Recent Streetsblog CHICAGO posts about Streetsblog Network

What a long, difficult journey it’s been for streetcar advocates in Cincinnati. After battling an extremely hostile state government, the project was nearly killed in the early stages of construction by an adversarial mayor. But a groundswell of grassroots support for the project pushed it over the top. The Cincy route is not very long and operates […]

Seattle has a housing affordability problem. One way to address that is to reduce the amount of parking required in new residential buildings, lowering construction costs and increasing the number of apartments that can be built. But it’s politically difficult to reduce parking requirements because current residents who own cars worry it will make parking more scarce. As long as […]

About $830 million in federal funds are set aside each year for walking and biking. That’s less than 2 percent of total federal transportation spending. Even this small provision of dedicated funds has been watered down by the GOP-controlled Congress. The current federal transportation law allows states to transfer half their allocation of ped/bike funds to general road projects. Plenty of states choose to spend […]

It’s hard to overstate the influence of Houston’s bus network redesign — an overhaul of the city’s bus routes that aimed to expand access to frequent service. Cities all over the country have taken note and many are reimagining their own bus networks. The transit agency in Austin, Capital Metro, is working on a similar project, and […]

A movement has been building in Providence, Rhode Island, to replace the aging 6/10 Connector — an elevated urban highway — with an at-grade surface street that prioritizes transit and bicycling. It’s a solution that other cities have pursued to brilliant effect (intentionally or otherwise), with highway slabs giving way to walkable places. But Rhode Island Governor Gina […]

The construction of Seattle’s budget-busting underground waterfront highway has been a great reminder of why car-based urban megaprojects are such a bad idea. The one advantage of the tunnel is that it would allow for better walking, biking, and transit connections on surface streets by the waterfront. The trouble is, Seattle is on track to waste that opportunity by […]