Rebuilding Roads with “Practical Design”

Today on the Streetsblog Network, Richard Layman of Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space finds some interesting ideas about the future of American roads in a somewhat unlikely source -- the super-mainstream Parade magazine, which comes as an insert with more than 400 newspapers around the country and claims a circulation of 33 million. Layman looks at a Parade's cover story from yesterday, entitled How We Can Save Our Roads. The Parade article looks at an engineering practice called "practical design" that is being implemented in Missouri:

Photo by TheTruthAbout via Flickr.

Today, when Missouri engineers design highways, they aim “not to build perfect projects, but to build good projects that give you a good system,” says
[Missouri's transportation boss, Pete K.] Rahn. Practical Design says to “start at the bottom of the standards and go up to meet the need. When you meet the need, you stop.”

Layman adds: 

Elsewhere around the network:  Transportation for America summarizes the data from the American Public Transportation Association about last year's surge in ridership on mass transit; Bike Commute Tips Blog writes about the link between the economic downturn and bike commuting; and Bicycle Fixation has a nifty history of the connection between bikes and the city.