The Human Toll of Normalizing Distracted Driving
Nowhere is the culture of permissiveness more apparent, or deadly, than in Texas, where about 3,500 people lose their lives in traffic every year. It is one of just four states that doesn't ban texting and driving.
April 19, 2017
How to Spot a Highway Boondoogle
With the Trump Administration purportedly gearing up to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure, it's time for a refresher on the perils of highway boondoggles.
April 18, 2017
Study: Drivers With Smart Phones Use Them Almost Every Time They Drive
Motorists with smart phones use their devices in 88 out of every 100 trips, according to data collected by Zendrive, a company that assesses driving behavior using the sensors in smart phones. Extrapolating to the entire population, Zendrive estimates there are about 600 million trips involving distracted driving in the U.S. each day.
April 17, 2017
Why the Mortgage Interest Tax Deduction Has Got to Go
The mortgage interest deduction costs the federal government more than all rental subsidies combined. All that money promotes sprawl by encouraging people to buy more house, while transferring wealth to the upper tiers of the income ladder.
April 17, 2017
Tesla’s Parking Problem Says a Lot About Elon Musk’s Brand of Tech Saviorism
It's fitting that the Palo Alto headquarters for Elon Musk's flagship company, Tesla, has an epic logistical problem caused by the spatial inefficiency of its core product.
April 14, 2017
The “Jaywalker” Brutalized By Sacramento Police Was Stopped for No Reason at All
When the line between a legally justifiable stop and outright harassment is so thin, it can easily become a pretext for racial profiling. That's what happened to Nandi Cain, Jr., who was beaten by Sacramento police during what officials called a jaywalking stop.
April 13, 2017
Mexico City May Abolish Its Parking Minimums
Mexico City Mayor Miguel Mancera is pursuing a sweeping overhaul of the city's parking policy that's expected to do away with minimum parking requirements and generate revenue for transit and affordable housing. If enacted, the reforms could set an important precedent for cities in North and South America.
April 12, 2017
We Know the Solution to Transit’s Last Mile Problem — It’s Walking
To solve the "first and last mile problem," there's no substitute for walkability.
April 12, 2017
Denver Is Your 2017 Parking Madness Champ!
Denver's monster parking crater is a classic of wasted urban potential: a huge swathe of land close to downtown, served by three light rail stations, and overwhelmed by massive parking lots for sports stadiums that barely get used much of the year.
April 11, 2017
Is Your Local Government Falling for the Hyperloop Fantasy?
There are no functional, real-world examples of a Hyperloop, Tesla founder Elon Musk's long-distance transport concept that involves shooting people through vacuum-sealed tubes in pods that travel at up to 760 mph. And yet a surprising number of government agencies are treating the Hyperloop as a serious proposition.
April 11, 2017
