Car Dependence
Why Creating Meaningful Transportation Change Is So Hard
Cross-posted from City Observatory.
October 21, 2015
How America’s Staggering Traffic Death Rate Became Matter-of-Fact
How did more than 30,000 annual motor vehicle deaths become something that most Americans accept as normal? A new paper by Boston University professor Itai Vardi tries to answer that question.
September 14, 2015
How to Make Big Box Stores Less Terrible for Walking: 8 Expert Tips
It's no coincidence that the most dangerous streets in many communities are the ones in front of big box stores.
September 8, 2015
FHWA Gleefully Reports That Driving Is Rising Again
After flatlining for nearly a decade, the mileage driven by Americans is rising once again. That means more traffic overwhelming city streets, slowing down buses, and spewing pollutants into the air. But to the Federal Highway Administration, it's a development to report with barely contained glee.
August 21, 2015
Cities Lead the Way as U.S. Car Commuting Takes Historic Downturn
The decline is small in number, but in the scheme of things, it's huge: New census data [PDF] out last week show car commuting among Americans is finally, after decades of growth, starting to reverse itself.
August 17, 2015
Auto Industry Analyst Predicts Decline of the Two-Car Household
Bailey Mareu, 30, and her husband were looking for ways to save money after she left her job to help run the family business in Lawrence, Kansas, two years ago.
December 2, 2014
Americans Aren’t as Dependent on Cars as You Might Think
Americans drive a lot. About 90 percent live in a household with a car. Among adults, 89 percent are licensed to drive. Overwhelmingly, most people get to work by driving alone.
November 7, 2014
Great Cities Don’t Have Much Traffic, But They Do Have Congestion
Here's a great visualization of what cities get out of the billions of dollars spent on highways and road expansion: more traffic.
October 31, 2014
Confirmed: Sprawl and Bad Transit Increase Unemployment
Since the 1960s and the earliest days of job sprawl, the theory of "spatial mismatch" -- that low-income communities experience higher unemployment because they are isolated from employment centers -- has shaped the way people think about urban form and social equity.
October 30, 2014
“Closing” Lombard Street: The Language of Taking Cars For Granted
A peculiar thing tends to happen when we talk about streets and transportation: We don't talk about cars. Seriously -- listen to conversations, read news headlines, and you'll start to notice that even when cars are the main subject, people will, consciously or unconsciously, fail to explicitly mention them.
May 28, 2014