears out, some Seattlites wonder….does light rail even work?
According to a recent Seattle Times article, yes it does. We saw an average of about 16,000 weekday riders in January and in increase over over 8% in just ONE MONTH.
Currently Sound Transit’s light-rail Link runs from Westlake Center through Ranier Valley and to the Sea-Tac Airport. But expansion is coming (slowly but surely…as we see with Eastlink) to subrubs north, east, and south by early 2020’s and extension to the University District by 2016.
[UPDATE]
February Link Light Rail ridership numbers are now in and we hit 16,741, which is the highest month since the revenue service began in July 2009!
Here is a link if you want to keep up with <Day-by-day ridership numbers>.
Thanks to @JN_Seattle for the heads-up!
Green Growth Top Posts – March 28th
Our Green Growth Cascadia most popular posts of the week were:
1. iRoad – the intelligent & green transportation highway of the future
2. Youngsters Love Transit Too! – Colorado college students rally for better transportation
3. You Say You Want a Rail-Volution
Other magnificent posts during the week were (in order):
Sunday Streets San Francisco
Street Closed for Cars, Open for People! Photo: Bill Ward
This past Sunday was the first of nine Sunday Streets in the City of San Francisco. The northbound lanes of the Embarcadero were opened for people, rather than cars, from 10am to 3pm. Thousands of folks turned out to walk, bike and just hang along the over 2 miles of road from Fisherman’s Warf down to Mission Bay. Mother Nature felt obliged to cooperate as well with clear skies and highs in the mid to upper 60s it was a great for Sunday for everyone in the Bay Area. Read more…
Youngsters Love Transit Too! – Colorado college students rally for better transportation
Photo: 9news.com
A message to all those non-believers of Generation Y: Look, We’re not THAT bad.
Even with all our new-fangeled technology, hip music, fast-food obsessions, and what some would call “edgy behavior,” we are still trying to save this planet!
A group of students out of the University of Colorado Boulder chapter of CoPIRG (Colorado Student Public Interest Research Group) are giving up their Spring Breaks to fight for better transportation choices. Would you trade your Mai Tai’s on a beach for picket signs on hot asphalt? I know I wouldn’t.
But that’s exactly what these students are doing to rally for more RTD access points and more funding for the Colorado FasTracks rail/BRT initiative. Read more…
Green Growth Cascadia’s press release Transportation Engineers Venture Into Social Media was a part of the Transportation Communications Newsletter‘s March 17th issue by traffic reporter Bernie Wagenblast.
Yay for being noticed on the interwebs!
Green Growth Cascadia 