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
Pennsylvania’s New Governor Is Awesome
| | No Comments
Here’s another race for governor with big implications for transportation policy: In Pennsylvania, businessman Tom Wolf handily beat incumbent Tom Corbett. Though Pennsylvania made some important progress on transportation issues during Corbett’s tenure, Wolf wants to usher in much more meaningful reforms. In its election round-up, Philly-based This Old City points to a post the […]
What the Results of 8 Governors’ Races Mean for Cities and Transit
| | No Comments
Yesterday’s elections returned some of the nation’s most anti-urban, anti-transit governors to power in races where they were supposed to be vulnerable. Pro-transit candidates were unexpectedly routed in some states, though a few did manage to hang on. For more background on these races, check out yesterday’s election preview. Here’s what to expect going forward. […]
Local Ballot Results: The Good, the Bad, and the Highway Money Grabs
| | No Comments
While last night’s election is looking like decisively bad news for transit in the Senate and in several statehouses, the results from local ballot initiatives are a little brighter. Here are the highlights that have Streetsblog Network members buzzing, as well as results from other referendums around the country. Seattle Seattle voters approved a ballot […]
Florida Republican: Vote Down Transit Because Driverless Cars Are Coming
| | No Comments
St. Petersburg doesn’t need light rail, according to local Republican state legislator Jeff Brandes, because self driving cars are going to make transit irrelevant. That’s why Brandes is fighting a ballot issue to be decided today in Pinellas County that would expand bus service 65 percent and open the way for future light rail, he told Fortune. It’s a tactic […]
Sprawl Is Back in New Jersey
| | No Comments
It’s starting to look like 2005 again in New Jersey. That’s what Andrew Besold at Network blog WalkBikeJersey has been noticing on his bike rides lately. Tracts of large houses are popping up again in formerly rural areas, and it’s threatening to overrun what’s left of the state’s unspoiled areas: Prior to the Great Recession, the housing […]
Great Cities Don’t Have Much Traffic, But They Do Have Congestion
| | No Comments
Here’s a great visualization of what cities get out of the billions of dollars spent on highways and road expansion: more traffic. Justin Swan at City Clock made this chart showing the relationship between congestion levels, as measured by TomTom, and car use. (Yes, it has no X axis — here’s Swan’s explanation of how to read […]
Portland Suburb: To Fight Climate Change, Expand Highways!
| | No Comments
Clackamas County, outside of Portland, has some opinions about the region’s plan to address climate change. According to Michael Andersen at Bike Portland, county commissioners have drafted a letter to regional planners saying the right way to control carbon emissions is to build more highways. Scratching your head? Well, the misguided belief that building more roads […]
Confirmed: Sprawl and Bad Transit Increase Unemployment
| | No Comments
Since the 1960s and the earliest days of job sprawl, the theory of “spatial mismatch” — that low-income communities experience higher unemployment because they are isolated from employment centers — has shaped the way people think about urban form and social equity. But it’s also been challenged. The research that supporting spatial mismatch has suffered from some […]
Ohio DOT Hosts Transit Meeting That No One Can Reach Via Transit
| | No Comments
Ohio DOT is one of those old-school transportation agencies that’s still just a highway department. The director is a former asphalt industry lobbyist. The state — despite being fairly densely populated and urban (about 1 million people don’t have cars) — spent only $7.3 million supporting transit in 2013, far less than it devotes to mowing […]
Documentary to Explore Racial Discrimination in Transportation Planning
| | No Comments
Beavercreek, Ohio, nabbed its own infamous place in civil rights history last year, when the Federal Highway Administration ruled that the suburb had violated anti-discrimination laws by blocking bus service from nearby Dayton. The Beavercreek case marked the first time civil rights activists had successfully filed an administrative complaint with the FHWA against a public […]
The Airtight Case for Road Diets
| | No Comments
Bill Lindeke at Streets.mn calls them “death roads.” Four-lane roads in urban areas can indeed be perilous. An 11-year-old boy was struck by a motorist on one of these roads recently in St. Paul. The media and others responded in typical fashion, deeming the crash an unavoidable “accident.” But the truth is these types of collisions are easy […]
Why a Street Designed for Transit Is Also Great for People
| | No Comments
When cities devote street space exclusively to buses or trains, they usually encounter some stiff resistance to change. Dan Reed at Greater Greater Washington has been giving the topic some thought, because many of the DC region’s upcoming transit projects will require reallocating some lanes from cars to transit. Reed cites Minneapolis’s Green Line, which runs through the […]