Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Studies & Reports

Study: Sharrows Don’t Make Streets Safer for Cycling

By Angie Schmitt | Jan 14, 2016 | No Comments

Sharrows are the dregs of bike infrastructure — the scraps cities hand out when they can’t muster the will to implement exclusive space for bicycling. They may help with wayfinding, but do sharrows improve the safety of cycling at all? New research presented at the Transportation Review Board Annual Meeting suggests they don’t. A study by University […]

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Social Engineering! Cities That Build More Parking Get More Traffic

By Angie Schmitt | Jan 13, 2016 | No Comments

Build parking spaces and they will come — in cars. New research presented this week at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board finds a direct, causal relationship between the amount of parking in cities and car commuting rates. University of Wisconsin researcher Chris McCahill and his team examined nine “medium-sized” cities — with relatively stable […]

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Federal Report: Bad Street Design a Factor in Rising Ped/Bike Fatalities

By Angie Schmitt | Dec 11, 2015 | No Comments

A new report from the non-partisan Government Accountability Office [PDF] examines why people walking or biking account for a rising share of traffic deaths in the United States. While the conclusions aren’t exactly earth-shattering, one culprit the GAO identified is street design practices that seek primarily to move cars. The investigation was ordered by U.S. representatives Rick Larsen (Washington State), […]

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Real Estate Giant: Suburban Office Parks Increasingly Obsolete

By Angie Schmitt | Dec 10, 2015 | No Comments

What tenants want in an office building is changing, and the old model of the isolated suburban office park is going the way of the fax machine. That’s according to a new report from Newmark, Grubb, Knight and Frank [PDF], one of the largest commercial real estate firms in the world. The old-school office park does “not offer the […]

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How Much Can Bicycling Help Fight Climate Change? A Lot, If Cities Try

By Angie Schmitt | Nov 18, 2015 | No Comments

A new study from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy attempts to measure the potential of bikes and e-bikes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. ITDP’s conclusion, in short: Bicycling could help cut carbon emissions from urban transportation 11 percent. The authors calculated the carbon emissions reduction that could result if cities around the world make a strong, sustained […]

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The Looming Transit Breakdown That Threatens America’s Economy

By Angie Schmitt | Nov 16, 2015 | No Comments

While federal transit funding stagnates, the nation’s largest rail and bus systems have been delaying critical maintenance projects. Without sustained efforts to fix infrastructure and vehicles, the effects of deteriorating service in big American cities could ripple across the national economy, according to a new report from the Regional Plan Association [PDF]. RPA focuses on ten of the nation’s largest transit agencies […]

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