Streetsblog Network

The Senate is getting ready to produce a 2014 transportation budget, and national advocates like Transportation for America think it's a pretty good package. Naturally, some senators are trying to sabotage it.

They're waist deep in the transportation appropriations process in Washington right now, and what's on the table is a study in contrasts. The House budget would zero out the popular TIGER program and slash funding for Amtrak, even as it shatters ridership records. President Obama has promised to veto it should it wind up on his desk.

Before he gained worldwide notoriety as the mayor allegedly caught on tape smoking crack, Toronto's Rob Ford was perhaps best known as the mayor who said, "Bicyclists are a pain in the ass!"

If only the Florida Department of Transportation was as concerned about traffic safety as one mysterious resident in Miami's Belle Meade neighborhood. A traffic safety vigilante known only as "the cone fairy" has been making nightly visits to a dangerous street in this neighborhood and applying a simple, temporary solution to reckless speeding: orange cones in the center of the street.

Young people are moving back to the downtown areas of many Midwestern and Southern cities. Sometimes they call these folks pioneers, though that's a fraught term. But a lot of them do have to rough it, so to speak -- living without grocery stores or other basic amenities that you'd have in New York or Boston.

Chuck Marohn cofounded the non-profit Strong Towns in 2009. Since then he has steadily built an audience for his message about the financial folly of car-centric planning and growth. The suburban development pattern that has prevailed since the end of World War II has resulted in what Marohn calls "the growth Ponzi scheme" -- a system that isn't viable in the long run because it cannot bring in enough revenue to cover its costs.

A 400-unit apartment building is in the works for an area of West Seattle zoned as a "transit village," with frequent, convenient transit connections. Attached to the apartments will be 122 parking spaces. Can you tell where this story is headed?

It might seem strange, but there are still plenty of people who ride bikes but don't like the idea of protected bike lanes that much, or even bike infrastructure altogether.

Last week, the Washington Post ran an editorial calling for a "balanced" approach to transportation investments. That rather mundane stance was enough to set off alarm bells for an advocate of suburban highway expansion in Virginia.