Streetsblog Network

Imagine how the sheer amount of space given over to cars in North American cities must look to someone from a place with real multi-modal streets. To Copenhagenize's Mikael Colville-Andersen, the word that comes to mind is "arrogance." It's arrogant not just for cars to have so much space, but to doggedly assert that cars can't possibly make do with less.

The American Society of Civil Engineers released its new report card for U.S. infrastructure yesterday. The topline grades: The country’s “GPA” has gone from a D four years ago to a D+; roads have gone from a D- to a D; transit has stayed steady at a D; and rail made the biggest leap, from a C- to a C+.

If you get to work by transit or bike, you're saving a lot of money on gas, but come tax season, Uncle Sam probably won't be as generous to you as he'll be to car commuters.

Anyone who values healthy cities may feel a bit of schadenfreude about the decline of the American shopping mall, which is becoming almost as retro as music videos and Orange Julius.

Adonia Lugo is a co-founder of the Ciudad de Luces/City of Lights bike outreach project in Los Angeles and currently an anthropology doctoral student in Seattle. Today on her blog Urban Adonia, she reflects on the difference between a policy-based approach to bike advocacy, as displayed at the recent National Bike Summit, and her work to transform cultural attitudes about cycling:

“In 2014, federal investment in surface transportation -- which is currently about $50 billion per year -- will drop to $6 billion or $7 billion. In one year.”

These days, almost every mid-sized city has an entertainment district. Depending on your nature, these are the places you either flock to on Friday and Saturday nights or assiduously avoid. These are also often the best places to get a gyro at 2 a.m.

What type of place is your city? Can you step out of your home day or night and catch a bus without too much hassle? Can you pick up your favorite sweet treat or a much-needed toilet paper refill with just a short stroll? Perhaps most importantly, can you find a place to live that you can afford which puts you within easy access of the aforementioned transit stop and a toilet paper dispensary?

There's never any shortage of calls to make Amtrak pay for itself. Republicans deride it as a "Soviet-style monopoly," rife with inefficiencies. But as Ed Glaeser pointed out in an article for the Boston Globe last week, another mode's subsidies are approved year after year without a peep: aviation.