Government Organizations
Basics
Transit and Equity Advocate Stephanie Pollack to Lead MassDOT
Stephanie Pollack was one of the first transportation experts who made a serious impression on me. A few weeks after I started working at Streetsblog, at my first Rail~volution conference, she gave a presentation on the complex relationship between transit, gentrification, and car ownership. Her energy, intellectual rigor, and passion for social justice were apparent in her nuanced work exploring the reasons why car ownership rates tend to rise in neighborhoods with new transit services -- and how it hurts not just the transportation system and the environment, but the poor.
January 14, 2015
The Feds Quietly Acknowledge the Driving Boom Is Over
The Federal Highway Administration has very quietly acknowledged that the driving boom is over.
January 7, 2015
NHTSA Touts Decrease in Traffic Deaths, But 32,719 Ain’t No Vision Zero
Twenty-four-year-old Taja Wilson was killed near the Louisiana bayou in August when a driver swerved on the shoulder where she was walking. Noshat Nahian, age 8, was killed in a Queens crosswalk on his way to school in December by a tractor-trailer driver with a suspended license. Manuel Steeber, 37, was in a wheelchair when he was killed in Minneapolis while trying to cross an intersection with no crosswalk or traffic signal on a 40-mph road. One witness speculated that Steeber must have had a "death wish."
December 22, 2014
DeFazio, Norton, and Larsen Take on Dangerous Street Design
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) is already proving that he’ll put some muscle into the fight for bike and pedestrian safety in his new post as ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
December 18, 2014
Kentucky Threatens 17 Louisville Street Trees, Citing Safety [Updated]
Here's a classic story of traffic engineering myopia. Officials at the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet are threatening to remove 17 newly planted street trees in a Louisville suburb.
December 17, 2014
5 Techniques That Guide the Best Regional Planning Agencies
"Metropolitan Planning Organization" is the wonky name for an obscure but oh-so-important breed of public agency -- the regional planning bodies charged with distributing federal transportation funds. MPOs can be powerful, transformative agencies that enhance economic growth, save people time, and improve public health. Or they can do the bare minimum required by law and continue to collect federal money year after year, merely serving as one more level of bureaucracy. Even worse, they can distribute funds in a way that hastens sprawl and urban decline.
December 10, 2014
Hastily-Debated Collins Measure Could Put More Tired Truckers on the Road
It just wouldn’t be Congress if we weren’t trying to debate substantive policy changes, with drastic implications for public safety, with a government shutdown deadline fast approaching.
December 9, 2014
Congress Gives Itself More Free Parking Than Its Own Rules Allow
As TransitCenter and the Frontier Group reported last week, the federal government pays a huge $7.3 billion subsidy to people who drive to work by making commuter parking expenses tax exempt. There are countless reasons for Congress to scrap this poorly-conceived, congestion-inducing subsidy. While policymakers consider the big picture, they also ought to examine how their own parking benefits are administered.
November 24, 2014
Talking Headways Podcast: I’m Not a Scientist
Do you ever think about the ecology of the city you live in? Not just the parks and the smog. Scientists are starting to examine urban ecosystems more holistically: the trees and the concrete, natural gas lines and soil, water pipes and rivers. The natural and the synthetic feed off each other in surprising ways. We're not scientists, but we found it interesting.
November 20, 2014
Lawmakers Could Finally Equalize Benefits for Transit and Parking This Year
It’s time to rev up the annual fight over parity between federal transit and parking benefits for commuters. Members of Congress hope this might finally be the year to get it done.
November 12, 2014