Transportation Policy
Streetsblog Basics
A Rising Bicycle Tide in Mexico City
Back in April, Marcelo Ebrad, the mayor of Mexico City, announced he wanted those who worked in his administration to ride bicycles to work one day a month (at right, Ebrard, center, kicks off the program). Many were shocked at the idea, or simply laughed it off. But this excellent article in the San Diego Union details how the mayor's decree to his employees has meshed with several other initiatives to raise the profile of bicycling as a legitimate form of transportation in the traffic-clogged city:
July 5, 2007
Slow Going for New Bus Lanes
The Village Voice took a trip down lower Broadway earlier this week to see how smoothly the new bus lanes were flowing. The answer? Despite reports of stepped-up enforcement, change is not coming quickly to the traffic culture of Lower Manhattan -- as you can see from the picture at right, which shows a bus trying to lay claim to a spot in the "buses-only" lane.
July 5, 2007
No Love for One-Way Proposal in Jackson Heights
Congestion in Jackson Heights: The DOT needs some new ideas
June 29, 2007
Free Bike Helmets for Delivery Workers Today
In anticipation of two new laws that take effect in July, DOT is handing out free helmets to commercial cyclists. One law requires businesses to provide helmets to employees who use bicycles as part of their work, and to make sure their workers wear them. Another law requires businesses to display this poster (pdf) in their workplace. From the DOT press release:
June 26, 2007
Brooklyn Greenway Initiative Benefit This Thursday
When I first met Brian McCormick, Milton Puryear and Meg Fellerath in the spring of 2002, they were picking up trash and planting tulips alongside a Brooklyn-Queens Expressway off-ramp in Cobble Hill. I asked them what they were up to and they told me they were working to create a waterfront greenway for Brooklyn -- a linear park running from Greenpoint to Red Hook. I didn't have the heart to tell them they looked like a gang of juvenile delinquents paying off 40 hours of community service for shop-lifting. Clearly, these people were either insane or visionary.
June 25, 2007
Book Review: Twenty-Three Years to Save the Planet
When George Monbiot, the popular columnist for the UK's Guardian newspaper, gets interested in something, he digs and digs until he's found what he's satisfied is the truth. Monbiot is interested in global warming, and presents in Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning (U.S. Edition: South End Press, May 2007) a heavily footnoted 215-page brisk and compelling case for why we should all be very worried. This is probably the clearest and broadest book yet published about global warming, with doses of skepticism, inquisitiveness, sobriety and optimism. Every Streetsblog reader should read it. More important, every Streetsblog reader should get it into the hands of five Streetsblog non-readers and ask each of them to do the same.
June 25, 2007
Toronto Cycling Activists Build Their Own Bike Network
Fed up with city government, which is two years behind schedule implementing a 1,000 kilometer bicycle network, Toronto's Other Urban Repair Squad have begun striping their own bike lanes -- in hot pink. The Toronto Star reports (via ibiketoronto):
June 22, 2007
Q&A With Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan
Streetsblog interviewed DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan at 40 Worth St., Monday, June 18. Photo: Brad Aaron
June 20, 2007