Streetsblog Network

Transportation planners in Austin are in the beginning stages of a pattern just about every community in the U.S. is familiar with.

Last week, the Austin City Council voted to allow "granny flats" -- small accessory dwellings -- in some areas zoned for single-family housing, and to reduce parking requirements along transit corridors. These types of reforms make housing more affordable and make neighborhoods more walkable and transit-friendly.

As the House and the Senate get to work on hashing out a multi-year transportation bill in conference committee, Congress is also putting together its annual spending package for transportation. The annual bill decides the fate of several discretionary programs, and earlier this year it looked like US DOT's TIGER grants, which tend to fund multi-modal projects at the regional or local level, might not survive.

How often do state DOTs lie with numbers to justify building highways?

Transitions where streets suddenly change are a tricky part of bike lane design. Here's how street designers in Pittsburgh handled the transition where a two-way bike lane ends at a T-intersection -- with a "merge lane" for cyclists turning right across motor vehicle traffic.

So far this year, nine people have been killed while walking in Columbus, Ohio. Predictably, pedestrians have been caught up in the police response, as the cops increased enforcement of jaywalking. It got even worse with comments from Sergeant Brooke Wilson made to the local NPR station.

In a six-month pilot program, Boston's MBTA is exploring the use of taxis as an alternative to large vans for paratransit service, which is required by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

A Google car made headlines last week when police pulled it over for driving too slowly on El Camino Real in Mountain View, California.

We've written before about how bike-share "station density" -- how closely together stations are placed -- is a key variable in how successful systems are in attracting riders.