Aaron Naparstek in his Livable Streets Power Broker pose.

For all of the readers, commenters, contributors and colleagues who have made Streetsblog such a powerful tool for transportation policy reform, high-quality online community and fun and interesting job: Thank you. It's been a great four-year run.

I'd say that I'll miss you guys except I'm sure I'll still be seeing you around. I will be moving over to The Open Planning Project's board of directors and I plan to continue to write and work on livable streets issues, among other things. If you want to keep up with me, you can follow me on Twitter @naparstek. I'll be dusting off and redesigning the old Naparstek.com blog as well. And it looks like we will probably be doing a going-away party on Friday, February 5. Stay tuned for details on that.

Naturally, I've been spending some time taking stock of these last four years and I can't help but find myself amazed at how far New York City's livable streets movement has come.

It's almost hard to believe that when we started this blog, ideas like physically-separated bike lanes, car-free Times Square and bus rapid transit were mostly considered crazy or impossible in New York City. It's remarkable to recall that as recently as August 2006 we lamented the fact that the leaders of cities like London, Paris and even unglamorous Chicago were rolling out ambitious transportation reforms and long-term sustainability plans while our own mayor chortled, "We like traffic. It means economic activity. It means people coming here."

When I first pitched the idea for Streetsblog to Mark Gorton in January 2006 (almost exactly four years ago to the day), New York City's streets were improving but still, for the most part, were ruled by a 1950's traffic engineering mindset aimed at maximizing the city's capacity to accommodate motor vehicles. While other world cities were rapidly reclaiming their public realm with bike infrastructure, car-free streets, bus rapid transit and congestion pricing, New York City government still seemed to view traffic as something like the weather -- a force beyond the control of mere mortals. Though few issues touch New Yorkers lives more personally on a more regular basis, transportation was a third-tier issue at City Hall and in the local press.

Streetsblog helped to change that. We initially had four goals in mind: First, we aimed to generate more of an awareness of our issues by creating a new journalistic beat ranging from the intense, neighborhood-level battles over bike lanes to the big question of how New York City planned to address the challenges of climate change. Second, we wanted to educate and excite policy makers, press and regular citizens about the transportation and urban planning best practices that were emerging in other world cities. Third, we hoped to establish an online community and discussion forum for the people who were working on and thinking about these issues. And finally, most of all, we intended to watchdog and reform New York City's Department of Transportation. We wanted Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff and his staff reading our blog. We wanted them to feel mildly embarrassed about the way that New York City's transportation policies were lagging behind those of other cities. And we hoped to create a new, more ambitious set of expectations for what New York City's DOT could do.

And we did it. Streetsblog, in many ways, exceeded -- and continues to surpass -- the wildest expectations that Mark and I originally had for it. Today, with Janette Sadik-Khan at the helm, New York City's DOT is pushing a bold program to create "sustainable streets" through the prioritization of pedestrians, transit and bicycles. The agency is not just reformed, it is transformed, and widely considered the leading example for transportation agencies in other U.S. cities to follow. We certainly can't take all the credit for the great improvements taking place on New York City streets these days and we fully recognize that there is a whole lot of work yet to be done. But looking back at these last four years, I can't help but think of Danish urban designer Jan Gehl's oft-repeated quote: "How nice it is to wake up every morning and know that your city is a little better than it was the day before."

Likewise, it has been gratifying this last year to see Streetsblog grow and succeed in other cities. Streetsblog San Francisco is proving that the model that we created here in New York City can be just as powerful and effective in another city. Streetsblog Los Angeles is demonstrating that even a low-budget, one-man version of Streetsblog can reap substantial results. And Streetsblog Capitol Hill, the only news source covering federal transportation policy as a daily beat, is showing that we can have a tangible impact on the national level as well.

Our national blog network has also been a real eye-opener. When we launched Streetsblog in the spring of 2006 there really wasn't anything else out there quite like it aside from BikePortland.com.

