Sarah Goodyear
Recent Posts
All Aboard the Great Streetcar Debate
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Streetcars provoke strong emotions in transpo geeks. A recent post on Human Transit called "Streetcars: An Inconvenient Truth" precipitated a very informed and sometimes heated thread of discussion on the relative virtues of light rail vs. bus rapid transit (a mode that got its moment in the limelight just this morning). Streetcars: Everybody’s got an […]
Making Climate Change Part of the Local Transpo Debate
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As the leaders of the G-8 meet in L’Aquila, Italy, to discuss how to tackle climate change on the global level, we bring you a report from Streetsblog Network member GreenCityBlueLake about a victory on the local level in Ohio. It shows how advocacy organizations can reframe the debate over transportation spending so that addressing […]
Riding the Broadband Superhighway to Work
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This morning, I’m making use of a mass transit system while sitting at my desk at home. That’s the way the writer of today’s featured post on the Streetsblog Network would see it, anyway. On network member blog New Geography, Nicole Belson Goluboff — a lawyer who specializes in the legal aspects of telecommuting — […]
Clicking to Connect With Government and Get Things Fixed
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An update today from Design New Haven, the excellent Streetsblog Network member that has been promoting the use of SeeClickFix. This rapidly growing service gives citizens a way to document problems in the public space, and back in March the issue getting the most attention in New Haven was the dangerous situation that exists for […]
Paying for a More Comfortable Transit Ride
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Today on the Streetsblog Network, we bring you some reflections on commuter comfort from network member Cap’n Transit. As he points out in a post called "Many Segments of the Population Are Too Old for This Shit," a lot of people are put off of certain modes of transit because of the perception — and […]
Another Step in Reducing Auto Dependence
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If you’re a person who is accustomed to getting around the place you live without a car, you’ve probably spent at least some time trying to sell your auto-dependent friends on the concept. Maybe you’ve even gone so far as to map out a route for them so that they wouldn’t get frustrated. And sometimes […]
Mind the Gender Gap
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Yesterday’s New York Times blog item about why New York women are underrepresented among the city’s bike commuters didn’t sit well with the authors of Streetsblog Network member Let’s Go Ride a Bike. Trisha, one of the blog’s authors and a bike commuter herself in Nashville, sees the piece as part of a trend (epitomized […]
Do Shiny New Roads “Only Make Idiots More Dangerous”?
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We hear the arguments again and again from DOTs: they need to widen highways and expand interchanges to improve safety on the nation’s roads. Streetsblog Network member The Political Environment, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sees it differently: Photo of the Marquette Interchange in Milwaukee by TracyJ_Brown via Flickr. [M]ost fatalities on the road are caused by […]
GAO Says We Need More Than a Vision for High Speed Rail
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Excited about the prospect of high speed rail in America? Lots of people have been. But as Yonah Freemark reports on The Transport Politic, yesterday the General Accountability Office threw a bit of a wet blanket on the growing enthusiasm. The GAO is saying the Obama administration has so far failed to provide clear goals […]
Destroying Highways to Rebuild Cities
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Hartford’s Aetna Viaduct, which the Courant called a "mistake" that has "cut the city in half." Photo from Capital Region of Governments. Today on the Streetsblog Network, Mobilizing the Region is talking about highway removal. Specifically, the proposed teardown or reinvention of the 40-year-old Aetna Viaduct in Hartford, CT, which has already outlived its projected […]
Have Red Light Speed Cameras Saved Lives in Maryland?
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Today on the Streetsblog Network, we’ve got a post from The WashCycle about speeding, new red light cameras and a reduction in fatalities in Montgomery County, Maryland. Police there report that "a 2008 study of 11 camera locations found a 25 percent reduction in crashes on the roads where the speed cameras were located." Deaths […]
Less Parking, More Healthy Food
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The other day, we looked at a supermarket in a densely populated part of New Haven that is unwelcoming to pedestrians. Today, courtesy of member blog The City Fix, we’re taking another look at urban supermarket planning, specifically the issue of how to get quality food markets built in underserved neighborhoods (so-called food deserts) — […]