Infrastructure

The summit laid out a vision for a transportation planning process that assess errors of the past and the needs of the present, and envisions the future in a spirit of trust, celebration and healing.

Cities might soon get the kind of federal money they need to tear down the downtown highways that federal dollars paid them to build — and to reinvest in communities of color that those highways destroyed.

Progressive advocates are making the case that new infrastructure money would actually be best spent tearing urban highways down — and reinvesting in the Black and brown communities that those bad road projects tore apart decades ago.

A new effort is underway to build a massive national network of connected walking and cycle infrastructure— and the organization behind it says a $10 billion federal investment in the project would help the country rebound from the economic ravages of COVID-19 in a way that highway spending never could. 

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on City Observatory and is republished with permission from the author. One of the biggest lies in transportation planning is calling something “multi-modal.”  When somebody tells you a project is “multi-modal,” you can safely bet that its really for cars and trucks with some decorative frills appended for bikes […]

"By eliminating car parking and narrowing automobile lanes we can create the space necessary to accommodate lightweight, human sized micromobility vehicles such as electric scooters."

New studies of Lisbon and Toronto offer the latest evidence for the power of safe infrastructure to encourage more cycling in cities — and speak to the perils of relying on historical data.

We need to make walking, biking, and transit safer and more appealing, or we're going to see an increase in driving, congestion, pollution and crashes once the Stay at Home order is lifted.

We need something better than either bulky, expensive, and profoundly ugly concrete bollards, or shrimpy, plastic poles that drivers can plow straight over.