Angie Schmitt
Recent Posts
How to Counter the Victim-Blaming Impulse After a Traffic Crash
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When a driver strikes someone walking or biking, the tendency to blame the victim runs deep. Ask Raquel Nelson, who lost her young son to a hit-and-run driver, then got convicted for vehicular homicide, even though she was just trying to walk across the street with her children from a bus stop to her home. Or [...]
6 Principles to Make Self-Driving Cars Work for Cities, Not Against Them
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Self-driving cars are coming, and maybe sooner than we think. But the question of how they will shape cities is still wide open. Could they lead to less traffic and parking as people stop owning cars and start sharing them? More sprawl as car travel becomes less of a hassle? More freedom to walk and bike [...]
4 Ways Road Builders Game the Numbers to Justify Highways
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The people who make the case for highways often present themselves as unbiased technicians, simply providing evidence to an audience subject to irrational bias.
Forecasts said motorists would make 21,000 trips per day on Greenville’s Southern Connector, a public-private toll road. In real life they made fewer than 9,000. Map via Toll Road News
But traffic forecasting is not a neutral, dispassionate exercise. It [...]
Anthony Foxx to Local Officials: Transport Policy Should Tackle Segregation
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Local transportation officials should actively work to reduce segregation and promote equal access to quality schools, three Cabinet members say in a “dear colleague” letter released last week [PDF].
Are good schools accessible by walking, biking, and transit? Cabinet members say they should be. Image: Streetfilms
The message from Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, HUD Secretary Julián Castro, and Education Secretary John King urges [...]
Many Americans Live Near Transit, But Few Live Close to Good Transit
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In major American cities, most people live close to some type of transit service, but buses or trains that run every 15 minutes or less are much harder to come by. Chart: AllTransit/Center for Neighborhood Technology
This chart tells an eye-opening story about access to transit in the United States. Using the new data tool AllTransit, TransitCenter dug into who has access [...]
A Hit-and-Run Driver Killed 5 People on Bikes, So the Press Lectured Cyclists
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The five victims of hit-and-run driver Charlie Pickett. Photos: Mlive.com
A hit-and-run driver killed five people on a group bike ride in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Tuesday. Four others were seriously injured in the horrifying crash, caused when a driver hit their training group — known as “the Chain Gang” — from behind.
Charlie Pickett, whose Facebook page is emblazoned with [...]
The Grassroots Triumph Over a Ruinous Highway Plan for Charleston
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Highway opponents in Charleston, South Carolina, “beat Goliath.” That’s how the Post and Courier described the finale of a long grassroots campaign to stop the extension of I-526 into Johns Island and James Island.
Grassroots opponents quashed plans to slice a highway through island communities outside Charleston. Photo: Nix 526
Local officials made it official earlier this month: There will be no highway through [...]
When “Trends Suck,” Don’t Make Transportation Plans That Follow the Trend
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Cuyahoga County has sprawled outward even as its population has declined or stagnated. Maps: Cuyahoga County Planning Commission
Sometimes the worst transportation plan is having no plan at all, and northeast Ohio could be the poster child for what goes wrong when regions aren’t intentional about investments in transportation infrastructure.
While the regional planning organization, NOACA, always had a long-term [...]
State DOT Engineers Say They’ll Do Better on Walking, Biking, Transit
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In a welcome sign from an industry group that has been slow to embrace street designs that prioritize walking, biking, and transit, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) released a statement last week saying it intends to “better address multi-modal issues.”
The engineering profession can do better than this. Photo: Strong Towns
AASHTO’s street design manuals are [...]
3 Graphs That Explain Why 20 MPH Should Be the Limit on City Streets
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A still from ProPublica‘s interactive graph.
Speed kills, especially on city streets teeming with pedestrians and cyclists.
The investigative news nonprofit ProPublica has produced an interactive graph that deftly conveys how just a few miles per hour can spell the difference between life and death when a person is struck by a motorist. ProPublica’s Lena Groeger used data from the AAA Safety [...]
House Panel Calls on U.S. DOT to Measure Access to Economic Opportunity
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A bill working its way through Congress may prompt federal officials to get a better handle on how transportation projects help or hinder access to jobs, education, and health care.
Representative Maxine Waters of California sponsored the provision. Photo: Wikipedia
The legislation, which passed out of a House Committee this week, calls for U.S. DOT to measure “the degree to which the [...]
Clinton Pledges to Make a Big Infrastructure Push in Her First 100 Days
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The industry groups behind last week’s “Infrastructure Week” campaign got exciting news today when presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton announced she’s going to make a big $275 billion “infrastructure” push in her first 100 days.
Photo: Gabe Skidmore via Flickr
An anonymous Clinton aide told the Washington Post:
This proposal would represent the most significant increase in infrastructure investment [...]