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
Seattle’s Struggle to Keep the Transit in Its “Tunnel Plus Transit” Plan
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Back when Seattle and the state of Washington made the (regrettable) decision to replace the aging Alaskan Way Viaduct with an underground highway, the consolation was that the elevated highway running between downtown and the waterfront would come down and make way for a nice surface street with dedicated transit lanes. Proponents of the deep bore tunnel even gave their plan […]
What Went Wrong With Boston’s Green Line Extension?
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Last week, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority abruptly cut ties with four contractors working on the 4.7-mile Green Line extension to Somerville and Medford, outside Boston. The announcement came shortly after reports that the cost of the light rail project had ballooned to about $3 billion, an increase of a billion dollars. State officials said the decision doesn’t mean […]
To Save the Climate, Mayors and Cities Can Lead the Way
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On Saturday, the COP21 summit in Paris culminated with a precedent-setting climate change agreement. Nearly 200 nations are on board, but their commitments don’t go far enough to head off catastrophic global warming. It wasn’t just heads of state meeting last week in Paris. If a two-degree celsius rise in global temperatures and the devastating fallout […]
Federal Report: Bad Street Design a Factor in Rising Ped/Bike Fatalities
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A new report from the non-partisan Government Accountability Office [PDF] examines why people walking or biking account for a rising share of traffic deaths in the United States. While the conclusions aren’t exactly earth-shattering, one culprit the GAO identified is street design practices that seek primarily to move cars. The investigation was ordered by U.S. representatives Rick Larsen (Washington State), […]
The Problem With Designing Streets for Peak Hour Traffic
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When engineers make decisions about streets, they tend to emphasize the “peak hour” — the morning and evening rush when traffic is at its most intense. For the most part, city streets are still designed to move motor vehicles during this relatively short period of time, to the detriment of people outside of cars — i.e. the people who live in […]
Real Estate Giant: Suburban Office Parks Increasingly Obsolete
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What tenants want in an office building is changing, and the old model of the isolated suburban office park is going the way of the fax machine. That’s according to a new report from Newmark, Grubb, Knight and Frank [PDF], one of the largest commercial real estate firms in the world. The old-school office park does “not offer the […]
Why Changing the Rules of the Road for Cycling Won’t Cause Chaos
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Washington, DC, is the latest city to consider changing its traffic laws to require cyclists to yield at stop signs and red lights but not come to a complete stop unless necessary. Similar proposals have recently surfaced in New York and San Francisco. The proposed rule is commonly known as the Idaho Stop, after the one state that’s […]
St. Louis Struggles With an Old Question: “Why Go Downtown at All?”
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Alex Ihnen at NextSTL uncovered this video from a 1965 television program about traffic and commuting in the St. Louis region. Noting the growing number of businesses in the suburbs with “free parking,” the narrator asks, “Who needs to go downtown at all?” This leads to a vision of the future that turned out to be eerily […]
Send in Your Nominations for the Best Urban Street Transformation of 2015
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Did your city turn a dangerous, high-speed street into a safe place to walk and bike this year? Got a new transitway or protected bike lane in your hometown that’s changing how people get around? Streetsblog wants to know about it. The search is on for the best American street redesign of the year. Send in your nominations and Streetsblog […]
Florida DOT Unveils Its Big Plan to Fix Deadly Streets
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Plenty of states are saddled with a legacy of roads designed to be deadly for pedestrians, but Florida stands out as a special case. Orlando, Jacksonville, Tampa, and Miami have a monopoly on the four “top” spots on Transportation for America’s list of the most deadly cities for pedestrians [PDF]. The good news is, the Florida Department of Transportation […]
Slapping Flashy Crosswalks on Stroads Misses the Point of Complete Streets
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Leveraging technology, data, engineering, & education solutions to improve Florida transportation safety #FDOT100 pic.twitter.com/5SIKgeJlqS — FLORIDA DOT (@MyFDOT) December 3, 2015 This Tweet from the Florida Department of Transportation last week was intended to exemplify the agency’s efforts to make walking and biking safer on the state’s notoriously deadly roads. In FDOT’s defense, this is a huge task. But Jesse Bailey at […]
The Best and Worst of the New 5-Year Transportation Bill
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Smart people are wading through the 1,300-page transportation bill that came out of conference committee earlier this week, and we’re starting to get a clearer sense of how it will change federal transportation policy for the next five years. The House voted to pass the bill by an overwhelming margin just moments ago, and President Obama has already […]