Sarah Goodyear

Yesterday morning, Megan Charlop was killed by a bus in the Bronx after apparently being doored and knocked into traffic by the driver of a parked car while riding her bike. Anyone who regularly rides a bicycle in New York City or or anywhere else knows that potentially fatal bus-bicycle interactions are common. Conflicts between buses and bikes are often created or exacerbated by double-parked cars or drivers who open their doors without looking, but there is also often a lack of clarity about how bus drivers and bicyclists should interact as they share the road. As a result, it can be scary and confusing to ride along bus routes.

It's time for another Streetsblog Network user-generated slide show, this one about families riding transit.

Thanks to a few of the posts on the Streetsblog Network over the last 24 hours, we're thinking about free will, morality and infrastructure. Jarrett Walker of Human Transit linked to a post from our newest network member, Michael D at Psystenance, about something called the "fundamental attribution error."

Yesterday, at The Urbanophile, Aaron Renn posted a thoughtful essay about the idea of the "city as platform." He looks at all the different meanings of the word platform and muses about how they apply in the urban context.

Regular readers will notice something new and different across all our sites starting today.

You might have seen it making the rounds over the last couple of days -- the new Mercedes ad in which a bike messenger challenges a driver in one of the company's luxury vehicles to a race from Harlem to the Fulton Ferry landing in Brooklyn.

It says something about the country that we live in that the simple act of walking to work can merit a blog post. But so it is. Today, at her fine blog The Naked City, Mary Newsom wrote about her experience walking the 4.2 miles from her home to her office. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. She often writes about planning and transportation issues and has a great understanding of livable streets issues. As she made her lonely way along the street, she was able to experience in a different way how completely dominated by cars her familiar landscape is, and what that means:

At Streetsblog Network member blog Planning Pool, this week is being billed as "Fail Week" -- a full five days on "information about bad planning, lack of planning, and planning generally gone awry." We can't wait to see what they'll be doing. There's certainly no shortage of potential topics.

If you've ever wanted a breakdown of the benefits of commuting by bike versus commuting by car, Carfree.us has got it for you. The writer of this Streetsblog Network member blog, a resident of Charlotte, North Carolina,  is not actually totally car-free, but he has made a commitment to commuting by bike or bus for the calendar year of 2010. From his introductory post:

As malls have struggled over the last 20 years or so to stay culturally relevant -- or even profitable -- one of the solutions that has gained ground is the "lifestyle center." These are malls with sidewalks and sidewalk musicians, European-style fountains, open-air restaurants, and of course, lots of shopping. They are prefab places masquerading as real places. Check out this 2006 piece from Slate and you'll get the idea.