Year: 2009

As Congress mulls over solutions to the nation's transportation funding gap, with an eye to passing new infrastructure legislation to reverse the rising unemployment rate, Rep. Pete DeFazio's (D-OR) proposed tax on oil futures is picking up new fans in high places.

San Jose is on the verge of adopting its new bicycle plan at the next City Council meeting on November 17th, which, as anyone who has cycled in San Jose knows, would be a welcome change from decades of traffic engineering focused almost solely on automobility.

If the equivalent of one jumbo jet full of Americans died every month, the resulting public outcry would be deafening. Or would it?

This week holds sobering discussion of climate change and sea level rise, a green festival, and more weekend bike rides than you can shake a stick at. Here are the highlights. Tuesday: SPUR Lunchtime Forum: Planning for the San Francisco Bay. Will Travis, executive director of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, will discuss opportunities … Continued

This morning on the Streetsblog Network, Smart City Memphis lays out what they call "Downtown's case against City Hall for abandonment." The post details how politicians systematically pulled financial and planning resources out of the city's core, even as they touted the importance of a vibrant city center for Memphis's future:

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

The city plans to paint bike lanes in 22 locations within the first year after the Bike Plan injunction is lifted, all of which would be reversible upon a court order, according to a filing [PDF] by the City's Attorney's office today.

City planners have been on the hook for some of the last century's greatest metropolitan mishaps: urban freeways and "slum clearance," arbitrary minimum parking requirements, and land use laws that have left little room for the mingling of uses. Understandably, today's planners are a bit humbled. But when planning directors from some of North America's most progressive cities spoke at City Hall this week about the political challenges that face urban planners, several of them said the field needs to move beyond worrying about past mistakes.

Over the past two days at the Congress for the New Urbanism Project for Transportation Reform conference, attendees have called for transportation reform at local, regional, and national levels. In a panel debate about the future of transportation funding and the role of regional planning through MPOs, several speakers argued that the foundation of transportation and development funding had to be systematically overhauled.