The title says it all.
[flickr]photo:4981349954[/flickr]
Old and new CTA logos, superimposed. Photo by Jeff Zoline.
The title says it all.
[flickr]photo:4981349954[/flickr]
Old and new CTA logos, superimposed. Photo by Jeff Zoline.
[vimeo]36091944[/vimeo]
Last weekend’s open thread asked you to post a link to an article you read. This weekend I want you to post a link to a video about some kind of sustainable transportation that you watched. I’ll go first. Here’s a vigorous and dramatic view of New York City streets, traffic, and buildings, from a very low-to-the-ground point of view, shot all from cameras mounted on bicycles. I really like the first minute, where the camera is (in what seems like slow motion, but isn’t) wrapping around objects and people.
[flickr]photo:6810699175[/flickr]
The Garfield Park fieldhouse, along the upcoming West Side Boulevards bike route
After attending the West Side and South Side meetings for the Streets for Cycling plan to install hundreds of miles of protected bike lanes and other innovative bikeways, I confess I was a little concerned about the city’s initial plans.
At the meetings, Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) staffers announced that a 4.1-mile network of protected bike lanes (PBLs) will be built along the West Side segment of the Boulevard System. Another 1.5-mile segment will be built along Garfield Boulevard (5500 S.) from King to Halsted. CDOT also announced that the city’s first neighborhood greenway (AKA bike boulevard), a traffic-calmed, bike-and-ped-prioritized side street, will be created on a .9-mile stretch of Berteau Avenue (4200 N.) from Lincoln to Clark.
[flickr]photo:6724046217[/flickr]
CDOT handout outlining the West Side Boulevard PBL route
I became more nervous about these locations after I learned that the West Side route and the Berteau greenway were first proposed by aldermen, and that one of the main motivations for putting PBLs on the boulevards is traffic calming. It reminded me of how, when I used to work for the city getting bike racks installed, aldermen would sometimes ask us to install racks at the end of a cul-de-sac to keep cars from driving over the curb, not because anyone would actually want to park a bike there.
Continue reading Are the upcoming Streets for Cycling projects in good locations?
[vimeo]35643272[/vimeo]
As part of the Cities for Cycling program, bikeway design experts take their show on the road, using the streets of different U.S. cities as their classroom and the new NACTO design book as their guide.
Watch this Streetfilms video featuring CDOT’s Gabe Klein and David Gleason, experts from Portland, Oregon, New York City, and San Francisco, as well as Lee Crandell, campaigns director at Active Transportation Alliance, and Margo O’Hara, a co-leader of the Streets for Cycling Plan’s North Side district. Continue reading NACTO is for cities, AASHTO is for states: This video is about “Cities for Cycling”
[flickr]photo:5182567358[/flickr]
Photo of the Wabash ‘L’ by Clark Maxwell.
If you call your representatives to ask them to vote against bills that cut transit, bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure funding, you can also add these talking points:
Highways and roads have the lowest return of jobs per dollar of investment
From the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst:
For each $1 million, the cycling projects in this study create a total of 11.4 jobs within the state where the project is located. Pedestrian-only projects create an average of about 10 jobs per $1 million and multi-use trails create nearly as many, at 9.6 jobs per $1 million. Infrastructure that combines road construction with pedestrian and bicycle facilities creates slightly fewer jobs for the same amount of spending, and road-only projects create the least, with a total of 7.8 jobs per $1 million. On average, the 58 projects we studied create about 9 jobs per $1 million within their own states. If we add the spill-over employment that is created in other states through the supply chain, the employment impact rises by an average of 3 additional jobs per $1 million. Read the full summary. Read the full study, by Heidi Garrett-Peltier.
Bicycling can save the economy
A series of 10 articles on “Bikenomics“, by Elly Blue.
Bicycle transportation is good for a lot of things — it’s healthy, it’s green, it’s quiet, it’s fun, it builds community. It also makes financial sense, and the magnitude of bicycling’s economic impact gets far less attention than it deserves. In the Bikenomics series, Elly Blue explores the scope of that impact, from personal finance to local economies to the big picture of the national budget. In the grassroots and on a policy level, the bicycle is emerging as an effective engine of economic recovery.
People who use transit to commute save thousands annually
It’s a no brainer: no gas and insurance to buy. From the American Public Transportation Association:
The report notes that riding public transportation saves individuals, on average $9,656 annually, and up to $805 per month based on the January 5, 2011 average national gas price ($3.08 per gallon-reported by AAA) and the national unreserved monthly parking rate. [This data is from January 5, 2011, but the information remains true today. The only difference is the calculated dollar amount each individual is saving over driving a car to work.]
[flickr]photo:6790745933[/flickr]
New and maintained trains? Forget it. Photo by John Iwanski.
If you are on the mailing list of any transportation advocacy group, or have been reading Streetsblog, this blog, and other websites, you may have noticed that transportation funding for transit, bicycle, and pedestrian projects is falling on the cutting room floors of two of the House of Representatives’s committees: Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I), and Ways and Means (W&M). Full information on these issues was posted this morning.
Each committee has a bill that screws over funding that buys buses and trains, builds train stations, sidewalks, and cycling trails. You can ask your representatives to vote no on these bills. Here’s what to do:
Transportation and Infrastructure committee
It’s probably too late today to do anything about this, but you should ask your Representative to vote no on H.R.7. This bill repeals programs on safety, Safe Routes to School, and Transportation Enhancements.
Find your representative, or contact the following representatives from Illinois on this committee:
Ways and Means committee
Voting on H.R.3864 happens Friday morning. Ask your representative to vote no. This bill removes the Mass Transit Account from the Highway Trust Fund and leaves its funding up in the air, fighting for General Revenues along with thousands of other programs, instead of having a dedicated funding stream (gas taxes).
Find your representative, or contact the following representatives from Illinois on this committee: