The other day, a woman on foot was killed by a someone driving a car in New Jersey. Sadly, that isn’t terribly unusual. What made this death more "newsworthy" — elevating it briefly to the CNN headline stack yesterday — was the fact that Alexis Cohen, the woman who was left on the side of […]

Can a bike-sharing program transform a city? To mark the second anniversary of the Vélib system in Paris, Streetsblog Network member World Streets has a post arguing that it can, if it’s done on a sufficient scale: One of the complaints currently being voiced in the UK press about the new public bike start-up in […]

It’s Friday. It’s summer. Let’s face it, you shouldn’t be looking at a computer right now. But since you are — maybe you’re at work or something crazy like that — we’ll give you some fun stuff from the Streetsblog Network today. Fun, with a little undertone of serious. First, via Transit Miami, we present […]

Today on the Streetsblog Network, we’re headed to Louisville, Kentucky, where Broken Sidewalk highlights grassroots efforts to prevent a massive expansion of the I-64 highway on the Ohio River waterfront. A local advocacy group called 8664.org (as in, "let’s 86 the 64") is opposing the Ohio River Bridges Project, which would cost $4.1 billion and […]

New York isn’t the only city that’s experimenting with closing roads to improve traffic and create better conditions for pedestrians and cyclists. Today, from Streetsblog Network member Human Transit, we hear of a bridge in Vancouver where a lane of car traffic has been given over to cyclists: Happy cyclists coming off the Burrard Bridge […]

In today’s New York Times article about how the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration withheld research data on the risks of cellphone use while driving, one little nugget in particular caught my attention: [Dr. Jeffrey Runge, then the head of the highway safety agency,] said [the chief of staff for Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta] asked […]

What’s really slowing these cars down? Probably not bikes. Photo by richardmasoner via Flickr. What is it about bicycles that drives some motorists so crazy? Anyone who’s ever ridden a bike more than a handful of times in this country has experienced it. The honking, the rude remarks, the vehicles speeding past with drivers shouting […]

They seem to be coming out at an ever-increasing pace: rankings of cities and nations based on how livable they are, or how bicycle friendly, or how green and happy, put together by various advocacy groups, think tanks and magazines. The media loves to pick these up, and let’s face it, they’re fun. But as […]

Anyone who makes any effort to live more sustainably has been there — facing the accusation that what you’re doing isn’t enough. That you’re compromising, and that your willingness to deviate from a purist approach invalidates your efforts. Sometimes these accusations come from within. And sometimes they make you want to give up. It’s the […]

Yesterday on the Streetsblog Network, we looked at the concept of "resilient cities" — an idea that some of our commenters on Streetsblog NY and Streetsblog LA sites frankly weren’t buying. Today, we have a post from Streetsblog Network member Smart Growth Around America about a city that is desperately searching for some definition of […]

The idea that cities are greener than suburbs has gotten a lot of attention lately. But a recently published book argues that in a future of diminishing resources, cities themselves are going to have to become much more efficient and inventive if they are to be sustainable — indeed, if they are to survive at […]

Over the past couple of months, we’ve been following a story in Savannah about a crackdown on jaywalking — a crackdown prompted by the death of a tourist who was hit by a car on Oglethorpe Avenue in the city’s historic district. Streetsblog Network member Sustainable Savannah has done a great job of articulating why […]