Noah Kazis

Portland-area Metro Council president David Bragdon will be the next head of New York City's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. The founding director of the office, Rohit Aggarwala, announced his departure in April after a three-year tenure in which he led the development of the city's sustainability framework, PlaNYC 2030. Bragdon, an elected official with experience leading one of the country's most progressively planned regions, will take over the role as the city prepares for the 2011 update of PlaNYC. 

More New Yorkers are riding bikes than ever, but a new report from the Department of City Planning further complicates the effort to precisely determine how much cycling has taken off. The report, which looks only at cycling in Manhattan bike lanes from 2001 to 2008, shows a significantly slower rate of growth than estimates based on other measurements.

Transit funding these days is, needless to say, scarce. Across the country, transit agencies are slashing services to cope with the gaping fiscal holes left by the recession. More than ever, every dollar counts.

Fordham Plaza, one of the city's busiest transit and retail hubs, but also one of its most dangerous, is slated for a major redesign [PDF] by NYCDOT and the Economic Development Corporation. Highlights of the badly-needed overhaul include a massive increase in public space, a slew of safety improvements for pedestrians, and a block-long bus- and bike-only street.

The House of Representatives passed its 2011 appropriations bill for Transportation and Housing and Urban Development yesterday, significantly increasing the amount going to both highways and transit while decreasing spending overall. A fight over $200 million in funds for the Obama Administration's new livability initiatives, however, showed that substantive changes in federal transportation policy will remain difficult to achieve until Congress tackles the long-term transportation reauthorization bill. 

The last decade has often been heralded as a "back to the cities" moment, a time when Americans have been excited to return to the walkable lifestyle many abandoned two generations before. A new report from New Jersey's Rutgers and Rowan Universities throws a little cold water on that optimism, though, pointing out that even the most densely populated state in the Union sprawls further out into the countryside every year.

The Flushing Commons development sailed to a 44-2 vote of approval in the City Council yesterday after the city arranged a set of concessions to local merchants who had opposed the project. Chief among them: $3 million to keep the project's oversized parking lot even cheaper. 

The city's Department of Health has made encouraging physical activity, which can help prevent obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other ailments, a top priority. As part of promoting healthy lifestyles, the Department's Brooklyn District Public Health Office spent last summer studying cyclist behavior in Bedford-Stuyvesant to learn who in that neighborhood travels by bike, and how, so as to better be able to promote cycling in the broader North and Central Brooklyn area. The recently released results [PDF] provide a rare neighborhood-scale look at who cycles, how they ride, and what they think of biking conditions. 

With good data and targeted traffic enforcement, police departments around the country are saving lives. The Data Driven Approach to Crime and Traffic Safety policing system, or DDACTS, run by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, is reducing crashes by putting officers where they need to be to address the traffic violations most likely to lead to injury and death.

MTA Unveils Fare Hike Details (NYT, News) It’s Not Just Fares: Dozens of Small Cuts Will Hurt Ride Quality (WSJ) And 202 Station Agent Layoffs Formally Approved (AMNY) News: Don’t Blame MTA; Pin the Hike on Paterson, Silver, Sampson, and Skelos Will Environmentalists Regroup Around a Carbon Fee Instead of a Carbon Cap? (The Nation) … Continued