Matthew Roth
Recent Posts
Civil Rights Review of Bay Area Planning Org May Set National Precedent
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The long-term impacts to transportation funding as a result of the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) civil rights compliance probe of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) won’t be clear for some time, but the action by the federal administration has transportation policy circles buzzing. Experts in civil rights and regional planning policy couldn’t point to another […]
New Jersey Transit Village Program Continues to Grow
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Image: Town of Somerville The holy grail for many urbanists contemplating long-term development and growth trends is the transit village. Adding growth adjacent to functional transit has the benefit of making it easier for the new population there to drive less and use transit for a multitude of trips. Likewise, transit villages can add to […]
Will California Achieve Its Anti-Sprawl Targets?
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Photo: Mark Strozier As California’s big four metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) try to determine how much they can influence growth and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, significant questions remain. The state’s Senate Bill 375, typically referred to as the Anti-Sprawl Bill, requires planners and policymakers to develop meaningful solutions to curb sprawl, reduce driving, and promote […]
Will California Achieve Its Anti-Sprawl Targets?
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Photo: Mark Strozier As California’s big four metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) try to determine how much they can influence growth and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, significant questions remain. The state’s Senate Bill 375, typically referred to as the Anti-Sprawl Bill, requires planners and policymakers to develop meaningful solutions to curb sprawl, reduce driving, and promote […]
FTA Boss: “Paint is Cheap, Rails Systems are Extremely Expensive”
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Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff has been shaking up transit agencies across the country in the short year he has headed the FTA, from working with advocates in the Twin Cities who wanted additional stops added in under-served communities along the Central Corridor rail route to his decision to deny BART the $70 million it […]
California Poised to Allow Personal Vehicle Sharing Services
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(Photo: Car sharing is a growth industry, as pioneer City CarShare would tell you, and it has beneficial environmental and economic impacts. Studies of car sharing services like Zipcar and City CarShare show that for every car that is shared, up to 15 private vehicles are taken off the road. Owning and operating a personal […]
Bay Area’s Oakland Airport Connector Project Loses More Federal Funding
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As transportation planners and transit agencies around the country yesterday celebrated the announcement of the $1.5 billion in Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants, BART received more troubling news that could hurt the feasibility of its planned Oakland Airport Connector (OAC). (Image: BART) After losing $70 million in stimulus funds last week because the […]
Building a Farm Where a Freeway Used To Be
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Moving mulch on the old Central Freeway on-ramp. (Photo: Matthew Roth) A few weeks ago in San Francisco, a number of urban farmers opened a gate in a chain-link fence at Laguna Street, between Oak and Fell Streets, and entered an overgrown lot that has been unused for nearly two decades. The farmers brought with […]
New Website Prompts Transit Agencies to Open Data to the Public
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(Image: City-go-Round) The software developers and open data advocates at Front Seat, known more familiarly for their Walk Score rankings of the most walkable U.S. cities, have turned their focus on transit agencies that have resisted opening transit data to third-party, open-source developers. Their new website, City-Go-Round, is an effort to encourage agencies to release […]
‘No Road That We Built in Texas Paid For Itself’
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Over the past two days at the Congress for the New Urbanism Project for Transportation Reform conference, attendees have called for reform at local, regional, and national levels. In a panel debate about the future of transportation funding and the role of regional planning through MPOs, several speakers argued that the foundation of transportation and […]
California Cities Lead Nation in Reducing Emissions from Streetlights
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PG&E workers installing an LED streetlight. Photo: PG&E Streetlights are an enormous part of any city’s energy consumption and cities that wish to cut down on their emissions and their energy bills are getting in line to convert their older street lamps to LED technology. According to Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) and Department of Energy […]
CNU Summit to Focus on Reforming Transportation, Planning Principles
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The Congress for the New Urbanism will meet in Portland, Oregon, in early November for the annual Project for Transportation Reform, a summit to further define and clarify emerging urban transportation policies that embrace entire networks, rather than interdependent transportation segments, and that seek to balance modal transportation splits and reduce overall vehicular miles traveled […]