Read our lead editorial from today musing on how the Phillies' win - and potential loss - on Tuesday might have influenced SEPTA's strike timing.

"We agreed not to strike during the World Series. We took people to the game because we are professionals. Now it's time to reward us."

And for everybody scrambling to get somewhere, some things to remember...

A TRANSIT STRIKE anywhere can be devastating. But in a city known for its kind, compassionate, and helpful people . . .

Oh, wait. Wrong city. We're the ones who boo Santa.

 Read the rest here.

UPDATE 11/05: Is it time for binding arbitration?

It's completely a coincidence in terms of timing, but today's news of a surprise, late-night SEPTA strike was accompanied in our pages by word that Philadelphia may soon be getting a serious fleet of Pedicabs, which are already a fixture in Boston, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. If you were one of the many people trying to shoehorn yourself onto a Regional Rail train today - or if you weren't even that lucky - you may have wished you could jump on the back of one of these oversized trikes and be whisked away.

OK, maybe only 1.3% of you were thinking along those lines. But there are other reasons to take a good look at the phenomenon also known as "cycle rickshaws" besides save-the-planet rationales.

Among others, two brothers tell of being forced into exile by L&I...

The lack of pedicab regulation in the city had been a problem for local companies and for operators in other cities that wanted to set up shop here.

Ben and Tom Dambman co-own Chariots of Philly, a pedicab company that operated in Manayunk from 2003 until 2005.

When the brothers tried to expand into other parts of Philadelphia, the Department of Licenses and Inspections ordered them to cease operations until pedicab regulation was in place.

For the last three summers, they operated their business in Avalon, N.J.

"We want to work exclusively in Philadelphia - this is our home, and this is where we want to live and work," said Tom Dambman.

Seems like a good idea to let them work at home. But could pedicabs make a difference in city traffic? Ecologically we'd like to say yes. But how would traffic change if we started to see more than one or two pedicabs?

Despite their common eco-friendly underpinnings, pedicabs would seem unlikely to challenge the habits of public-transportation riders, what with their relatively high price. The most obvious industry that might logically fear the rise of pedicabs is that of carriage horses. The colorful, sometimes inaccurate Colonial tour guides compete as "novelty" transportation, have certain liabilities that pedicabs don't, and offer against that a sense of history - an Old City tradition dating back a full 33 years.

But for now, anyway, the costumes and clackety-clop are the draw right around Independence Hall, and if New York is any model, pedicabs won't suddenly knock that out. Outside of Manayunk, one could imagine pedicabs competing with taxicabs in and around that whole Penn's Landing / Society Hill / Independence Mall area, or perhaps University City, where quickly and safely navigating among often unpredictable crowds on both walkways and streets is called for - but then again, cities sometimes ban pedicabs in their most congested areas. A case could also be made for pedicabs concentrating in the parkway / Art Museum area. Hey, if it's good enough for the Segways...

At any rate, the regulation, once in practice, will tell the tale. How will licensed, city-certified pedicabs be identified? Will pedicabs be restricted to bike lanes on roads that have them? What non-car areas would they be permitted to serve? What kind of safety and/or maintenance rules will be in place to prevent the occasional fatal accident?

Council should look at these questions carefully, but now is the time to start looking and answering questions. Let's hope sometime soon the kinks get worked out and Philadelphia pedicabs can pedal us toward "Greenest City in America."

Daily News film critic Gary Thompson reviews a pair of 'green'-oriented documentaries today, and both get a B- in his book.

'No Impact Man,' featuring a guy who tries to go a year without leaving a carbon footprint, misses largely because the main character is too much of a wuss, according to Gary.

On the other hand, 'Fuel' is in many ways too aggressive, pushing foreign-oil conspiracies that take up too much time and attention. Gary calls it "about as plodding and stale as it can be for nearly an hour. Until it suddenly and miraculously becomes informative, leading to a lively second half."

That's when the movie starts looking into alternative fuel, specifically algae-based biofuel and its potential as a sustainable solution, helping to power a "Veggie Van," a plug-in hybrid that's touring the country.

If you want to get a close-up look at the "Algaeus," (the fancy name for the veggie van) head out to the U.Penn campus (specifically, 40th and Locust) at 5:00 today, where the van, along with "Fuel" director Josh Tickell and producer Rebecca Harrell, will be making an appearance as part of its road trip. They'll be showing clips from the movie as well as answering your questions.

