Matthew Roth
Recent Posts
Forget High-Speed Rail, Let’s Get High-Speed Buses
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I would put this up there with China’s proposal for huge buses that allow cars to drive under them, but it’s still worth a good laugh. Who needs shoulders on highways anyway?!
New Video Sim Bets San Franciscans Will *Heart* Performance Parking
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In a refreshing turn, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which runs Muni and manages the streets of San Francisco, has produced an informative and whimsical animated short explaining how their dynamic parking management pilot, SFPark, will work. The video (and pretty much everything else about the SFPark.org website) uses a cute Sim-City aesthetic […]
New Jersey Transit Village Program Continues to Grow
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Image: Town of Somerville The holy grail for many urbanists contemplating long-term development and growth trends is the transit village. Adding growth adjacent to functional transit has the benefit of making it easier for the new population there to drive less and use transit for a multitude of trips. Likewise, transit villages can add to […]
Will California Achieve Its Anti-Sprawl Targets?
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Photo: Mark Strozier As California’s big four metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) try to determine how much they can influence growth and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, significant questions remain. The state’s Senate Bill 375, typically referred to as the Anti-Sprawl Bill, requires planners and policymakers to develop meaningful solutions to curb sprawl, reduce driving, and promote […]
Jon Stewart Lambastes 40 Years of Presidential Posturing on Oil
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The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c An Energy-Independent Future www.thedailyshow.com Jon Stewart fired one of his more brilliant salvos last night, synthesizing 40 years of political posturing around energy independence and America’s addiction to foreign oil in just under eight minutes of satire. Drawing on this week’s speech from […]
San Francisco First City in the Nation to Count Its Parking Spaces
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Editor’s note: We linked to this story out of San Francisco in the headline stack this morning, and it’s worth a very close look. Experts counsel that the first step in reforming parking policies that promote driving is to measure the parking supply. The number one recommendation in "Suburbanizing the City" [PDF], the 2008 report […]
Google Engineer Scott Shawcroft Explains the New Bike Map
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The wait for bicycle directions on Google Maps has finally ended as the company announced a beta version of its new bicycle directions feature at the League of American Bicyclists National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C. this morning. The new mapping software includes an elegant overlay of bicycle routes based on priority bicycle streets and […]
Facebook Refuses to Remove Group Promoting Anti-Cyclist Violence
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Screenshot from the Facebook group promoting dooring, among other acts that injure cyclists. A number of Streetsblog readers have noticed a particularly loathsome group that has sprouted up on Facebook and has a legion of fans. As of this writing, more than 32,000 people are fans of "There’s a perfectly good bike path right next […]
Times Square BID Leader on the Art of Street Reclamation
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This used to be the scene of gridlocked traffic. Photo: berk2804 Seven years ago, when Tim Tompkins took over as president of the Times Square Alliance, one of New York’s largest BIDs, security and cleanliness were the top concerns. Despite incessant traffic and "pedlock," few decision-makers were focused, at first, on the vision of Times […]
Donald Shoup on San Francisco’s Groundbreaking Parking Meter Study
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UCLA professor and parking policy superstar Donald Shoup. If you’re interested in the power of parking policy to reduce congestion and make streets more livable, the most exciting place to be right now is San Francisco. For the past year and a half, the city has pursued an innovative slate of policies designed to manage […]
CNU Summit to Focus on Reforming Transportation, Planning Principles
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The Congress for the New Urbanism will meet in Portland, Oregon, in early November for the annual Project for Transportation Reform, a summit to further define emerging policies that embrace entire urban transportation networks, rather than disjointed transportation segments, and that seek to balance modal splits and reduce overall vehicular miles traveled (VMT). Summit attendees […]
Kalashnikovs for Clunkers: The Next Stimulus Plan
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In case you don’t qualify for the federal Cash-for-Clunkers rebate program, Mark Muller of Max Motors in Butler, Missouri, has an offer you might want to consider: get a free AK-47 with a new truck. The dealer, whose motto is "God, Guns, Guts and American Pick-Up Trucks," one-upped himself from last year’s offer of pistols […]