Take a look at our Streetsblog Network map today. There are now more than 300 locally-oriented livable streets blogs in 45 states. Sure, the "Tea Party" movement gets all of the media attention. But I believe these 300 livable streets blogs and the tens of thousands of readers who visit them on a weekly basis represent one of the most vibrant, genuine and rapidly growing new grassroots movements underway in the United States today. It will take time -- building new communities and changing the physical design and infrastructure of existing cities is a slow process. But this is the start of a movement that is transforming the American city and the American way-of-life in some very fundamental and positive ways. Streetsblog will continue to play a critical role in spreading the ideas and connecting the people who are building this nationwide movement.

I will be leaving you in very good hands here at Streetsblog. Ben Fried will continue to edit and run the blog in New York City, with Bryan Goebel in San Francisco, Elana Schor in Washington D.C. and Damien Newton in Los Angeles. Sarah Goodyear will still be building and managing the national blog network and developing and improving our online community. Livable Streets Initiative managing director Carly Clark will be picking up the slack on the fundraising and development front, pushing ahead with plans to open up local editions of Streetsblog in new cities. Streetfilms, of course, will still be doing the great work that they do. Nick Grossman and the TOPP Labs crew will continue to do an amazing job of designing, developing and maintaining our web sites. And TOPP founder Mark Gorton will continue to provide invaluable financial support and strategic direction to the whole crew.

Stock photo. Not Damien's baby!

Until we get the content flowing again, you might want to pretend you live in San Francisco or use this opportunity to catch up on federal transportation policy. Likewise, the Streetsblog Network is generating more than enough good stories to keep you busy.

Here's wishing luck to Damien and family. Hopefully we'll have him back soon.

And Al Gore and the folks at Repower America say call your U.S. Representative today because you can be sure the guys from the coal industry have made their calls. Here's Al...

To
me, and I suspect no one else on earth, there is something wonderful
about listening to country music playing in the cab, air conditioner
running, the hum of a huge diesel engine in the background, the
tranquility that comes with being in a virtual wilderness of trees and
marsh, the day breaking and vibrant pink coming alive in the morning
clouds — and getting to build something with each scoop of dirt.

How romantic!

And as if this story weren’t weird enough already, a profile of Sanford in American Conservative magazine provides another sordid tidbit about the governor’s diesel-powered meditation technique:

During Sanford’s first gubernatorial campaign in 2002, an 8-year-old
African-American girl wandered onto a Sanford family property on Lady’s
Island and drowned. A source close to the governor said she fell into a
"retaining pond." Her family’s lawyer, Manning Smith, called it a
"pit." Other sources claim that Sanford, who owned a hydraulic
excavator at the time, digs holes on his property to unwind.

We
are excited to announce the official launch of Streetsblog Capitol
Hill. With major transportation, climate and energy legislation coming
before Congress in the next year or two we felt that it was critical to
have a talented journalist down in Washington D.C. covering the issues
on a daily basis. With the financial support of the Surdna Foundation
and the Wallace Global Fund the Livable Streets Initiative has hired
reporter Elana Schor
to cover the federal beat for us. DC.Streetsblog.org (as it’s known to
your web browser) will be her new home. Sarah Goodyear, editor of our national blog nework, and talented writers like Ryan Avent will be contributing to Streetsblog Capitol Hill as well.

Broadly
speaking, we hope to do two things with this new edition of
Streetsblog. First, we aim to make it a high-quality daily source for
news and analysis of federal transportation policy and related issues.
We want to create a blog that is a daily must-read for the advocates,
lawmakers, Congressional staffers, urban planning practitioners, policy
wonks and lobbyists who are working to shape the future of America’s
transportation systems.

