Is this really the best we can do? Dave Alden at Vibrant Bay Area writes that the above ad from Dignity Health (dignity!) depicting a driver getting out of his car to help a senior avoid being run over in a crosswalk is a pretty skewed notion of “human kindness.” [I]sn’t there something unkind about forcing the woman to […]

Publicly-financed arenas for privately-owned sports franchises are usually a bad deal for taxpayers. And the proposal for a new Milwaukee Bucks facility looks like a humdinger. Patrick Small at Urban Milwaukee reports that city officials, including Mayor Tom Barrett, haven’t told residents exactly how much they could be on the hook for — though so far the Bucks have […]

The above photo could be a scene from Any Suburb, USA. Except … what’s the deal with the helmet-free cyclist in street clothes? “Welcome to Orange County,” writes Andrew Stokols at TheCityFix. “No, not Orange County, California. This is Orange County, Beijing.” Stokols says walled-off suburbs modeled on U.S. “gated communities” are gaining popularity among the affluent […]

Officials in Portland, Oregon, are expected to adopt a Vision Zero program, with the goal of preventing traffic deaths and serious injuries in the next 10 years. Jonathan Maus of Bike Portland reports: On Wednesday Portland City Council is poised to take two steps on the road toward a full embrace of Vision Zero. They’ll […]

Voters in Montgomery County, Texas, rejected a road-building bond referendum. Despite local support for transit, county leaders plan to give the referendum another try. The Houston Chronicle reports that opposition to a $350 million bond measure, all of it for road construction, was led by residents of one affluent enclave who don’t want a traffic-inducing parkway extension. But there’s […]

Whether you own a car or not, if you live in a city, there’s a good chance you pay for parking. Building parking spots is expensive, but most cities require developers to build a certain amount of parking per residence, driving up the cost of housing. Nick Magrino at Streets.mn reports that Minneapolis is rethinking that […]

Should urban cemeteries be more accessible to the public? Alex Cecchini at Streets.mn thinks so. Cecchini points out that many city cemeteries are fenced off save for a single entrance point, effectively disrupting the street grid more than any superblock. A graveyard in his Minneapolis neighborhood, for instance, allows motorists to drive through but requires cyclists to […]

Earlier this year a street safety plan for Hillcrest and other San Diego neighborhoods was derailed after NIMBYs complained about the loss of curbside parking. The plan was prompted to prevent incidents like the 2012 crash when a driver hit a mother and her 3-year-old daughter in a Hillcrest crosswalk at an intersection with a history of […]

A Virginia state agency is weighing how to allocate new transportation funds, presenting an opportunity for the state to do more than widen and build roads. David Alpert at Greater Greater Washington reports that the Commonwealth Transportation Board is developing a formula to allocate funds approved by the state legislature in 2013. Though a new […]

Last year New York City made it a misdemeanor for a driver to harm a pedestrian or cyclist who is walking or biking with the right of way. Since then, the Right of Way Law has come under attack from the MTA bus drivers union and members of the City Council, many of whom helped […]

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan has criticized the Purple Line and Red Line light rail projects, planned for Montgomery County and Baltimore, respectively, as too costly. Though he’s threatened to kill long-standing plans to expand the real-life DC and Baltimore transit systems, Hogan is totally into a flashy and very pricey non-existent project. David Alpert at Greater […]

Georgia ranks near the bottom in transit spending among U.S. states. MARTA, which serves residents of the Atlanta region, is the largest transit system in the country to receive no state funding. And Darin at Network blog ATL Urbanist reports that the state has yanked the rug from under transit-using Georgians once again. [Y]ou can […]