Streetsblog USA

Late last week, somebody started the meme #ReplaceBikeWithCar on Twitter and it really took off.

A funny thing happens when you switch the word "car" with the word "bike" in news reports. Robert Prinz, a former Streetsblog San Francisco intern, has been making the switch in stories about destructive car crashes and posting the results at his blog, 10 Miles per Hour Challenge! It makes for some provocative viewing.

We started with 16 parking craters and now we're down to the Final Four of Parking Madness.

It goes without saying that the mass suburbanization of the past 60 years has been very bad news for people who can't afford cars, and it's getting worse as poverty levels rise in the suburbs.

The last spot in the 2014 Parking Madness Final Four is at stake today, as Rochester faces off against Detroit.

Jeff and I had a great time this week, getting all outraged at the short-sighted move by the Tennessee Senate to ban dedicated lanes for transit, and high and mighty about cities that devote too much space to surface parking at the expense of just about everything else. And then we treat ourselves to a fun conversation about the origin of the American playground -- and whether the entire city should be the playground.

We're two weeks into our Parking Madness competition, and only a few parking craters are still standing.

One more round, and we'll be down to the worst-of-the-worst parking craters in the Parking Madness bracket, our annual search for the worst excesses in urban surface parking.

We're on to round two of Parking Madness, our search for the worst parking crater in North America. And I have to say, the parking craters in this match do seem to have descended to a new level of horribleness.