Month: January 2013

Who will be looking out for the interests of transit riders in the 113th Congress? It’s easy to figure it out, said Cap’n Transit over the weekend: Just check whether they have an R or a D next to their names.

Yesterday, we mentioned that some people in Washington, DC, are up in arms over a zoning rule designed to let more people move in to some residential areas. Linda Schmitt, leader of a group that goes by the name "Neighbors for Neighborhoods," is organizing against a measure that would allow people to live in existing buildings in alleyways. It was a curious complaint, because, as David Alpert at Greater Greater Washington noted, what they were all worked up over amounted to a few "cute, clean little brick house[s]."

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Dangerous, illegal right turns from Market Street onto the freeway at the intersection with Octavia Boulevard -- the location with the most pedestrian and bicycle crashes in the city -- may become less frequent after a long-awaited state decision that allows the city to use camera enforcement. The decision was announced by California Attorney General Kamala Harris last week.

Updated 4:47 p.m.

This week, SPUR hosts a forum with updates on high-speed rail, the SFMTA considers bike lanes on part of the Great Highway, East Bay Bike Party hosts a superhero ride, and the SF Bicycle Coalition leads an exploration of the Richmond District and the upper Presidio.

One of the most important federal transit programs has undergone a makeover, and transit advocates are cheering the results.

It's well-established that density and mixed-use development reduce driving. Right? But strategies like those don’t work the same way everywhere, according to new research published in the Journal of Transport and Land Use. While in major cities, denser development is linked to lower rates of driving, researchers found that in smaller cities it might not have much effect at all. The research suggests that for smaller cities, a focus on reducing block sizes and improving street connectivity may be the most effective way to cut down on driving, though the authors caution that more research is needed to draw universal conclusions.

Agenda and schedule