Buses
Basics
Northern Virginia Locked In to Congested Roads
Suburbanites in northern Virginia are finding their streets more clogged with traffic than ever, and, as the Washington Post reported earlier this week, they aren't about to get bailed out by road-widening projects. Here's the crux of the problem, told from the Post reporter's decidedly windshield perspective:
May 9, 2008
Queens Civic Congress Has Its Own Plan
No one who comes before the NYC Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission is going to admit to liking congestion. If they're against the mayor's congestion-pricing plan, they are usually going to come up with some kind of alternative.
October 31, 2007
Doubts About DOT Congestion Prescription in Jax Heights
Community activists in Jackson Heights have been complaining about congestion at the corner at 73rd St. and 37th Ave. (right) for years. A major traffic study of the area is underway, but according to a DOT spokesman, the department didn't want to wait to implement "short-term initiatives" that could ease the problem. Problem is, some of the activists--including Will Sweeney of the Western Jackson Heights Alliance--aren't necessarily thrilled with the department's solution.
October 3, 2007
Melbourne, Australia After a Decade of Focus on Public Spaces
With apologies for my carbon footprint, I recently returned from a working tour of eight cities Down Under. The trip included an invitation to Melbourne to work with the staff of the city's successful new public space development, Federation Square, and to help lead a Placemaking training course that included many city staff, local developers and "place managers." In the process, I had the opportunity to learn a few things relevant to my hometown, New York City.
August 2, 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
Q&A With Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan
Streetsblog interviewed DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan at 40 Worth St., Monday, June 18
June 20, 2007
The Perfect Argument for Congestion Pricing
The Staten Island Advance ran an article last Thursday about a "perfect storm" of crushing Staten Island-bound traffic on the Gowanus Expressway and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. To give you a sense of the frustrated tone of the article, it was entitled "21-Month Nightmare: Agency Offers Zero Solutions for Verrazano Lane Mess." Here's how it began:
June 19, 2007
The Car Habit Is Tough to Break
"People are addicted to their cars," said John Street, the Mayor of
Philadelphia, at a panel on transport yesterday during the C40 Large
Cities Climate Summit. He was identifying what he saw as the major
challenge for cities striving to make their transport systems more
environmentally sustainable.
May 17, 2007
High-Emission Vehicles to Pay £200 ($400!) to Enter London
London mayor Ken Livingstone, whose congestion-pricing plan has served as a model for Mayor Bloomberg's, is expected to unveil today an even more radical measure aimed at reducing pollution in his city. According to the Guardian, Livingstone's proposal would target high-emission commercial vehicles:
May 10, 2007
There Are Certain Facts That We’ve All Got to Face Up To
Given that it was only a few months ago that Mayor Michael Bloomberg could be heard saying, "We like traffic, it means economic activity, it means people coming here," his pitch for a whole new set of progressive transportation policies at last week's meeting of the Regional Plan Association was all the more remarkable:
May 10, 2007