Our second goal for Streetsblog
Capitol Hill is to help bring outsiders into the federal transportation
policy-making process. For decades, transportation policy on Capitol
Hill has mostly been an arcane, complex insiders game
– a game that’s been played best by highway lobbyists. Streetsblog
Capitol Hill will put locally-oriented livable streets advocates on the
playing field and help them better understand the rules of the game. As
the 293 bloggers who are now members of the Streetsblog Network
make clear every day, a vibrant, grassroots movement for sustainable
transport, smart growth and livable streets is active and growing
increasingly powerful in cities and states nationwide. Streetsblog
Capitol Hill will help connect these local activists to the important
action taking place inside the Beltway. 

Regular
readers will notice that "Capitol Hill" has replaced "National Blog
Network" in the tab above. Streetsblog.net has not gone away. You will
still find Sarah Goodyear’s daily Network round-up posted on all of our
blogs. Network headlines and access to the Network web site can be
found in the sidebar at right. Likewise, the RSS feed for Streetsblog
Capitol Hill can be found here.

As you may have noticed, we’ve got a new reporter here at Streetsblog, Elana Schor.
Elana will be covering this year’s big federal transportation story
down in Washington D.C. with an eye towards helping transit advocates
and livable streets activists gain a better understanding of what
has typically been a very inside-the-Beltway, highway-oriented process.
If you have tips, comments or questions for Elana, email her: elana
[at] streetsblog [dot] org.

Elana
has covered Capitol Hill for more than four years, most recently as a
staff reporter for The Hill, The Guardian, and the Talking Points Memo
blog. Her work has also been published by MarketWatch and the Biloxi
Sun-Herald. She holds a masters degree in journalism from Northwestern
University, and lives in Washington’s very walkable Mount Pleasant
neighborhood. 

Streetsblog’s national work is being funded by grants from the Surdna Foundation and the Wallace Global Fund.

Regarding
this national work — here’s a question for you: What would you like to
see Elana cover in the coming months? Or, more generally, how would you
like to see Streetsblog approach the federal transportation issues?

I’ve found that Streetsblog tends to work best and engage readers most when we focus on the hyper-local and hyper-personal
side of policy issues. Yet, unlike neighborhood street fights and
seemingly timeless issues like sidewalk cycling and rolling stops,
federal transportation policy often feels too big and distant to get a
handle on. It sometimes feels more like a spectator sport, taking place
on this whole other playing field where, I think, locally-oriented
livable streets activists often don’t feel like they have much
influence.

So, this is going to be our challenge in the
coming months: Cover the federal transportation policy process in a way
that makes Streetsblog a daily read for national advocates, elected
officials, Hill staffers and U.S. DOT personnel while also making the
issues engaging and tangible to grassroots livable streets activists.
By making transit coverage more accessible, the goal is to take the
blinders off policymakers who have historically been beholden to
moneyed lobbies rather than new ideas.

I’m convinced that
the local activists are key. The hundreds of thousands of people across
America who are working to make their own communities more bikeable,
walkable and transit-oriented are the most powerful force for pushing
federal transportation policy in a smarter more sustainable direction.
We’ve just got to get informed and engaged. Elana is going to help us
do that.

Over at Streetsblog San Francisco, Matthew Roth has the first installment of what will surely be an ongoing story...

Our ideal candidate is
a talented, experienced writer and reporter who knows the players in
transportation and environmental policymaking on Capitol Hill. The
ability to navigate the intricacies of the legislative process, to dig
beneath the surface, and to track the interests and influences behind
the scene is a must.

Qualifications

While
Streetsblog has a distinct advocacy bent oriented towards reducing
automobile dependence and improving conditions for pedestrians,
cyclists and transit riders, we bring newspaper-quality journalism to
the issues that we cover. Towards that end, we are seeking a
reporter/blogger with previous professional experience to do original
research, interviews, investigation and coverage of events.
Qualifications include:

• Professional journalism
  experience, ideally covering the legislative processes related to
  transportation, planning or environmental policy issues.
• A
  network of existing sources – and an ability to cultivate new sources –
  among the lawmakers, lobbyists, advocates and other players who work on
  federal transportation policy issues.
• Experience with WordPress or other blogging technologies is a plus.
• A personal passion for the issues that Streetsblog covers.

