transportation

Airplane Cabins Could Be 100X Quieter With These Rubber Mufflers

The dull throbbing hum that accompanies you on your jet-setting adventures might be quieted in the near future. Scientists from MIT and North Carolina State University collaborated on a thin rubber membrane that can be installed throughout the body of a plane like acoustical tiles, essentially sound-proofing the interior. To keep the plane’s weight low,…

An 1899 Plan to Build A Bike Highway in Los Angeles (And Why It Failed)

Over a century ago, the California Cycleway promised an elevated, dedicated bike path from Los Angeles to the nearby city of Pasadena. In this excerpt from the new book LAtitudes: An Angeleno’s Atlas, author Dan Koeppel tracks its path through Southern California—and discovers why it was never finished. Horace M. Dobbins plunged the shovel into…

How NYT Magazine Made a 150-Foot Pedestrian for Its Walking Issue

It’s like Christmas morning for pedestrian advocates! This week’s New York Times Magazine is all about walking, from the very act of perambulation to all the ways that the city—any city really—is best appreciated on foot. And the cover is a street-scale work of art. This is not Photoshop! The art was shot practically, from…

Japan’s maglev train has once again broken the world speed record. The seven-car train reached a top speed of 375 mph (603 km/h) Tuesday, breaking its own record that was set just days earlier. The “magnetic train” hovers above the tracks and is propelled by electrically charged magnets. The challenge now will be in building…

People Riding Bikes Minus the Bikes Is the Best Use of Photoshop Ever

Imagine a world without bikes. No really, imagine it. It’s pretty funny. Yes, there is a Subreddit devoted to the art of Photoshopping away the Schwinns from under would-be riders. Some people just look like they’re leaping awkwardly into the air, others look like they’re possessed by demons. Recumbent bikes, not surprisingly, yield the most…

Boeing’s New 737 MAX Is About to Make Flying a Little Less Horrible

Two incremental but important changes—wider seats and redesigned bins—have been announced for Boeing’s new 737 MAX, which will take to the skies in 2017. This isn’t just about passenger comfort, either. The changes are also intended to make flying a lot more affordable. At the heart of the 737 MAX project is a promise to…

That Time the Postal Service Actually Used Gyrocopters To Deliver Mail

When a Florida mailman landed a gyrocopter with a USPS logo on the lawn of the Capitol today, I’m sure you were asking yourself the same question I was: Does the postal service really deliver mail via gyrocopter? Not today. But it turns out they did, back in the 1930s. Before it was part of…

The World’s Best Pedestrian Bridge and 7 More Stunning Urban Structures

From a bridge that makes walking an adventure to a cost-effective way to revitalize an aging port, Architizer’s A+ Awards announced yesterday include smart and simple architecture for everyday life. Here are a few public structures that make grand statements about our changing cities or solve a universal problem in a beautiful way. The annual…

LA’s New Parking Signs Are Brilliant and Every City Should Copy Them

In the quest to make parking suck less, there are apps that help you find a space, and meters where you can pay with a swipe of your credit card. But LA has launched a simple, low-tech solution to make parking better: Well-designed signage that offers no ambiguity whatsoever when it comes to where you…

Can You Guess a City By Its Transit Stops Alone?

Do you consider yourself a transit nerd? The Center for Neighborhood Technology has a doozy of a challenge for you: A quiz that asks you to name a US city based on a map of its public transportation system. The rub: It only shows you the stops. You can’t see the routes. The online quizis…

Was This the Plexiglass Car of the Future in 1952?

If you’re a fan of olde-timey futuristic cars you may have seen the photo above pulsating through your streams this weekend. Is it really what people of 1952 thought cars of the future would look like? Not exactly. But it’s still really cool! This plexiglass Plymouth from the 1952 Chicago Auto Show was actually just…

Flying SUX! The Weirdest Stories Behind Our Airport Codes

You see them everywhere: On highway signs, plane tickets, and even humblebraggy Twitter updates. Some are obvious and some make no sense. But what do these three-letter airport codes really mean? The sleek new site Airport Codes lets you bounce from airport to airport exploring the codes and their origins. Here are some of the…

Would You Take the Bus If It Earned You Free Credits For Tolls?

There’s a running joke in many American cities: The only way to make public transportation truly work would be to pay people to ride it. In Atlanta, that’s kind of what a new pilot program is doing. For certain transit trips, passengers can now earn $2—but they can only use the money to pay tolls…

Museum Giving Away Back to the Future Car (If Cubs Win World Series)

We’re still waiting on many of the futuristic technologies from Back to the Future: Part II. We don’t have Marty’s hoverboard, Doc’s electronic technology that puts you to sleep, or the government’s total weather control. But you might have a chance to win Doc Brown’s DeLorean — provided the Cubs win the World Series. In…

This Cartoon Perfectly Sums Up the Optimism of 1950s Futurism

The December 28, 1959 issue of Life magazine featured this illustration of life in 1975. It’s over the top and cartoonish, of course, but it perfectly sums up all of the techno-optimism that was so prevalent in the late 1950s — the Golden Age of Futurism. The article that accompanied the illustration spelled out the…

These Massive Machines Move Spacecraft Around Kennedy Space Center

These massive crawlers are still transporting spacecraft 50 years after first debuting at Kennedy Space Center.

Welcome to the Rural Town That Wants to Build a Hyperloop Utopia

What do cities look like in the world of Hyperloop transit? Will supersonic travel turn our cities into vast, intermodal suburbs? And what about the edge towns that once bled into the country, fed by car travel—will they empty out and decay, eliminated by a new form of transportation that bypasses them? Oddly enough, the…

Why Are These Massive Cargo Ships Trapped at 29 U.S. Ports?

You’ve probably read about it, even if it didn’t really register. Something about a backlog. Something about unions. Imports and exports. Now the dispute that’s paralyzing 29 ports on the U.S. West Coast has the potential to affect all of us—and to empty the shelves in countless stores. What seems to be the problem? West…

In 1976 Arthur C. Clarke Predicted the Dark Side of Smartphones

Arthur C. Clarke made it his business to look into the future. And just like the dozens of prognosticators who would come before and after him, he got a few things right and a few things wrong. AT&T has just uploaded a video from a conference at MIT wherein Clarke describes the future from the…

A Map Of The Different Ways People Get To Work All Over America

How did you get to work this morning? Did you hop into your car? Venture down into your city’s metro? Flag down a co-worker for a rideshare? Or did you simply open up your laptop and get to work? Nathan Yau over at FlowingData put together this interactive map using data from the Census Bureau’s…