The Stubborn Persistence of Car Dependence
With driving on the upswing again as gas prices remain surprisingly low, Yonah Freemark at The Transport Politic is taking a long hard look at what it will take to substantially change America's travel habits. He notes that except for a handful of cities with good transit, driving continues to account for most of the nation's growth in travel:
October 19, 2015
Pope Francis and the Flexibility of Our Streets
Add Pope Francis's tour of New York to the long list of carmageddon scares that successfully frightened off would-be motorists. I grabbed these two shots of traffic from Google Maps, and despite all the alarming car detour icons, you can see that traffic was lighter during peak Francis than it normally is on a New York City weekday.
September 29, 2015
We’re Hiring! Lead Streetsblog’s Coverage of the SF Bay Area
After four terrific years running Streetsblog San Francisco, Aaron Bialick is moving on. Before I get to the job opening, I'd like to pay my respects to his body of work.
September 21, 2015
NY Mayor Has Yet to Say Traffic Is More Dangerous Than Painted Breasts
Mayor de Blasio had a chance today to quell the uproar over his suggestion that the city may rip out the Times Square pedestrian plazas. Instead he equivocated and didn't take the idea off the table:
August 24, 2015
An Experiment in Driver-Cyclist Interaction, Powered By Christmas Lights
When you're on a bike getting passed by motorists going 20 or 30 mph faster than you, it can feel like one act of deliberate aggression after another. And in many cases there is real, seething hostility and complete disregard for other people's safety at work. But a lot of the time, people drive fast because that's the message the street design is sending, and they don't know any better.
August 10, 2015
How Parking Permits Can Improve the Politics of Walkable Development
Residential parking permits are often referred to as "hunting licenses" because while they grant permit holders the privilege of parking on the street, there's usually no limit to how many permits can be issued. If there are more permits in a neighborhood than available on-street parking spaces, there's still going to be a parking crunch and permit holders will still circle streets hunting for a spot.
August 4, 2015
When Transit Goes Down at the Polls, Here’s Some Advice on How to Regroup
Last week, voters in the Vancouver region rejected a half-cent sales tax to pay for a package of transit infrastructure and service expansions necessary to handle growing demand. Even in the city of Vancouver, the measure fell shy of a majority. Polling revealed that most "No" voters didn’t trust the regional transit agency, TransLink, to make good use of the additional revenue.
July 6, 2015
Killing a Transit Project Isn’t Going to Fix Your City’s Parking Crunch
Yesterday Streetsblog USA ran a post from Michael Andersen about how Newark fixed the glut of parked cars on Mount Prospect Avenue, the first street in New Jersey to get a protected bike lane: Instead of letting people park in the bikeway, the city started charging for parking. With a price on parking, people stopped storing their cars on the street all day long, and there was finally some turnover. Problem solved.
July 2, 2015
Like Great Transit, a Compact City Gives People Freedom
The Congress for New Urbanism has posted a video of Jarrett Walker (of Human Transit fame) delivering a new presentation, "Learning the Language of Transit." There's a passage where Walker frames transit as not simply a mode of transportation, but a means to access your city and, ultimately, the freedom and opportunity to do the things you want.
May 20, 2015
America’s Biggest Bike-Share Operator Now Makes Its Own Bikes
Motivate, the company that runs bike-share systems in several large American cities, is now manufacturing its own bikes.
May 7, 2015