4 . Have you ever considered how important transportation is to the world?     1     We would have to get or make our own food, our own clothes, even our books, and newspapers. Everything that we have come to depend on is brought to us. Even the water that we drink is transported through pipelines from wells to our homes and offices. We have come to depend on the availability of three principal kinds of transportation: land, sea and air.

Automobiles, railroads, trucks and pipelines are the principal means of land transportation.     2     Without our principal means of air transportation, the airplane, we would have to slow down our lives and commerce.

Nearly every major city in the world provides some form of public transportation.     3     The most common form is the bus. Buses have been in use in major cities since approximately 1900. They provide transportation service on countless routes from the city center to the suburbs.

Subways are mostly found in large cities. The subway is an underground system of high speed trains, which move more quickly and efficiently than buses. And they will deliver you to within walking distance of almost any place in the city.     4    

Cabs are more expensive than buses or subways, but they will deliver you to the exact location you want in the shortest time possible.     5     And as an added attraction, many cab drivers will tell you stories about their adventures or even the details of their life stories.

If you ever visit a major city in another country, you will probably have no trouble getting around. However, no matter what form of transportation you adopt, you may come to the conclusion that the most inexpensive and reliable form of transportation will be your own two legs.

6 . Train travel can be a very fun experience. You can take in the beautiful scenery and have a relaxed travel experience without the trouble of air travel. Besides, trains are an environmentally friendly choice. Now, train travelers have an additional justification to go by rail. Deutsche Bahn, the national railway company, just cut the price of long-distance travel by 10 percent—a move which has drawn comparisons to the United Kingdom, where millions of people are now trying hard to deal with a 2.7% price increase.

This move, according to the company, came from the climate law passed by the government including a cut in the VAT—value added tax (增值税) -on train travel from 19 percent to 7 percent.

The new prices apply to trips over 50 kilometers, only if the passenger travels from one railway region into another one. Prices are also cut on special offers and additional services, such as fees for traveling with your bicycle.

Deutsche Bahn said, “We do not make any money from the tax cut, and are passing on all savings directly to ticket buyers.” According to Deutsche Bahn, this change is expected to bring in another 5 million passengers a year who’ll change to train traveling for the lower prices.

What actually causes it? Climate protection action. Decreasing the release of carbon from transportation is a key part of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and Germany is trying to meet its requirements to keep global wanning below 2℃.

In an effort to follow the new rules, Deutsche Bahn has planned on buying new trains by 2026 at a cost of $13.46 billion. Germany has already been greening its transportation. Hydrogen (氢) trains were introduced in Germany in 2018. The country is also testing power lines for eTrucks on the motorway.

7 . In Spain, children and their families are riding bikes to school together in large groups. The program is called “bicibús” or bike bus. In Barcelona, the program started recently with only five children and grew quickly to hundreds of riders.

The Eixample bike bus begins around 8:25 every Friday morning. The path it will follow is always posted ahead of time, so everyone knows where to join. The bicibús starts off with just a few students and parents, with more and more joining as it travels along.

Most kids ride their bikes, but others ride motor bikes or use skates. Instead of riding in bike lanes (车道) or on sidewalks, the bicibús takes over the entire street. With music playing and bike bells ringing, the bicibús feels like a party.

Being able to ride with a crowd of kids is a big part of the fun. Nine-year-old Maria Pitarch says, “The best part of the bicibús is that we ride along and pick up my friends and we ride together. ”

The Eixample bicibús goes to several schools. When students reach their school, they leave the bus and park their bikes. Some parents have made the bicibús the way they get to work on Friday.

It was possible to bike to school in Eixample before, but it wasn’t really safe for kids. There are a few bike lanes, but there are also lots of cars.

Because one of the main roads used by the Eixample bicibús is busy, having about 20,000 cars and motorcycles every day, the local police are helping stop traffic by riding in front of the bicibús and behind it.

Parents are hoping that the bicibús will help change ideas about how people can get around in the city. They want the city to create wider, kid-friendly bike lanes that are separate from car traffic. They point out that the bicibús also helps cut down on pollution.

Already some other areas in Barcelona are also organizing bike buses. Some bike buses have even been organized in other countries.

8 . The state of Michigan, which is home to the first paved road in the country, may also become home to the first wireless electric vehicle (EV) charging road in the country. Governor Gretchen Whitmer recently announced the new project of developing the country's first wireless charging infrastructure on a public road.

An electrified road would save electric vehicle owners and public transportation agencies the need to stop vehicles to charge them constantly, and would support transportation in parts of the country with few to no electric vehicle charging stations.

According to government news outlet Route-Fifty, electrified charging roads use three types of technology. The first is an inductive power transfer (感应电力传输) from the road, which then sends power between a set of coils (线圈) in the roadway and a set of coils in the car. A second consideration is charging through a power transfer from the road to the car through a rail. Another option is overhead conductive (传导性的) charging that transfers power for charging through a connection to overhead lines which is often used for buses and trains.

“The needs for the vehicles will depend on the solution provided；however, the goal is to have the roadway used by all electric vehicle types,” a spokesperson from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation said. “If it's a success, the state of Michigan will review other locations to determine where they best fit the need.”

Michigan officials hope the charging road will provide an improvement to public transportation by charging electric buses and increased access to transportation in or near rural communities, and even potentially help to develop tourism in the area.

“The field of transportation is in the process of a transformation not experienced since the invention of the automobile,” Nadia Gkritza, a professor of Purdue University, said. "Through this project, we foresee opportunities to reduce emissions and near-road exposures to pollutants, coupled with other transportation innovations in shared mobility and automation that will shape data-driven policies encouraging advances."