As part of her graduate studies, Emily Washington at Network blog Market Urbanism set out to determine if people were willing to pay a premium for housing in a walkable urban setting. She developed two different models to see if there’s a link between housing prices and Walk Scores in 259 cities. Wouldn’t you know it, she [...]
The elegant Talgo trainsets ordered by the Doyle administration for the Amtrak Hiawatha are nearly complete. But will they ever be used? Alas, Sunday is quite possibly the only day you will ever get to go inside them. Tours, children’s activities, and refreshments will be available at the Talgo assembly facility from noon until 3 p.m. on [...]
Major media outlets can be harsh to bicyclists — often inexplicably or irrationally harsh. Even progressive sites like Salon are not immune, as we’ve written about before. Today Adonia Lugo at Urban Adonia points to another unexpected source of venom: the feminist blogosphere, a.k.a. ladyblogs. These bastions of tolerance and acceptance have a strange blind spot for [...]
At this month’s New Jersey Department of Transportation complete streets workshop in Mercer County, South Brunswick High School (SBHS) Student Council President Ian Moritz and Recording Secretary Dan Gorzynski might have seemed a bit younger than the rest of the crowd, but they came for the same reason as everyone else: they were interested in making streets [...]
It’s funny how often public transit referendums bring out the the best in local communities. The case of Baton Rouge, Louisiana is a perfect example: Voters recently decided to essentially double investment in public transit — rescuing their transit agency from a long slide into irrelevance. Stephen Lee Davis at Transportation for America took an in depth [...]
Well, LA Times reporter Ralph Vartabedian is at it again. Last month he triggered a false alarm over high-speed rail operating costs. Now he has made new allegations over the “aggressive” construction schedule: If California starts building a 130-mile segment of high-speed rail late this year as planned, it will enter into a risky race [...]
Publicly backed sports arenas are always a gamble. Sold as a way to attract investment and energy, they can become big public liabilities, draining money for more essential services. But that doesn’t stop too many cities, and there are examples of places that have gambled on sports facilities and won big. There’s a new member [...]
Sunday Parkways got off to a great start yesterday as throngs of Portlanders enjoyed the warm sun and rolled through eight-miles of carfree northeast neighborhoods. The City of Portland put the total crowd at an estimated 28,250, which makes it just a few thousand shy of the record (31,600, in North Portland last summer). The [...]
Smart growth is affordable. Smart growth is healthy. More and more, smart growth is what people prefer. And yet, the view that smart growth policies are being forced on people, or that they are some sort of global conspiracy à la Agenda 21, has no shortage of adherents. Even in Portland, a group called the Oregon Transformation [...]
In a recent guest post, Peter Brown praised the Tyne and Wear (greater Newcastle) region in the UK for seeking to regain government powers of integrated planning. The new paradigm is what the Brits call a “contract scheme” in which the government controls planning and operators provide service under contract with government. This is pretty [...]
When African American residents in Portland initially opposed the extension of bike lanes on North Williams Avenue last year, it seemed to signify a wider perception that bike infrastructure mainly serves white professionals. While cycling for transportation is most common among low-income Americans, bike lanes were only on the table for North Williams once more affluent people [...]
Local communities across the country are preparing to vote on the people, plans and projects that will set the tone for transportation progress in the months and years to come — with many communities already showing us how it’s done. Transportation Vote 2012 will help educate voters, advocates and candidates and keep abreast of transportation-related [...]
We’ve been reporting on the Trinity Toll Road proposal in Dallas, yet another downtown highway with a tremendous cost. This Dallas highway proposal could turn out differently than previous ones. There is real opposition at the grassroots level. And even though the majority of local decision makers are supportive, a notable few have vocally joined [...]
As Congress debates funding for our future transportation system, America Bikes released the results of a survey that shows Americans overwhelmingly support funding for bike and pedestrian facilities. According to America Bikes: The national survey, performed by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, asked 1,003 adults in the United States about their opinions on federal funding [...]
The last four years have been rough on American transit riders, as fare increases and route reductions became the norm, even as demand for service increased. For many cities there’s still no end in sight, as Pittsburgh can attest. The Steel City is facing across-the-board cuts of 35 percent if the state doesn’t step in — [...]