To Apply

Send a resume, cover letter, and relevant clips/links to jobs@streetsblog.org.

Streetsblog
is produced by The Open Planning Project, a New York City-based
non-profit that uses technology to catalyze civic action and social
change. This position is full-time, and the Reporter will work remotely
from Washington, DC.

• For Streetsblog, one of the big goals of the redesign was to make our San Francisco, Los Angeles and National Blog Network
  web sites more accessible. In the old design, links to these sites were
  buried in our sidebar. Now you can find them via the tabs in the
  header.
• You can still find handy links to the Comments, Calendar and Submit Content
  pages up in the Streetsblog header as well. "Submit Content" used to be
  called "Contribute" but we thought that it sounded too much like we
  were asking for money (which we may be doing soon, but not yet). For
  now, we’re just asking you to tag your links, photos and videos so we
  can feature them here on Streetsblog. This is actually a really
  interesting part of the web site if you haven’t visited it before.
• In the thin header at the very top you may notice that the Livable Streets "Groups" site has been renamed "Community."
  We felt this better reflected our mission to help Livable Streets
  activists connect with each other, share information and resources, and
  generally become more aware of themselves as a growing national
  movement. We’ve been steadily improving the Community features over the
  last few months and really want to ramp that up in the coming months. Have you joined yet?
• Streetfilms and Streetswiki
  have remained pretty much the same, aside from the new header. I’d be
  curious to hear what people think we need to do with Streetswiki to
  make it a more useful resource.
• You’ll note that we’ve added Livable Streets Education
  to the top nav bar as well. Run by Kim Wiley-Schwartz and Rebecca
  Jacobs, the Education Project is starting to work in classrooms
  throughout New York City to train the next generation of Livable
  Streets activists. This is a very cool program and we’ll have a more
  detailed post on it tomorrow.
• We are hearing
  some people say that they miss seeing our logo depicting the
  silhouetted street scene. We like it too but felt that it contributed
  to the site’s header being a bit too busy and heavy. For
  what it’s worth, you can still find the logo on the Livable Streets
  Initiative homepage. If there’s enough of a popular outcry, perhaps we
  can ask our designer Andy Cochran to figure out a way to bring it back
  to the other sites as well. (In addition, the L.A. Streetsblog logo can be found at the Los Angeles Streetsblog page on Facebook.)

That’s
all for now. If you have any feedback on the new design or features
that you’d like to see us improving or developing, please leave a
comment or shoot us an email.

Today we are launching the Streetsblog Network "Action Widget." The Streetsblog Network, as you may already know, is a collection of about 200 bloggers from all around the United States who focus on livable streets, sustainable transport and smart growth issues, usually with a local focus.

The Action Widget is a tool that members of the Network, or anyone else, can install into the sidebar of their blog using the code found on this page. Network editor Sarah Goodyear will update the Action Widget regularly with legislative alerts, breaking news and top stories from blogs participating in the Streetsblog Network. Above are three examples of how the widget would have appeared last week as the House of Representatives debated the transportation portion of the stimulus bill. 

One of the things that's become clear to me watching the Streetsblog Network grow is that these bloggers represent a vibrant and potentially powerful national movement pushing for fundamental change in the way we do transportation policy here in the United States. It is both a strength and weakness of this movement that its most active and committed members -- the people in the trenches fighting for better biking facilities, new light rail lines and less automobile-dependent cities -- tend to be focused on local issues to the extreme.

One of the big goals of the Streetsblog Network is to get livable streets advocates to take a moment to lift their heads from their important neighborhood-level work and take note of the fact that 2009 is going to be a watershed year for federal transportation policy, and they need to be involved in shaping that policy. If they're not, then the policy-making will be done by the business-as-usual folks, the Road Gang who, incidentally, can not find 200 local bloggers writing enthusiastically about the shovel-ready road widening on the outskirts of town. The Highwaymen have no such grassroots movement behind them.

