Cartoon: If people treated their homes like they treat the earth
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/17/1364819/-Cartoon-If-people-treated-their-homes-like-they-treat-the-earth
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/17/1364819/-Cartoon-If-people-treated-their-homes-like-they-treat-the-earth
Virginia approves its first transportation plan based on a new system of scoring and prioritizing projects
by Dan Levine, Transportation for AmericaFollowing the release of the first list of recommended projects back in January, today’s approval from the CTB marks the first complete cycle of a brand new process created by the legislature a few years ago to improve the process for selecting projects and awarding transportation dollars — all in an effort to direct the new money to the best, most cost-effective projects with the greatest bang for the buck.
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http://t4america.org/2016/06/14/virginia-approves-its-first-transportation-plan-based-on-a-new-system-of-scoring-and-prioritizing-projects/
Slower Speed Limits Give Cities a New Attitude About Biking, Walking, Breathing
BY ANNA CLARK, Next CityEdinburgh, Scotland, is rolling out a 20 mph speed limit on 80 percent of its roads. (Photo by Martin Abegglen)
As more U.S. cities embrace the Vision Zero approach to curtailing traffic and ensuring pedestrian safety, there’s plenty of compelling data in favor of slow roads coming out of Edinburgh, Scotland. The numbers show how lower speed limits can change drivers’ attitudes about bicyclists — and even let city-dwellers breathe a bit easier thanks to air quality improvement.
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https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/slow-speed-limits-cities-edinburgh-20mph
NINE FOOT TRAVEL LANES IN PRACTICE
[B' Spokes: Yes Roland Ave with the state not allowing anything less than 10.5 foot lanes so we got a really skimpy Bikeways I am looking at you. 9 foot travel lanes exist are safer IMHO just fine for use that is not an major arterial road. See:]http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/10/12/nine-foot-travel-lanes-in-practice
The Case for Free-Range Parenting
By Clemens Wergin, New York Times...
That same year, 2,931 children under 15 died as passengers in car accidents. Driving children around is statistically more dangerous than letting them roam freely.
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http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/opinion/the-case-for-free-range-parenting.html
NEW PED AND BIKE DATA COLLECTING TECHNOLOGY
-> A new crop of data collecting technology — including bike-counter totems, GPS-enabled smartphone apps and cameras that use machine learning — is enhancing more time-consuming, less accurate ways of counting people riding bikes and walking. Tech startup CTY designed Numina (http://bit.ly/1tqvimy), a camera bike and pedestrian counter because there is not a lot of data that helps justifies complete streets infrastructure. The data counting hardware is essentially a camera mounted 15 feet up on a light pole capturing video. Software is programmed to recognize and count patterns such as a bicyclist or walker crossing the screen. Numina can also track behavior on a given piece of infrastructure — where a cyclist rides on a street, whether they choose the sidewalk over the bike lane, spots pedestrians avoid and more. Some of the most exciting data is coming from companies such as Strava (http://bit.ly/1WNyrcp) and MapMyRide (http://bit.ly/1XWTGcC), which track routes via GPS units and smartphone apps, provide actual behavior, and can provide demographic data about users. http://bit.ly/24x0Fr1from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.
NHTSA: 2014 TRAFFIC SAFETY FACTS: CHILDREN 75% killed in cars vs other modes
-> The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released its 2014 Traffic Safety Facts: Children with details the number of motor vehicle traffic fatalities and injuries involving children 14 and younger. Of the 1,070 child fatalities in 2014, 20% had been walking, and 5% had been riding a bike. http://1.usa.gov/238oTssfrom CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.
Dinosaur Comics on Driving
[B' Spokes: For me this really captures the unsaid aspect of driving. -- I heard of this cool new game called driving. It's dull and repetitive...]http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=2587
New traffic congestion report raises more questions than it answers
by Stephen Lee Davis, Transportation for America...
The report’s touchstone metric is a blunt measure of peak-hour speeds compared to an empty road in the middle of the night. Did you know that trips take longer during rush hour compared to the middle of the night? You did? The comparison of rush-hour to free-flow traffic begs the question about the goal: is it reasonable or even possible to build enough road capacity to keep traffic moving at free-flow speeds from 6-9 a.m. when the bulk of the populace is going to work? (Those free-flow speeds being used as the baseline comparison also exceed the speed limit in many cases, by the way.)
The economist Joe Cortright wrote a comical April Fools post that showed how silly that logic is when applied anywhere else, in this case, at Starbucks, where consumers lose “$4 billion every year in wasted time” because of long lines during busy mornings. Yet:
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http://t4america.org/2015/08/26/new-traffic-congestion-report-raises-more-questions-than-it-answers/
To make streets walkable, empower pedestrians to cross anywhere
by Ben Ross, Greater Greater Washington ...
To make streets truly walkable, we need to totally rethink how we run them. Crossing on foot should be legal anywhere and anyplace. Traffic lights should be red-yellow-green, with no walk signals.
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http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/30477/to-make-streets-walkable-empower-pedestrians-to-cross-anywhere/