On the Merits of Roundabouts
I grew up in Orange, California, a city that decided to forgo the traditional town square in favor of a circle. The Orange Circle is a two-lane roundabout surrounding a park and a fountain that was funded, I kid you not, back in 1886 through local bake sales. Every teenager in town learned to drive […]
Read MoreCrowdsourcing Traffic Studies
As my organization prepares to create a corridor plan, I’m spending much of my time surveying the street and benchmarking current conditions. At some point we’ll have to think about measuring traffic counts but I find the current technology a bit limiting. The old-fashioned approach involved throwing a sensor across the road to count cars. That’s […]
Read MorePlay Streets
On a recent post about restoring the downtown street grid, Matt Boehner, planner for our city’s Parks and Recreation Department, had a great comment about reclaiming streets. Without a doubt, the default use of streets has become cars and any other use is considered an exception to that rule. (In fact, Vox recently had a […]
Read MoreRestoring the Street Grid
Austin is adding nine new streets to their downtown, restoring the street grid and fixing what is called a “transportation dead zone.” According to the Austin American Statesman: (Director of the Downtown Austin Alliance Charlie) Betts noted that adding streets reverses what has been a sporadic trend of the downtown grid losing pieces of streets over […]
Read MoreIs a road diet warranted?
A sneckdown is a snow pile in the street next to a sidewalk or at an intersection. This pile shows us where sidewalk space could reclaimed, as cars aren’t driving over it, and how streets could be better designed. via @urbanful
Read MoreBikes v. Cars
I recently posted a link on Facebook to a great article on Vox explaining why bikes should be able to treat stop signs as yield signs. Also known as the Idaho Stop, this is a common-sense approach that keeps everyone safe while still allowing a cyclist to maintain some forward momentum—which is especially important if […]
Read MoreGetting Around in the Windy City
We recently spent a week in Chicago and it was a model of mass transit. We took Amtrak into Chicago and as we disembarked, immediately purchased a CTA pass. We could hop on either a train or a bus with the pass and both had smart phone apps that let us know everything from routes […]
Read MoreMake Your Own Street
I just discovered Streetmix, a nifty online app where you build your own street. I put a lot of thought into my street–making sure there were dedicated bus lanes, bikes lanes, and lanes that cars and bikes could share. Sidewalks were wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side and there was plenty of room […]
Read MorePortland = Bikes
I recently took a trip to Portland and was eager to see a city that so purposely revolved around bikes. Stopping for coffee, we saw plenty of guys on track bikes–sans brakes–but few regular riders. Never understood the value of riding through a busy downtown without brakes. Seems like more style than sense. As tourists, […]
Read MoreParkways: Still Freeways
I’ve written before about cities in which freeways form a barrier between the people and the places they’d like to be and Niagara Falls is one of the worst offenders. The Robert Moses Parkway runs along the Niagara River, separating the Niagara Gorge—truly one of the more amazing sites in the state—from the neighborhoods adjacent to […]
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