Cities, Counties, and Countries

San Mateo County is poised to spend more than a hundred million dollars on an expansion of Highway 101 while passing over more effective, less expensive options to improve people's commutes.

When a street redesign to prioritize walking, biking, or transit is introduced, the headlines are predictable: A handful of business owners scream bloody murder. Anecdotes from grumpy merchants tend to dominate the news coverage, but what's the real economic impact of projects like Select Bus Service, pedestrian plazas, road diets and protected bike lanes? How can it be measured?

In a potent demonstration for safer streets, 1,000 Londoners staged a "die-in" with their bikes in front of the city's transportation offices Friday. ABC producer Meredith Frost snapped the above image, which has been going viral on the Internet. The protest lasted a brief 15 minutes.

Streetsblog is happy to announce the opening of a new, full-time Sacramento-based reporting position to cover livable streets news from around California and the state capitol beginning in early 2014.

After public pressure, the City of Oakland held a second community meeting Wednesday about the design of the Latham Square pilot plaza, where a lane of car traffic was reinstated prematurely at the behest of Planning and Building Director Rachel Flynn. Despite a standing room-only crowd of attendees showing up to weigh in, the meeting was shut down 45 minutes early.

Earlier this month, NYC DOT put out a major new report, Making Safer Streets [PDF], that collects before-and-after data from dozens of street redesigns and distills five key principles to reduce traffic injuries. The excitement of election week overshadowed the release, but this is an important document that livable streets supporters will want to bookmark. It's an accessible guide to how DOT approaches the task of re-engineering streets for greater safety.

The crowning achievement for Oakland's new planning and building director so far might be ensuring that cars are being driven through the Latham Square pilot plaza once again.

Looks like the new LeBron James Nike ad that debuted during "Sunday Night Football" was at least in part the star's idea.

Here we present our final -- and most informative -- Streetfilm from Amsterdam. It provides a nice cross-section of commentary on life in the City of Bikes. If you'd like to skip directly to a certain section, use this table of contents: