Streetsblog USA

The forecasting models were right: As the polls closed last night it quickly became apparent that Republicans will gain control of the Senate, with at least 52 seats now held by the GOP. The implications for transportation are immense. To understand what they are, first let's look at what last night means for the prospects for a new transportation bill next year. Then we'll get inside the committees for a nitty-gritty look at the leadership shakeup.

Today, voters go to the polls to exercise their constitutional right to self-government -- if their state hasn’t disenfranchised them with onerous voter ID laws, that is, and if they can get motivated to turn out for a mid-term election. In 27 states, voters are choosing a governor. These elections are perhaps the most important in the country when it comes to transportation policy, because governors set the agenda for major infrastructure decisions and control the state DOTs that spend the lion's share of U.S. transportation funding.

On Friday, the Ohio Department of Transportation held a meeting ostensibly to gather feedback from transit riders in the Dayton and Cincinnati regions. But ODOT held the meeting in exurban Lebanon -- a hour's trip by car from Cincinnati and totally inaccessible by transit from either city.

Here's a great visualization of what cities get out of the billions of dollars spent on highways and road expansion: more traffic.

It's scorecard season in California. Advocacy groups are giving grades to legislators based on how they voted on bills in the last year's sessions, and releasing the scores just in time to influence next week's election.

Since the 1960s and the earliest days of job sprawl, the theory of "spatial mismatch" -- that low-income communities experience higher unemployment because they are isolated from employment centers -- has shaped the way people think about urban form and social equity.

If you're a Netflix member, you're part of the downfall of the brick-and-mortar video store. There are all kinds of reasons to be sad about that, but we look at its implications for urbanism and transportation. Besides, now where will you find esoteric foreign films to impress your friends? There are reasons to believe a few hardy indie-shop survivors could keep hanging on for a while (and we encourage you to bike to them).

Next week, voters in Maryland and Wisconsin may tell state officials to keep their greedy paws off transportation funds. Louisianans will consider whether to create an infrastructure bank to help finance projects. Texans will weigh the wisdom of raiding the state’s Rainy Day Fund for -- what else? -- highways. And Massachusetts activists who have been fighting to repeal the state’s automatic gas tax hikes will finally get their day of reckoning.

Beavercreek, Ohio, nabbed its own infamous place in civil rights history last year, when the Federal Highway Administration ruled that the suburb had violated anti-discrimination laws by blocking bus service from nearby Dayton.