This project takes the spirit of intersection repair to new heights. You're looking at the Elevado Costa e Silva, a two-mile stretch of 1970s-vintage elevated highway in the middle of gridlocked Sao Paulo, Brazil. It's known informally as the minhocão ("giant worm"), and according to local blog Inside Sao Paulo, a project to remove the structure is on hold despite some form of support from the City Council. For now, the minhocão is closed to traffic on Sundays, when it opens to the public for ciclovia-style recreation.

About a week ago, local artist Felipe Morozini organized this massive pavement-painting endeavor, covering a swath of the minhocão with 75 enormous flowers (more pictures here). Unlike your usual pavement paintings and intersection repairs, which calm traffic by adding a layer of intrigue to existing spaces, the Sao Paulo paintjob feels like an assertion of what else could spring to life if the highway disappeared.

So, who wants to lay down a work of art on the Sheridan Expressway?

They're not super heroes per se, but in the livable streets universe, David Byrne, Janette Sadik-Khan and Paul Steely White are about as close as they come. You can catch them tonight at a free panel called "Cities, Bicycles and the Future of Getting Around" at the Union Square Barnes & Noble at 7 p.m.

Speaking of livable streets super heroes: any ideas? Bikeman? Woonerf Woman? Livable Streets League?

After reading about a new Pew Poll that found 88 percent of Americans believe they can't live without a car, I couldn't help thinking of this cartoon from John Akre -- who also gave us Cars for Hats. Car dependence has never looked so terrifying.

Today's toon combo comes to us via the Times' By Design blog, where Allison Arieff has posted a paean to Steven M. Johnson, an inventor, author, cartoonist and former urban planner described by Arieff as "a sort of R. Crumb meets R. Buckminster Fuller." Many of Johnson's "whimsical musings" are transportation related, and at least one of them (which Johnson called the "Treadaround") has become reality.

As for auto abandonment zones and the bike vest (seen after the jump), we'll keep our eyes peeled. 

From the cutting-off-one's-nose-to-spite-one's-face department comes this nonetheless impressive song and video excoriating the MTA (a.k.a. "Money-Taking Assholes") and calling on transit riders to "start jumping the gates." But there's more to the message than misguided MTA bashing, as "the fuck-ups in Albany" -- Ruben Diaz, Sr., Pedro Espada and Carl Kruger, specifically -- get their due.

Just goes to show that there's plenty of anger out there over the MTA funding fiasco, and that much of it could use some constructive channeling. Again, today's Union Square rally would be a good place to start. Maybe signs flashing across TV screens and tabloid pages naming state senators (whomever they may be) would finally get the fuck-ups' Albany's attention.

If you're in need of a little comic relief today, try this seemingly subversive pro-jaywalking message from the Muppets.

This past weekend, Livable Streets Education teamed up with educators at the New York Transit Museum to teach families about the past, present, and future of New York City’s streets. With help from their parents, kids designed their own "livable streets" to improve conditions for pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders. 

The kids also made some pretty fantastic buses out of recycled materials, complete with riders, drivers, wheels, windows, and decorations that would look stunning on the genuine article. We even saw a few double-deckers and articulated buses.

If you missed out this weekend, there are more chances to join in coming up in the summer. Look for us leading similar workshops at the arts room of the Children’s Museum of Manhattan on Sunday, July 19.

After the jump: an articulated, double-decker butterfly bus.

GM has seen the future, and it looks like a B-n-L Hover Chair.

GM's solution for the future of transportation is -- hold your breath -- a Segway built for two.  I don't know about you, but I want my money back. 

GM and Segway announced the prototype, which they dubbed "Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility," or PUMA, today in New York City, where the old single-occupancy stand-up Segways are already illegal.  The wheeled chair, which GM claims will address congestion, safety, affordability, parking, and energy concerns in urban areas, gets 35 miles per charge and does 35 miles per hour, a blistering speed that makes them just slow enough to get run down by the automobile company's more traditional vehicles. 

Unfortunately for those of us who already use a "personal mobility device" with more than 100 years of proven utility and health benefits, Dave Rand, GM's Executive Director of Global Design, said on Brian Lehrer today that he thought PUMAs should be able to use bike lanes. Lehrer was skeptical of the device, saying that the last time he heard of a transportation "revolution" was when Segways were introduced, and he noted how small a market share they currently have. 

When Lehrer challenged Rand on how PUMAs would fit in already dense urban areas, where carving out room for a bike lane is as difficult as it gets, the GM rep suggested they would start using PUMAs on college campuses and other areas that look nothing like cities.

Given that Segways cost around $6,000, the new PUMA would likely be more expensive. There are also concerns about safety and visibility, which GM claims they'll solve with technology links to existing OnStar systems so that the PUMAs will sense other vehicles and slow automatically, at least other vehicles with OnStar.

