Streetsblog USA

Opponents of a $1.4 billion highway expansion project outside Cincinnati have won some important concessions from Ohio DOT, but the agency's stealth campaign to build an "interstate to the sea" isn't over yet.

City rankings of bike-friendliness -- while fabulous click-bait for their purveyors -- obscure dramatic differences among neighborhoods. Los Angeles doesn’t appear on any cycling top 10 lists, but the area to the north and west of the University of Southern California has a 20 percent bicycle mode share. The city of Miami Beach is no bike heavyweight, but around Flamingo Park, nearly one in every four trips to work is made on two wheels.

This week I'm joined by Bruce Katz, vice president of the Brookings Institution and founder of its Metropolitan Policy Program. We chat about devolution in Great Britain --the idea of moving power away from national bureaucracies and towards metropolitan governance -- and the power of metropolitan areas around the world.

Greetings loyal readers.

In 2009, Vancouver converted a southbound car lane on the west side of the Burrard Bridge to a protected bikeway using concrete dividers, freeing up the sidewalk for pedestrians. On the east side, the city converted the existing sidewalk into a bike path.

Cross-posted from City Observatory

How many jobs are within a 10-minute walk of your home? How about 20 minutes? Chances are, there's a lot more if you live in Philadelphia than in Memphis.

Can anything spur Congress to overhaul a federal transportation policy that lets states run amok building highway expansions while the rest of our infrastructure goes to seed? Don't hold your breath -- the cycle of extending the status quo transportation bill is starting all over again.

This week on the podcast, Dan Parolek of Opticos Design talks about their new website themissingmiddle.com, which explores housing types between high- or mid-rise buildings and single-family homes that cities don't make much anymore.