Out of Town

Gresham, Oregon used to look like your typical suburb. Lots of lawns and lots of parking. When Portland’s MAX light-rail line expanded to Gresham, developers saw an opportunity to bring something different: walkable development. But a downturn in the local real estate market interceded. One developer trying to build a four-story condo project decided that … Continued

After Sen. Scott Brown's (R-MA) January upset in the race for the congressional seat long held by the late Ted Kennedy, his win was chalked up to several factors: voter reluctance to embrace health care reform, campaign-trail gaffes by the Democratic candidate -- and a hyper-folksy ad campaign that featured Brown cruising around the state meeting voters in his "old truck."

"Folks, you ain't seen nothing yet," Mayor Bloomberg told an Earth Day crowd yesterday. "The best and greenest days are yet to come." The PlaNYC update coming in 2011, he implied, would have a slew of new initiatives to make our city more sustainable, and he's taking suggestions. 

It was a privilege and honor for my artwork to represent the United States at the United Nation Habitat organized World Urban Forum (WUF) in Brazil. The theme of the fifth biannual conference was The Right to the City: Bridging the Urban Divide. The Forum was established by the United Nations in 2002 to examine urgent problems facing the world today. The conference focused on rapid urbanization and its impact on cities, economies, climate change, and policies. It brought together over 17,000 participants including government leaders, ministers, mayors, diplomats, regional and international associations, community groups, and practitioners. The US delegation was comprised of high-level staff from the White House Office of Urban Affairs, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the State Department, the United States Agency for International Development, and the United States Department of Agriculture. This year, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan led the US delegation.

Amid the good vibes yesterday over new federal funding agreements for transit projects in New York City, Oakland, Hartford, and other metro areas, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) also offered a spell of bad news to a few local proposals that are still working to meet the agency's standards for aid.

Here at LA Streetsblog, we spend a lot of time looking at some of the bicycle and pedestrian designs from around the world and going "why not us?"  Budapest.  Copehnagen.  Beijing.  Heck, even Tempe and Baltimore are doing better when it comes to supporting cyclists.

Delhi, home to over 12 million people and the seat of India's national government, is widely considered to have the most dangerous traffic in the world.

The Transportation Enhancements program, which requires states to set aside 10 percent of their federal transport money for new bicycle and pedestrian facilities, among other projects, turns 19 years old this year. But you'd almost never know it after reading Saturday's Fort Worth Star-Telegram, in which the paper tallies -- with no shortage of alarm -- the federal money not being spent on new roads.

Miami's conversion of HOV lane space to new high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes as part of the federal Urban Partnership program, which also prompted New York City's congestion pricing push, is cutting travel times for local transit and boosting use -- but overall bus ridership in the corridor has stayed static, according to a new report from the U.S. DOT.