So, we hope that the Action Widget can help progressive transportation bloggers to keep their readers informed, mobilized and connected to other local activists and to the action taking place on the federal level. If you have any feedback or questions about the Action Widget, we really want to hear it. Do you need help installing it? Does it work on your blog? Would a certain change in design or function make you more likely to use it? Please shoot an email to tips@streetsblog.org and let us know what you think.

“We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars…”
– Barack Obama’s inaugural address.

“The last thing this nation needs now is a stimulus plan aimed at
the development of non-gasoline-powered automobiles married with
extensive rehabilitation of the highway system.”
– James Howard Kunstler

Looking to circumvent a citywide bike lane injunction or avoid bike lane-related Community Board histrionics? Alex Tee and Evan Gant from the product design firm Altitude Inc.
have a novel solution for you: Use laser beams to project your own lane
from the back of your bicycle. Gant tells me that he and Tee developed
their LightLane
concept for a design competition aimed at encouraging bike commuting.
For now, the idea exists only on paper but the duo has received so much
positive feedback, they are planning to build a prototype.

SF.Streetsblog.org

Streetsblog seems to be arriving in the Bay Area not a moment too soon. As Streetsblog San Francisco editor Bryan Goebel reports, the SF MTA's board voted to eliminate a critical piece of bike infrastructure at Market Street at Octavia Boulevard on Tuesday. Why? Apparently, the eastbound bike lane on Market Street is interfering with motorists' ability to make an illegal right turn on to the 101 freeway.

It looks to me like a classic example of old school traffic-engineering at its worst: Reduce cyclist and pedestrian injuries by simply discouraging cyclists and pedestrians from using the street. Frankly, it's incredible that this kind of planning and engineering still holds sway in a city whose mayor claims to be building "a new green economy" and a "sustainable vision."

Bryan and Streetsblog San Francisco reporter Matthew Roth are going to make sure that issues like this receive the regular coverage that they deserve and officials are held accountable for their press releases. It should be fun. And Streetfilms was already there...

A few notes:

1. We know that we need to redesign our web sites to make it easier to find Streetsblog San Francisco, Los Angeles and Streetsblog.net, our national network of 175 livable streets bloggers. We hope to have a quick, interim redesign finished soon and a more comprehensive redesign of the Livable Streets Network later this year.

2. Streetsblog San Francisco is funded by a generous donation from Jonathan Weiner, a bike-commuting, Muni-riding, San Francisco-based software entrepreneur, a grant from the Wallace Global Fund and ongoing support from Mark Gorton and The Open Planning Project.

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

Let’s
give a warm Streetsblog welcome to Mr. Theo, the newest member of the
Livable Streets Network. You may recognize Theo as the star of the
Louisville, Kentucky transit system’s YouTube hit, "Bikes-on-Board."
Sure, some LSN members will criticize him for uploading a photo of
himself standing next to a vehicle that gets about 7 miles per gallon
and runs on leaded fuel. But give the man some credit for supporting
urban infrastructure investment; his personal web site is BigDiggity.com. If you’re looking for a transit-oriented M.C. in the River City area, Mr. Theo is for hire.

By the way, if you are a regular commenter on Streetsblog and you haven’t yet created a member profile for yourself, you can sign up here. We’ve been working to improve some of the tools and interfaces in LSN Groups, so check it out if you haven’t visited in a while.

Before the financial meltdown severely undercut John McCain's presidential ambitions, his campaign was giddy over the apparent success of its energy policy message: Drill, baby, drill!

It is, after all, a simple sounding solution that appeals to politicians in love with the quick fix, oil companies desperate for access to new sources, and auto-dependent Americans, many of whom now find themselves stranded in far-off suburbs, trapped in expensive car commutes and completely lacking freedom of choice when it comes to transportation. No matter that drilling here and drilling now isn't going to do much of anything to reduce gasoline prices or wean Americans from their crushing oil dependence. 

