Sarah Goodyear

Today, in honor of bike month on the Streetsblog Network, we hear from a cyclist in Long Beach, California, who was forced into the position of (unsuccessfully) educating a police officer about the right of a bike to ride safely out of the door zone. This via the Long Beach Cyclists blog:

When she wrote a column for the New York Sun last year about letting her nine-year-old ride the subway on his own, Lenore Skenazy was pilloried by many as an irresponsible mom. She stuck to her guns, though, and started a blog dedicated to "sane parenting", advocating the idea that we are over-sheltering our children from infinitesimal threats such as stranger abduction. According to Skenazy, the kind of independence represented by that subway trip is necessary and healthy for children -- and their parents as well.

Usually when we talk about someone having a windshield perspective on this blog, we don't mean it as a good thing. But today, courtesy of Streetsblog Network member Bike Portland, we bring you a windshield perspective that is actually quite helpful. TriMet bus operator Dan Christenson has written a guest column about how happy he is to see more bicyclists using lights at night -- because it means he sees them so much better:

Today from the Streetsblog Network, Tom Vanderbilt writes on his How We Drive blog about an upcoming experiment in London. Traffic lights at seven intersections in the borough of Ealing will be covered with bags, and drivers will be expected to safely navigate by making eye contact with pedestrians, cyclists and other motorists. The move was inspired by an accidental signal failure that resulted in improved traffic flow, catching the eye of planners. Vanderbilt cautions:

More and more, municipalities are seeing the advantages that "complete streets" development can bring to a community. The problem can be, as we see in a post by Streetsblog Network member Urban Milwaukee, that funding mechanisms are skewed heavily to a completely different kind of planning:

In Illinois, as elsewhere around the country, more people are riding transit -- and, as elsewhere, transit funding is being threatened because of state money problems. Meanwhile, reports The Transport Politic, road and bridge projects are going ahead as planned:

Today on the Streetsblog Network, we check in again with John Michlig, who writes the blog Sprawled Out from Franklin, Wisconsin.

Yesterday we heard about social conservatives who support a less autocentric transportation policy.

When Barack Obama was elected, urbanists were, in some cases literally, dancing in the streets. For once, America had elected a president who understood the importance of cities -- and who promised to create an "Office for Urban Policy" that would help those cities to take their rightful place in the federal policy debate.

Big thanks this morning to Streetsblog Network member Trains for America, which links to a fascinating essay from the Witherspoon Institute on why social conservatives should support public transit and walkable communities. Here's a taste of the Witherspoon piece: