Angie Schmitt
Recent Posts
El Paso’s Bid to Create a Regional Active Transportation Network
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A lot of regional transportation agencies talk a good game when it comes to improving biking and walking, but El Paso’s Metropolitan Planning Organization is actually doing something about it.
The El Paso Metropolitan Planning Organization wants to complete more trails like this one, along the Rio Grande, throughout the region. Photo: El Paso Southwest
The organization passed a [...]
Engineers to U.S. DOT: Transportation Is About More Than Moving Cars
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A trade group representing the transportation engineering profession thinks it’s high time for American policy makers to stop focusing so much on moving single-occupancy vehicles.
Should roads like this be considered a success? ITE doesn’t think so. Photo: Smart Growth America
U.S. DOT is currently deciding how it will assess the performance of state DOTs. Will it [...]
Rethinking Speed Limits By Factoring in Walkers and Bikers
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Portland wants to change the speed limit on North Weidler Street from 35 to 25 mph. Photo: Google Maps
For cities trying to get a handle on traffic fatalities, dangerous motor vehicle speeds are an enormous problem. Once drivers exceed 20 mph, the chances that someone outside the vehicle will survive a collision plummet.
But even on city [...]
When Cities Force Developers to Widen Roads, Everyone Loses
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At L.A.’s Vermont-Wilshire Towers, the city made the developer cede land and pay for 6,000 square feet of road widening. Photo: Google Maps
It’s a common practice for cities to make developers widen a street when they put up a new building. The thinking is that development creates car trips that must be accommodated with more asphalt.
But new research [...]
Carless Renters Forced to Pay $440 Million a Year for Parking They Don’t Use
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Many residents of American cities can’t escape the high cost of parking, even if they don’t own cars. Thanks to policies like mandatory parking requirements and the practice of “bundling” parking with housing, carless renters pay $440 million each year for parking they don’t use, according to a new study by C.J. Gabbe and Gregory Pierce in [...]
Dallas Plans to Deck Over a Highway — With a Parking Garage
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Dallas’ vision for highway lid topped with a parking garage. Image: Woodall Rodgers Deck Park Foundation
“The most Dallas thing ever.” That’s how Robert Wilonsky at The Dallas Morning News described a new plan to build a parking garage over a highway in the Big D.
The project adds an ironic twist to what has been, until now, a civic [...]
Oslo Gradually Removing Parking From Central City as It Phases Out Cars
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Photo: Wikipedia
Another European city is setting its sights on ridding the urban core of cars.
The City Council in Oslo, Norway, has approved a plan to remove cars from the central city by 2019. As part of that plan, parking spaces will be replaced by bike infrastructure.
Liv Jorun Andenes, who works on bike projects with Oslo’s agency for [...]
5 Reasons No One Should Ever Take the Straddling Bus Seriously
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A Chinese firm built and tested a prototype of this on a short track, but that might be the end of the road for the straddling bus. Image via Popular Science
The taller the bus, the harder it falls. Since 2010, a Chinese firm’s “straddling bus” concept has captured the imagination of people around the globe who want to avoid the hassle [...]
U.S. Transportation Now Belches Out More Carbon Than U.S. Electricity
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Photo: Wikipedia
For the first time in almost four decades, the nation’s tailpipes now spew out more carbon emissions than the nation’s smokestacks. It’s an indication of how slowly the American transportation sector is rising to the challenge of preventing catastrophic climate change.
Over the past 12 months, carbon emissions from cars and trucks have exceeded carbon emissions from electric power — the first time that’s happened [...]
Survey: Americans Want DOTs to Factor Climate Change in Their Decisions
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Graphic: NRDC
Should we continue to let state transportation departments spend tens of billions of dollars in federal funds each year without regard to how highway expansions contribute to climate change? Right now U.S. DOT is looking to inject some accountability into a process that has created a very carbon-intensive transportation system, and a new poll suggests most [...]
A Better Bus Stop: Big Ideas From Transit Riders for a Better Wait
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Streetsblog has been calling attention to the dismal state of transit waiting areas with our Sorriest Bus Stop in America tournament. Transit riders have to put up with conditions that no one should stand for — bus stops with nothing to sit on and no shelter, bus stops by dangerous, high-speed roads with no sidewalks, even “secret” bus stops [...]
Seattleites Own More Cars Than Atlantans, and Other Surprising Comparisons
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Here’s an interesting glimpse at car ownership in a cross-section of American and Canadian cities, courtesy of a recent report from the Shared Use Mobility Center.
This table comes from SUMC’s analysis of car-share and bike-share [PDF]. We trimmed it to highlight the cars per household across the 27 cities — 25 in America and two in Canada — in SUMC’s [...]