Recent Streetsblog CHICAGO posts about Streetsblog Network

How do highways and greenfield development exacerbate inequality? Richard Bose at Next STL shares this map of the St. Louis region, showing the share of income poor workers spend on transportation. Not surprisingly, as you go farther from the center, transportation consumes a greater percentage of people’s pay. What makes the case of St. Louis so tragic, writes Bose, is that the legacy […]

Rail systems built 40 years ago like BART and DC Metro have serious maintenance needs. Click to enlarge. Chart via Christof Spieler/Twitter What should we make of the recent headline-grabbing service disruptions at Washington Metro and BART? This chart from Houston transit advocate Christof Spieler offers some important perspective. These transit systems are reaching the age where maintenance needs are increasingly urgent. Alex Block at City […]

Ohio Democratic Party Chair David Pepper recently tweeted that “Ohio needs an urban agenda.” A group of local bloggers (myself included) think that’s a great idea, and we’ve been writing about what good state-level policy for Ohio cities would look like. Ohio’s policies tend to undermine cities instead of supporting them. How can that be reversed? Photo via Sustainable Cities Collective […]

It’s refreshing to see public agencies go beyond PSAs to deter distracted driving, which contributes to thousands of deaths in the U.S. each year. With traffic deaths on the rise in Oregon, state officials are ramping up their efforts. Oregon DOT Director Matt Garrett has pledged to “change cultural norms when it comes to distracted driving,” reports Jonathan Maus at Bike Portland, […]

Forty years ago, the Washington region had 60 miles of bus lanes on its streets, a network that was erased once Metrorail started operating. Today passengers make about half a million trips on Metro buses each weekday, not a great deal less than Metrorail, but there is no network of priority streets for buses. That’s starting […]

My, how things change. It’s always revealing to go back and look at how Americans responded to traffic deaths before they were regarded as an unavoidable aspect of everyday life. The era when the loss of lives to traffic violence was regarded with widespread shock and revulsion has almost faded from living memory. Here’s a glimpse of […]