Streetsblog Network

For years, the federal government has adopted roadway guidelines that fall far short of what's needed -- and what's possible -- to protect cyclists and pedestrians. By "playing it safe" and sticking with old-school engineering, U.S. DOT allowed streets to be unsafe for these vulnerable road users.

There may be nothing sadder than distressed cities trying to compete with the suburbs by adding more parking spaces. (We're looking at you, Cleveland, Detroit, and Buffalo!)

You know we've reached a low point in U.S. infrastructure policy when state officials are selling off public utilities in order to fund $1.7 billion highway interchanges.

When it comes to transportation funding, President Obama always seems to say the right thing. The latest example was his State of the Union address, where the president promoted a fix-it-first approach to infrastructure spending. On Wednesday, the White House fleshed out the idea with a proposal to direct 80 percent of a $50 billion burst in transportation spending to "deferred maintenance" of existing infrastructure.

In the last few months, we've seen all sorts of proposals from states trying to keep their transportation budgets solvent.

Since the 1970s, the Netherlands and the United States have taken different paths when it comes to engineering streets. While the Dutch tackled traffic deaths and injuries by designing local streets where walking and biking are safe, convenient ways to get around, the prevalent approach in America was to apply highway design principles to local streets -- wider and straighter was thought to be safer. The superiority of the Dutch approach turned out to be dramatic: In 1975, the traffic death rate in the Netherlands was 20 percent higher than in America, but by 2008 it was 60 percent lower. About 22,000 fewer people would die on U.S. streets each year if the nation had achieved safety outcomes comparable to the Dutch, according to Gary Toth at Project for Public Spaces.

Maine DOT is in the process of rebuilding Interstate 295 through downtown Portland, section by section, and a portion of the road that separates the city from the waterfront might be a prime candidate for a highway teardown.

Here's an important consideration in how we expend our public resources that doesn't find its way into your conventional cost-benefit analysis. Craig Benjamin at the Cascade Bicycle Club's Bike Blog writes that every transportation investment should be held to this one standard:

On Tuesday, President Obama pledged during the State of the Union to adopt a "Fix it First" approach to infrastructure, which would focus on maintaining what's already built instead of building expensive, sprawl-inducing new roads.