Out of Town

Last week's saga of MTA workers seizing bicycles locked to a subway stair railing in Brooklyn illustrated, yet again, just how far New York City has to go towards making bicycles an integral part of the city's transportation system. As Larry Littlefield aptly commented, "The MTA doesn't see bikes as an extension of the transit system. It's a new concept here."

Only 20 years ago, Beijing was one of the most bike-friendly cities in the world. Today, rapidly increasing automobile congestion is helping to turn the Chinese capital into one of the most polluted cities on Earth. Air quality is so bad, the Chinese government is initiating special driving restrictions ahead of next year's Olympic Games in order to make the air breathable for the world's elite athletes. Meanwhile, one entrepreneur is trying to bring back bicycles, capitalist-style with a bike sharing program similar to the one recently set up in Paris.

The first hearings conducted by the New York City Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission were held yesterday, with one in White Plains and another at Hofstra University.

Filed by April Greene

The National Complete Streets Coalition reports on an important victory for the livable streets movement in Illinois.  A new law mandates that the principles of complete streets must be incorporated into all new projects and construction, effective immediately.

Construction is underway on what may be the nation's most advanced urban greenway system.

With New York City recently scoring a bronze medal for urban bike-friendliness from the League of American Bicyclists, we figured it was a good time to post our 8 minute StreetFilm on Davis, California, where I visited this summer. Portland, Oregon is nipping at their heels, but Davis is still the only city in America yet to attain LAB's Platinum award.

If you're the type of person who has been following the Yankee Stadium parking garage story, or the Hudson Yards zoning story or the story about the city block in Prospect Heights that's being leveled and turned into a gigantic surface parking lot, you may enjoy James Howard Kunstler's column this week. The author of The Geography of Nowhere and The Long Emergency, has lately noticed that many American towns "are obsessed to the point of mania with the issue of parking and more generally the management of cars, and much of their spending is directed to those ends." He writes: