Streetsblog Network

Alex Ihnen at NextSTL uncovered this video from a 1965 television program about traffic and commuting in the St. Louis region. Noting the growing number of businesses in the suburbs with “free parking,” the narrator asks, “Who needs to go downtown at all?” This leads to a vision of the future that turned out to be eerily … Continued

Plenty of states are saddled with a legacy of roads designed to be deadly for pedestrians, but Florida stands out as a special case. Orlando, Jacksonville, Tampa, and Miami have a monopoly on the four “top” spots on Transportation for America’s list of the most deadly cities for pedestrians [PDF]. The good news is, the Florida Department of Transportation … Continued

Leveraging technology, data, engineering, & education solutions to improve Florida transportation safety #FDOT100 pic.twitter.com/5SIKgeJlqS — FLORIDA DOT (@MyFDOT) December 3, 2015 This Tweet from the Florida Department of Transportation last week was intended to exemplify the agency’s efforts to make walking and biking safer on the state’s notoriously deadly roads. In FDOT’s defense, this is a huge task. But Jesse Bailey at … Continued

With a few exceptions, the five-year transportation bill heading to President Obama’s desk continues what has been the core function of federal transportation policy for more than 60 years — sending a ton of money to the states to spend on highways. Preventing a big step backward was about as much as you could hope … Continued

Sharrows: the consolation prize of bike infrastructure. Dick van Veen, a Dutch bike engineer who is currently working in Ottawa, says cyclists often ask him about this symbolic gesture toward bike safety. He says in America, sharrows are often painted on an otherwise inhospitable road. The Dutch use them too, but they have a very different approach, he explains at Urban … Continued

The deaths of two pedestrians and bicyclist in quick succession in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood have local street safety advocates demanding reforms and the mayor promising swift action. So naturally a crack reporter had to interject that, hey, pedestrians sometimes break traffic rules! A recent Pittsburgh Post-Gazette piece by Ed Blazina adopts the perspective of a Port Authority bus driver who complains people on … Continued

Traffic fatalities are on the rise up again, with an increase of 8.1 percent in the first half of 2015, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. As is their practice, NHTSA officials are attributing the problem to driver (or passenger) error — drunk driving, speeding, failure to wear seatbelts — but did promise “new initiatives to protect vulnerable road users such … Continued

Anyone who does a fair amount of walking to get around will encounter gaps in the pedestrian network sooner or later. Sometimes they might just be minor annoyances, but they can also put people in very dangerous positions. Clark Parker at Streets.mn stumbled into a pedestrian gap when he tried to send a letter on a Saturday afternoon. The only post office open … Continued

Transportation planners in Austin are in the beginning stages of a pattern just about every community in the U.S. is familiar with. The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority (CTRMA) says traffic on a local highway — South MoPac — is going to grow a lot. And if Austin doesn’t spend $400 million building new managed lanes, they … Continued