Interviews

Elly Blue's latest publication, "Bikes in Space," is a feminist sci-fi zine about her favorite mode of transportation. "I realized that because I work for myself, I can do anything I want," she says by way of explanation. The amazing truth is that she makes a living writing whatever strikes her fancy about the intersection between bicycling and feminism.

Earlier this week, Smart Growth America released an important study that illustrates how walkable development results in huge savings and significantly better returns for municipalities compared to car-centric development.

There’s a new global benchmark for rating bus rapid transit projects. Yesterday the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy released the BRT Standard 2013, which lays out the requirements for bus routes to qualify as BRT and scores 50 systems in 35 cities around the world as basic, bronze, silver, or gold based on various criteria. The idea, which ITDP has been refining since a beta release in 2011, is to provide a concrete definition of what BRT is, and a reference for politicians, planners, and advocates who are interested in creating new BRT routes, as well as to rate the quality of existing systems.

What makes a city great? According to Jeff Speck, the secret sauce is, quite simply, walking. If your city is a good place to walk -- that is, walking is safe, comfortable, interesting, and useful -- everything else will fall into place.

Last week, three leading organizations advocating for biking and walking issued a communiqué [PDF] about their intention to unify. According to the plan, hashed out two weeks ago at a top-level meeting in San Diego, the League of American Bicyclists, the Alliance for Biking and Walking, and Bikes Belong will become one organization, with one board of directors. 

Streetsblog had a chance today to ask the former Democratic chief of the House Transportation Committee, Rep. James Oberstar of Minnesota, about life since the 2010 election, when he lost by a hair to Republican Chip Cravaack. He said he's spending his post-Congress time traveling to France, getting paid to say things he used to say for free, and telling his four kids and seven grandkids the story of his wife, who succumbed to breast cancer 20 years ago.

Streetsblog sat down last week with Larry Hanley, the president of the Amalgamated Transit Union and member of the AFL-CIO executive council. Yesterday, we published the first part of our interview, focusing on movement-building around transit. Here, we had a vigorous discussion about union rules and Buy America provisions that are the subject of some debate among transit advocates.

Here's the second installment of Streetsblog's interview with Dan Biederman, head of the 34th Street Partnership and the Bryant Park Corporation. In the first part of the interview, Biederman discussed reactions to NYC DOT's recent public space projects on Broadway, and why the reality on the ground is much better for Midtown than most press accounts have let on.

Streetsblog sat down last week with Larry Hanley, the president of the Amalgamated Transit Union and member of the AFL-CIO executive council. Hanley started his career in New York as a bus driver in Brooklyn and then Staten Island, from 1978 to 1987. He became active in the transit union and worked his way up the ranks until winning election last fall as its youngest president ever. He is known for his creative responses to attacks on the union, including attempts to privatize express bus service, and his ability to build coalitions across many sectors.