Car Culture

After receiving a heavy dose of car commercials during the New York Mets playoff run last month, I decided that it was time to start a new feature on Streetsblog called Ad Nauseum. Below is the first installment.

Jacobsen's study has been mentioned in several news stories lately. The Washington Post quotes him as saying:

Via the Manhattan Institute's new blog, Streetsblog learns of a pdf-formatted report entitled A Heavy Load: The Combined Housing and Transportation Burdens of Working Famillies, which looks at the housing and transportation expenses paid by lower income families in a number of cities. The report, published by the Center for Housing Policy, a K Street think tank, finds that lower-income families in central cities spend significantly less on the overhead of life than suburban and exurban ones.

On Friday, Department of Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall stood up in front of 600 people at Borough President Stringer's Transportation Policy Conference and said that her agency was serious about reducing car use in New York City. It was a great policy speech.

Photo: Mike Groll/Associated Press via The New York Times

Today is International Park(ing) Day. Also known as a "parking squat," Park(ing) is a quasi-legal reclamation of urban street space in which a metered, curbside parking spaces are transformed into urban parkland complete with sod, benches, trees and human beings. Here is how Park(ing) Day is being celebrated this morning in Midtown Manhattan on 8th Avenue near 30th Street:

Republican lobbyist and convicted tax-evader Albert J. Pirro is the husband of Jeanine F. Pirro, the law-n-order Westchester prosecutor and Republican candidate for state Attorney General. Albert was busted the other day in White Plains for doing 51 in a 25 mph school zone - just two months after being clocked at 98 in a 55 zone.

Charles Komanoff at Right of Way has churned out an initial analysis of the City's bicycle injury and fatality study. Here is his take: