Blogosphere: Strategic Mobility Plan a Way Forward
Austin Chronicle
The city is poised to plunge into the rail-transit business - with its central-city circulator Austin Urban Rail project - yet has barely dipped a toe into the transit-oriented development business. Transit-successful cities (e.g., Portland, Ore.) fund streetcars with tax-increment financing - bonds gradually paid off from the stream of increased property taxes that streetcar lines help create...
(March 11, 2010)
Utah: We Need Transit Oriented Communities
Standard Examiner
The Wasatch Front Regional Council estimates that the Top of Utah will see a 60 percent population increase over the next 30 years. Unfortunately, we're not a public transportation-oriented community in Utah. It's clear that we have to make some strides toward using public transit. If we don't, our freeways won't be able to handle the traffic flow. Add the resulting increase in pollution and we've got a big problem....
(March 11, 2010)
Blogosphere: Density Raises Productivity
The Bellows
We construct a dynamic general equilibrium model of cities and use it to estimate the effect of local agglomeration on per capita consumption growth. Agglomeration affects growth through the density of economic activity: higher production per unit of land raises local productivity.....
(March 11, 2010)
Research: Why We Fail to Reduce Traffic Volumes
Science Direct
If the objective of reducing urban road traffic volumes and GHG emissions from traffic is to be achieved, the way in which land use and transport systems in cities are planned and developed needs to change. Despite apparent agreement that this should be done and how it could be done, cities continue to be planned and developed in ways that cause and allow growth in urban road traffic volumes. In this paper we ask how planners frame the 'transport problem', and how their framing of the problem affects urban planning, the resulting plans and developments and the urban road traffic volumes...
(March 11, 2010)
Maryland: Planned Science Center Divides Residents
Examiner
Montgomery County residents and elected officials find themselves increasingly divided over their need for jobs and investment and their fear of traffic congestion and empty public treasuries as plans for a major health and sciences research complex near conclusion....
(March 11, 2010)
San Jose: Milpitas Votes Stop Location, Development
San Jose Mercury News
City officials last week supported Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority's vision of greater development at Milpitas' future Bay Area Rapid Transit station site at the southeast corner of Capitol Avenue and Montague Expressway...
(March 11, 2010)
Lakeland: Planning Commission Rejects TOD Changes
The Ledger
The Polk County Planning Commission gave county planners a rare rebuff on a major growth plan change Monday, voting 4-2 to recommend denial for three of the five proposed amendments to the plan....
(March 10, 2010)
Quote of the Day
Oregonian
"Of course, if I pull in and see a TriMet shuttle bus waiting for me, I just drive to work."
(March 9, 2010)
Blogosphere: Local Lesson in Transit Orientation
NRDC Switchboard
Several weeks ago, I ran a post making the case that transit-oriented development requires more than just transit and development. As the phrase implies, it also requires orientation: the development must relate to and be convenient to the transit....
(March 9, 2010)
Blogosphere: A Fresh Look at American Sprawl
Streetsblog NYC
American advocates for livable streets know that our addiction to the automobile is almost without peer. We know that we've given our land to driving lanes and parking lots and our air to exhaust fumes....
(March 9, 2010)
