Seeking more than a few good transportation engineers


By Robert Steuteville, Better! Cities & Towns

Traffic engineers and transportation planners are aware of the research favoring walkability, they know that complete streets work, and yet many are unwilling to face the logical implications: Their long-held practices need to change.

We need more than a few good transportation engineers.

Janette Sadik-Khan was a rare Department of Transportation official, under former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who challenged long-held practices. She pushed hard to make the city's streets and public spaces better for people outside of motorized vehicles.
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Knowing the futility of finding better solutions that way, Sadik-Khan was clever. When a big change was warranted, she proposed the idea as a temporary test. Traffic studies are notoriously unreliable—they often overestimate traffic substantially, contributing to the design of larger, faster streets and roads that discourage walking and induce more traffic. The system is guaranteed to confirm conventional practice. Traffic studies often delay projects for years and raise costs.

A temporary test project, instead, generates real-world data in real time. When these tests worked, the city made the changes permanent. Then new changes were proposed.

In that way Times Square and many other places in New York City were substantially improved. Half of the space in Times Square is now given to people to enjoy. Business is up, safety is improved, and the traffic still flows. One of the top three tourist attractions in the world now has better transportation balance. Using the old system, such a result is hard to imagine.
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by B' Spokes

Like most people I live a hectic life and who has the time for much exercise? Thanks to xtracycle now I do. By using my bike for daily activities I can get things done and get an hour plus work out in 15 minutes extra of my time, not a bad deal and beats taking the extra time going to the gym. In case you are still having trouble being motivated; the National Center of Disease Control says that inactivity is the #2 killer in the United States just behind smoking. ( http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/bb_nutrition/ ) Get out there and start living life! I can carry home a full shopping cart of groceries, car pool two kids or just get lost in the great outdoors camping for a week. Well I got go, another outing this weekend.
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