Whatever the prospects for algae-based biofuel, it's still a ways away as a commodity, so Gary gives a nod to 'No Impact Man' by remarking that until we can solve our problems with cool alternative fuels, "maybe watching less crappy television and spending more times with your kids isn't such a bad idea."

Michael Nutter suits up to ride part of the way to work using the new bike lanes.

The ever-irascible Stu Bykofsky weighs in today in the Daily News on the new river-to-river bike lanes that have been implemented on Spruce and Pine Streets. You can pretty much infer Stu's position on the matter by the headline, "Bicyclists given too much roadway?"

At first his beef seems to be with the "prime rolling real estate" being reassigned, as he agrees that "the streets are too narrow to give bicyclists an entire lane." Later, though, it seems this is more about a clash of cultures. "I like bicycles. It's bicyclists I hate," Stu says, quickly tempering the last word before listing "bad bicyclist" complaints like ignoring stop signs, running red lights and driving the wrong way down one-way streets.

At first the two concepts - a promising new 'green' initiative by the city and occasional bad behavior by a few cyclists - don't seem to have much to with each other. But the clear link is: Why should bikers be rewarded when they refuse to obey the rules of the road?

Maybe I'm overstating Stu's objection, but it's one I've heard a lot, in one version or another, especially since these bike lanes were announced.

Here's the thing, though. Car drivers (and I should say, I drive a lot more than I bike - hell, I probably bike more on one day a year than the whole rest of the year put together) often complain about how bicyclists disobey "rules of the road" ranging from actual law to common courtesies. But unless they're involved in a specific incident, I never hear these same charges leveled at car drivers in general.

Come on, though - rolling through stop signs? Running red lights? Failing to signal turns and lane changes? From my experience this kind of behavior is very common among car drivers in and around Philly. And I live on a one-way street, where I see as many cars as bikes going "up" instead of "down," if nor more.

But let's go back to the supposed main point here: Cars are being cheated out of an entire lane of Spruce and Pine! That will kill traffic flow!

This makes me laugh, because I wrote and recorded a song in the '90s called "Sittin' in a Lane of Traffic," about people - especially around here - who think driving lanes are for them to park their car in for however long they like. In the song I actually singled out Spruce and Pine streets as the most infamously, reliably double-parked streets in the whole city. In other words, except for perhaps a few hours in the dead of night, there never was a time that these streets had two continuous lanes to drive in!

So congratulations to the Mayor for getting this bike lane to happen, and for riding (part of the way) to work to promote it. I agree with Stu that Nutter probably won't be commuting from Wynnefield anytime soon - until, that is, we get those lanes installed, and then look out!

Here are a couple quick updates on two recent Earth to Philly posts: 

1) If you remember last Tuesday's note from Taiwan by blogger Nikka Landau about initiatives there to fight climate change by encouraging vegetarianism, you can get a more in-depth look at that scene via her latest post on the topic, Vegetarian Buffets, which may be a little short on analysis but makes up for it with a load of great photos of the food and the venues involved in two of these buffets. Landau notes that the restaurant at the first has a place for you to clean up and dispose of your waste in appropriate containers. "Can you think of one restaurant in the US that asks you to clean up after yourself and allows you to dispose of your waste responsibly?" she asks. Anyone? Anyone?

2) And as you'll recall from our post last Thursday, Friday, Sept. 18 was Park(ing) Day in Philadelphia. Our own Jon Snyder covered the event by hanging out at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's space and jawing with local coordinator Pamela Zimmerman to get the lowdown as well as some cool visuals that highlight the odd juxtaposition inherent in the Park(ing) Day concept...

Oh no, tell me that's not David Byrne!

On Fear of Music, Talking Heads' third album, David Byrne sang "I will find a city, find myself a city to live in," and proceeded to list "good points, bad points' about various cities, including name-checking Memphis as "home of Elvis and the ancient Greeks." Cheeky stuff for a guy who hadn't been to all that many cities yet.

Now, thirty years later, Byrne revisits his "cities" pursuit in a form befitting the now white-haired, globe-trotting man-about-towns that he's become: An essay in the Wall Street Journal tied to his just-out book Bicycle Diaries.

Although occasionally stumbling into obviousness ("A little touch of chaos and danger makes a city sexy"), the piece brings us back to Byrne's off-kilter viewpooint and expresses a few noteworthy ideas about how different aspects of cities can be tweaked to make them more "livable" - as defined by different groups of people. Starting as a checklist, the essay eventually congeals into an overall vision of vibrant urban living.

