Behold, Streetsblog’s brand-new podcast! In what we aim to turn into a recurring feature, Reconnecting America’s Jeff Wood and I recently chatted about the week’s news in livable streets, urbanism, and sustainable transportation. The topics are drawn from Jeff’s excellent daily compendium of transportation and planning links, The Direct Transfer, and from stories we’re tracking […]

There’s nothing worse than buying bags and bags of Halloween candy and then no one comes trick-or-treating at your door. (Hmm, scratch that — there are definitely worse things.) But anyway. You know your neighborhood leaves something to be desired if you don’t have little ghosts and princesses banging on your door tonight. What makes […]

“This is a money and power grab.” “It’s very disappointing and very AASHTO.” That’s how some transportation reformers are describing the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’ new recommendations for the next surface transportation bill. The current bill, MAP-21, expires in less than a year. AASHTO’s proposal is “so mired in protective technical-speak that […]

Why raise desperately needed transportation funds for a broke region when you could let people drive for free? In Georgia, the state has made up its mind: The DOT will pay $4.5 million to tear down tolls on GA 400 — and forfeit the $21 million a year the tolls brought in. It costs just […]

When researchers look at the reasons behind the downward trend in driving rates in the U.S., they look at several demographics: young people who prefer urban living and are getting into biking, or baby boomers who have picked a more vibrant place to spend their retirement. Immigrants form another cohort that trends away from single-occupancy […]

U.S. DOT’s new campaign urging parents to set five safety rules before giving their kids the car keys is this close to being a really good idea. As DOT notes, motor vehicle crashes are the number one killer of 14 to 18-year-olds. In 2011, more than 2,300 people were killed in crashes involving a teen […]

Soon after the government shutdown ended, we heard murmurs that the TIGER grant program for innovative transportation projects had been a casualty of the negotiations. Under the rules of the Office of Management and Budget, any program that was de-funded in either chamber’s bill would be de-funded in the continuing resolution (the temporary budget) until […]

There is a pernicious myth among some states that they give more to Washington in the form of gas taxes than they get back in the form of federal transportation funding. A recent rash of federal bailouts — $35 billion between September 2008 and March 2010 — ensured a windfall for every state in the […]

Reading this sentence in a mainstream publication just validated everything I feel about the kind of parent I want to be: “It doesn’t mean millennials put parenthood second, but their definition of what makes a good parent is Mom and Dad being happy, and exposing their child to all the things that they have enjoyed.” […]

Every Body Walk!, the new campaign spearheaded by Kaiser Permanente and a host of other organizations — including the Office of the Surgeon General — is on fire. Two weeks after hosting its first sold-out conference in Washington, DC, the campaign has put out this excellent documentary on the importance of integrating walking into our […]

Where are the newest Bicycle Friendly Communities? Many of them are in the ‘burbs. As we mentioned a few days ago, more suburban-style communities received the League of American Bicyclists’ BFC honor this week. That’s a shift from previous years. “The national boom in biking has officially found a pedal-hold in a previously unlikely place: the […]

Congratulations, gentle Congresspeople. You have come up with a deeply flawed solution to a problem only you would create. Never mind that it set up another showdown three months from now. The good news is the government shutdown is almost over, for the moment. More than 18,000 furloughed U.S. DOT officials can return to work. […]