Sarah Goodyear

Following up on yesterday's post about family-friendly transit, which generated a raft of interesting comments on Streetsblog New York (and even more on our SF, DC and LA sites), we've got a dispatch from the front lines. Carla Saulter, who writes the always excellent Bus Chick blog out in Seattle, weighs in on how going from one kid to two has made her car-free existence significantly more challenging, although she remains characteristically undaunted:

As someone who is raising a child without a car in a transit-rich city, I sometimes need to be reminded that for many people in the United States, the reality of maintaining a family life without a personal motor vehicle is impractical -- or simply unthinkable, for a variety of reasons. This often holds true even if they live in a city with relatively good transit.

Streetsblog Network member Boston Biker has picked up the most recent Streetfilms release, Fixing the Great Mistake: Autocentric Development, and written an eloquent post about the necessity of moving away from car-centered planning.

The Vancouver Olympics may be over, but Jarrett Walker at Human Transit writes that the legacy for public transportation in that city could be a lasting one. During the games, the city moved nearly 1.7 million people per day on its transit system. Walker sees it as a sort of Olympic exhibition of what the future could hold:

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:

Today from Streetsblog Network member GreenCityBlueLake, an update on the push to include bicycle and pedestrian facilities on a reconstructed Innerbelt Bridge over the Cuyahoga River -- an accommodation that the Ohio DOT has been resisting. In the latest development, Rep. Dennis Kucinich has stepped up his involvement. From GCBL:

There's a lot going on around the Streetsblog Network today. From A Place of Sense, in Indianapolis, comes a post about that city's parking policies. A developer there, seeking to renovate an abandoned apartment building in an area with many parking lots, requested a variance from the city's requirement that developments provide their own off-street parking. The request was denied, and the building will remain vacant for the foreseeable future.

One of our Streetsblog Network member bloggers had a terrifying encounter with a pickup truck full of drunken men the other night. The author of the blog Imagine No Cars, wrote of being chased through the streets of Missoula, Montana, in fear for his life:

Did you commute by bike this morning? (I'm not at the office yet today, but that's how I'm going to get there.) If so, you might be surprised to hear that "a bicycle is not a transportation device." Those are the perplexing words of John Cook, a supervisor in Fairfax County, Virginia. 

Today on the Streetsblog Network, we're thinking about parking, thanks to a post from The Overhead Wire on the devastating effect that parking structures and highways can have on a city's infrastructure: