Streetsblog

Can urban police forces with histories of racial profiling and brutality be entrusted to carry out traffic enforcement as part of Vision Zero initiatives? In a Twitter chat yesterday, the Safe Routes to School National Partnership asked how to ensure that "law enforcement doesn't profile or discriminate" when asked to uphold traffic laws.

Can taxes on driving mileage replace gas taxes as a source of transportation funds? Right now the state of Oregon is testing a mileage tax with an opt-in pilot program called "OreGo." Participants install a device that tracks their driving and pay 1.5 cents per mile, which is assessed from a special account.

Neighborhoods that are walkable, affordable for lower-income households, and provide access to jobs for people without a car are far too rare.

City Hall has set aside $9 million to improve streets near Mott Avenue in Downtown Far Rockaway. Ideas floated earlier this year include several pedestrian safety and public space enhancements. But word is the project doesn't do much for cycling, despite the need for safer biking conditions on streets like Beach Channel Drive. It's not too late to shape the project: The city and Council Member Donovan Richards are holding a hearing tomorrow to collect ideas from local residents.

The campaign to remove a 1960s-era highway relic in Providence, Rhode Island, known as the 6/10 Connector looked like it could go the distance. Local advocates had built broad support for the idea of replacing the two-mile highway segment with an at-grade boulevard that makes room for transit and bicycling while mending the divide between neighborhoods.

New Census data is out on how Americans commute, and the standout success story is Seattle, where the rate of people who drive alone to work dropped 8.8 percent over the last decade.

Networks of safe walking and biking infrastructure won't work very well if they're interrupted by bridges that are dangerous or stressful to cross. But when transportation agencies fix up bridges, their instinct is often to do the least for walking and biking that they can get away with.

What a long, difficult journey it's been for streetcar advocates in Cincinnati. After battling an extremely hostile state government, the project was nearly killed in the early stages of construction by an adversarial mayor. But a groundswell of grassroots support for the project pushed it over the top.

Seattle has a housing affordability problem. One way to address that is to reduce the amount of parking required in new residential buildings, lowering construction costs and increasing the number of apartments that can be built.