Though it's not explicitly about sustainability, Byrne's perspective as a bike-rider ("available parking doesn't matter to me. Parking lots and structures are dead real estate") weaves his seemingly random observations into a holisitic vision of a city as a thriving organism, and provides plenty of food for thought for city residents and planners alike.

A part of me wishes David Byrne were still pumping out nerdy, hiccuppy two-and-a-half-minute ditties with Chris, Tina and Jerry, rather than settling into the role of elder statesman. But I've got to admit his more sedate, serious work has its own value, with more depth and scope, a panoramic vision extending - one might say - three hundred sixty-five degrees.

Some of the locations where you may see altered parking spaces.

If you're walking through Center City (or a handful of other neighborhoods) tomorrow between 9 am and 5 pm and come across a parking space that's just a little more organic, or even a little crazier, than you might expect, you'll know you're in the midst of the second annual Park(ing) Day in Philadelphia.

The initiative aims to "reclaim parking spots and transform them into engaging, people-friendly public spaces for one day!" Last year, the first year Park(ing) Day was celebrated here (it started in San Francisco in 2005) there were 25 spaces decorated and otherwise upgraded to make statements of one kind or another about public space and the greening thereof. This year it's 30 - while still not a huge percentage of the total spaces in town, that's "170 square feet of public space."

The Park(ing) Day Philadelphia site has a map  of the spaces and more info on the project. It will be good to see Philly parking spaces generating smiles and provoking thought instead of generating/provoking fights with our infamous Parking Authority. And it will be good to see more green around town - if only for a day.

ALSO: You may remember the Earth to Philly post, White House farmer's market? Do it! Well, they took our advice and did it! And the first one is tonight! Fantastic. If you're in or arounjd DC, check it out and let us know how it goes!

One of these things is not like the other: A voice recorder; a video camera, an FM radio tuner... and a pedometer?

Even though the previous generation of the iPod nano had an "accelerometer" that could be synced to a plug-in to gather workout data, the use of the word "pedometer" on the new fifth-generation one announced last week has some people scratching their heads. As one Internet wit offered moments after the specs were made public, "they forgot to include a corkscrew!" This blog entry from the Chicago Tribune also captures that attitude.

But many people have gone broke underestimating the power of Apple to define cultural trends. Remember how the translucent candy-colored iMacs inspired literally hundreds of different products - completely unrelated to computing - to suddenly be offered in those same translucent candy colors?

The question now is whether Apple will succeed at making walking a cool form of lifestyle entertainment along with the more traditional digital forms for which it's already cornered the market. Yes, this "pedometer" can actually deliver data on a lot of different forms of workout, but if walking, specifically, gets the boost in popularity that five-color translucence got ten years ago it could mean more than a short-lived design trend.

In other words, the iPod, furthering the work of the Sony walkman, has made exercising by walking more palatable by providing ever more customizable portable entertainment. Putting the pedometer on a par with other neato features could make people "think different" about their exercise drudgery, seeing it as not so much a block of time spent on a task as another fun mode of self-expression. Eventually - and here's the kicker - people could lavish the same pride and attention on their walking as most now do on their cars.

If that does wind up happening, it will be huge news for sustainability, as one more psychological advantage of the car topples in favor of walking. If it doesn't happen, well, no biggie - at least this futuristic state-of-the-art device finally allows you to listen to the radio!

Here's a quick thought from the Daily News Editorial Board...

AS cell-phone-toting drivers debate the fairness of being forced to wait for arriving planes in the airports' grim and poorly signed cell-phone lot on Bartram Avenue instead of the shoulder of I-95, we have the perfect solution:

Just a few blocks away is the naturally landscaped lot of one of America's most surprising national wildlife areas, the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum. Surrounded by shoulder-high native grasses and flowers, the preserve parking lot is open dawn to dusk. A helpful ranger is on duty until 4 p.m. daily with maps of the 3.3-mile, easily walked loop trail and a list of the latest sightings. The other day, ours included a bald eagle, kingfishers, egrets, painted turtles, cormorants and great blue herons.

Get out of the car, stroll five minutes to reach a footbridge across the water. Keep your cell phone with you, though. When you're gazing across the lily-pad-lined water, it's easy to forget that civilization is nearby.