The offer applies to anyone aged 18-30 who is an EU citizen and a resident in Spain. It includes discounts of up to 90 percent on state-run buses and short-to-medium distance trains.
https://www.thelocal.es/20230510/spain-to-pay-national-bus-and-train-tickets-for-young-people-this-summer?tpcc=newsletter_subscriber&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=how_to_get_a_100_mortgage_in_spain_and_more_travel_discounts_for_young_people&utm_term=2023-05-10
Category Archives: transportation
Waymap: Mapping the way for the blind
“Mobility is not a luxury,” said Waymap founder and CEO Tom Pey, who is blind and argues other apps are not precise enough. “It is, in fact, a human right.”
Blind travelers often use a small number of routes from home because they are relying on memory to get around and they lack confidence, Pey said.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/app-to-help-blind-people-navigate-public-transit-to-debut-in-washington?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social_video&utm_term=1_1&utm_content=28222_AI_glasses_deaf_people&utm_campaign=social_video_2022
This Tiny Town Created by ChatGPT Is Better Than Reality TV
A team of AI researchers at Google and Stanford University posted a study online on April 7 where they used OpenAI’s chatbot to create 25 “generative agents,” or unique personas with identities and goals, and placed them into a sandbox environment resembling a town called Smallville much like The Sims. The authors of the study (which hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet) observed the agents as they went about their days, going to work, talking with one another, and even planning activities.
The bots and their virtual environment were rendered in delightful 16-bit sprites, giving it the look and feel of a video game. The results were a pretty idyllic village that seemed ripped out of Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing—if, you know, those games were also rife with incredibly complex and uncomfortable ethical and existential questions.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/google-and-stanford-researchers-used-chatgpt-to-invent-a-small-virtual-town#:~:text=A%20team%20of%20AI%20researchers,Smallville%20much%20like%20The%20Sims.
‘The Era of Urban Supremacy Is Over’
From July 1, 2020, to July 1, 2021, “New census data shows a huge spike in movement out of big metro areas during the pandemic,” Frey wrote in an April 2022 paper, including “an absolute decline in the aggregate size of the nation’s 56 major metropolitan areas (those with populations exceeding 1 million).”
This is the first time, Frey continued, “that the nation’s major metro areas registered an annual negative growth rate since at least 1990.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/opinion/post-pandemic-cities-suburbs-future.html?utm_source=Blueprint&utm_campaign=3a02128ede-Newsletter_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b0b9cbf437-3a02128ede-231014502
VW Gets Ready to Reveal a People’s Car for the Electric Age
Volkswagen is about to do what Tesla didn’t during its recent investor day: show off an affordable electric vehicle for the masses.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-15/vw-gets-ready-to-reveal-a-people-s-car-for-the-electric-age
Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars
For Adah Crandall, a high-school student in Portland, Oregon, a daily annoyance is family members asking when she is going to learn to drive. Ms Crandall, who is 16, has spent a quarter of her life arguing against the car-centric planning of her city. At 12 she attended a school next to a major road down which thousands of lorries thundered every day. When a teacher invited a speaker to talk about air pollution, she and her classmates were galvanised. Within a year, she was travelling to Salem, Oregon’s capital, to demand lawmakers pass stricter laws on diesel engines.
https://www.economist.com/international/2023/02/16/throughout-the-rich-world-the-young-are-falling-out-of-love-with-cars
In praise of the ‘15-minute city’ – the mundane planning theory terrifying conspiracists
Never before has a mundane theory of urbanism been such a lightning rod for outrage. It’s like suggesting that public parks are part of a sinister plant-worshipping plot to demolish our homes and replace them with grass. Or that public transport is the work of a satanic bus cult. Some online forums have claimed that the 15-minute city represents the first step towards an inevitable Hunger Games society, in which residents will not be allowed to leave their prescribed areas. They see it not as a route to a low-traffic, low-carbon future, but as the beginning of a slippery slope to living in an open-air prison.
https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/16/15-minute-city-planning-theory-conspiracists
The bus, the bike, and the elevator are the future of transportation
There’s a lesson in that. Getting people around in new, different ways—as happened in Amsterdam between 1970 and 2000, between Beijing and Shanghai in the past decade, and in Dar es Salaam right now—relies mostly on technologies that we have had for a while. Why should we want to change the status quo? Most urgently, because transportation from motor vehicles is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. We spend, onaverage, nearly two full days a year in rush-hour traffic (about five days in Los Angeles). We pay dearly for the privilege, spending $740 a month per car according to AAA. Last year, 36,560 Americans died in car crashes, not including 6,283 pedestrians killed by cars. Countless more are sickened by exhaust. Nearly half of American kids walked or biked to school in 1950; today that figure is 13 percent.
https://slate.com/technology/2019/10/future-of-transportation-bus-bike-elevator.html
This Is How Tourism Must Shift to Actually Address Climate Change
An estimated 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions are due to tourism, and that’s predicted to double by 2050, the year scientists have forecast as the tipping point for all sorts of ecological disasters. By then, our planet will have warmed 1.5C (2.7F) above preindustrial times. By the end of the century, the figure looks to be 2C (3.6F), with that half-degree making a huge difference. If emissions are left unchecked, this warming will accelerate, bringing forth a distinctly heightened level of cataclysmic weather patterns.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-14/how-tourism-can-hit-net-zero-by-2050-an-unrealistic-but-not-impossible-solution
Blindspots/Known Unknowns – Electric vehicles catch aflame during Ian aftermath
Saltwater flooding in the state’s coastal areas caused the lithium ion batteries in electric vehicles to combust, catching fire. Firefighters near Naples had to put out six blazes related to the vehicles in the days following Ian’s landfall.
Eric Wachsman, director of Maryland’s Energy Institute, stated that the qualities of lithium ion battery cells that allow them to move a passenger vehicle also make these cells vulnerable to ignition, due to the cells having closely placed electrodes that are filled with a flammable liquid electrolyte.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/hurricane/electric-vehicles-catch-aflame-during-ian-aftermath/1267694?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=accuweather&s=09
Analyzing Trends with Tim Stock 