Study: Sharrows Don’t Make Streets Safer for Cycling
Sharrows are the dregs of bike infrastructure -- the scraps cities hand out when they can't muster the will to implement exclusive space for bicycling. They may help with wayfinding, but do sharrows improve the safety of cycling at all? New research presented at the Transportation Review Board Annual Meeting suggests they don't.
January 14, 2016
Missouri Lawmaker Wants to Require Tall Fluorescent Flags for Cyclists
In what is perhaps the most comical anti-bike legislation to come out of a statehouse in years (and that is really saying something) a Missouri lawmaker has proposed legislation that would require any cyclist riding on a "lettered county road" to use an orange, fluorescent flag that stands at least 15 feet off the ground.
January 14, 2016
Social Engineering! Cities That Build More Parking Get More Traffic
Build parking spaces and they will come -- in cars. New research presented this week at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board finds a direct, causal relationship between the amount of parking in cities and car commuting rates.
January 13, 2016
Blaming Pedestrians While Absolving the Streets That Kill Them
It didn't take long for Louisville to notch its first pedestrian death of the year. Brian O’Neal, 46, was killed on the sixth day of 2016 while trying to cross Dixie Highway.
January 13, 2016
New Evidence That Bus Rapid Transit Done Right Spurs Development
More American cities are considering bus rapid transit, or BRT, as a cost-effective method to expand and improve transit. One of the knocks against BRT, as opposed to rail, is that it supposedly doesn't affect development patterns. But a new study [PDF] by Arthur C. Nelson of the University of Arizona and released by Transportation for America finds that BRT lines can indeed shape real estate and attract jobs -- if the projects are done right.
January 12, 2016
Texas DOT Isn’t Learning From Its Horrific Road Fatalities Calendar
This calendar is published by the Texas Department of Transportation as part of its traffic safety efforts. It shows how many fatal collisions and traffic deaths happened every day of the year. On average, someone is killed every two and a half hours on Texas streets, and someone is injured every two minutes, according to TxDOT [PDF].
January 8, 2016
Portland Bike-Share Ready to Roll Thanks to $10 Million From Nike
"Huge" is how Jonathan Maus at Bike Portland described the news yesterday that Nike will sponsor Portland's upcoming bike-share system to the tune of $10 million.
January 8, 2016
New Philly Mayor: Politicos Can No Longer Park on the City Hall Sidewalk
The Jim Kenney administration is off to a promising start in Philadelphia. One of the mayor's first acts in office was to end the thoroughly obnoxious practice of letting government honchos park on the sidewalk "apron" around City Hall -- a public space.
January 7, 2016
A Letter-Grade System for Walkable Retail Buildings
What makes a building walkable? Or rather, what kind of buildings make a city walkable?
January 7, 2016
What Happened When a Newspaper Became an Advocate for Bicyclists
In too many cities, newspaper coverage of bicycling has stoked some of the darker aspects of human nature. Opinion pieces about bike lanes tend to cater to the reactionary opposition, goading the trolls of the comments section, where casual death threats are standard fare.
January 6, 2016