Massachusetts

Funding from a proposed "cap and invest" program for the northeast could create money for bike lanes and transit-oriented development.

Biking and walking have leveled off and are becoming more dangerous. The federal government and states aren't doing enough.

If states stop ignoring pedestrians, and get serious about protecting them — like Massachusetts has proposed — enormous resources would be available to improve safety.

If we're going to create a safer transportation system, we're going to have to drive less, and a new study of travel and development patterns in Massachusetts sheds light on what can be done to cut down on traffic. Here are the six factors researchers identified that affect the amount people drive.

What if, instead of basing policy around the presumption that people will drive more every year, transportation agencies started making decisions to reduce the volume of driving? And what if they succeed?

Michael Andersen blogs for The Green Lane Project, a PeopleForBikes program that helps U.S. cities build better bike lanes to create low-stress streets.

Stephanie Pollack was one of the first transportation experts who made a serious impression on me. A few weeks after I started working at Streetsblog, at my first Rail~volution conference, she gave a presentation on the complex relationship between transit, gentrification, and car ownership. Her energy, intellectual rigor, and passion for social justice were apparent in her nuanced work exploring the reasons why car ownership rates tend to rise in neighborhoods with new transit services -- and how it hurts not just the transportation system and the environment, but the poor.

Yesterday's elections returned some of the nation's most anti-urban, anti-transit governors to power in races where they were supposed to be vulnerable. Pro-transit candidates were unexpectedly routed in some states, though a few did manage to hang on.

Streetsblog's Parking Madness competition has highlighted the blight that results when large surface parking lots take over a city's downtown. Even though Rochester, winner of 2014's Golden Crater, certainly gains bragging rights, all of the competitors have something to worry about: Cumulatively, the past 50 years of building parking have had a debilitating effect on America's downtowns.