Month: September 2009

Chris Essel becomes the most recent, and perhaps last, candidate to fill out our CD2 Questionnaire.  As CD2 residents are hopefully aware, the Special Election is next Tuesday.  On Monday Streetsblog will run a wrap up piece that will include excerpts from all the interviews and a series of videos by Stephen Box.

Interest groups seeking to influence transportation policy-making have long flooded the capital with campaign cash and lobbyists -- and their numbers are rising at an eye-popping rate. Nearly 1,800 interests are employing at least 2,100 transportation lobbyists to work the system in anticipation of the next federal infrastructure bill, according to a Center for Public Integrity investigation unveiled today.

On Monday, we featured a post from The Transit Pass that called out Dallas as one of the U.S. cities in which the proportion of transit users to population is sadly anemic.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill.

The final fuel-efficiency rule released by the Obama administration this morning includes what some lobbyists have nicknamed "the German provision," giving automakers that sell less than 400,000 vehicles in the U.S. an exemption for 25 percent of their fleet.

Jane Jacobs. Photo: BusinessWeek She may be experiencing an intellectual reconsideration in some corners, but Jane Jacobs is still a beloved figure for the urban planners and designers of Planetizen. After a month-long online poll that saw more than 14,000 votes cast, the site released its list of the “Top 100 Urban Thinkers” today — … Continued

Last weekend the Eco-Village sponsored a weekend of events designed to empower the residents within and surrounding the Eco-Village and reclaim their streets.  On Friday night, they hosted Portland architect and activist Mark Lakeman, founder of the City Repair movement, who encouraged those listening to think of themselves as villagers empowered to take control of their streets instead of vassals to the bureaucracy known as local government and DOT's.  On Saturday, they took his words to heart and went to work on their own street at Bimini Place.

Last Saturday night, transportation activists Stephen and Enci Box arrived at the Hollywood and Western Metro Red Line station and found the station in shambles.  A homeless encampment had moved onto the top floor, five of the six escalators were out of order and the "emergency intercom" was broken.

Today on the Streetsblog Network, we've got a post about unfulfilled potential -- American cities that could do a lot better at getting people to ride transit.