Cities around the world are shutting down streets for pedestrian, cyclist and mass transit thoroughfares and plazas, wrote John Mattson in an article in Scientific American last month. Case in point is New York City’s move to shut down portions of Broadway around Times and Herald Squares. These car-free areas in the heart of Manhattan [...]
Filed under: planning, transportation | Tagged: streets | Leave a Comment »
The US Department of Transportation this week awarded nearly $300 in grants as part of the administration’s livability initiative to better coordinate transportation, housing and commercial development investments to serve the people living in those communities. The funds come from the Urban Circulator Grant Program and the Bus and Bus Livability Grant Program. Streetcars were [...]
Filed under: transportation | Tagged: st. louis, streetcars, cincinnati | Leave a Comment »
A movement may be picking up to replace aging freeways in core cities with boulevards that open up land for development of buildings, tree-lined corridors and reconnect urban centers to their most prized assets. The U.S. Department of Transportation is suggesting in its strategic plan that replacement of freeways with boulevards in some cities may [...]
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We just read a recently released report by the American Public Health Association on public health costs associated with transportation. The report documents the costs of poor transport policies, including the $142 billion the country pays in costs from obesity, the $50 billion from traffic-related air pollution and $180 billion from traffic crashes. The report [...]
Filed under: health, planning, transportation | Tagged: research | 1 Comment »
The Mayor of Paris announced recently that the city is closing an expressway along the River Seine in a project that could have a major impact on public space in the city. Time magazine describes the current one-day-a-week closure and how this may spread to 365 days per year: On a recent Sunday in Paris, [...]
Filed under: transportation | Tagged: freeways, waterfronts, paris | Leave a Comment »
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) late last month released recommendations for improving public health through transportation policy, saying that a concentration on motor vehicles has created an environment where physical activity is discouraged, air quality is poor and pedestrian deaths are all too likely. The report recommends that actions be taken [...]
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Haya El Nasser of USA Today takes a look at cities thinking differently about freeways cutting through there communities. The article overviews plans in Dallas to cover a part of the Woodall Rodgers Freeway around downtown, shrink the footprint of the Fort Washington Way in Cincinnati and turn the riverfront-blocking I-70 in St. Louis into [...]
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Architect Manit Rastogi is seeking to transform the canals of Delhi, India by using new technology to treat sewage and turning the now polluted corridors into a network of bike and pedestrian greenways. In a report and the below video on CNN, Rastogi says the city “will then be interconnected with an eco-friendly and safe [...]
Filed under: international, renewal, transportation | Tagged: delhi, india | 2 Comments »
Bicycline magazine is out with its list of the United States’ Top 50 Bike-Friendly Cities. The top ten are, in order: Minneapolis, Portland, Boulder, Seattle, Eugene (Oregon), San Francisco, Madison (Wisc.), New York, Tuscon and Chicago. Reading through the top 50, it’s not hard to see that a great park system contributes to these rankings [...]
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Portland, Oregon has begun to install separated bicycle lanes called cycle tracks, a move that has also recently taken place at varying levels in New York City, Washington, D.C., Minneapolis and Indianapolis. We’ve promoted the idea of using cycle tracks to provide safer and more bicycle-friendly routes to parks, and to connect parks and other [...]
Filed under: planning, transportation | Tagged: connectivity | 2 Comments »
