Streetsblog.net
A Look at the Year Ahead for Transit Expansion
At The Transport Politic, Yonah Freemark has made it a tradition to catalog new transit projects every year. He reports that 2014 will see a significant expansion of rail and bus rapid transit lines. "Virtually every metropolitan region in the United States and Canada is investing millions of dollars in new transit expansion projects," he writes:
January 6, 2014
What If We Rated Schools by Walkability?
We live in an era when school ratings are everywhere. Assigning "grades" to schools based on academic performance is a famously tricky proposition, though. Maybe there are other metrics that are much more straightforward.
January 3, 2014
2013 in City Transportation — Two Steps Forward…
Looking back at the year in transportation reform, there are certainly many reasons to be encouraged about what's happening in cities around the United States. Here are some 2013 retrospectives from Streetsblog Network members that give snapshots of two places that are making progress on active transportation, and one where the prevailing dynamic is still stuck in the 20th Century.
January 2, 2014
Milwaukee’s Job Sprawl Mess: a Cautionary Tale
Remember how suburban office parks used to be all the rage? Their strongest selling point was that you didn't have to pay to park at them. And if you lived in the suburbs anyway, you could avoid the hassle of going into the city, basically, ever. What could go wrong?
December 20, 2013
Seattle’s Uber Crackdown Would Protect Taxi Industry, Hurt Riders
The Seattle City Council is poised to pass some legislation that would crack down on popular ridesharing services like Lyft and UberX.
December 19, 2013
Are Regional Transit Agencies Too Beholden to the Suburbs?
The conflict over the Cincinnati Streetcar is clearly rooted in some sort of geographic tension. The new mayor, whose strength comes from the city's outer neighborhoods, has taken aim at a project held very dear by people who live in the city center -- and now the whole country's watching to see if the city will squander the millions it's already spent on the project.
December 18, 2013
How to Ruin Your Street Grid With Highways, Parking, and Superblocks
Street grids are a key ingredient in a walkable city. Fortunately, many American cities -- especially the older ones -- were endowed with tightly knit grids, dispersing traffic of all types and creating good connections for people on foot.
December 17, 2013
Making Private Donors Pay for Cincy Streetcar: A Classic Double-Standard
This is a make or break week for the Cincinnati streetcar. The Federal Transit Administration has given the city until Thursday to provide "unequivocal" assurances that the "paused" project will proceed at the agreed upon schedule, or the agency will revoke its $45 million grant to the project.
December 16, 2013
Study: Parking Minimums Cost Seattle Renters $246 a Month
In Seattle, it's now legal in certain neighborhoods to build apartment buildings with no parking. By saving on parking costs, owners can offer lower rents, and developers say there are waiting lists for parking-free buildings.
December 13, 2013
Oregonians Less Interested in Bigger Highways, More Excited for Bike/Ped
By more than a two-to-one margin, Oregon residents would rather maintain existing highways than expand them. That's one of the most interesting findings from a recent survey of state residents taken by the Oregon Department of Transportation.
December 12, 2013