Livable Streets

Tonight, you are invited to a planning meeting to prepare for the previously discussed parking spot squat in New York City as a part of Park(ing) Day 2007. If you want to get involved, this is the place to be. Let's show those San Franciscans who's boss. 

As if USA Today featuring the "Complete Streets" movement on its front page weren't enough to make one realize that walking is the biggest new way to earn your "green" points, a cool web site, Walk Score, rates the walkability of any location in the United States on a 0-100 scale. Based on the number of retail businesses and amenities near an address, this site analyzes how frequently one is likely to need to drive in the daily course of life. The closer things are to the places you're likely to need, the better your score. Finally, a site that attempts to quantify the economic, environmental and social benefits of living in a city.

The results are in on one of urban designer and "shared space" proponent Ben Hamilton-Baillie's London projects. Kensington High Street is twice as safe now that all of the traffic engineering "safety features" are gone. The Standard reports:

StreetFilms' Clarence Eckerson has been in Davis, California the last few days, filming one of the premier bicycling cities in the United States. Clarence has a preliminary report and some photos up on the web site with a StreetFilm yet to come. It's worth a quick look.

Luc Nadal of the Institute for Transportation Development Policy sends along these photos showing some of the exciting new things happening on Parisian streets these days.

Nobody knows whether the convoluted and difficult congestion pricing "deal" reached by political leaders yesterday will actually result in anything. The deal is complex even by Albany standards. A few things, however, are clear:

A rendering of a mural proposed for Butler St. and Third Ave., one block from the Brooklyn intersection where a 4-year-old boy was killed by the driver of a Hummer in February.

On Monday, July 9 the transportation committee of Community Board 8 on Manhattan's Upper East Side took up the issues of congestion pricing and a new pair of crosstown bike lanes.

On Sunday in Paris, more than 10,000 bicycles became available at 750 self-service docking stations. The bike program, called Vélib (for "vélo," bicycle, and "liberté," freedom) is supposed to double in size by the end of the year. Pierre Aidenbaum, mayor of Paris's trendy third district, said "For a long time cars were associated with freedom of movement and flexibility. What we want to show people is that in many ways bicycles fulfill this role much more today." The New York Times reports: