Noah Kazis

The city's Department of Health has made encouraging physical activity, which can help prevent obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other ailments, a top priority. As part of promoting healthy lifestyles, the Department's Brooklyn District Public Health Office spent last summer studying cyclist behavior in Bedford-Stuyvesant to learn who in that neighborhood travels by bike, and how, so as to better be able to promote cycling in the broader North and Central Brooklyn area. The recently released results [PDF] provide a rare neighborhood-scale look at who cycles, how they ride, and what they think of biking conditions. 

With good data and targeted traffic enforcement, police departments around the country are saving lives. The Data Driven Approach to Crime and Traffic Safety policing system, or DDACTS, run by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, is reducing crashes by putting officers where they need to be to address the traffic violations most likely to lead to injury and death.

MTA Unveils Fare Hike Details (NYT, News) It’s Not Just Fares: Dozens of Small Cuts Will Hurt Ride Quality (WSJ) And 202 Station Agent Layoffs Formally Approved (AMNY) News: Don’t Blame MTA; Pin the Hike on Paterson, Silver, Sampson, and Skelos Will Environmentalists Regroup Around a Carbon Fee Instead of a Carbon Cap? (The Nation) … Continued

It may be the middle of summer, but if you're paying attention, it's already election season. With a string of primaries leading into November's main event, voters will consider transportation issues from now through the fall. In some races, like for California governor, it's one of many hot-button topics being debated by the candidates. In others, transportation is right there on the ballot.

MTA Fare Hike Plans Expand: 1-Day, 14-Day Passes To End, Bridge and Tunnel Tolls Up (Post)  Suburban Park-and-Ride Prices Rise, Too (SAS)  Ben Kabak Grabs Subway Ridership and Reliability Graphs Showing Pre-Service Cut Trends In Wake of Service Cuts, Commuter Vans Come Even to the Upper East Side (Metro) New Willis Ave. Bridge, Now With … Continued

With the city's budget battered by the economic crisis, the Bloomberg administration is looking for ways to reduce the cost of city government. One place they're turning: the city's fleet of 26,000 motor vehicles. The city announced last week that it expects to save $71 million by streamlining fleet management, including measures to cut fuel use and decrease the number of vehicles it owns. The city will also explore ways to use car-sharing to make the city's fleet more efficient.

Another city, another would-be transit-oriented development undermined by a glut of parking. This time it's Newton, Massachusetts, where plans are underway to build 420,000 square feet of office space, 60,000 square feet of retail, and 190 units of housing at the Riverside terminus of Boston's Green Line, the highest-ridership light rail line in the country.

Manhattan Community Board 7 approved its recommendations for the Riverside Center mega-project in a special meeting last night, laying out a long list of demands. Many of the modifications would make the development more walkable, whether by integrating the project with the city's streets and sidewalks or, more controversially, reducing the amount of parking proposed for the site. The board wants Extell Development to chop the number of parking spaces in its proposal from 1,800 to 1,000.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the Department of City Planning is currently studying the merits of parking minimums in some of New York's transit-rich neighborhoods, like Harlem and western Brooklyn and Queens. And local interests in at least one neighborhood, Downtown Brooklyn, are starting to mobilize around the issue. While the coalition has yet to go public, sources say there have been preliminary discussions about reducing, or even eliminating, parking minimums in the area, which would be a big victory for sustainable transportation.

Americans who ride trains and buses are suffering the effects of a huge maintenance backlog, according to a new study by the Federal Transit Administration [PDF]. It would take a down payment of $77.7 billion to bring the nation's transit systems up to a state of good repair and another $14.4 billion per year, on average, to keep transit running smoothly, safely, and comfortably for riders.