Angie Schmitt
Recent Posts
The Highway Era Is Over. When Will Our Institutions Catch Up?
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The highway era is over. The construction of the Interstate Highway System is essentially complete.
How much has changed at American transportation agencies since the 1960s? Image via YouTube
Americans will continue to log lots of miles on highways, but for the most part, the job of building them is over. We’ve already connected the places worth connecting by highways.
The problem is that transportation agencies — [...]
TTI Built a “Dutch Junction” With Glow-in-the-Dark Bike Lanes
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The Texas Transportation Institute built this Dutch Junction on the Texas A&M campus in College Station. Photo: TTI
It’s America’s first unsignalized “Dutch Junction” — a type of intersection with protected space for cycling. It even has solar luminescent bike lanes. And here’s the kicker — it’s in the heart of Texas.
The Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M led the design and [...]
Why Do We Put the Onus for Traffic Safety on Kids?
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.@NTSB Vice Chairman: Practice safe walking behavior. Stay alert, walk on sidewalks, cross at crosswalks. #NationalWalkToSchoolDaypic.twitter.com/TWRChfTdcZ
— NTSB (@NTSB) October 5, 2016
It’s Walk-to-School Day, a day when children all over the country get to enjoy the simple experience of traveling somewhere using their own power. It makes me happy because I love seeing the pictures of kids walking with [...]
The Feds’ Tentative Steps to Legalize Mixed-Use Housing Don’t Go Far Enough
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Small apartment buildings with ground-floor retail used to be a fixture of small towns and big cities. But federal lending rules have made this type of housing very difficult to build or renovate. Photo: Wikipedia
For a long time, apartment buildings with ground-floor retail were the building blocks of America’s cities and towns. Combining housing and commercial uses is also essential [...]
White House: Make Cities Affordable By Building for Walkability, Not Parking
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The Obama administration is taking on the crisis of rising rents in American cities, releasing a series of recommendations today to spur the construction of more affordable housing. Among the many ideas the White House endorses: allowing more multi-family housing near transit and getting rid of parking minimums.
Rising rents and stagnant incomes are putting pressure on [...]
Will US DOT’s Self-Driving Car Rules Make Streets Safe for Walking and Biking?
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This week, U.S. DOT released guidelines for self-driving cars, a significant step as regulators prepare for companies to bring this new technology to market. Autonomous vehicles raise all sorts of questions about urban transportation systems. It’s up to advocates to ensure that the technology helps accomplish broader goals like safer streets and more efficient use of urban space, [...]
How Transit Agencies Can Offer Better Paratransit Service at Lower Costs
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Paratransit costs are rising fast. Graph: Brookings via Rudin Center
Paratransit service for people with disabilities is a big part of what modern transit agencies do, and it’s getting bigger all the time. As the population ages and more people rely on paratransit to get around, agencies need to get smart about how they provide the service [...]
Where Car Commuting Is Shrinking — And Where It’s Not
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Where are Americans making the shift away from driving to work?
Crunching newly-released Census data, Yonah Freemark looked at how commute travel is changing in different cities and regions. In general, car commuting in major metro areas declined between 2005 and 2015, but the shift was greater than a couple of percentage points in only a few cities.
Keep [...]
FHWA’s New Goal: Eliminating Pedestrian and Cyclist Deaths in America
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Pedestrian and cyclist deaths account for a growing share of traffic fatalities in America. Can federal officials reverse the trend? Graph: FHWA
The Federal Highway Administration wants to eliminate pedestrian and cyclist fatalities “in the next 20 to 30 years.” In a new strategic plan [PDF], the agency calls for reducing serious injuries and deaths 80 percent in the [...]
How Unrepresentative Is Your Regional Planning Agency?
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Do the people who make transportation funding decisions in your region represent the people who actually live in your region?
Who makes decisions at the Texas Department of Transportation? These guys (and one woman). Image: Jay Crossley
After sitting through dozens of meetings presided over by a legion of white men, Texas transportation reformer Jay Crossley wanted to find [...]
No, Uber’s Not Going to Replace Buses, But It Can Complement Them
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Not a day goes by without a raft of stories about “new mobility” providers — ride-hailing companies like Uber or car-share services like Car2Go that have tapped into recent technological advances to provide new ways to get around.
Kansas City teamed up with the private vanpool service Bridj to link two neighborhoods that the bus network didn’t connect well. Image: [...]
Austin Plans a Bus Network Redesign of Its Own
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It’s hard to overstate the influence of Houston’s bus network redesign — an overhaul of the city’s bus routes that aimed to expand access to frequent service. Cities all over the country have taken note and many are reimagining their own bus networks.
The transit agency in Austin, Capital Metro, is working on a similar project, and yesterday [...]