Micromobility from Brookhaven to Toronto
Near and far, the conversation about mobility is changing.
Take, for instance, an interview the Atlanta Business Chronicle published yesterday with new Brookhaven Mayor John Park. Among the questions and answers:
How do you tie these areas of the city together, including the office properties along the Perimeter?
We have heavy transit. That plays a role. But the biggest thing we are focused on now is multimodal. It’s only two or three miles from each of these pockets of the city. Rather than sitting in traffic or catching an Uber, what if you could just zip down [a multimodal trail] on your bike? Conceivably, a family could be at their kid’s baseball game at Murphey Candler Park, hop on their bikes and go all the way to Buford Highway or Peachtree Street Greenway. Its next phase will connect to the BeltLine. Ponce City Market is only five or so miles away. That’s not a hard ride on an electric bike.
Park added that officials are looking to extend the DeKalb city’s trail network outside I-285. “You could even get to a Braves game,” he told ABC Editor Doug Sams. “All of this is going to happen eventually. It’s already been partially funded. And it’s a focus of my administration.”
That’s the “near” part. Further afield, the Toronto Star reports that the transportation staff for Canada’s largest city are pushing a “micromobility strategy” that continues a ban on e-scooters but encourages the use of “low-speed minicars” on designated roadways.
Under a proposed “micromobility strategy” debated at city hall Thursday, city staff want to add a new, somewhat bigger option. “Low-speed vehicles” — four-wheeled cars or trucks carrying two to four passengers at speeds up to 40 kmh — would be allowed on streets with speed limits of up to 50 kmh.
The strategy itself makes for interesting reading (assuming you’re as much of a mobility nerd as we are). Among the goals are to:
increase the mode share of active transportation, public transit and zero emission vehicles to achieve the City's Net Zero Strategy environmental targets and to support the transition to zero emission vehicles.
The larger point, however, is that Atlanta’s not alone in grappling with the challenges of micromobility, active transportation, “light individual transit” and the like. And we’re also not alone in seeing the opportunities.
