Sarah Goodyear

The theme of today's post from the Streetsblog Network is mayors who talk sense. First, at Fort Worthology, Kevin Buchanan files a report on what Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief had to say in his State of the City address:

Today from Streetsblog Network member GreenCityBlueLake, an update on the push to include bicycle and pedestrian facilities on a reconstructed Innerbelt Bridge over the Cuyahoga River -- an accommodation that the Ohio DOT has been resisting. In the latest development, Rep. Dennis Kucinich has stepped up his involvement. From GCBL:

There's a lot going on around the Streetsblog Network today. From A Place of Sense, in Indianapolis, comes a post about that city's parking policies. A developer there, seeking to renovate an abandoned apartment building in an area with many parking lots, requested a variance from the city's requirement that developments provide their own off-street parking. The request was denied, and the building will remain vacant for the foreseeable future.

One of our Streetsblog Network member bloggers had a terrifying encounter with a pickup truck full of drunken men the other night. The author of the blog Imagine No Cars wrote of being chased through the streets of Missoula, Montana, in fear for his life:

Did you commute by bike this morning? (I'm not at the office yet today, but that's how I'm going to get there.) If so, you might be surprised to hear that "a bicycle is not a transportation device." Those are the perplexing words of John Cook, a supervisor in Fairfax County, Virginia. 

Today on the Streetsblog Network, we're thinking about parking, thanks to a post from The Overhead Wire on the devastating effect that parking structures and highways can have on a city's infrastructure:

The Streetsblog Network has been abuzz over the last 24 hours about the TIGER grants that were announced yesterday by the US DOT. Elana had some great roundups on this site yesterday about winners and losers in the highly competitive process.

Today on the Streetsblog Network, we're thinking about the reinvention of cars. At his blog The Bellows, Ryan Avent has written a two-part piece about how best to enable innovation in car design. His starting point is a review in The American Prospect of a new book called Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century, which takes a gung-ho approach to futuristic, nimble, hyperconnected vehicles that will essentially drive themselves. It's a dream that goes back generations, and it's still quite robust.

Yesterday on the Streetsblog Network, member blog Portlandize published a great post summarizing the economic benefits of better cycling infrastructure. The piece serves as a response to those who might have their doubts about Portland's ambitious new Bicycle Plan for 2030.

A couple of months ago, we wrote about Clevelanders protesting a $450 million rebuilding of the city's Innerbelt Bridge that fails to include bike and pedestrian access. Since then, the Ohio Department of Transportation has dug in its heels, saying that there is no time to make any amendments to the environmental impact statement on the project before a March 2 deadline.