Transportation Policy
Basics
New Partnership Brings Together “Strange Bedfellows” For Active Transpo
The gospel of active transportation has spread. Thanks to a number of concurrent crises, from obesity to climate change to the "silver tsunami," it's become clear to more and more people that the simple act of walking and biking can have a major impact on averting some of the biggest problems America faces. So over the past several years, several different sectors have joined traditional biking and walking advocates in taking up the mantle of active transportation. And now those relationships have been consecrated into a new union: the Partnership for Active Transportation.
February 11, 2014
Will Obama’s SOTU Pledge to Flex Executive Power Extend to Transpo?
Maybe it doesn’t matter what President Obama says in his State of the Union. According to a Washington Post analysis, his batting average for last year’s SOTU proposals was a .208. In 2013, the president pleaded for tax reform, an American Jobs Act, $50 billion for a Fix-It-First infrastructure repair binge, a “Partnership to Rebuild America” to lure private capital to infrastructure projects, and an Energy Security Trust to use oil and gas revenues for technology to “shift our cars and trucks off oil for good.” None of that went anywhere.
January 29, 2014
Talking Headways Podcast: Vision Zero
The best thing about hosting a Streetsblog podcast is getting to call on other Streetsblog reporters for the lowdown on the biggest news of the week. In this case, Jeff Wood and I called Ben Fried, Streetsblog's editor-in-chief based in New York, to provide some context for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's big announcement of the campaign to eliminate traffic deaths in the city. Note that the podcast was recorded before the recent outbreak of jaywalking tickets in Manhattan.
January 22, 2014
Secretary Foxx Pledges to Make Bike/Ped Safety a Priority
Pedestrian crash statistics aren’t just numbers to Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. He himself was the victim of one of those crashes once, while out jogging. “I got lucky,” he told a packed room at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board today. “But there are lots of people out there that aren’t so lucky.”
January 15, 2014
HUD and U.S. DOT Embrace Housing + Transportation Metric for Affordability
A few years ago, the Center for Neighborhood Technology gave a wonderful gift to urbanists and planners: the Housing + Transportation Index. This simple calculation clarified and popularized a key concept: that transportation costs must be taken into account in any measurement of “affordability.”
November 12, 2013
Old Solutions: U.S. DOT’s Proposed Strategic Plan Falls Short
Andy Clarke is the president of the League of American Bicyclists. This article originally appeared on the League's blog.
September 6, 2013
Motor Mouths: Send Us Clueless Transportation Quotes From Public Officials
Before he gained worldwide notoriety as the mayor allegedly caught on tape smoking crack, Toronto's Rob Ford was perhaps best known as the mayor who said, "Bicyclists are a pain in the ass!"
July 25, 2013
U.S. PIRG: The Driving Boom Is Over But the Road-Building Binge Continues
The driving boom is over.
May 14, 2013
Does President Obama Have the Power to Influence Transportation Policy?
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy called for a federal transit funding plan. Two years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson took baby steps toward starting that program, but Johnson’s true transportation legacy was signing the bill that created the Department of Transportation, bringing all modes under one roof.
April 30, 2013
Streetfacts: Americans Are Driving Less
We continue our Streetfacts series by looking at the data on driving in the U.S. Per-capita driving has declined every year since 2005. That's not a blip, it's now an 8-year trend.
April 3, 2013