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| Energy Sustainable Transport |
Photograph by Kike Calvo, National Geographic
The new aerial tramway in Medellin, Colombia, looks more like a ski lift than an urban transportation system—but the project is just one of the many creative energy innovations being advanced by cities around the globe. The tram cars, which traverse hilly, low-income neighborhoods, won a Sustainable Transport Award from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP).
In other cities, drivers are helping to ease gridlock—and the financial burdens of auto ownership—with car-sharing systems. And communities such as Singapore, the capital of the nation with the same name, and Stanford, California, home to Stanford University, are enticing drivers to skip rush hour entirely by giving them a chance to win cash prizes.
While many projects aim to ease traffic on city streets, others are looking below them in hopes of tapping an unusual energy source—the hot water that showers, dishwashers, laundries, and other users send down the drain each year. Some estimates suggest that the energy in America's wastewater could power 30 million U.S. homes per year—and fledgling projects in Vancouver and Chicago aim to capture that resource through heat-recovery systems.
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