Streetsblog.net

A recent guest editorial in the Denver Post argued that "it's time to Uber our bus system" with privately operated demand-responsive service downtown.

The culture war against biking and walking continues in Wisconsin under the guise of fiscal conservatism.

Fast-growing Texas cities have an enormous traffic problem -- that much isn't in dispute. But the response has been myopic: pouring more and more money into widening highways. Even the road engineers at the Texas Transportation Institute recently acknowledged there's no way these cities can fund and build highway lanes fast enough to keep pace with population growth. That's in no small part because widening and expanding highways fuels sprawl that induces more car trips, TTI acknowledged.

Ohio's cities have been declining, and traffic congestion isn't the problem. The highway system, if anything, is overbuilt.

State departments of transportation all over the country use specious traffic projections to justify hugely expensive road widening projects. That's how you end up with the graph on the right -- showing how DOTs continued to forecast traffic growth year after year, even as driving stagnated.

Complaining about traffic is practically a sport in Atlanta. Which makes sense, since traffic in the region is absolutely miserable.

If you're behind the wheel of a car, law enforcement will let you get away with just about anything -- even smashing into a house and pulverizing a crib where an infant was sleeping.

This is how it begins: Local leaders in Milwaukee commissioned a study examining whether the city's convention center is up to snuff. Surprise, surprise, reports Bruce Murphy at Urban Milwaukee: Hunden Strategic Partners, a consulting firm that loves convention centers, says Milwaukee really ought to be pumping a bunch of public money into expanding its convention facilities and a new arena for its NBA franchise, the Bucks. Oh, and a large publicly subsidized hotel wouldn't hurt either. This is the same outfit that did the study for Kansas City's Power and Light District, which has turned into a notorious money pit for the city.

The Congress for New Urbanism has posted a video of Jarrett Walker (of Human Transit fame) delivering a new presentation, "Learning the Language of Transit." There's a passage where Walker frames transit as not simply a mode of transportation, but a means to access your city and, ultimately, the freedom and opportunity to do the things you want.