I’m a big fan of urban mass transportation. I’ve always enjoyed bus and light rail in the U.S. and I am currently car less and thus walk a lot or share rides in Asheville (I’m in the process of finding a bike). I stumbled onto this Wired article discussing pod cars, a somewhat unwieldy and unproven mass transportation choice that a few cities are attempting to develop. It also made me check back in with vision42 an ongoing proposal to redevelop 42nd st. in Manhattan to have light rail and be car free. I think it’d be a great idea, their is limited east to west mobility options and the costs are much lower than a comparable subway line. I also like the fact that it would have bike lanes on it. The one worry with such a plan is slow speed. The current inner-city light rail examples in Portland, OR and Seville, Spain are barely better than walking, Portland’s goes on avg. 7 mph in the city and Seville goes 4-5 mph in parts. I wrote a final paper for an urban economics class back at NYU on the Portland light rail and a proposed expansion and weighing its costs vs economic and public benefits. And while it runs quite slow economically and in terms of providing a reliable transportation option it was effective. Light rail shows a 30-60% boost in ridership over identical bus service. Back to vision42, they have a petition you should sign if you support the idea and their main website vision42 has alot more information and research they’ve done.