That prized garage space or curbside spot you’ve been yearning for may be costing you—and the city—in ways you never realized. A journey into the world of parking, where meter maids are under siege, everybody’s on the take, and the tickets keep on coming

[Source: Los Angeles magazine]

I haven’t lived in an American city yet which has parking problems but I have heard that availability of a parking spot is often the deciding factor in where you live in the city. But even with an assured spot, you can still not be worry-free.

Will you? The city of Murcia, Spain recently opened a new streetcar system, and is offering lifetime passes to the trolley for anyone who gives up their car for good [via Planetizen]. Some more details here.

A simple yet vastly improved design for traffic lights. [via Yanko Design]

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

Having lived in Atlanta for over 5 years and having driven on this road shown in the video, I can attest to the fact that accidents are waiting to happen every day. It is a wonder that more people are not killed every day. Unless design changes are implemented to slow drivers down and to give pedestrians a little more importance, we may seen many more deaths on this highway than on any other road in America

Today, I want to announce a sea change. People across America who value bicycling should have a voice when it comes to transportation planning. This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.

We are integrating the needs of bicyclists in federally-funded road projects. We are discouraging transportation investments that negatively affect cyclists and pedestrians. And we are encouraging investments that go beyond the minimum requirements and provide facilities for bicyclists and pedestrians of all ages and abilities.

The U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Ray Lahood announced a major shift in policy and attitude toward making urban transit bike-friendly.

Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community.

An innovative experiment is current in progress in Vauban, Germany where residents of an upscale community, no less, are learning to live without cars in a suburb.

Ants never overtake. Not ever. Instead they form into platoons in which all the ants move at the same speed. Increase the density of ant traffic and the platoons simply join together to form larger groups. This is how the velocity remains the same while the density increases.

Alexander John and colleagues at the University of Cologne in Germany have discovered lessons from ant traffic that can be incorporated in traffic planning. This is just one of the applications gleaned from biomimicry.

As of the 2000 census, the Los Angeles region’s urbanized area had the highest population density in the nation. Yes, that was the word “highest,” not a smudge on your monitor. At 7,068 people per square mile, Los Angeles is considerably denser than New York-Newark

Eric Morris is busy smashing myths about Los Angeles urbanscape over at the Freakonomics blog.

LaHood is a conservative Illinois Republican with little transportation expertise and almost no administrative experience, who has earned a LCV lifetime voting score on critical environmental issues of 27 percent, and who maintains deep financial connections to the very industries he’s now supposed to regulate.

Everything is not perfect, right? Alex Steffen at WorldChanging comments on the disappointing choice of Transportation Secretary after other notable selections. As Alex writes, transportation is not a department you want to skimp out on especially in wake of crumbling infrastructure and Obama’s promise of rebuilding America.

If you want to book a hotel or make a restaurant reservation you can switch on the Transit Layer and look for the public transport line nearest to the location. If you want to travel from A to B you can quickly familiarize yourself with the public transport network and find out which lines to use and where to change.

Google Maps has added a public transit layer for more than 50 cities around the world to help citizens and tourists obtain information on getting around quicker. I see more European cities than U.S ones. It doesn’t take a genius to tell you what that means.