Cities and Countries

Sometimes, when a city builds a really good bike lane - especially an American city - you have to sit back and appreciate it.

If the city's helmet law kills bike-share -- again -- public safety will suffer.

In the last 50 years, nearly every state agency that used to call itself the "highway department" has changed its name to the "department of transportation" to reflect a purported change in mission. But in practice, many state DOTs still operate strictly as highway departments.

It makes perfect sense to provide bulk transit passes, which often lead to higher ridership. But these fare structures pose a problem for people who aren't in a position to scrape together the cash for a pass and pay for a whole month of transit rides one fare at a time. They may end up paying more than wealthier riders for the same amount of service, even though they can least afford it. Now Portland's transit agencies -- Trimet, C-Tran, and the city's streetcars -- are showing the way to a fairer system.

Stopping a highway project is never easy. It's even harder when the highway is in a city like Dallas. And yet this week, the Dallas City Council pulled the plug on the $1.7 billion Trinity Toll Road in a 13-2 vote. A key figure in the highway revolt is Council Member Angela Hunt.

High school students haven’t gotten much attention as potential bike-share users, but they should.

There are plenty of questions about whether this new bike-share business model, which is backed by Silicon Valley-style venture capital, will have legs. Will the companies be able to maintain safe bikes, provide good service, and stay financially viable in the long run? It’s too soon to say. But in the early going, they are proving that plenty of people will use bike-share in a city where it previously flopped, reports Tom Fucoloro at Seattle Bike Blog.

Thanks to road boosters in the suburbs of Washington, DC, another highway bridge across the Potomac River -- part of an old plan for a second beltway around the nation’s capital -- is still officially a possibility.

It's extra challenging to redesign a city street for safe walking and biking when that street is controlled by the state DOT. That's the case with Memorial Drive in Atlanta, a dangerous state road that runs more than five miles across the city.