Blogosphere: West's Transpo Revolution, Why Streetcars Don't Work, Bus Travel Comeback, New York Urban Farms, Bicycle Lending Library, Edible Bus Stops
July 30, 2012
More News & Resources:
| TRANSPORT |
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Blogosphere: Slow Start To LRT Line Is Part Of The Plan Sacramento Press The Green Line light rail segment's slow start with relatively low ridership, is part of the plan, officials say.... Read On |
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Blogosphere: West's Transportation Revolution Planetizen After decades of planning and development of its urban rail networks, will the American West change its image from car cornucopia to transit paradise? ... Read On |
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Blogosphere: Why Streetcars Don't Work Anymore Cap'n Transit Rides Again Many people, including Jarrett Walker, have written skeptically about the value of streetcars over buses in mixed traffic. They're right to be skeptical, but they don't explain why we can't just go back to the way things were. I've often wished we could go back to the time when there were trolleys on the streets of Long Island City and interurbans serving places like Hoosick Falls (minus the sexism, racism, and so forth). But as James Howard Kunstler is fond of saying, history is not symmetrical. There are good reasons why streetcars won't do what they did in 1912 unless we change other things.... Read On |
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Blogosphere: Bus Travel Making a Big Comeback Smarter Travel Blog Riding the bus is no longer the last travel resort for students and budget travelers. Several big bus operators are competing for a share of the mainstream travel market with improved buses and faster schedules.... Read On |
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Blogosphere: Expanded TIFIA Not Universal Option Press-Enterprise To the applause of many Southern California transportation officials and onlookers the new federal transportation bill radically expands a loan program aimed at paying for some of the nation's biggest road and rail projects.... Read On |
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Blogosphere: Preview Of DART Orange Line In Irving Scoop Blog, Dallas News The Orange Line - DART's new light-rail expansion into Irving - wasn't officially open yet, but that didn't stop people from milling around the new stations and hopping on the train to check it out this afternoon.... Read On |
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Blogosphere: Most Expensive Tunnel In World Economist EARLIER this month, Amtrak, America's government-owned passenger rail corporation, released a plan outlining how it's going to spend $151 billion it doesn't currently have (and has no prospect of receiving anytime soon) to bring true high-speed trains to America's crucial Boston-New York-Washington rail axis. Gulliver has already explained why Amtrak's project is ambitious, expensive, and unlikely. But the more you delve into the details of the plans, the sillier they appear.... Read On |
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Blogosphere: Amtrak's Union Station Plans Pedestrian Observations Amtrak's announcement that it needs $7 billion to improve Union Station, in a way that is tangential to train or passenger capacity, has gotten some deserved flak already on other blogs. What I want to discuss instead is a pair of issues relating to capacity: passenger circulation, and track capacity.... Read On |
| URBANISM/HOUSING/CITIES |
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Blogosphere: Let L.A. Be L.A. Joel Kotkin, City Journal Victor's Restaurant, a nondescript coffee shop on a Hollywood side street, seems an odd place to meet for a movement challenging many of Los Angeles's most powerful, well-heeled forces. Yet amid the uniformed service workers, budding actors, and retirees enjoying coffee and French toast, unlikely revolutionaries plot the next major battle over the city's future. Driving their rebellion is a proposal from the L.A. planning department that would allow greater density in the heart of Hollywood, a scruffy district that includes swaths of classic California bungalows and charming 1930s-era garden apartments.... Read On |
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Blogosphere: Houston Is Coolest City In America? Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space According to Forbe's Magazine, "America's Coolest Cities," Houston is the coolest city in the U.S., based on these and other factors as measured _for the metropolitan area_ (another indicator that the methodology is flawed): including median age, net migration, employment, entertainment and restaurant and bar options per capita, green space and recreational opportunities, the number of pro and college sports teams, the number of bars and restaurants, and cultural diversity,... Read On |
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Blogosphere: Chicago Lacks 'Calling Card' Industry Urbanophile I now want to transition from a look at historical and current conditions in Chicago to a defense of a couple of my more controversial diagnoses that attepted to explain the problems behind Chicago's weakness in recent years. These were my observation that Chicago lacks a "calling card" industry, and my claim that Chicago, while a global city, is weak enough in this dimension that it cannot rely on that alone to sustain it.... Read On |
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Blogosphere: Gotham's Urban Farms POV Blog, MetropolisMag In New York City, where more than 8 million of us live in very close proximity to hundreds of our immediate neighbors, many of us are also near some form of urban agriculture. Today there are ten times more urban farms in Gotham than in San Francisco and Seattle. And urban farming is growing in every one of our five boroughs..... Read On |
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Blogosphere: Copenhagen's Bicycle Lending Library The City Fix What if you could check out a bike like a book from a library shelf? The question, thanks to the Bicycle Innovation Lab, is not "if" but "where." The Copenhagen cykelbiblioteket, or, in English, "Bicycle Library," will loan you a bike for a returnable deposit of 500 Danish kroner (US$80), or slightly more than a library card.... Read On |
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Video: London's Edible Bus Stops Grist The Edible Bus Stop project is not about luring children to bus stops by building them out of gingerbread. Instead, it's about providing food to the community by turning bus stops into public gardens.... Read On |
