Bicycle Infrastructure
AASHTO Adds Designs to Bikeway Guide, But Not Protected Bike Lanes
Last week, AASHTO, the national association of state DOTs, published the first update to its bicycle facility design guide in 13 years (available online for $144). Since many transportation engineers take their cues from AASHTO, there was an urgent need to update the 1999 guide, which failed to include many effective design treatments and promoted some standards that actually made streets more dangerous. The new guide includes some significant steps forward, but it still lacks the bikeway designs widely recognized as the best practice for making cycling a mainstream mode of transport.
June 19, 2012
Green Lane Project Spreads the Word About NACTO’s Bikeway Design Guide
For the next two years, the Green Lane Project will lend expertise and support to Austin, Chicago, Memphis, Portland, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. as those cities implement the type of infrastructure that has proven successful at leading people to take up biking for transportation. The project bills itself as a “storytelling campaign” for the cities to share their experiences.
May 29, 2012
The Unintended Consequences of Michigan Students’ Bike-to-School “Prank”
Tuesday morning, a group of intrepid high schoolers in the western Michigan city of Walker got onto their bikes and into a heap of trouble.
May 24, 2012
New WHO Tool Calculates the Health Savings of Bike/Ped Infrastructure
Sidewalks, bike lanes, traffic calming projects -- they save lives. Not just by protecting cyclists and pedestrians (not to mention motorists), but by encouraging physical activity that leads to a healthy life.
March 23, 2012
Cold Climate Can’t Stop Minneapolis’s Surging Bike Rates
Good news out of the Sierra Club Green Transportation Campaign, whose national conservation organizer Rachel Butler brings our attention to Minneapolis's first ever Bicycle Account [PDF]. The compilation of cycling-related data shows a marked increase in the number of cyclists and a steadily decreasing injury rate to go along with substantial investments in bicycle infrastructure on city streets.
January 20, 2012
Lessons From the Former Chairman: Oberstar on Ending the Interstate Era
Streetsblog had a chance today to ask the former Democratic chief of the House Transportation Committee, Rep. James Oberstar of Minnesota, about life since the 2010 election, when he lost by a hair to Republican Chip Cravaack. He said he's spending his post-Congress time traveling to France, getting paid to say things he used to say for free, and telling his four kids and seven grandkids the story of his wife, who succombed to breast cancer 20 years ago.
October 14, 2011
Mica Won’t Say Where Transpo Funding Will Come From; LaHood Defends TE
House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica (R-FL) said this morning that getting permission from Republican leadership to find more revenues to fund the transportation bill was a “major breakthrough” but still won’t say where the money will come from.
October 14, 2011
LaHood: Communities Should Embrace Next-Gen Bikeway Design Guide
If Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has anything to say about it, every transportation planner in the country should have a shiny new engineering guide on his or her bookshelf.
October 14, 2011
Mayors Rebel Against State-Controlled Highway Expansion, Fight For Transit
If your roads are congested, your bus lines are getting cut, and money is flowing to brand-new roads to nowhere, don’t blame your mayor. Chances are, he or she is as mad about it as you are. Mayors are speaking out against ineffective transportation funding mechanisms that direct scarce resources to sprawling highways and away from urban transit and safer streets for walking and biking.
May 3, 2011