Angie Schmitt
Recent Posts
Finding the Political Will to Fix “Four-Lane Death Roads”
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A driver struck and killed a woman last week in St. Paul on what Bill Lindeke at streets.mn calls a “four-lane death road.”
A mother was killed as she crossed this “four-lane death road” in St. Paul last week. Photo: Streets.mn
The victim was 32-year-old Erin Elizabeth Dunham, who was dropping her kid off at the bus. She was walking in the [...]
3 Graphs That Explain Why 20 MPH Should Be the Limit on City Streets
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A still from ProPublica‘s interactive graph.
Speed kills, especially on city streets teeming with pedestrians and cyclists.
The investigative news nonprofit ProPublica has produced an interactive graph that deftly conveys how just a few miles per hour can spell the difference between life and death when a person is struck by a motorist. ProPublica’s Lena Groeger used data from the AAA Safety [...]
The Problem With “Infrastructure Week”
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You may have noticed that it’s “Infrastructure Week” in America — a time where engineering and construction industry groups beat the drum for more money, using big numbers and images of collapsing bridges.
You can follow the dialogue on Twitter. It’s full of value-neutral statements like this one from Democratic members of the House Committee on Transportation and [...]
More Evidence Bike Lanes Can Be More Efficient Than Car Lanes
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Contrary to all those cranky newspaper columns about how every last inch of asphalt needs to be allocated to motor vehicles, bike lanes can actually move more people with less street space than general traffic lanes.
Here’s a good example from Toronto. Biking Toronto reports that while bike lanes take up just 19 percent of College Street, cyclists now account for nearly [...]
Reminder: Just Laying Track Is No Guarantee Riders Will Come
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Atlanta’s streetcar route is still surrounded by parking lots. Photo: Streetcarviews/Tumblr
Laying track isn’t enough to build a successful transit system — as some cities are learning the hard way.
A slate of new rail projects — mostly mixed-traffic streetcars, but that’s not the only way to mess up — are attracting embarrassingly few passengers. Some of these projects may be [...]
U.S. DOT Wants to Show America How to Heal Divides Left By Urban Highways
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Highway destruction in reverse: U.S. DOT used the teardown of Milwaukee’s Park East Freeway, shown here mid-demolition, to illustrate its “Every Place Counts” initiative. Photo: Milwaukee Department of City Development via CNU
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx opened up earlier this spring in a refreshingly personal speech about how highway construction in American cities isolated many neighborhoods — especially black [...]
After Big Push From Mayors, TIGER in Line For Slight Funding Boost
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There’s good news out of the Senate committee responsible for doling out transportation funds.
The Indianapolis Cultural Trail was funded in part with a TIGER grant. Photo: Walk Indianapolis
Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee okayed a small increase in TIGER funding, according to Stephen Lee Davis at Transportation for America. TIGER is the program that allows local governments [...]
Tell the Feds: Don’t Turn City Streets Into Highways
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Will the Obama administration prod state DOTs to abandon the destructive practice of widening roads and highways, or will it further entrench policies that have hollowed out cities and towns, increased traffic and car dependence, and made America a world leader in carbon pollution?
New federal rules threaten to give state DOTs more license to treat urban [...]
Insane Comic Books Warn Phoenix Children That Biking Will Kill Them
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This comic book was produced by the Phoenix Street Transportation Department to warn young children about the dangers of not wearing a helmet. Via The Arizona Republic
Hey kids, the Phoenix Department of Street Transportation has a fun message for you: Riding your bike is likely to result in a gory horror scene. If you don’t wear your [...]
Schools, Streets, and the Deadly Negligence of State DOTs
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On Missouri’s Highway 109 Saturday night, a driver struck and killed a 7-year-old girl who was walking to a father-daughter dance. Image: Google Maps
Here is a truly heartbreaking story about the price we pay for prioritizing cars over people on our streets.
This weekend in St. Louis County, a turning driver struck and killed 7-year-old Rachel Bick on Highway 109. She was trying [...]
A Big Opportunity to Reform the Vicious Cycle of Highway Expansion
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Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx made headlines recently with a speech about how America needs to rethink its approach to urban highways. But U.S. DOT’s influence is limited. States have the real power when it comes spending federal transportation funds, however, and a lot of states are still stuck in the cycle of addressing traffic congestion by widening highways, [...]
Your 2016 Parking Madness Champion Is… Louisville!
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Streetsblog readers spent the past three weeks voting in Parking Madness, the single elimination tournament where cities compete for the Golden Crater — a symbol of the shameful amount of space we’ve allowed surface parking to consume in our communities. We started with a field of 16 and now we have a champion.
The winner of this year’s Golden Crater is [...]