Milwaukee Is Claiming Its Excess Street Space for Bicycling
Milwaukee has shrunk since the 1960s, when its population was about 19 percent bigger than today, leaving the city with a lot of excess road capacity. As a result, Milwaukee is a city where it's relatively easy to replace general traffic lanes with bike lanes. Other cities in the Rust Belt -- and anywhere suffering from population loss -- could be doing the same.
November 7, 2016
How the Accommodations We Make for Cars Impose Huge Costs on Cities
Wide highways, big parking lots, dangerous intersections designed for speed -- there are a lot of downsides to all this car-centric infrastructure, including the way it saps the fiscal health of cities.
November 4, 2016
How Can Cities Make the Most of an Infrastructure Spending Spree?
Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have indicated that they intend to spend big on "infrastructure" if elected president. Whether this ends up making cities stronger or just fueling more wasteful sprawl, however, is an open question.
November 3, 2016
Will Seattle Blow Its Chance to Reclaim Its Waterfront?
It's bad enough that Washington DOT is building a huge underground highway by the Seattle waterfront at enormous expense and financial risk. Now the city is poised to ruin the one benefit of the highway tunnel -- better pedestrian connections to the waterfront.
November 2, 2016
Transit Vote 2016: Raleigh’s Chance to Grow Smarter
We continue our overview of what’s at stake in the big transit ballot initiatives this November with a look at Wake County, North Carolina. Previous installments in this series examined Indianapolis, Seattle, Detroit, and Atlanta.
November 1, 2016
Pedestrian Shaming — an Annual Rite of Halloween
Cutrufo has a good roundup of how different agencies performed: Florida, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and New York state DOTs, and the Federal Highway Administration get the worst marks, while Missouri, Texas, Illinois and Louisiana DOTs get points for placing responsibility on motor vehicle operators.
November 1, 2016
Why American Trucks Are So Deadly for Pedestrians and Cyclists
Large trucks are a leading killer of cyclists and pedestrians and cyclists in urban areas. While London has recently decided to kick the most dangerous trucks out of the city, in the U.S., truck safety regulations are much further behind.
October 31, 2016
Will D.C. Metro Fall Into a Transit Death Spiral?
The situation unfolding for transit riders in Washington, DC, is scary. Few American cities rely on transit more than DC, but the system seems to be caught in a spiral of deteriorating service and declining ridership. With fewer people paying fares, WMATA has less revenue to pay for service, and the cycle continues.
October 31, 2016
What If Climate Hawks Fought Dirty Highways Like They Fight Dirty Energy?
American climate activists' single biggest achievement in recent years was the defeat of the Keystone XL pipeline. Nothing has unified and energized more people than the fight to keep dirty fossil fuels in the ground. Yesterday, the world watched members of the Standing Rock Sioux defend their tribal lands and water from armed police acting in the interest of companies building the Dakota Access Pipeline.
October 28, 2016
Will State DOTs Follow Through on Their Goals for Zero Traffic Deaths?
State DOTs aren't known for setting ambitious street safety goals. They're usually more interested in moving traffic than saving lives. But it looks like that's starting to change as states follow the lead of the federal government's "Toward Zero Deaths" initiative, which itself was inspired by the spread of Vision Zero campaigns among cities. Even states like Ohio are saying their goal is zero traffic deaths.
October 27, 2016