Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Government Organizations

Yes, Local Transportation Agencies Can Measure Their Climate Impacts

By Mitchell Beer | Aug 24, 2016 | 1 Comment

It’s going to be a tough sell for those who claim that greenhouse gas performance measures for transportation can’t possibly work, when plenty of transportation agencies say it would be no problem. That’s according to transportation officials in several regions across America who responded to a survey commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council. The responses were […]

Stark Divisions Between Dems and GOP on Climate Impacts of Transportation

By Angie Schmitt | Aug 22, 2016 | 17 Comments

How polarized are the two political parties on key questions about transportation policy and climate change? As you can imagine, the answer is “very.” The senior Democrat and Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee — California’s Barbara Boxer and Oklahoma’s Jim Inhofe, respectively — each wrote an opinion this week for the Eno Center for […]

State DOTs to Feds: We Don’t Want to Reveal Our Impact on Climate Change

By Angie Schmitt | Aug 18, 2016 | 6 Comments

Every year state DOTs receive tens of billions of dollars in transportation funds from the federal government. By and large, they can do whatever they want with the money, which in most states means wasting enormous sums on pork-laden highway projects. Now that U.S. DOT might impose some measure of accountability on how states use these […]

Unless US DOT Changes Course, Building Protected Bikeways May Get Tougher

By Michael Andersen | Jul 8, 2016 | 18 Comments

Michael Andersen blogs for The Green Lane Project, a PeopleForBikes program that helps U.S. cities connect high-comfort biking networks. “Hey, how long does it take you to get to work?” “Well, on average my car is usually traveling at 36 mph.” No actual human makes transportation decisions this way. But for some reason, the federal […]

U.S. Traffic Fatalities Rising Fast — Especially Pedestrian and Cyclist Deaths

By Angie Schmitt | Jul 1, 2016 | 41 Comments

Traffic fatalities in America hit a seven-year high in 2015, with pedestrians and cyclists accounting for a disproportionate share of the alarming increase, according to preliminary data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Last year, 35,200 people were killed in traffic — a 7.7 percent increase over 2014 and the worst death toll since 2008. The number of people killed while […]

4 Ways Road Builders Game the Numbers to Justify Highways

By Angie Schmitt | Jun 23, 2016 | 15 Comments

The people who make the case for highways often present themselves as unbiased technicians, simply providing evidence to an audience subject to irrational bias. But traffic forecasting is not a neutral, dispassionate exercise. It is subject to all sorts of incentives, beliefs, and assumptions that can skew the results in a particular direction. Intentionally or not, forecasters frequently exaggerate predicted […]

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