Rand said on Lehrer's show that users could charge the vehicle at home overnight or where it is parked during the day, the implication being that people have an easy place to plug in at night, as in a garage. Has Rand spent any time in a dense urban setting, where most people don't have garages? Does he envision all those plugs coming out of parking meters?

GM's announcement comes a day after Ohio State released a study that found 20 percent of preschoolers are obese. I know the mega-corporation lampooned in Disney's Wall-E was meant to be Walmart, but GM seems to be moving us a step closer to the B-n-L Hover Chairs that make physical activity a thing of the past.

I seem to recall from a class in high school something about us evolving to walk upright. Rather than worrying about how to incorporate an impractical new Segway into the urban realm, shouldn't cities be making more room for walking and cycling? The good ones already are.

Speaking of which -- officer, can you remove that thing from our nice new pedestrian plaza?

Photo from NY Times

With events in Albany still unfolding, it remains to be seen whether this Bill Bramhall 'toon -- slide four of the Daily News illustrator's gallery -- will become reality.

On the other hand, with drivers still guaranteed a free ride over East and Harlem River bridges, the argument could be made that it already has.

Transit gallows humor from Daily News cartoonist Bill Bramhall. The whole toon is a fitting accompaniment to the paper's editorial stance on the MTA rescue saga. You can find it on the fourth slide in this gallery.

The UK Department for Transport's no-holds-barred THINK! road safety campaign isn't just for adults. This creepy toon, one in a series designed to influence how kids interact with auto traffic (here's another), encourages bright colored clothing in favor of "trendy" darker tones when walking at night.

These spots bring to mind a number of questions. Is it possible to preach pedestrian safety to pedestrians without, even by implication, downplaying the responsibility of drivers? And when it comes to kids, is it possible -- or responsible -- to teach anything other than "Fear the car"? 

Head over to Toronto bike advocacy blog Take the Tooker for the denouement to this transportation fable. Hat tip: Greater Greater Washington.

Hat tip to David Alpert for this Tom Toles toon, which nails the disconnect between the brave green world we're supposedly entering and the dramatic cutbacks plaguing transit systems across the country. Click through for the punchline (I kind of gave it away already).

Toles' transit system, the DC Metro, is on the verge of cutting service a few weeks after handling record ridership during the Presidential inauguration. Meanwhile, the stimulus package enters conference committee without provision for operating assistance -- and the green jobs it would sustain -- in either the House or Senate version of the bill.

This word of warning from cartoonist Mike Luckovich to Republicans in Congress feels all the more timely on the heels of today's action in the Senate. Click through for the punchline.

I'm guessing the speeding metaphor in this cartoon from Gary Varvel of the Indianapolis Star (click through for Pelosi's quote) is not intended to critique spending stimulus dollars on highway expansion. But if you stick House Appropriations Chair David Obey in the driver's seat, it makes for a rather pointed comment on the reckless approach to transportation policy exhibited by some Congressional leaders.

Good stuff this week from Tom Toles, whose transpo-themed editorial cartoons are always on target. Click through for the rest of this commentary.

Marshall Ramsey of the Clarion-Ledger explores the relationship between the automobile industry and the rest of us. Click through for the punchline.

Click through for the conclusion to this week's toon, which comes to us from Rick Smith of Shaker Heights, Ohio. Smith's strip, Yehuda Moon, is a serialized saga with daily entries going back to January. I'm still making my way through the storyline, but having biked the greenways of Lorain County, I had a soft spot for this installment.

This week's 'toon is a short Streetfilm of drawings from students at PS 87 on Manhattan's Upper West Side, where Kim Wiley-Schwartz of the Livable Streets Education program asked kindergarteners, "What would you do if there were no cars in the street?"

Livable Streets Education encourages students to explore and question the environments around their schools and in their neighborhoods, and to voice the changes they want to see on their streets. To find out more, contact Kim at 646-734-6486 or kwileyschwartz@openplans.org.

Cartoonist Mark Fiore has more fun with Detroit this week. Click through for what to do when your car company breaks down.

We've noticed that, in the midst of all the Big Three bashing, some are wondering how white-collar institutions like Citigroup can secure so much money from the feds while the blue-collar-employing automakers are made to beg. Here's Leo W. Gerard of the Huffington Post expounding an increasingly popular meme:

The message here could not be more clear: Washington will bailout out those who shower before work but not those who shower afterwards.

Detroit is a place where workers are unionized; Wall Street is not. And right-wing Republicans and conservative pundits have made it clear they want the union workers to suffer. They want federal aid denied to the Big Three so that the firms go bankrupt. Then the companies can renege on pensions they guaranteed to retirees and can break salary and benefit promises to workers in current contracts.

Are union sympathies driving the backlash against the backlash? Or could it be some sort of Jedi mind trick perpetrated by seemingly hapless Detroit?