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For the Record, the Feds Don’t Require Streets to Speed Car Traffic
When advocating for a street redesign that will take some space away from cars, it's common to run up against this classic brush-off from your local transportation agency: The federal government won't allow it.
May 13, 2016
Zoning Reform Will Boost Housing Affordability and Walkability in D.C.
A change to D.C.'s zoning code will allow homeowners to build and rent out a basement apartment, or an apartment over the garage, without the long, expensive hassle of obtaining special permission.
May 11, 2016
How Boston Will Cut Transit Construction Costs Without Diluting Transit
Boston's 4.7-mile Green Line extension is supposed to bring light rail service to some of the nation's most densely populated neighborhoods, but skyrocketing construction costs have threatened to sink the project. After the price tag ballooned to $3 billion last year, about a 50 percent increase, the project was in danger of being cancelled altogether.
May 10, 2016
Paris Kicks Off Monthly Car-Free Sundays on the Champs-Élysées
It's been almost six months since Paris held its big car-free day, a jubilant event that temporarily cleared the air of poisonous diesel emissions and imparted a sense of how great streets could be without the constant roar of motor vehicles.
May 9, 2016
Using Stress Maps to Identify Gaps in the Bike Network
Here's an interesting way to evaluate how well a street network works for biking. Stephen Tu and Alex Rixey are mapping streets in Montgomery County, Maryland, based on how comfortable riders of different skill levels find them.
May 6, 2016
How Would Jane Jacobs Zone?
Everyone's paying tribute to Jane Jacobs today, on what would be the pioneering urbanist's 100th birthday. Jacobs' classic critique of mid-century American urban planning dogma, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is probably the most influential book ever written about planning. But her legacy is also contested, and her ideas still go unheeded in most cities. Was she too averse to change? And how do her theories of city-building work in practice?
May 4, 2016
Cyclists Will Pay to Park at Seattle’s New Light Rail Stations. Will Drivers?
Right now, the Seattle region is hashing out how to spend $50 billion to expand transit. The project list, known as ST3, is tilted heavily toward the suburbs, not the urban core where ridership would be higher.
May 3, 2016
Take a Moment to Appreciate the Absolute Enormity of This Interchange
Every once in a while you have to step back and gape at the sheer scale of the highway interchanges America has built smack in the middle of our cities.
April 28, 2016
When Homeowners Near Good Transit Refuse to Share the Neighborhood
This video from the Minneapolis-based satirical site Wedge LIVE sends up the not-in-my-backyard resistance to infill development that could help alleviate the shortage of affordable housing affecting a growing number of American cities.
April 27, 2016
Tell the Feds: Don’t Turn City Streets Into Highways
Will the Obama administration prod state DOTs to abandon the destructive practice of widening roads and highways, or will it further entrench policies that have hollowed out cities and towns, increased traffic and car dependence, and made America a world leader in carbon pollution?
April 22, 2016