Angie Schmitt
Recent Posts
Obama’s Politically Impossible Transpo Plan Is Just What America Needs
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Even with a tax on oil, the U.S.’s effective gas tax rate would be the lowest in the industrialized world. Graph: Tony Dutzik via FHWA
It may be “seven years too late,” as tactical urbanist Mike Lydon put it, but President Obama has released a transportation proposal that calls for big shifts in the country’s spending priorities.
Obama’s proposal would [...]
The Feds Want to Reform the Cult of “Level of Service”
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The old way of making transportation decisions prioritized the movement of cars above all. The Federal Highway Administration will encourage local agencies to shift to other methods. Cartoon: Andy Singer via Project for Public Spaces
“What you measure is what you get,” the saying goes.
That’s certainly true for transportation policy. And for a very long time one [...]
Study: Sharrows Don’t Make Streets Safer for Cycling
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Sharrows are the dregs of bike infrastructure — the scraps cities hand out when they can’t muster the will to implement exclusive space for bicycling. They may help with wayfinding, but do sharrows improve the safety of cycling at all? New research presented at the Transportation Review Board Annual Meeting suggests they don’t.
Sharrows without traffic-calming won’t do [...]
Social Engineering! Cities That Build More Parking Get More Traffic
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Cities like Hartford that added a lot of parking over the last few decades saw driving rates increase more than in cities where parking volumes stayed flatter. Graph: McCahill/TRB
Build parking spaces and they will come — in cars. New research presented this week at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board finds a direct, causal [...]
What Happened When a Newspaper Became an Advocate for Bicyclists
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In too many cities, newspaper coverage of bicycling has stoked some of the darker aspects of human nature. Opinion pieces about bike lanes tend to cater to the reactionary opposition, goading the trolls of the comments section, where casual death threats are standard fare.
News-Press reporters Janine Zeitlin (center) and Laura Ruane (right) accept an award for [...]
Gaze Upon Lincoln, Nebraska’s Awesome New Curb-Protected Bike Lane
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Need a reason to feel hopeful for 2016? Check out this video from the city of Lincoln, Nebraska, showing off the city’s new curb-protected bike lane.
The N Street protected bike lane provides a link between two major trails. Image: Downtown Lincoln Association/Alta Planning + Design
The N Street protected bike lane covers a 17-block stretch in downtown Lincoln. It includes [...]
The Problem With Designing Streets for Peak Hour Traffic
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If St. Paul widens this intersection to make traffic move faster for a few hours each weekday, it’s going to work worse all the time for everyone who lives nearby. Photo: Google Maps via Streets.mn
When engineers make decisions about streets, they tend to emphasize the “peak hour” — the morning and evening rush when traffic is at its most intense. For the [...]
The Best and Worst of the New 5-Year Transportation Bill
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The trucking industry was a big winner in the transportation bill negotiations. Photo: Wikipedia
Smart people are wading through the 1,300-page transportation bill that came out of conference committee earlier this week, and we’re starting to get a clearer sense of how it will change federal transportation policy for the next five years.
The House voted to pass the [...]
How Traffic Growth Projections Become a Self-Fulfilling Prophesy
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Transportation planners in Austin are in the beginning stages of a pattern just about every community in the U.S. is familiar with.
The way to break the traffic projection prophecy is to avoid catering to it in the first place. Image: Carfree Austin
The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority (CTRMA) says traffic on a local highway — South MoPac [...]
TIGER Restored, Transit Expansion Funds Cut in 2016 Spending Bill
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As the House and the Senate get to work on hashing out a multi-year transportation bill in conference committee, Congress is also putting together its annual spending package for transportation. The annual bill decides the fate of several discretionary programs, and earlier this year it looked like US DOT’s TIGER grants, which tend to fund multi-modal projects at [...]
Zig Zag Road Striping Calms Traffic in Virginia
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Virginia DOT installed these zig zag markings to caution drivers approaching the intersection of a popular walking and biking trail. Photo: Virginia DOT
At 11 points in northern Virginia, the familiar straight dashed lines on the road gives way to a series of zig zags. The unusual markings, the result of a pilot project from the Virginia Department of [...]
The Looming Transit Breakdown That Threatens America’s Economy
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Categories of maintenance needs, in billions of dollars, for America’s large transit agencies. Graph: RPA
While federal transit funding stagnates, the nation’s largest rail and bus systems have been delaying critical maintenance projects. Without sustained efforts to fix infrastructure and vehicles, the effects of deteriorating service in big American cities could ripple across the national economy, according to a new [...]