Angie Schmitt
Angie is a Cleveland-based writer with a background in planning and newspaper reporting. She has been writing about cities for Streetsblog for six years.
Recent Posts
Why Smaller Delivery Vehicles Could Be Huge for Cities
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CityLab ran an article recently about how smaller delivery trucks could be coming to U.S. cities, with the makers of 15-foot cargo vans used in many European cities poised to begin marketing them in the United States. That is important not just because these smaller vehicles are inherently safer, but because it could mean safer […]
The Spectacular Waste of Half-Empty Black Friday Parking Lots
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If there’s one thing American planners fear, it’s that someone, sometime, somewhere, won’t be able to immediately find a parking space. Gigantic manuals have been devoted to avoiding this “problem,” and laws have been passed in nearly every community in the nation to ensure that no one ever lacks for parking. Chuck Marohn at Strong […]
No Charges for Driver Who Plowed Into Protesters in Minneapolis
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The driver who rammed his way through a crowd protesting the non-indictment of Darren Wilson yesterday afternoon in Minneapolis, injuring a 16-year-old girl, has not been charged with any crime. That’s according to Minneapolis Police spokesperson John Elder, who emailed us this morning saying the case “remains under investigation.” You can see in the above […]
Why Ferguson Protests Spilled Onto Highways
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Protests following a Missouri grand jury’s failure to indict Officer Darren Wilson for shooting and killing Michael Brown spilled out onto highways in several American cities on Monday evening and Tuesday. Protesters occupied freeways in Los Angeles, Seattle, Oakland, Milwaukee, Atlanta, St. Louis, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Chicago. (One reported incident of road […]
States That Ban Traffic Safety Cams Put Their Own Residents’ Lives at Risk
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In Ohio, lawmakers are now poised to outlaw traffic safety cameras, needlessly obstructing efforts to save lives. Similar bills were taken up this year in statehouses in Iowa, South Dakota and Missouri. According to the Governor’s Highway Safety Association, 12 states have laws that forbid speed cameras under most circumstances. If enacted, these laws will certainly end […]
Seattle Advocates Convince City to Make Major Avenue Safe for Biking
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A crucial Seattle street is getting the protected bike lane treatment thanks to the hard work of local advocates. Roosevelt Way is a direct and convenient bike route to get downtown, writes Scott Bonjukian at Network blog The Urbanist, but it also has a high rate of cyclist injuries. At first, a proposed redesign did not include a […]
Why Aren’t American Bike-Share Systems Living Up to Their Potential?
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As policy director at the New York City Department of Transportation from 2007 to June, 2014, Jon Orcutt shepherded the nation’s largest bike-share system through the earliest stages of planning, a wide-ranging public engagement process, and, last year, the rollout of hundreds of Citi Bike stations. That makes Orcutt, formerly of Transportation Alternatives and the Tri-State Transportation […]
Rochester Residents Add Their Own Bus Stop Seating
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Rochester residents are experimenting with a simple idea to make riding the bus a little more comfortable. Mike Governale at Rochester Subway reports that a group called Reconnect Rochester is testing out two brightly colored “bus stop cubes” to give bus riders a place to rest at stops that currently have no seating. Governale went around […]
Federal Housing Administration Still Tips the Scales Toward Sprawl
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There’s a notion that remains very pervasive in certain quarters — *cough* Joel Kotkin *cough* — that the reason so many American cities are sprawling and suburban is the natural result of market forces. Essentially, Americans love driving and big yards and so that’s what we get. But it’s a mistake to characterize American housing markets […]
The Great Traffic Projection Swindle
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This is the final piece in a three-part series about privately-financed roads. In the first two parts of this series, we looked at the Indiana Toll Road as an example of the growth in privately financed highways, and how financial firms can turn these assets into profits, even if the road itself is a big money loser. […]
The Idea That Families Don’t Belong in the City Is Antiquated and Harmful
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The notion of cities as playgrounds for the young and unattached remains a pretty pervasive concept. The blogger at Family Friendly Cities has encountered it plenty. A young parent, he says that in his circles, the social stigma against raising children in the city remains irrationally strong: As a young couple we lived in a garden style apartment […]
How Macquarie Makes Money By Losing Money on Toll Roads
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This is the second post in a three-part series about the Indiana Toll Road and privately financed highways. Read part one. Macquarie Group, the gigantic Australian financial services firm with some $400 billion in assets under management, has made a lot of money in the infrastructure privatization game. The publicly traded company owns the Brussels Airport, […]