Matt Yglesias made an excellent point about NIMBYs over at Slate yesterday. Writing about opposition to multifamily residential construction in the tony neighborhood near Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis, Yglesias wondered how much value residents really place on keeping the area a “single-family residential community.” Just because there’s value in something doesn’t mean people are willing to […]

Oahu, Hawaii should be the ideal place to walk for transportation, but it has the nation’s highest pedestrian fatality rate for senior citizens – more than twice the next-highest state. So the state enacted a Complete Streets policy in 2009, seeking to “reasonably accommodate” everyone — “pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users, motorists, and persons of all […]

Walk Score came out with its bikeability rankings in the spring, but they were only at the citywide level. If you wanted to plug in your address and come up with a custom rating for your own address, like you can with Walk Score, the system wasn’t quite ready. That all changes today. Using an […]

In June, the House of Representatives voted to ban U.S. DOT from even studying the viability of switching from the gas tax to a vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) fee. But the tide may be turning: The sponsor of the amendment, Rep. Chip Cravaack, has been ousted from Congress, the amendment itself is on the skids, and a new […]

Earlier this month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed a new rule requiring automakers to install event data recorders, known as EDRs or black boxes, in all light passenger vehicles. While the rule would expand the number of vehicles equipped to record critical information in the moments preceding a crash, that alone won’t aid […]

Ford has spent the last few years fretting about how to reach out to Gen Y. The car company made news earlier this year when it re-designed its 2015 Mustang to appeal to buyers born between 1980 and 1999. (Apparently Gen Y just screams “shark-nosed grille and round headlights” to Ford.) Last year, Ford turned to […]

OK, truth: Raise your hand if you find federal transportation legislation intimidating and incomprehensible. I thought so. Me too. The problem, as you know, is that it’s enormously important that advocates not only understand the new transportation law, MAP-21, but that they understand it in granular detail so they can find the small opportunities buried […]

Hybrid drivers: Nice try, but your wheels aren’t really saving the planet. Consumer Reports announced Thursday that Ford was inflating the mileage on its hybrid models. Instead of getting “47 city/47 highway/47 combined mpg” as advertised, the Fusion sedan gets 35/41/39 and the new C-Max wagon gets 35/38/37. That’s a pretty big difference — far bigger than […]

California Republicans from Fresno and Bakersfield put their foot down in a House hearing yesterday, rejecting the high-speed rail project whose initial segment would run between those two cities. Rep. Jeff Denham, whose district includes Fresno, is the author of an amendment, passed in June, to ensure that no more federal money gets spent on […]

Six weeks after my daughter was born, my midwife asked me if I was getting any exercise. I confessed I wasn’t. I hadn’t figured out a new routine that included exercise, my old activities weren’t baby-friendly, I just didn’t have the time, and I wasn’t up for anything high-impact. She recommended I try walking for […]

Walking can seem like a rather mundane thing to get organized about, until you realize that it’s a direct challenge to car-oriented transportation and it’s the best thing people can do for their health. Then walking is downright revolutionary. Not only that, but it can be joyful. That was the message that the U.S. Surgeon […]

UPDATE: An earlier version of this article included Robert Dold as the fifth potential aisle-crosser. I’ve since been informed that Dold lost his re-election bid this year. Charlie Bass and Judy Biggert, named briefly at the bottom for supporting the Senate transportation bill and Amtrak funding, also lost their elections, making this list even shorter. First […]