We'd be remiss if we didn't nod to the Vancouver Olympics, opening today, and highlight their heavy reliance on mass transit to move spectators and athletes around the scenic seaside region.
In particular, we note that electric vehicles play a major role. Take, for instance, the city's streetcar system.
Streetcars are clean by definition, since they run on electricity and emit nothing other than the occasional scent of unwashed passengers.
2010 Vancouver Olympics mascots: Sumi the thunder-bird, Quatchi the Sasquatch, Miga the Sea Bear
Canadian mass-transit maker Bombardier (they also make snow machines and personal watercraft) donated two low-floor articulated trolleys, which they brought to the Olympics from their plant in Brussels.
With almost 500 in use, it's a popular model in Europe, which has maintained and expanded its streetcar systems even as the U.S. shut their down in the 1950s and 1960s, only to build new ones starting in the 1990s.
We'd also be remiss, by the way, if we didn't acknowledge the inevitably adorable Olympic mascots: Sumi the thunder-bird, Quatchi the Sasquatch, and Miga the Sea Bear.
They're based on the mythology of the Inuit (or indigenous people, as the Canadians say, shunning the term "Indian").
Aren't they cute? Awwwwwwww.
