Month: February 2010

First Lady Michelle Obama took to the mikes this afternoon to kick off a national campaign to combat childhood obesity, emphasizing new initiatives to promote biking and walking alongside a strong focus on healthier food options in schools.

We got an e-mail late last night from Kevin Buchanan, who runs the Fort Worthology blog down in Fort Worth, Texas, with some very good news for that city's streets. Here's what Kevin had to report:

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Last week, the LA Bike Working Group began to release parts of "L.A.'s Best Bike Plan" in the form of the Backbone Bikeway Network maps and started a new conversation about the state of bike planning in Los Angeles.  The maps, first published on three members of the steering committee's blogs, moved to LAist and then on to the mainstream media.

Now that the Obama administration has awarded $8 billion in high-speed rail grants to more than two dozen states, with $2.5 billion more coming soon, why not keep thinking big when it comes to bullet-train expansion?

Picture a future where a smiling multi-racial police force, who apparently answers to nobody, moves unchecked through society arresting and detaining people for offenses to the environment.  Use plastic bags at the grocers?  You're arrested, frisked, and handcuffed before being frog marched from the store.  Set your hot tub at too high a temperature?  You're chased, mostly naked, through your back yard by a hoard of police officers.  Sound like a nightmare scenario dreamed up by a conservative talk radio host?  Nope, it's just another greenwashing attempt from the same car company that mocks cyclists, bus riders, pedestrians and people who drive cars run on vegetable oil.

As I noted in my previous commentary "Metro In Transition", while the Sectors are being disbanded the Governance Councils continue in their role of providing oversight of Metro bus operations.

Pensacola, Florida. Springfield, Missouri. Fort Wayne, Indiana. All three of those metropolitan areas have populations between 350,000 and 500,000, and all three would have been required to install nitrogen dioxide monitoring stations near major roadways under a new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule cracking down on the pollutant.

We turn to the Streetsblog Network for a little inspiration this morning, courtesy of Robin Chase — author of the blog Network Musings and former CEO of Zipcar. Chase shares a story from a friend in India, Vinay Jayaswal, who believes that meaningful change on the most overwhelming issues can, and must, begin with the … Continued