Sarah Goodyear

Today on the Streetsblog Network, Mobilizing the Region is talking about highway removal. Specifically, the proposed teardown or reinvention of the 40-year-old Aetna Viaduct in Hartford, CT, which has already outlived its projected lifespan. Now the Hartford Courant has become a proponent of the idea that getting rid of the road could transform Connecticut's capital city:

Today on the Streetsblog Network, we've got a post from The WashCycle about speeding, new red light cameras and a reduction in fatalities in Montgomery County, Maryland. Police there report that "a 2008 study of 11 camera locations found a 25 percent reduction in crashes on the roads where the speed cameras were located." Deaths have gone to 9 from 19 over a the same period last year. While the WashCycle cautions against reading too much into a relatively small amount of data, they also say the cameras have likely been effective. They also report on some novel citizen objections to the technology:

The other day, we looked at a supermarket in a densely populated part of New Haven that is unwelcoming to pedestrians. Today, courtesy of member blog The City Fix, we're taking another look at urban supermarket planning, specifically the issue of how to get quality food markets built in underserved neighborhoods (so-called food deserts) -- where people often walk or take transit to the store. They write about how cities like New York and Washington, DC, can encourage supermarket construction by relaxing onerous zoning requirements for parking spaces:

With all the kerfuffle in Washington right now over the federal transportation law and the crisis in the Highway Trust Fund, it seems like an appropriate time to be reminded of the role that federal dollars play in funding bicycle infrastructure.

Today, from Design New Haven, a tale of two shopping plazas. 

Much of the talk on the Streetsblog Network in the past few days, perhaps prompted by the recently concluded Congress for the New Urbanism conference, is about transit-oriented development. The real estate crisis, it seems, may finally be pushing the issue into the mainstream.

When you think of the best bicycling cities in the US, Fort Worth, TX, probably doesn't spring to mind. But there are some changes coming. Hundreds of miles of new bike lanes, "road diets" and a proposed streetcar system could fundamentally change the way people think about getting around town there.

As you probably know, the Congress for the New Urbanism is holding its annual meeting out in Denver this week. Today on the Streetsblog Network, we've got a post from member Joe Urban (a.k.a. writer Sam Newberg) that talks about the real-life impact of the "new urbanist" approach to planning in that city, and the importance of conveying that impact to the public when trying to implement similar planning approaches elsewhere.

A few months ago, I went to Memphis for a wedding. I asked the people at my downtown hotel how I should get to the venue, which was also downtown, on South Main Street. They told me it would be about a ten-minute drive. Which let me know it couldn't be that far away.

Today on the Streetsblog Network, Roger Valdez of Worldchanging examines whether making parking more difficult can actually reduce driving levels -- and recalls the frustration he used to feel before he was able to jettison his car: