Streetsblog Network

Cities all over the country have been experimenting with ways to make bike-share service accessible to people who don’t have a credit card and about $100 to drop all at once on an annual membership. In the last few years, Boston and Chicago both started offering $5 annual memberships for low-income residents. Edward Russell at … Continued

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx made headlines recently with a speech about how America needs to rethink its approach to urban highways. But U.S. DOT’s influence is limited. States have the real power when it comes spending federal transportation funds, however, and a lot of states are still stuck in the cycle of addressing traffic congestion by widening highways, … Continued

How do highways and greenfield development exacerbate inequality? Richard Bose at Next STL shares this map of the St. Louis region, showing the share of income poor workers spend on transportation. Not surprisingly, as you go farther from the center, transportation consumes a greater percentage of people’s pay. What makes the case of St. Louis so tragic, writes Bose, is that the legacy … Continued

What should we make of the recent headline-grabbing service disruptions at Washington Metro and BART? This chart from Houston transit advocate Christof Spieler offers some important perspective. These transit systems are reaching the age where maintenance needs are increasingly urgent. Alex Block at City Block writes: BART, the snake digesting the mouse: Until seeing the data presented this way, I never appreciated how much of the … Continued

Ohio Democratic Party Chair David Pepper recently tweeted that “Ohio needs an urban agenda.” A group of local bloggers (myself included) think that’s a great idea, and we’ve been writing about what good state-level policy for Ohio cities would look like. Despite being one of the most urbanized states in the nation, Ohio doesn’t really have a coherent policy agenda to strengthen … Continued

It’s refreshing to see public agencies go beyond PSAs to deter distracted driving, which contributes to thousands of deaths in the U.S. each year. With traffic deaths on the rise in Oregon, state officials are ramping up their efforts. Oregon DOT Director Matt Garrett has pledged to “change cultural norms when it comes to distracted driving,” reports Jonathan Maus at Bike Portland, … Continued

Forty years ago, the Washington region had 60 miles of bus lanes on its streets, a network that was erased once Metrorail started operating. Today passengers make about half a million trips on Metro buses each weekday, not a great deal less than Metrorail, but there is no network of priority streets for buses. That’s starting … Continued

My, how things change. It’s always revealing to go back and look at how Americans responded to traffic deaths before they were regarded as an unavoidable aspect of everyday life. The era when the loss of lives to traffic violence was regarded with widespread shock and revulsion has almost faded from living memory. Here’s a glimpse of … Continued

For every transportation agency trying to innovate and update policies for the 21st century, there are several thoughtlessly widening highways like it’s still 1956. Case in point: Ohio DOT, which wants to widen three highways in the Cleveland region. Tim Kovach has been poring over the global urban congestion rankings produced by Tom Tom, the GPS company. TomTom says that out of … Continued