Melanie Curry
Streetsblog California editor Melanie Curry has been thinking about transportation, and how to improve conditions for bicyclists, since her early days commuting by bike to UCLA long ago. She was Managing Editor at the East Bay Express, and edited Access Magazine for the University of California Transportation Center. She also earned her Masters in City Planning from UC Berkeley.
Recent Posts
New Tool Makes it Easy to Estimate Added Travel from New Highway Lanes–in California
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Research on California highways shows that adding highway lanes induces more travel; this tool shows how much, on which roads, where.
Sacramento City Council Passes a Citywide TOD Ordinance
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City removes required parking minimums and restricts car-oriented uses near its light rail stations.
Lawsuit Aims to Destroy E-Scooter Companies
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A class action lawsuit charges them with "gross negligence," being a public nuisance, and "aiding and abetting" assault.
The Engineering Manual Everyone but You Seems to Have
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It took only one tweet, and the Manual on Uniform Traffic Engineering Excuses practically wrote itself.
Traffic Safety Report Finds More Drivers Using Cellphones
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Despite laws against using a hand-held phone or similar device, a new report shows that people are not putting down their phones.
Transit Vote 2016: California’s Transportation Funding Ballot Initiatives
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We continue our overview of what’s at stake in the big transit ballot initiatives next week with a look at California. Previous installments in this series examined Indianapolis, Seattle, Detroit, Atlanta, and Raleigh. All three of Streetsblog’s west coast editors contributed to this article: Melanie Curry of Streetsblog CA, Roger Rudick of Streetsblog SF, and Joe Linton of Streetsblog LA. Twenty of 58 California […]
Oakland Forging Ahead With New Ideas for Transportation
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It’s exciting times in Oakland, California. In the past six weeks, Oakland has passed a raft of policies that promise to have a lasting effect on the city’s future transportation and development. This is all being done as part of the city government’s reorganization, creating a new Department of Transportation to better strategize and coordinate […]
California Has Officially Ditched Car-Centric ‘Level of Service’
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Ding, dong…LOS is dead. At least as far as the state of California is concerned. Level of Service (LOS) has been the standard by which the state measures the transportation impacts of major developments and changes to roads. Level of Service is basically a measurement of how many cars can be pushed through an intersection […]
Caltrans Endorses the NACTO Urban Street Design Guide
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It wasn’t a total surprise, but exciting nevertheless for bicycle advocates gathered at the NACTO “Cities for Cycling” Road Show in Oakland last night. Caltrans Director Malcolm Dougherty announced that the agency will endorse the use of the National Association of City Transportation Officials Urban Street Design Guide, giving California cities the state DOT’s blessing to install modern […]
Dramatic Shift Away From Driving Continues in California
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In the first major travel survey since 2009, evidence grows that Americans are changing their transportation habits rapidly. The news from Caltrans’ 2012 California Household Travel Survey is dramatic: Californians are making far more trips by walking, bicycling, and transit than they were in 2000. The survey found the percentage of trips by these modes […]
The End for LOS in California? State Wants Input on a New Planning Metric
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With little fanfare, California is considering a change in how it measures transportation impacts that could herald a major change in environmental law. SB 743, passed and signed into law in September, is a potential game changer because it could completely remove LOS — Level of Service, a measure of car traffic congestion — from […]