Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Government Organizations

Philly Urbanists Launch Political Action Committee to Shake Up City Council

By Angie Schmitt | Jan 21, 2015 | 5 Comments

In a move that may mark, in the words of Philadelphia Magazine, “New Philadelphia’s political awakening,” a group of Philly urbanists launched a political action committee earlier this month to support candidates who will reform local land use, transportation, and taxation policies. The new organization is called The 5th Square, a reference to the public space at […]

Transit and Equity Advocate Stephanie Pollack to Lead MassDOT

By Tanya Snyder | Jan 14, 2015 | 52 Comments

Stephanie Pollack was one of the first transportation experts who made a serious impression on me. A few weeks after I started working at Streetsblog, at my first Rail~volution conference, she gave a presentation on the complex relationship between transit, gentrification, and car ownership. Her energy, intellectual rigor, and passion for social justice were apparent […]

The Feds Quietly Acknowledge the Driving Boom Is Over

By Phineas Baxandall | Jan 7, 2015 | 13 Comments

The Federal Highway Administration has very quietly acknowledged that the driving boom is over. After many years of aggressively and inaccurately claiming that Americans would likely begin a new era of rapid driving growth, the agency’s more recent forecast finally recognizes that the protracted post-World War II era has given way to a different paradigm. […]

NHTSA Touts Decrease in Traffic Deaths, But 32,719 Ain’t No Vision Zero

By Tanya Snyder | Dec 22, 2014 | 18 Comments

Twenty-four-year-old Taja Wilson was killed near the Louisiana bayou in August when a driver swerved on the shoulder where she was walking. Noshat Nahian, age 8, was killed in a Queens crosswalk on his way to school in December by a tractor-trailer driver with a suspended license. Manuel Steeber, 37, was in a wheelchair when he was […]

DeFazio, Norton, and Larsen Take on Dangerous Street Design

By Tanya Snyder | Dec 18, 2014 | No Comments

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) is already proving that he’ll put some muscle into the fight for bike and pedestrian safety in his new post as ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. DeFazio and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), top Democrat on the Highways and Transit Subcommittee, have signed on to fellow T&I […]

Kentucky Threatens 17 Louisville Street Trees, Citing Safety [Updated]

By Angie Schmitt | Dec 17, 2014 | 2 Comments

Here’s a classic story of traffic engineering myopia. Officials at the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet are threatening to remove 17 newly planted street trees in a Louisville suburb. As reported by Next City and Louisville’s Courier-Journal, the trees had been selected and planted in part to ameliorate the area’s growing urban heat island problem. Louisville has lost 9 […]

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