Payton Chung
Payton Chung is Editor at Large of Streetsblog USA. He first addressed a city council about smart growth in 1996, accidentally authored Chicago's inclusionary housing law, and sees the promises and perils of planning every day as a resident of "beautiful as well as sanitary" Washington, D.C.
Recent Posts
Senate Delays Bill as Metro Businesses Plead For Transportation Investment
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The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee once again delayed the release of its six-year reauthorization bill, a follow-up to the MAP-21 bill that expires September 30. Committee Chair Barbara Boxer had initially promised to unveil the legislative text early this week, then today, and now is promising to release the bill next Monday, with a […]
Mapping How Far You Can Bike Without Breaking a Sweat
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Any bicyclist knows that maps can be quite deceiving at first glance. The first time I tried to traverse San Francisco on a bicycle, I foolishly set out from the bike-rental shop on Fisherman’s Wharf with a basic street map, and decided that I’d avoid downtown traffic by heading south across the grid. While I was correct […]
11 Simple Ways to Speed Up Your City’s Buses
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All across America, city buses are waiting. Waiting at stoplights, waiting behind long lines of cars, waiting to pull back into traffic, waiting at stops for growing crowds of passengers. And no, it’s not just your imagination: Buses are doing more waiting, and less moving, than they used to. A recent survey of 11 urban transit systems […]
Parking Craters Aren’t Just Ugly, They’re a Cancer on Your City’s Downtown
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Streetsblog’s Parking Madness competition has highlighted the blight that results when large surface parking lots take over a city’s downtown. Even though Rochester, winner of 2014’s Golden Crater, certainly gains bragging rights, all of the competitors have something to worry about: Cumulatively, the past 50 years of building parking have had a debilitating effect on America’s downtowns. […]
Flawed Handheld Phone Bans Don’t Stop Distracted Driving
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University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan, over at the New York Times’ Economix blog, dug up a 2012 study by Cheng Cheng of Texas A&M University that tells the world nothing new about the currently confused state of laws against distracted driving, and in particular bans on handheld phone use. “Perhaps lawmakers overestimated the benefits […]