The Sundance Channel's Big Ideas For A Small Planet is back. The eco-solutions show tidily takes on an issue - like, say Fuel or Drive in episodes from last year's season - and finds three "Big Ideas" to discuss in a half-hour. Sometimes, the episodes are paired with a longer documentary, such as with the series opening Crude Awakening.

For season two, the format of the show remains the same. The next episode, Transport, covers topics we're all in love with here on AutoblogGreen: how to get around in a more sustainable fashion. The breezy mood of Big Ideas makes the problems seem so darn solvable, which I think is a good thing. We all know congestion, global warming, dirty emissions and high fuel prices are a pain in the rear - is it that bad to take ten minutes to imaging how great it would be to live in a bike-friendly city?

This brings us to Transport. The show's idea number one is greener public transportation, which focuses on the efforts of New York City. City planners are working on making better bus lanes (with lights that can hold off a red light to allow an approaching bus through), installing more bike lanes with better bike parking at subway stations, and implementing congestion pricing for cars. The NYC plan to charge $8 per car is still in the works, having received City Council approval in April. One of NYC's greening efforts that not many people know about is how sustainable the garage where New York's subway cars are repaired and cleaned is - rain water is collected to be used to wash the cars, much work is done using natural lighting and there is, for a reason not explained in the show, a fuel cell. Segment one also tells us that there are 500 miles of bike lanes in NYC, and another 100 are on deck for the near future. But the real Bike City USA is Portland, Oregon. Read on after the break.

The city of Monterrey, Mexico, will have its subway system, called Metrorrey, propelled with electricity obtained from biogas. Simeprode, the company that manages the city waste system, is finishing a 5.3 MW power plant that will produce electricity for the two subway lines. This plant will allow Monterrey not only to run its mass transit system with bioenergy but also to expand the subway networks in the near future. The remaining power will be used for public lightning. The technology was imported from Germany, and the total cost of the project was about $6.5 million.

[Source: El Porvenir via Energias Renovables]