Sarah Goodyear
Recent Posts
Parking Permit Abusers Being Cleared from Chinatown?
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A Chinatown tipster sent along these remarkable pictures yesterday of what seems to be an effort to cut down on placarded vehicles clogging the neighborhood’s streets: There are white paper signs posted on lamp poles and parking meters that say "No Permit Area, Tow Away Zone." Lo and behold, there are hardly any cars with […]
Report from Atlanta: Don’t Walk This Way
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I can’t get behind Prevention Magazine’s ranking of New York as 39th among the nation’s most walkable cities. But after spending three days in Atlanta for a conference recently, I have no problem understanding why it rates 86th. Stuck, like most of the city’s legions of conventioneers, in the area around the Peachtree Center, I […]
Feds Withhold Fatal-Accident Info from Public
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An article in the LA Times (reg required) details how the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has systematically withheld information on fatal accidents from the public, even going so far as to deny Freedom of Information Act requests from researchers. R.A. Whitworth, whose Maryland-based company conducts highway safety research for attorneys, insurance companies and even […]
The Greening of the Times
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Today’s New York Times has an entire section on "The Business of Being Green" (Times Select), which includes articles on economies of scale in alternative energy, carbon-offset shopping, the possibly endangered practice of truck idling, Danish wind farms, and environmental litigation. The left-leaning Guardian of London has long made green stories a staple of its […]
StreetFilms: “Something Has to Be Done”
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Emergency Pedestrian Safety RallyRunning time: 4 minutes 38 seconds Here are some highlights from Sunday’s rally for pedestrian safety. In the words of Audrey Anderson, whose 14-year-old son, Andre, was killed by an SUV while he was riding his bike: "Drivers who kill and are not apparently drunk walk away from crash sites as free […]
Old Gray Lady Gets on the Bandwagon
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The New York Times came out advocating for progressive transportation policies in its Sunday City section editorial, saying that the departure of DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall presents "a great opportunity to take bold action on a vexing quality of life and health issue: traffic congestion." After giving Weinshall props for her actions on the Queens […]
Four-Year-Old Killed by Hummer Shouldn’t Have Died in Vain
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The death of four-year-old James Jacaricce Rice at the intersection of Third Avenue and Baltic Street in Brooklyn yesterday didn’t make a huge splash in the news. But it should have. What were James and his 18-year-old aunt, Ta-Nayin St. John, doing when they were mowed down by a three-ton yellow Hummer making a turn? […]
The Power of Moses: Please Wield Responsibly
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An op-ed piece by Eleanor Randolph in today’s New York Times finds yet another lesson in the current re-examination of Robert Moses’s legacy. Randolph looks at the enormously powerful entities, usually known as authorities, that Moses left behind: "public-private hybrid[s] that can collect fees, take on debt and build things with little government interference." Randolph […]
Sustainable Transportation for NYC: How to Make it Happen
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Today on Gotham Gazette, Bruce Schaller outlines how transportation policy could fit in to Mayor Bloomberg’s sustainability initiative for 2030. The piece merits a full read, but Schaller frames his argument in terms of three big ideas: [F]ix the skewed economic incentives to drive, implement targeted transit improvements throughout the city, and make more efficient […]
Congestion Tops Citizens’ PlaNYC 2030 Concerns
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The second phase of Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030 outreach campaign, which has been soliciting feedback from the public through meetings with community leaders and on PlaNYC’s website, has been completed, and the word is in: People in New York want to do something about traffic congestion. So far, the website has received 52,000 visits from […]
Another Free-Market Argument for Congestion Pricing
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An opinion piece in today’s New York Sun addresses the congestion-pricing incentives laid out in the Bush Administration’s new budget proposal. The article, by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a former chief economist at the US Department of Labor who is now with the conservative Hudson Institute, argues that "the only effective way to reduce traffic congestion is […]
Disgruntled Drivers Responsible for UK Letter Bombs?
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A letter bomb exploded yesterday at the offices of the Drivers and Vehicle Licensing Agency in Swansea, South Wales, injuring a woman. It was the seventh such incident reported at a UK agency linked to traffic enforcement in the past three weeks, and the third in three days, according to an article in the Guardian. […]