Transportation Policy
Streetsblog Basics
Improved DOT Rolls Out Improved Web Site
Yesterday afternoon the Dept. of Transportation launched a new and improved web site loaded with features designed to make information more available to the public. Now you can use the DOT's site not only to watch traffic cams and sign up for e-news updates, but also to request different types of permits, report potholes, file complaints about newsracks, report damaged bicycle racks (and our favorite, request bicycle racks).
August 22, 2007
Staten Island PlaNYC Panel Tonight
Join Transportation Alternatives and the Citizens Committee for NYC at Everything Goes Book Café in St. George on Staten Island for a screening of Contested Streets, a one-hour documentary about New York's traffic crisis and how congestion pricing can solve it.
August 21, 2007
The Urban Transportation Report Card
Transportation Alternatives has teamed up with cycling advocates from Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle to issue the Urban Transportation Report Card (PDF), which rates these cities' progress on greening their transportation systems. The report notes that transportation accounts for 20-60% of carbon emissions in major U.S. cities, so it is very encouraging that in each city the most significant growth occurred in bicycling, with Chicago registering an 80% increase in cyclists from 1990-2000.
August 20, 2007
Transit-Oriented America, Part 1: Eight Thousand Miles
My wife and I were married last month in Brooklyn. For our honeymoon, we wanted to see as many great American cities as we could. In 19 days of travel, we visited Chicago, Seattle, Portland (Ore.), San Francisco, Los Angeles and New Orleans (and also stopped briefly in Cleveland, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Houston, Atlanta, Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia).
August 20, 2007
Secretary Peters Says Bikes “Are Not Transportation”
We'd expect this kind of thing from some people, but not U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters. On PBS' "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" this week, Peters stated that instead of raising taxes on gasoline to renew the nation's sagging infrastructure, Congress should examine its spending priorities -- including investments in bike paths and trails, which, Peters said, "are not transportation."
August 17, 2007
Pedicabs Protest New Regulations
Pedicabs took to the streets yesterday to protest the City's new regulations on New York's greenest for-hire transportation industry. In a press release, The Green Transport Association says that City Council Speaker Christine Quinn "dealt pedicabs a crushing blow capping our number at 325 city-wide" -- a reported 35 percent reduction in the pedicab workforce:
August 16, 2007
The Cars That Ate New York
Adam J. Schwartz, who has a really interesting looking exhibit up at the Brooklyn History Society called Up From Flames, sends along this rather intense photo of a bike crash in Bushwick. As one commenter noted after seeing the photo, "Looks like a faulty bicycle."
August 14, 2007
In the Shadow of the Queensboro Bridge
Sarah Gallagher of the Upper Green Side introduces us to life on the neighborhood streets on the Manhattan side of the Queensboro bridge. Talking with store owners and others in the area, Streetfilms' Nick Whitaker learns that expensive rent isn't the only cost of doing business on the Upper East Side.
August 10, 2007
New Blog Focuses on Tearing Down the “Highway to Nowhere”
Sheridan Swap is a new blog covering the Mother of All Livable Streets projects -- the long-running campaign to convert one mile of little-used highway running along the Bronx River into affordable housing, parkland, greenway and economic opportunity for one of the city's most beleaguered neighborhoods. The blog is run by the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance. The state, it seems, is getting ready to weigh in on the merits of the project:
August 6, 2007