The Hub 8/4/17: Clean Air Council’s Weekly Round-up of Transportation News

“The Hub” is a weekly round-up of transportation related news in the Philadelphia area and beyond. Check back weekly to keep up to date on the issues Clean Air Council’s transportation staff finds important.

The Telegraph: Bike-sharing helps ease traffic jams in China –  Among the top 20 cities hosting a dockless bikeshare system, 19 have had improved traffic conditions.

Mobility Lab: How far is too far to bike to work? –  Thinking of biking to work? Use this crowdsourced chart to see what distance is good for you.

City Lab: Why residents of ‘black ZIP codes’ can’t breathe –  A new working paper, published in the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that asthma is much more prevalent among black and Puerto Rican children and that it’s the characteristics of places, not people, that are largely responsible for that disparity. A very large share of the communities they studied live close to busy highways.

Slate.com: The absurdity of Honolulu’s new law banning pedestrians from looking at their cellphones –  Honolulu’s pedestrian-fatality rates are one of the highest in the U.S. We should be more worried about cell phones in the hands of drivers.

Philly Voice: On heels of lawsuit, petition calls for legalizing median parking on South Broad Street – While not enforced, parking on the median of South Broad Street has been illegal since the early 1900s. Median parking obstructs buffer zones, crosswalks and turning lanes, putting pedestrians, cyclists and drivers at risk.

Image Source: The Guardian