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What If Someone Made a Car Ad That Reflected Reality?
You can't avoid them: leaping out of your television, a magazine, or the billboard you walk by on the overpass. There they are -- cars, sleek and shiny, racing unfettered on some pristine street to the soothing tones of a hyper-masculine narrator.
July 8, 2013
After 50 Years of Sprawl, a Profound Sense of Loss
Decades ago, Kent was a small Ohio college town, some 40 miles from Cleveland, surrounded by countryside, streams, and thick forests.
July 2, 2013
Ding Dong, Portland’s CRC Mega-Highway Is Dead!
It's a good day for advocates of a more human-scaled transportation system. The Portland region's $3.2 billion, bi-state mega-highway project, the unassumingly-named Columbia River Crossing, won't be built. The Washington state legislature adjourned yesterday without voting on a transportation package that would have provided funding for the project, which led the Columbian to say, stick a fork in it, "the Columbia River Crossing is dead."
July 1, 2013
DC Police Wrongly Presume Injured Cyclist Guilty: “C’mon, You’re a Biker”
How many times have you read about someone who was injured while walking or biking, only to be found at fault by law enforcement? And in those cases, how many times did police blame the victim based on nothing more than self-serving testimony from the driver? That's what happened to Zach T. in Washington, DC, this spring, but thanks to his own persistence and detective work, he was able to prove the driver's account wrong and obtain some measure of delayed justice.
June 28, 2013
Walking With Your Baby on Some of the Most Dangerous Streets in America
Miami, and Florida in general, is a notoriously dangerous place to walk. The top four most dangerous cities for pedestrians are all in the Sunshine State, according to Transportation for America, with Miami, a city of wide roads and narrow sidewalks, coming in at number four.
June 27, 2013
The Problem With Park-and-Rides
There it is, at your typical American suburban transit stop: a parking lot -- a free one, probably.
June 26, 2013
Fossil Fuel-Funded Foundation Not Very Good at Predicting Rail Ridership
This is going to come as a shock, but counting the number of passengers on a new transit line the first week it opens isn't that great a way to predict whether that line will be successful in the long term.
June 24, 2013
In Bogotá, “Mejor en Bici” Shows the City Is Better on a Bicycle
Bogotá, Colombia, has a deserved reputation as one of the best biking cities in Latin America. Former mayor Enrique Peñalosa helped endow the city with a system of all-ages bikeways. But like many global cities, Bogotá still struggles with congestion and car dependence, and cycling rates during the week are much lower than the weekends, when everyone comes out for the city's famous Ciclovía.
June 21, 2013
The Defense Department’s Embrace of Livability Will Save Money — and Lives
On Tuesday, we wrote about the Defense Department’s new rules for the design of their bases and installations. These rules make smart growth the law of the land on hundreds of vast military installations in the U.S. and abroad. There’s more to the story: In this post we examine how a smart growth development model will bring wide-ranging benefits to the defense complex.
June 21, 2013
T4A: One in Nine American Bridges Structurally Deficient
There's a new report out on the state of America's bridges, and with it a new raft of disturbing statistics. Nearly one in nine, or 11 percent, are structurally deficient -- meaning a bridge inspector has rated a major component of the structure to be in poor condition. The average age of a bridge in the United States is 43 years; the average design life, 50 years.
June 20, 2013