In a blockbuster development, New York’s MTA has withdrawn from membership in APTA, the industry organization representing American transit agencies. The MTA’s rejection of APTA is a big deal. The agency accounts for 35 percent of all transit trips in the nation, and its annual fee to support APTA is larger than what other agencies contribute. The future of […]

Cities all over the country have been experimenting with ways to make bike-share service accessible to people who don’t have a credit card and about $100 to drop all at once on an annual membership. In the last few years, Boston and Chicago both started offering $5 annual memberships for low-income residents. Edward Russell at Greater Greater Washington reports that […]

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx made headlines recently with a speech about how America needs to rethink its approach to urban highways. But U.S. DOT’s influence is limited. States have the real power when it comes spending federal transportation funds, however, and a lot of states are still stuck in the cycle of addressing traffic congestion by widening highways, […]

How do highways and greenfield development exacerbate inequality? Richard Bose at Next STL shares this map of the St. Louis region, showing the share of income poor workers spend on transportation. Not surprisingly, as you go farther from the center, transportation consumes a greater percentage of people’s pay. What makes the case of St. Louis so tragic, writes Bose, is that the legacy […]

What should we make of the recent headline-grabbing service disruptions at Washington Metro and BART? This chart from Houston transit advocate Christof Spieler offers some important perspective. These transit systems are reaching the age where maintenance needs are increasingly urgent. Alex Block at City Block writes: BART, the snake digesting the mouse: Until seeing the data presented this way, I never appreciated how much of the […]

Ohio Democratic Party Chair David Pepper recently tweeted that “Ohio needs an urban agenda.” A group of local bloggers (myself included) think that’s a great idea, and we’ve been writing about what good state-level policy for Ohio cities would look like. Despite being one of the most urbanized states in the nation, Ohio doesn’t really have a coherent policy agenda to strengthen […]

It’s refreshing to see public agencies go beyond PSAs to deter distracted driving, which contributes to thousands of deaths in the U.S. each year. With traffic deaths on the rise in Oregon, state officials are ramping up their efforts. Oregon DOT Director Matt Garrett has pledged to “change cultural norms when it comes to distracted driving,” reports Jonathan Maus at Bike Portland, […]

Forty years ago, the Washington region had 60 miles of bus lanes on its streets, a network that was erased once Metrorail started operating. Today passengers make about half a million trips on Metro buses each weekday, not a great deal less than Metrorail, but there is no network of priority streets for buses. That’s starting […]