Quality of Life

The connection between walkable development and grocery shopping may not seem immediately apparent -- until you consider studies conducted in cities from Austin to Seattle that showed the share of trips taken by foot or by transit rises as local food outlets move closer to residential areas.

On the issue of clean transportation, from transit to bike paths to clean water, few members of Congress are as knowledgeable or active as Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR). Chief of the Congressional Bicycle Caucus and founder of the new Livable Communities Task Force, the Portland lawmaker is on the front lines of Washington's biggest infrastructure debates. Streetsblog Capitol Hill spoke with him yesterday about the prospects for transportation in the coming jobs bill, which he has said could be paid for in part with Wall Street bailout money. Below is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion.

Back in June, when the Senate was in the early stages of its marathon health care reform debate, several Republicans blasted the  proposed legislation for including a grant program aimed at encouraging construction of local infrastructure to promote healthier movement.

Streetsblog New York reported last week on the state DOT's expensive plan to widen part of the Major Deegan Expressway in the southwest Bronx, even as the agency fails to maintain upstate bridges. 

One of the themes of the financial and economic crisis we've faced over the past two years is that government, pressed into responding to serious economic pain, has often found itself supporting the activities that got us into this mess in the first place.

Early this week, I noticed a number of my favorite bloggers linking to this Elisabeth Rosenthal essay at Environment 360, on the mysterious greenness of European nations. The average American, as it happens, produces about twice as much carbon dioxide each year as your typical resident of Western Europe.

Despite talk of a nascent economic recovery, the brutal toll exacted on state budgets by the recession continues -- with palpable consequences for transit riders and already lower-income urbanites. Could the cure for cities' fiscal woes be a dramatic shift in drug policy?

Debate over the incendiary urban policy issue of gun possession came to a head today in the Senate, as a proposal to let individuals carry concealed firearms into states with strong weapons limits -- such as New York and Illinois -- was defeated by a narrow margin.

The link between transportation and public health, explored on this page days ago, is plumbed further in a report released today by PolicyLink and the Prevention Institute with an introduction by Jim Oberstar (D-MN), chairman of the House transport committee.