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Whose Parking Regime Reigns Supreme? LA, SF, and NYC Compare Notes
Less than a week after Queens Community Board 3 signed off on DOT's PARK Smart pilot for Jackson Heights, New York's neighborhood-level parking policy changes were given some national context on Wednesday at the National Association of City Transportation Officials' "Designing Cities" conference.
October 26, 2012
Remembering When Our Streets Belonged to Everyone
Just a few generations ago, streets were places of commerce and play, places to socialize, places where public life happened. The author of the Chicago-based Get Around Blog just finished reading Peter Norton's book, Fighting Traffic, which outlines in fascinating-yet-depressing detail how the rise of the automobile rudely interrupted this whole way of life.
October 24, 2012
Teenagers’ Cars Are the Gifts That Keep on Wreaking Havoc
The multiple-teenager-fatality car crash remains a sad staple of journalism. And no wonder. The instant loss of several lives is so dreadful and the death of a young person so poignant that the combination is shattering. When a car-full of teens crash and die, the article can almost be assembled by rote: the devastated families, the grieving community, the investigation that will forever be “ongoing,” and the seeming arbitrariness of young lives snuffed out in a few seconds.
October 16, 2012
When Will We See a Department of Transportation and Land Use?
The way we design cities in the U.S. is dysfunctional, and the reasons for that are many. But among the most important is how our public agencies are structured, argues Nathaniel Hood at Strong Towns.
October 12, 2012
Florida and Kansas Reverse Course on Spurned Trails Funding
It wasn't too long ago we reported that 48 states had elected to preserve funding for recreational trails, after the new transportation bill made it possible for states to "opt out" of much of the funding for active transportation.
October 9, 2012
Greater Atlanta Continues to Treat Walking Like a Crime
Despite the national outrage over the Raquel Nelson case, officials in metro Atlanta continue to treat pedestrians like criminals.
October 3, 2012
Private Bus Routes and Silicon Valley’s Outmoded Office Model
The image to the right is a transit frequency map, with a twist. Instead of city bus routes, this one shows the private bus routes traveled daily by Silicon Valley employees on their way from San Francisco to their respective corporate headquarters some 40 miles away.
October 3, 2012
Is Your Region a “Complete Community”?
We do a lot of transportation coverage at Streetsblog, but, as we all know, the way people get around fits into a bigger picture: the way communities function. When we talk about streets we're also talking about job access, quality of life, sustainability and health.
October 2, 2012
How Streets Designed for Speed Led to the Death of Seventh Grade Girl
Get hit by a car traveling 20 miles per hour, and the odds are 19 to 1 that you, the pedestrian, will live to see another walk around the block. But if the vehicle's speed at impact increases just ten miles per hour, your chances are barely better than 50-50. And if a driver hits you at 40 miles per hour, there's almost a nine in ten chance that you won't survive.
October 1, 2012
The Tricky Politics of Introducing a Streetcar to a City
Adding a new streetcar in a city with less-than-fantastic transit, or in a red or purple state, is not for the faint of heart. Nobody in the country has fought harder for their streetcar than Cincinnati, prevailing over assaults by local, state and federal actors.
September 28, 2012