Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Network Roundup

In cities with steep hills, public staircases can be an important piece of the walking network. Like any type of infrastructure, however, sometimes cities let their staircases fall apart. Randy Simes at Urban Cincy says that’s happening to many of Cincinnati’s public stairs right now. To turn around that situation, he points to Seoul, South Korea, for inspiration: Many […]

The financial ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has a new report out that presents a bizarre theory about dangerous conditions on American streets. It’s the Millennials’ fault, “but not in the way you think,” they say. Prepare yourself for some ratings agency clickbait! Standard & Poor’s blames Millennials not only for the poor state of transportation infrastructure but also the […]

Republican lawmakers in Rhode Island are trying to pay for roads and bridges without new tolls on trucks. James Kennedy at Transport Providence is wondering what’s so conservative about giving a free pass to the interests that inflict the most damage on roads, since everyone else will have to pay instead: One way we can assess […]

The rise of private transit operators like Bridj, Leap, and Uberpool has raised questions about equity in places including the Bay Area, where such services are fast replicating. A related issue is the impact they will have on traditional public transit systems. Private transit vehicles have been described as “like a lounge on wheels,” with […]

Chicago’s rail transit infrastructure has a lot of unused capacity, Yonah Freemark wrote last week on the blog of the Metropolitan Planning Council, and making use of it might be cheaper and easier than expanding the system. Some of Chicago’s most transit-accessible neighborhoods are barely growing, but rents are rising fast, Freemark reported, an indication that […]

There’s an interesting conversation happening in urbanism circles about how to make transit financially sustainable, going back to a piece in CityLab last June from University of Minnesota professor David Levinson. Levinson made the case for running transit like a public utility, not a government agency. There’s one thing that’s largely missing from these discussions, argues Cap’n Transit, […]