Streetsblog USA

Michael Andersen blogs for The Green Lane Project, a PeopleForBikes program that helps U.S. cities build better bike lanes to create low-stress streets.

When a cyclist is killed or seriously injured, the responses you hear often pin the blame squarely on the victim. "Why wasn't she wearing a helmet?" Or, "Why was he wearing dark clothing? "

Michael Andersen blogs for The Green Lane Project, a PeopleForBikes program that helps U.S. cities build better bike lanes to create low-stress streets.

This was the New Year's revelry advice from Mother Jones, the left-wing, reader-supported magazine: Whatever you do, don't walk anywhere after drinking. That's because, Maddie Oatman writes, it makes you more likely to be struck by a driver.

It's been one year since the world's largest tunnel boring machine, "Bertha," got stuck 120 feet beneath Seattle. Before it broke down, the colossal machine had excavated just 1,000 feet of the two-mile tube that's supposed to house a new, $3.1 billion underground highway to replace an aging elevated road called the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

Twenty-four-year-old Taja Wilson was killed near the Louisiana bayou in August when a driver swerved on the shoulder where she was walking. Noshat Nahian, age 8, was killed in a Queens crosswalk on his way to school in December by a tractor-trailer driver with a suspended license. Manuel Steeber, 37, was in a wheelchair when he was killed in Minneapolis while trying to cross an intersection with no crosswalk or traffic signal on a 40-mph road. One witness speculated that Steeber must have had a "death wish."

Keep this in mind the next time a high-profile train crash generates more press coverage than a year's worth of car wrecks: Despite the media sensationalism and overwrought regulatory responses that follow such events, transit is already a lot safer than driving.

Stuck in Seattle or Stuck in Sherman Oaks. There are so many places to get stuck these days and so many clowns and jokers making it worse.

Earlier this year, following a slight uptick in U.S. traffic volumes, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a press release, "More people driving means our economy is picking up speed." He's not the only person to equate traffic with economic growth. Even former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg once said, "We like traffic, it means economic activity," before his administration embraced ideas like congestion pricing, bus lanes, and protected bikeways.