Aaron Donovan
Before he began blogging about land use and transportation, Aaron Donovan wrote The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund's annual fundraising appeal for three years and earned a master's degree in urban planning from Columbia. Since then, he has worked for nonprofit organizations devoted to New York City economic development. He lives and works in the Financial District, and sees New York's pre-automobile built form as an asset that makes New York unique in the United States, and as a strategic advantage that should be capitalized upon.
Recent Posts
The Weekly Carnage
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Mark Vergari / The Journal News Fatal Crashes (25 Killed This Week; 444 Killed This Year) Greenburgh, N.Y.: Sprain Brook Rollover Kills Driver (Journal News) Manhattan: Pedestrian, 42, Struck Crossing West Side Highway* (Villager) Brooklyn: DWI Charge After Speeder Kills Good Samaritan (Daily News, NY Post) Queens: SUV Smashes Into Parked Motorcyclist, Killing 1 (NYT, NY […]
Transit-Oriented America, Part 4: The Trains
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This is Part 4 of a five-part series on U.S. rail travel. (Parts 1, 2 and 3.) Susan Donovan boarding Metro-North Train No. 737 on July 11, beginning an 8,000-mile rail journey at Grand Central Terminal. I always find it a little amazing that a handful of times a day, one can descend into Penn […]
Transit-Oriented America, Part 3: Three More Cities
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Part 3 in a series on rail and transit-only travel across the United States focuses on the final three cities of our journey. Part 2 looked at the first three and Part 1 presented an overview of our travel. San Francisco Fully restored streetcars, cable cars, buses with and without pantographs, submerged and at-grade light rail, a […]
Transit-Oriented America, Part 2: Three Cities
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This is the second installment in a five-part rail travel series that began yesterday. In between all that fun Amtrak travel I described yesterday, my wife Susan and I stopped on our honeymoon at six great cities with an eye toward observing their built environments and transportation systems (but mostly just being plain old tourists). […]
Staten Island Talks Congestion Pricing and Traffic Relief
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Join Transportation Alternatives and the Citizens Committee for NYC for a screening of Contested Streets, a one-hour documentary about New York’s traffic crisis and how congestion pricing can solve it. They’ll be following up with information about transit improvements coming to Staten Island as part of PlaNYC and congestion pricing. It will be a good […]
Transit-Oriented America, Part 1: Eight Thousand Miles
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My wife and I were married last month in Brooklyn. For our honeymoon, we wanted to see as many great American cities as we could. In 19 days of travel, we visited Chicago, Seattle, Portland (Ore.), San Francisco, Los Angeles and New Orleans (and also stopped briefly in Cleveland, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Houston, Atlanta, Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia). How could two people as obsessed as […]
Meeting: Help Time’s Up! Find New Space
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Time’s Up’s space at 49 E. Houston St. has been sold and they are currently searching for a new space that will allow them to continue our indoor meetings, events, movies and bike workshops. They will remain at 49 E. Houston for several more months with a full schedule of activities and workshops, but need […]
Transportation Alternatives Volunteer Night – Mailing Party
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Join New York City’s advocates for cyclists and pedestrians as they spread the word about their important work at their Volunteer Night mailing parties. Activities include stuffing envelopes, folding t-shirts and sending out campaign materials with fellow activists.
Discussion: Thom Hartmann on ‘The 11th Hour’ Environmental Documentary
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Come hear the acclaimed author and radio host Thom Hartmann discuss The 11th Hour, a new film about the fate of the planet. Leonardo DiCaprio’s "The 11th Hour" is a feature length documentary about the environmental crises caused by human actions and their impact on the planet. With the help of over fifty of the […]
The Weekly Carnage
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Fatal Crashes (17 Killed This Week; 419 Killed This Year) Queens: DWI Crash Kills Rap Promoter, 22 (Daily News) Queens: Two Pedestrians Killed in Separate Crashes (Newsday, Queens Chronicle) Queens: DOT Worker Placing Cones is Struck and Killed (NY Post, AM NY, NY1) Queens: Cyclist, 13, Killed by Driver With Dud License (Daily News, Newsday) Queens: Man, […]
Lecture: The Construction of Old Penn Station and its Tunnels
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At the end of the 19th century, Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) president Alexander Cassatt sought some way — other than huge fleets of ferries from New Jersey — to bring the PRR’s tens of millions of passengers into water-locked New York. By 1901, the brilliant Cassatt had embarked upon the greatest civil engineering project of the […]
Mass Pedicab Ride on City Hall
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Fair Regulation, Not Strangulation No Cap, No Bans on Pedicab Industry 100 plus Pedicabs will ride en masse from Columbus Circle down Broadway to City Hall starting at noon. Media are invited to "embed" as pedicab passengers at any point during the ride. 2 p.m. press conference on City Hall steps will target City Council […]