Streetsblog.net
Streetsblog LA
Chicago Business Owner: No Protected Bike Lanes Is a Dealbreaker
As our Chicago readers are well aware, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has made bike infrastructure a key part of his economic strategy. Since Emanuel took office, Chicago has been adding protected bike lanes perhaps faster than any city in the United States. The famously sharp-tongued Emanuel has even pledged to attract businesses from other cities, notably Seattle, with top-quality bike infra.
October 8, 2013
Did CA Tip the Scales Against LOS? Is The End Near?
There are three little words that will make any livable streets advocate groan: Level of Service.
October 3, 2013
SSTI to Transport Officials: Start Planning for a Future With Less Driving
For a long time in the United States, driving activity moved in step with the economy. Since economic growth was fairly steady, consistent growth in driving was built into all the traffic modeling the engineers used to plan and build streets and transportation infrastructure.
October 3, 2013
Repurposing Streets for All Users in Portland — Maine
All summer, the city of Portland, Maine, has been chipping away at the space it devotes to asphalt. With a reduced lane here, a curb extension there, an added landscaped median, the city is creating a safer, more inviting environment for pedestrians, reports C. Neal at Network blog Rights of Way.
October 1, 2013
Bakersfield Residents Vow to Fight Retrograde Highway Plan
Many American cities, at this point, are waking up with a sort of hangover from the "Interstate Era" that demolished urban neighborhoods to build life-sapping highways. Heck, some really proactive cities are demolishing their underused, elevated, antiquated urban freeways.
September 30, 2013
On Portland’s Hawthorne Bridge, 20 Percent of Traffic Is Bikes
Ever encountered a transportation agency that says it's not worth the money to install bike access on an urban bridge, because bikes aren't "real transportation"? Point them to the case of Portland's Hawthorne Bridge.
September 27, 2013
Businesses in Groningen, the Netherlands: More Bike Traffic, Please
What happens when transportation planners try to accommodate cyclist traffic? If you're in Groningen, the Netherlands, where over half of all trips are made by bike, you get complaints from business owners -- who don't want cyclists diverted from their street.
September 23, 2013
Winning a Campaign for Better Walking and Biking at the Ballot Box
While transit groups have been campaigning for, and winning, ballot measures for years, walking and biking advocacy groups are newer to the ballot referendum game. But as demand for safer streets grows in cities around the country, more and more active transportation groups are seeking voter support for special funding measures.
September 20, 2013
Happy Park(ing) Day: Go Create a Better Street
It's Park(ing) Day around the world -- an international demonstration of the potential to repurpose the space given over to cars in our cities. Right now in more than 160 cities in 35 countries, people are setting up small parks in what, for one day, will turn unremarkable 9-by-18-foot asphalt patches into community gathering spaces.
September 20, 2013
Seattle Reconsiders School Design to Get Kids Walking Again
We know that sedentary behavior is a big contributor to the childhood obesity epidemic in America. And the fact that few children walk to school anymore -- only 13 percent in 2009 compared to more than 50 percent in their parents' generation -- is part of the problem.
September 19, 2013