If you're curious about the masterminds behind the message, head over to Newt Gingrich's "tri-partisan" American Solutions web site. There, you can download "The New Language of Smart Energy," a 42-page talking points memo from Republican pollster Frank Luntz. Luntz handily sums up his findings as "The 10 Communications Commandments for 2008." Not surprising, given the buckets of fossil fuel money behind Gingrich's American Solutions, the Commandments can pretty much be summed up as "Thou Shalt Drill. Thou Shalt Drill Here. Thou Shalt Drill Now."

Here, courtesy of Frank and Newt, is some of the messaging that oil companies are using to maintain their grip on U.S. energy policy and get to those environmentally-sensitive leases. Mock and ignore them at your own peril.

• First off, before even getting into the Ten Commandments, make sure you present yourself as having risen above partisan politics.
• Then frame the issue in terms of national security. Our dependence on oil isn't the problem. It's our dependence on "foreign oil" that's the problem. All that stuff about oil being a globally traded commodity? Too complicated. Skip that. 
  
• Shortages "are unacceptable in our 21st century economy." All that stuff about geology and peak oil? Too wonky. Skip that.
• "It is about American oil and American gas." (Bold and underline formatting courtesy of Frank Luntz.)
• The more you can talk about futuristic "breakthrough technology," the more you'll be embraced by the American public.
  
• "Diversity of supply leads to security of supply." But focus, mainly, on diversity of oil and gas supply not diversity of energy sources.
  
• Do: Talk about new technology and the Chevy Tahoe Hybrid. Don't: Talk about conservation or sacrifice.

Newt, Frank, and the rest of their ilk seem to be in retreat for now. But with some drivers returning to their gas-guzzling ways, how long until the next "crisis" hits -- and the oil-suckers emerge from their crypt?

Happy Halloween.

Graphic: Carly Clark

In the coming months Streetsblog will turn increasing attention to
Capitol Hill and the 2009 federal transportation reauthorization bill.
With hundreds of billions of dollars up for grabs, organizations are mobilizing to influence the outcome of the debate. One thing many of the groups pushing for mass transit, smart growth and livable streets have in common is funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. The old adage says “Follow the money,” so Streetsblog spoke with foundation Managing Director Nicholas Turner.

Aaron Naparstek: What kind of work is Rockefeller Foundation doing in the transportation sector right now?

Nick Turner: We’ve undertaken an initiative that’s focused on trying to advance a more equitable and sustainable transportation paradigm in this country. When you look at the cost of transportation for low-income families, you see this is the second highest cost for working Americans. Then if you look at the slice of those who earn twenty to fifty thousand dollars a year, it’s the highest cost. Having to own and operate a car eats up 30 percent of household income.

AN: Why did Rockefeller Foundation decide to focus on transportation?

NT: When we look at challenges for the 21st century globally, not just for the United States, there are really three factors that made us interested in transportation. First, is that we’ve entered an urban age and so more people live in cities now than do in rural communities, and that trend is only going to accelerate. We’re interested in strengthening the capacity of cities to advance prosperity, to be centers of opportunity for people, and in the United States transportation obviously is one of the key determinants of access to opportunity.

The second thing that made us alight on transportation again was the climate impact. With transportation accounting for 33 percent of emissions in this country we thought it was essential to look at the lever of federal policy and funding as a way of reducing that impact.

The third thing, and it’s smaller than the other two, is when we look at this country and other developing countries we see an increasingly tattered social contract. Investing in sustainable and equitable transportation, and the building of that infrastructure, is a source of good jobs and increases access to good jobs for lower income Americans.

Transportation should be seen as a tool to achieve a variety of social benefits and ends. Transportation is not an end in and of itself but it should be a tool to enhance quality of life for people.

AN: What kinds of changes would you like to see made in federal transportation policy?

