Mayor of Fort Worth: Autocentric Design “A Mistake”

The theme of today’s post from the Streetsblog Network is mayors who talk sense. First, at Fort Worthology, Kevin Buchanan files a report on what Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief had to say in his State of the City address:

Mayor Mike Moncrief of Fort Worth: “Friends, we cannot continue to focus solely on building more roads for more vehicles.”

[O]ne of
the items he discussed was the city’s transportation and planning.  The
mayor stated in no uncertain terms that Fort Worth is facing severe
transportation challenges, that they stem from too many years of
car-first planning, and that Fort Worth can no longer be designed and
built in a car-centric fashion — topics certainly familiar to Fort
Worthology readers:

“Commuter rail, streetcars and other alternative modes
of transportation also remain a priority for me and this City Council.
Unfortunately, Fort Worth and other major metropolitan areas are
finding out the hard way what a mistake it was to design and build
cities around automobiles years ago. Friends, we cannot continue to
focus solely on building more roads for more vehicles. That’s counterproductive at best. Business as usual is dead! North Texas requires a transportation overhaul. No more Band-Aids, no more patches — a complete overhaul!”

That’s pretty strong talk coming from the mayor of a major city in Texas. Mayor Moncrief’s words come on the heels of the Fort Worth City Council’s unanimous approval of the sweeping Bike Fort Worth plan, which will add hundreds of miles of cycling infrastructure to the city’s streets.

Then, from Car Less Ohio, we hear that the mayor of Columbus, Ohio, has his own plans to boost active transportation:

In the annual State of the City address last night, Mayor Michael
Coleman said he is determined to make Columbus “Bike City USA.” To help
get there, the city will set aside $6 million from its capital budget
to connect the Alum Creek Trail to the city’s bikeway system and build
an additional 24 miles of bike paths and bike lanes on city streets.

Do we see a trend here?