Before 2009, Times Square was a hellish place to walk. Pedestrians outnumbered vehicles nine to one but were confined to just 10 percent of the street space. The creation of car-free plazas on Broadway changed the equation, and now those plazas are a permanent fixture of the street.
Right before former New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan set off on a multi-city book tour for Streetfight (along with co-author Seth Solomonow), I was able to get a few minutes to ask her five eclectic questions in Washington Square Park. Want to know the story behind the appearance of hundreds of cheap lawn chairs on opening day in car-free Times […]
It was just about five years ago that attorneys with the law firm Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, working pro bono on behalf of some people with ties to Senator Chuck Schumer, filed suit against the city for installing the Prospect Park West bike lane. In August 2011, Kings County Supreme Court Judge Bert Bunyan dismissed […]
How did Portland get to be a national model for sustainable transportation and walkable development? Yes, Mayor Neil Goldschmidt stopped the Mount Hood Freeway from being built in 1974 and began negotiations that eventually led to the implementation of the urban growth boundary. But Goldschmidt didn’t do it alone. Grassroots activists from a group called […]