Sarah Goodyear

In the last couple of weeks, the issue of cellphone use and texting while driving has finally been shoved into the national consciousness, thanks to an excellent series of articles by Matt Richtel in The New York Times. Even the United States Senate has been moved to sit up and take notice. Of course our attention will soon drift elsewhere, the way it does -- that's sort of the problem, isn't it? -- until some fresh incident brings it briefly to mind again.

When non-transportation-geeks ask me why transportation policy is a topic worthy of more attention on the national stage, I often start by talking about the public health implications. Not only are tens of thousands of Americans killed and injured in car crashes every year, not only are countless thousands of others killed and sickened by air pollution caused by motor vehicles -- on top of that, the link between obesity and automobile dependence is increasingly well-documented. As Elana Schor wrote here a couple of weeks ago, "Transportation reform is health reform."

It's the height of summer, the stretch of endless lazy days when -- at least in the American dreamworld -- kids hunt for adventure in packs through the shimmering heat. A time when they make their own fun. A time of bicycles and improvised games and ice cream, of luxuriant boredom and the discovery it makes possible.

The other day, a woman on foot was killed by a someone driving a car in New Jersey. Sadly, that isn't terribly unusual. What made this death more "newsworthy" -- elevating it briefly to the CNN headline stack yesterday -- was the fact that Alexis Cohen, the woman who was left on the side of the road by a hit-and-run driver, had auditioned for American Idol.

Can a bike-sharing program transform a city? To mark the second anniversary of the Vélib system in Paris, Streetsblog Network member World Streets has a post arguing that it can, if it's done on a sufficient scale:

It's Friday. It's summer. Let's face it, you shouldn't be looking at a computer right now.

Today on the Streetsblog Network, we're headed to Louisville, Kentucky, where Broken Sidewalk highlights grassroots efforts to prevent a massive expansion of the I-64 highway on the Ohio River waterfront.

New York isn't the only city that's experimenting with closing roads to improve traffic and create better conditions for pedestrians and cyclists. Today, from Streetsblog Network member Human Transit, we hear of a bridge in Vancouver where a lane of car traffic has been given over to cyclists:

In today's New York Times article about how the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration withheld research data on the risks of cellphone use while driving, one little nugget in particular caught my attention:

What is it about bicycles that drives some motorists so crazy?