Sarah Goodyear

Streetsblog Network member Boston Biker has picked up the most recent Streetfilms release, Fixing the Great Mistake: Autocentric Development, and written an eloquent post about the necessity of moving away from car-centered planning.

The Vancouver Olympics may be over, but Jarrett Walker at Human Transit writes that the legacy for public transportation in that city could be a lasting one. During the games, the city moved nearly 1.7 million people per day on its transit system. Walker sees it as a sort of Olympic exhibition of what the future could hold:

The theme of today's post from the Streetsblog Network is mayors who talk sense. First, at Fort Worthology, Kevin Buchanan files a report on what Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief had to say in his State of the City address:

Today from Streetsblog Network member GreenCityBlueLake, an update on the push to include bicycle and pedestrian facilities on a reconstructed Innerbelt Bridge over the Cuyahoga River -- an accommodation that the Ohio DOT has been resisting. In the latest development, Rep. Dennis Kucinich has stepped up his involvement. From GCBL:

There's a lot going on around the Streetsblog Network today. From A Place of Sense, in Indianapolis, comes a post about that city's parking policies. A developer there, seeking to renovate an abandoned apartment building in an area with many parking lots, requested a variance from the city's requirement that developments provide their own off-street parking. The request was denied, and the building will remain vacant for the foreseeable future.

One of our Streetsblog Network member bloggers had a terrifying encounter with a pickup truck full of drunken men the other night. , who writes the blog Imagine No Cars, wrote of being chased through the streets of Missoula, Montana, in fear for his life:

Did you commute by bike this morning? (I'm not at the office yet today, but that's how I'm going to get there.) If so, you might be surprised to hear that "a bicycle is not a transportation device." Those are the perplexing words of John Cook, a supervisor in Fairfax County, Virginia. 

The Streetsblog Network has been abuzz over the last 24 hours about the TIGER grants that were announced yesterday by the US DOT. Elana had some great roundups on this site yesterday about winners and losers in the highly competitive process.

Today on the Streetsblog Network, we're thinking about the reinvention of cars. At his blog The Bellows, Ryan Avent has written a two-part piece about how best to enable innovation in car design. His starting point is a review in The American Prospect of a new book called Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century, which takes a gung-ho approach to futuristic, nimble, hyperconnected vehicles that will essentially drive themselves. It's a dream that goes back generations, and it's still quite robust.

Yesterday on the Streetsblog Network, member blog Portlandize published a great post summarizing the economic benefits of better cycling infrastructure. The piece serves as a response to those who might have their doubts about Portland's ambitious new Bicycle Plan for 2030.