Transportation Policy
Streetsblog Basics
Sadik-Khan Introduces the New York City Model
DOT revealed its "Sustainable Streets" strategic plan last night, in the very same room where the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign held its kick-off event a little more than two years ago. Once again, Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson was there. Here are excerpts from the presentation by Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, who says that, rather than duplicate the livable streets efforts of cities like London, Paris and Copenhagen, her agency intends to implement "the New York City Model" of sustainable transportation and urban design.
April 29, 2008
How Paris is Beating Traffic Without Congestion Pricing
Biking by the Seine during car-free hours on the Georges Pompidou Expressway.
April 22, 2008
Sadik-Khan: We’re Putting the Square Back in Madison Square
DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan gave a brief, clear-eyed overview of the city's post-pricing transportation agenda today at the Regional Plan Association's 18th Annual Regional Assembly. Speaking at a panel discussion called "Making Cars Pay Their Way," she rattled off a list of projects in the works, including some public space improvements that are certain to quicken the pulse of livable streets types.
April 18, 2008
A Transit Miracle on 34th Street
NYC DOT is proposing to turn Manhattan's 34th Street into a river-to-river "transitway."
April 17, 2008
If You Build It With Less Parking, They Will Still Come
We're nearly a couple of weeks into baseball season, and fans of the Washington Nationals are enjoying their new transit-, bike- and pedestrian-friendly stadium. The DC complex, with its transit links, shuttle buses and valet bike parking, is so accessible -- and city efforts to encourage fans to get there by alternate means so successful -- that on Opening Day its relatively few parking lots weren't even full, reports Greater Greater Washington:
April 10, 2008
Neighborhoods and Parking Reform: Show Them The Money
Now that the Legislature has said "no" to pricing streets, attention has turned to pricing curbside parking. It's no secret that meter rates are ridiculously low. This is because the DOT has been told by generations of mayors to keep the price down in an effort to appease motorists. The cost of this ill-considered gesture is a plague of cruising traffic, rampant double parking, congested streets, and motorists with nowhere to park paying $600 million a year in parking tickets.
April 10, 2008
Two Ways to Tell the Story of Congestion Pricing
This Monday the Washington Post ran a long feature on page A1, "Letting the Market Drive Transportation," about the Bush administration's attempts to shift financing for roads from the gas tax to user fees, and starve transit in the process. The cast of characters includes a pair of conservative ideologues, Tyler Duvall and D.J. Gribbin, high up in U.S. DOT, as well as Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, who earned the enmity of alternative transportation advocates last summer when she said bikes aren't transportation.
March 20, 2008