Young people

At some point over the past few years, a lot of my friends started moving to Silver Spring and Takoma Park and Falls Church. These inner-ring, transit-connected suburbs of DC are still far less compact and walkable than the neighborhoods my friends moved from. So they bought cars.

The downward slide continues.

We continue our Streetfacts series by looking at the data on driving in the U.S. Per-capita driving has declined every year since 2005. That's not a blip, it's now an 8-year trend.

Tony Dutzik is senior policy analyst with Frontier Group, a non-profit public policy think tank.

Everything you think you know about bicycling is wrong. At the National Women’s Bicycling Forum this morning, one message came through: the underrepresentation of women and people of color in cycling isn't simply due to safety concerns and lack of protected infrastructure, as is often surmised. It's more complicated than that.

The other day I stumbled upon a document from the Ohio Department of Transportation called Ohio's Job's and Transportation Plan [PDF]. As I read it, I couldn't help but feel pessimistic about the direction of the state.

Many American cities are proving to be more resilient than suburban areas thanks in part to the shifting preferences of today's young people. But as USA Today reported in a talked-about article earlier this week, the cohort that has flocked to cities is now reaching a stage of life which, historically, has been more closely associated with suburbia.

What is it with kids today? They just don't seem to be that interested in driving.

Childless urbanites love to hate the stroller. New Yorker Laura Miller started a blog, “Too Big For Stroller,” dedicated to mocking older children who get around the easy way. Commenters on a Greater Greater Washington story about strollers on buses last year showcased surprising vitriol, saying, “Carry your child, like an able-bodied adult should” and “Pretty lousy parenting, when you could fold the stroller and hold the child” and “Keep those strollers off our buses.” There are internet rants against giant, SUV-style strollers (and, five years ago on Streetsblog, a defense). A New York Times story about stroller rage ended up plumbing deeper emotional issues around unequal social status for breeders and non-breeders.