Streetsblog USA

More disturbing reports from Atlanta's epic frozen traffic jam disaster are coming to light today. It's hard to believe how quickly the situation got out of hand when the region's freeways got hit with a few inches of snow.

The day after President Obama’s State of the Union plea to improve economic opportunity for struggling Americans, New Jersey Democrat Albio Sires introduced a bill that he says will help meet that goal.

The city of Fresno, California, is a sprawling place, not known for having a strong transit system. But it's been making big strides. Last year, this city of 500,000 passed a "general plan" that called for 45 percent of new development to be "infill," or built in already developed areas.

Maybe it doesn’t matter what President Obama says in his State of the Union. According to a Washington Post analysis, his batting average for last year’s SOTU proposals was a .208. In 2013, the president pleaded for tax reform, an American Jobs Act, $50 billion for a Fix-It-First infrastructure repair binge, a “Partnership to Rebuild America” to lure private capital to infrastructure projects, and an Energy Security Trust to use oil and gas revenues for technology to “shift our cars and trucks off oil for good.” None of that went anywhere.

Jeff Wood and I are back with episode 8 of the Talking Headways podcast. We talk about Los Angeles Metro's decision not to extend light rail all the way to LAX (and what they're doing instead), plus some analysis of what rail can really do in a city as spread-out as LA. Then we head east to Princeton, New Jersey, where we debunk the thesis that low sales of luxury condos somehow equates to a rejection of walkability. And finally, back west to Seattle, which finds itself with a similar problem to LA: how to bring more density to settled single-family areas?

Transportation apps aimed at drivers are increasingly ubiquitous. There are apps to help people find a parking space, or to allow drivers to report a pile-up on the interstate to other drivers in real time.

When former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced earlier this month that he was going to co-chair Building America's Future, I thought, "well that seems like a good place for him, but it's not going to make his wife happy." Mrs. LaHood has famously been needling him for years to get out of public office and make some money in the private sector.

A new bill introduced by Senators John Hoeven (R-ND) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) would further entrench rules that make it difficult for crash investigators to access black box data from cars.