Just a few months after Houston reorganized its bus network to provide more frequent service where more people can use it — without increasing the operating budget — ridership is already on the upswing. A lot goes in to bus network analysis and how to put scarce resources to better use. But some inefficiencies clearly stand out on a […]

With a few exceptions, the five-year transportation bill heading to President Obama’s desk continues what has been the core function of federal transportation policy for more than 60 years — sending a ton of money to the states to spend on highways. Preventing a big step backward was about as much as you could hope […]

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 […]

Today on the Streetsblog Network, Mary Newsom at the Naked City has a classic story about a dangerous street in desperate need of a design overhaul, and a DOT that’s only willing to try out tiny, cosmetic changes. Charlotte is out with its annual list of high-crash intersections, and not for the first time, the […]

On Sunday residents of Portland got a preview of Tilikum Crossing, a.k.a. the “Bridge of the People,” described by Michael Andersen of BikePortland as “the first bridge in the United States to carry buses, bikes, trains, streetcars and people walking but no private cars.” Tilikum Crossing is the first bridge constructed over the Willamette River […]

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 […]

In the early 20th century “chauffeur” was synonymous with “motorist,” and by 1906 Life Magazine had had enough of them. Doug Gordon at Brooklyn Spoke dug up a column titled “Get After the Chauffeurs,” in which Life reported on a two-vehicle crash in Central Park that killed several people, including the driver who caused the collision. “That one got […]

Here’s a look at what’s happening around the Streetsblog Network today… Washington Governor Jay Inslee may go ahead and swallow the “poison pill” that Republican legislators insisted on including in a state transportation package, reports Frank Chachiere at Seattle Transit Blog. That would mean Inslee will go ahead with a low-carbon fuel standard for the state, which will […]

Voters in Montgomery County, Texas, rejected a road-building bond referendum. Despite local support for transit, county leaders plan to give the referendum another try. The Houston Chronicle reports that opposition to a $350 million bond measure, all of it for road construction, was led by residents of one affluent enclave who don’t want a traffic-inducing parkway extension. But there’s […]

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 to your city and, ultimately, the freedom and opportunity to do the […]