Parking Madness: New York City vs. Wilkes-Barre
If there's one thing to take away from Parking Madness, it's that surface parking disasters have struck cities great and small, victimizing boomtowns and economically struggling places alike. Nowhere is immune.
March 25, 2016
True Story: Buying Transit Passes Is Cheaper Than Building Garages
Downtown Columbus, Ohio, is facing a parking crunch. But parking prices aren't high enough in this city to make garage construction a viable private investment. Faced with this situation, a lot of cities would pour a bunch of money into a big subsidized garage or two. But in Columbus, several officials have hit on a smarter idea: providing free transit passes to downtown workers.
March 24, 2016
The Meaning of Rob Ford
Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford died yesterday at the age of 46. He had been battling cancer. Ford was a high-profile, polarizing figure who built a political career playing off tensions between the urbanizing central city and Toronto's working-class outer neighborhoods.
March 23, 2016
Retired Fire Chief: Make American Firetrucks Fit City Streets, Not Vice Versa
It's a sad irony that fire departments, while essential to public safety, are often a major obstacle to safer streets in American cities.
March 22, 2016
High-Speed Police Chases: Not Worth the Risk
High-speed police chases have no place in crowded cities. The risk of killing innocent bystanders is just too high to justify maybe preventing the "bad guy" from getting away.
March 22, 2016
Parking Madness: Federal Way vs. Montreal
We're just getting started with Parking Madness 2016 -- our annual hunt for North America's worst parking craters. So far, Washington, D.C., and Rutland, Vermont, have advanced to the second round.
March 21, 2016
Can Milwaukee Build a Downtown Stadium That’s Not a Disaster?
A promotional video for the Milwaukee Bucks' new downtown arena promises the public a "ripple effect" for their investment of hundreds of millions of dollars, saying the stadium will "transform" the neighborhood with development and jobs.
March 21, 2016
Parking Madness: Vancouver vs. Rutland
Welcome to day two of the 2016 Parking Madness tournament. Yesterday, the assortment of surface parking between the Capitol and Union Station in Washington crushed the parking lots that greet people entering downtown Burlington, Vermont.
March 18, 2016
What D.C. Metro Inspectors Found During the System Shutdown
The D.C. Metro was shut down for 29 hours straight earlier this week while inspectors checked for defects in jumper cables, which transmit power between sections of the electrified third rail, along all the track in the system. To its credit, WMATA publicly documented the process.
March 18, 2016