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The Planetizen News Brief - 2/5/09

5 February 2009 - 5:00am
Smart City Radio

The Planetizen News Brief is a weekly rundown of some of the most interesting and important news and issues of the past week.

The Planetizen News Brief airs every week on the nationally-syndicated radio program "Smart City", which is broadcast in cities across the U.S. Learn more about Smart City and listen to archived shows.

Full Transcript

It’s a move that seems obvious to transit people all over the world: if you’re going to build a rail system in a city with an airport, you should probably connect the rail to the airport. But some cities – for a variety of reasons – haven’t done that. Los Angeles, for example, has a regional light rail system that comes only as close as about a mile from the city’s international airport. In November, Honolulu voters approved the construction of a $4 billion regionwide light rail system. At the time, a route had been selected and Honolulu was on its way to becoming another city with no link between air and rail. But, according to an article in the Honolulu Star Bulletin -- and to cheers of transit advocates -- a recent vote by the city council has effectively rerouted the rail system away from its original route and into direct connection with the city’s airport.

In other good news for transit buffs, it appears plans are being expedited in Toronto to build a new subway line downtown. The National Post is reporting that the so-called downtown relief subway has been bumped up in the planning schedule from its original 25-year blueprint to the more aggressive 15-year timeline. It’s a project that augments an existing subway line with a $2.1 billion diversion that runs more directly through an underserved and heavily used downtown core area. Officials are predicting more than 18,000 users per hour on the new line, which many say is exactly why it needs to be fast-tracked. Though the idea is politically popular, up to this point the city council has only agreed to study the possibility of moving up the timeline.

Meanwhile, in the tropics, where rainforest clearcutting and environmental devastation seem to dominate the news, sensitive jungle land is unexpectedly rehabilitating itself. A recent article from the New York Times looks at how farmland in Central and South America is reverting back to jungles as villagers leave their homes for more lucrative futures in the city. It’s a trend being seen throughout the tropics in Latin America and Asia, and while it’s been seen as a positive development for the world’s threatened rainforests, it’s led many to start thinking that maybe protecting these areas doesn’t need to be such a high priority. After all, contrarians argue, if these new forests can sprout up relatively quickly, it might not be so big of a deal to lose some of those older forests. The debate on that issue rages, however. And though the new jungle is welcome, scientists aren’t quite ready to call it the saviour of the endangered rainforest.

Stories discussed in this week's Planetizen News Brief

Hawaii Light Rail to Connect With Airport

Toronto Considers Fast-Tracking Downtown Subway

Abandoned Farmland Becoming Rainforest

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