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
Visualizing LA’s 18.6 Million Parking Spaces as One Enormous Blob
| | No Comments
Here’s a great visualization of how much land parking spaces consume in our cities, via Shane Phillips at Network blog Better Institutions. Inspired by a post from Copenhagenize, Shane created a map showing the collective size of Los Angeles County’s 18.6 million parking spaces (as estimated by the American Planning Association) if they were arranged side by side, assuming […]
Ridership on the Upswing After Houston’s Bus Network Redesign
| | No Comments
In August, Houston debuted its new bus network, reconfigured to increase frequent service, expand weekend hours, and improve access to jobs. The implementation was contentious at times, and when we last checked in on the results — two months after the changes took effect — bus ridership was down 4 percent overall but up dramatically on weekends. That was to […]
Sacramento Freeways and the “Small Town Mindset”
| | No Comments
“It’s time to drop the small-town mindset and go for a big fix.” That’s how Tony Bizjak of the Sacramento Bee described plans to widen the gridlocked Capital City Freeway through the city at a cost of $700 million. Highway widening, to him, must be emblematic of a “big-city mindset.” But as Network blog Systemic Failure points out, […]
Vote for the Best Urban Street Transformation of 2015
| | No Comments
It’s almost time to say goodbye to 2015, which means we’re about to hand out Streetsies to recognize achievements for walking, biking, and transit in American cities this year. Earlier this month we asked readers for nominations for the Best Urban Street Transformation of the year, and here are the standouts from your submissions. It’s a great batch and […]
Louisville Removes Sidewalk “For Safety”
| | No Comments
Louisville is in the middle of a three-year, federally-funded safety initiative to reduce the city’s high rate of pedestrian fatalities. Per capita, four times the number of people are killed walking in Louisville than in Washington, DC. Some good improvements are in the works, but the people in charge of Louisville’s streets clearly need to get over some bad habits. Branden Klayko […]
Civil Rights Groups Challenge Maryland Gov. Hogan’s Red Line Cancellation
| | No Comments
Back in June, newly elected Maryland Governor Larry Hogan unilaterally cancelled a transit expansion project that Baltimore had been planning for a decade, transferring the state’s promised investment to road projects in more rural parts of the state. Now a coalition of civil rights groups is challenging the decision on civil rights grounds, saying it amounts […]
America Already Has a Stratified Transportation System
| | No Comments
The emergence of app-based taxis and private city bus services has prompted a lot of handwringing about the emergence of a “two-tiered” or “stratified” transportation system. Network blog Cap’n Transit doesn’t have much patience for that argument. America’s transportation system is already highly stratified, and it’s hard to see how the new services will make that situation worse: If you go to […]
Carseats and the Limitations of American Safety Culture
| | No Comments
One lesson they really hammer home, when you’re a new parent, is the importance of carseats. Hospitals won’t let you take a newborn home from the hospital unless you can show you have a carseat. And they warn you of this fact in Lamaze class and in all the parenting books and on all the […]
Savannah Weighs Bike Ban in Beloved City Park
| | No Comments
Talk about a reductive view of safety. After a couple of unusual incidents where bicyclists collided with pedestrians in Savannah’s 30-acre Forsyth Park, the city is now considering outlawing cycling in the park. Savannah Bicycle Campaign says that will force cyclists onto nearby streets where traffic moves at deadly speeds, and the city has no plan to redesign them: A proposed […]
D.C. to Pilot Protected Intersections as Part of Vision Zero Effort
| | No Comments
Yesterday, Washington DC officials released the city’s Vision Zero plan [PDF], which aims to eliminate traffic fatalities within the District by 2024. It came with a good deal of analysis highlighting where the most dangerous places in the city are. David Alpert at Greater Greater Washington has the recap of what the city will do to improve safety: More than half of pedestrian […]
Congress Expected to Level Tax Benefit for Transit and Car Commuters
| | No Comments
A federal policy that has encouraged Americans to drive to work instead of taking the bus or the train won’t tilt the playing field toward car commuters so much. A bill that extends provisions of the tax code will permanently set the maximum transit commuter tax benefit at the same level car commuters get for parking expenses. Both classes of commuters can now […]
Is the FAST Act Good for Bike Funding?
| | No Comments
When Congress passed a long-term transportation bill for the first time in more than a decade earlier this month, People for Bikes called it “a great day for bikes,” and Momentum Magazine called it a “win for bikes.” But is it? The bill reserves $820 million for biking and walking infrastructure annually in its first two years, […]