Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Car Culture

Hey, Wanna Buy a Minicar?

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General Motors would like you to like them. No, really. That’s why, at the New York International Auto Show yesterday, they revealed three new concept minicars aimed at the urban market. Called the Groove, the Beat and the Trax, they’re new skins for the same basic guts found in a Chevy Spark or Daewoo Matiz […]

Auto Worship Still a Sign of the Times

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 When the Supreme Court held this week that the Environmental Protection Agency does, in fact, possess the latitude to protect the environment, the New York Times called it "a victory for a world whose environment seems increasingly threatened by climate change." "It is a vindication for states like California that chose not to wait for […]

When a Two-Car Garage Just Isn’t Enough

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There are 255,794 vehicles registered in Staten Island, and as the borough’s population has taken off in the last few years, some of the local parking customs have become increasingly strained. A story published Monday in the Staten Island Advance illuminates just how entitled the people of that borough still feel to free parking — […]

StreetFilm: Room to Breathe

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Room to BreatheA StreetFilm by Clarence Eckerson Jr.Running Time: 3 minutes 41 seconds Inspired by a poster produced by Portland’s Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA) in the mid-1990s, this weekend Transportation Alternatives gathered a gaggle of cyclists on 42nd Street in Manhattan to stage New York’s own dramatic illustration of how much street space would be […]

Pedestrian Safety: The National Picture

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Whose light is it, anyway? A recent story in USA Today talked about the growing national movement for pedestrian and bicyclist safety. The piece included a table that showed the number of pedestrians killed state by state in 2005 (Florida, with 3.24 deaths per 100,000 population, was the worst for pedestrians, while New Hampshire was […]