NT: The specifics of it we leave up to our grantees, who are really the true experts and have a sense of what’s doable. I think that it’s important to define what a national vision is — what is the federal interest in transportation — and get clear about that. It should be hopefully something that is more contemporary than the residue of the 1950’s interstate highway system, which obviously is complete. What we have now is a bias and a subsidy for building roads. I think that certainly served its purposes in the 20th century. But now we have to think about what is the next national purpose.

AN: If Rockefeller Foundation’s investments in transportation policy reform work well and pay off in the way that you hope, what kind of outcomes will we see in the coming years? 

NT: I think that we would be looking at a recognition that — and again this might be incremental and slow based upon our political system — but an eventual recognition that transportation should be seen as a tool to achieve a variety of other social benefits and ends. Transportation is not an end in and of itself but it should be a tool to enhance quality of life for people. We need adequate investment in a range of transportation options so that people are not spending 90 minutes a day or two hours a day stuck in their cars, away from their family, sitting in traffic and angry about it. Transportation policy should serve our climate imperatives, and have to take into account that by 2020 and 2050 we really ought to be hitting some benchmarks for the reduction of our emissions. Transportation should serve social equity. It should be seen as a tool that enhances opportunity for individuals and helps them to prosper, to move up the income ladder, to be connected to good jobs. Finally, federal transportation policies and funding should be directly related to broader national economic prosperity. It has to be thought of as an investment. If this country is to continue as an economic force globally, what kind of transportation networks do we need?

AN: So, you don’t really come out and say ‘We need a national rail network’ or ‘We need electric cars,’ or anything like that.

We see an increasingly tattered social contract. Investing in sustainable and equitable transportation, and the building of that infrastructure, is a source of good jobs and increases access to good jobs.

NT: To date, the argument has been about this mode versus that mode. And no doubt we’ve subsidized highways to a far greater extent than we’ve subsidized railroad or other means, so it’s certainly understandable when people say we need to shift more resources towards public transportation, high speed rail and the like. But if you’re thinking about transportation, again, as being a tool that helps you get to a set of broader societal benefits, you want to be somewhat mode-neutral. My guess is that any attempt to move towards those social benefits would, obviously, expand public transportation, rail, bus rapid transit, walking and biking. But I think it’s important to get out of this mode-against-mode battle because otherwise you’re not really addressing the problem.

AN: What organizations and projects is Rockefeller funding then to make this happen?

NT: The Brookings Institution has launched a metropolitan infrastructure initiative and put forth a seminal report called "A Bridge To Somewhere." The Bipartisan Policy Center is another grantee that has created a commission-like body that is really trying to think about what the long term vision should look like for transportation and also what is plausible in the short term. We’ve invested as well in the development of Transportation for America coalition, the campaign that will seek to really mobilize people and advance change on Capitol Hill. Building America’s Future is a coalition established by Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger that exhorts the federal government to acknowledge the crisis of insufficient infrastructure investment both in dollar terms but also in terms of climate sustainability. Those are just a few examples of our grantees.

AN: Does the media do an adequate job of covering this set of issues?

NT: No, not yet. I should actually mention that one of the grants that we’ve also made, we’ve established a communications partnership with Channel 13, WNET, which has launched something called "Blueprint America." It’s a multi-platform effort that seeks to explore the challenge facing America’s infrastructure, in particular, transportation infrastructure. One of the reasons why we entered the partnership with WNET was because it’s a complicated issue to understand when you talk about transportation infrastructure. I think that it’s hard to put into sound bites and to simplify in ways that are cogent. Take the example of the high gas prices this summer. To the extent that people discussed policy, it all turned towards expanding offshore drilling and the need for better gas mileage. There was little talk about what the federal, state and local governments can do to really reduce people’s reliance upon the automobile, and therefore reduce their costs. We want to see the paradigm start to shift more in those directions.

With rising gas prices crippling school bus fleets across the U.S., Clarion-Ledger editorial cartoonist Marshall Ramsay offers an intriguing new school transportation idea. Click through to see it.

As the Democratic convention convenes in Denver, Matt Davies of the Journal News drills down on the national energy policy debate. Click through for the punchline.