Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Economics

Bridging the Local-National Message Divide: The Climate Bill is the Answer

By Ryan Avent | Oct 9, 2009 | No Comments

Urban areas have a lot to contribute to the congressional climate change debate. (Photo: SDOT Blog) This week, I was fortunate to attend the Open Cities conference in Washington (along with fellow Streetsbloggers Elana Schor and Aaron Naparstek), on the ways in which new media is shaping urban policy. The takeaway, for me at least, […]

When $1 Billion Doesn’t Buy What it Used To — And When it Does

By Elana Schor | Oct 8, 2009 | 1 Comment

Since Washington’s economic recovery debate first began last fall, advocates for greater infrastructure investment have invoked one phrase more often than almost any other: "Every $1 billion spent on transportation creates 47,500 jobs." How many transportation jobs could this $1 billion create? (Photo: Infosthetics) Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) used that […]

Transit and Congestion, an Indirect Connection

By Ryan Avent | Oct 2, 2009 | 5 Comments

Yesterday, Freakonomics linked to a new piece of research [PDF] on congestion that I’d been musing over for a few days. Let me quote the abstract here (paragraph break and emphasis mine): We investigate the relationship between interstate highways and highway vehicle kilometers traveled (vkt) in us cities. We find that vkt increases proportionately to […]

Rezoning Tysons Corner: It’s Hard To Teach Old Dogs New Tricks

By Ryan Avent | Sep 18, 2009 | No Comments

Streetsblog has previously covered the effort to transform Tysons Corner, a bustling but car-oriented and traffic-plagued jobs center in Fairfax County, Virginia, into a walkable, transit-oriented corridor based around four new Metro stations — similar to the immensely successful redevelopment of the Wilson Boulevard corridor in Arlington, just a few miles to Tysons’ northeast. The project […]

Stimulus Spotlight: Delaware Town Boosts Bike-Ped Access to Bus Stop

By Elana Schor | Sep 11, 2009 | No Comments

The new Route 43 bus in Middletown, Delaware, stops at many popular places: the local high school, the retail shopping district, and the Methodist church, to name a few. But the park-and-ride that helped riders access the bus was clogged with cars, which the state DOT attributed to higher transit demand. The Middletown park-and-ride, before […]

The ‘Movie Ticket’ Theory of Transportation Pricing

By Elana Schor | Sep 10, 2009 | No Comments

Let’s say you’re at the movies, and you look up at the box office only to see no ticket prices listed. You know you’re going to have to pay for the show eventually — perhaps even during income-tax season — but for now you can watch all you want, seemingly for free. (Photo: Roloff via […]

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