Secretary LaHood takes on Senator Coburn’s “stimulus waste”
December 10, 2009By Sean Barry
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood didn’t pull any punches in a blog post yesterday about one senator’s “stimulus waste” list.
Senator Tom Coburn is a persistent critic of transportation “enhancements” and the author of a failed amendment earlier this year to strip bicycle and pedestrian projects from a spending bill. His latest waste list includes two bike paths. Coburn told the Washington Times, “When we run $1.4 trillion deficits, the money we spend ought to be a high priority for the American people as a whole.” To which LaHood retorts: “What he really means is that, because he doesn’t get bikes, no one else does either.”
LaHood goes on to cite an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act project extending a bike trail between downtown Minneapolis and the new Minnesota Twins stadium.
“I guess a better connection to Minneapolis’s central business district doesn’t count as infrastructure to some folks,” the secretary wrote. In fact, projects aimed at improving biking, walking and livability are central to both economic recovery, livability and future prosperity.
“We don’t call that waste,” LaHood concluded. “We call it progress.”
New York City sees biking go in one direction — up!
November 10, 2009By Stephen Lee Davis
All of the videos from Streetfilms are certainly worth watching, but we wanted to call out special attention to this one, especially on the heels of the Dangerous by Design release yesterday morning. With nearly 5,000 people dying every year on our roads while walking or biking, some cities are working hard to bring those numbers down by making biking (and walking) safer and more convenient.
New York City is one of those places. If you looked at the detailed rankings of the largest 52 metro areas in Dangerous by Design, you might have seen that New York is already one of the safest metros in the country when measured with the Pedestrian Danger Index. Part of the reason for that is the relatively low number of fatalities when compared against the high percentage of people who walk to work in the metro area. But that doesn’t mean it’s inherently safe. New York City has the largest share of pedestrians dying in traffic accidents in the country, with pedestrians making up a whopping 31% of all traffic fatalities.
So for the last few years, the City has been committed to making the public realm and their streets safer for walking and biking, and the numbers are bearing it out in a positive way. Watch this encouraging video from the gang at Streetfilms chronicling the huge rise in the numbers of people bicycling in the Big Apple.
Planning for the future: Washington’s new Woodrow Wilson Bridge
June 17, 2009By Stephen Lee Davis
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| A New Trail Originally uploaded by M.V. Jantzen. A bicyclist cruises along I-495/95 on the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge “active transportation lane,” leading to the rare sight of someone not in a car using the Capital Beltway. View more photos of the opening on Flickr from Eric Gilliland, director of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (a T4 partner.) |
Two weekends ago, the 12-foot-wide bicycle and pedestrian lane of the Woodrow Wilson interstate bridge over the Potomac River held its grand opening in Washington DC, filling with bikers and walkers who can now join the thousands of cars that cross the bridge each day.
The bridge, which connects Virginia and Maryland on the southern part of the Capital Beltway, is a vital transportation link in the region, where Interstate 95 (and the large majority of truck traffic) bypasses Washington, continuing north or south along the eastern seaboard.
Hundreds of bicyclists enjoyed a ride across the bridge for the first time ever last weekend, and the renovations to the bridge also added dedicated space for a future transit line — not something you see everyday on an interstate bridge in the United States.
Building a new bridge to replace the 1961 bridge had been discussed for decades, but the planning kicked into high gear in the 1990’s, with Maryland, Virginia, and the federal government all engaged in the process (DC relinquished control to the states.)
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| The King Street (Virginia) and Branch Avenue (Maryland) Metro stops are separated by just a few miles and the Potomac River, but require a long ride into DC to travel between the two on the Metrorail system. One day, Metro might cross the Wilson Bridge instead. |
Looking at a map of the Metrorail public transportation system, one can see that only a few miles separate the end of the green line in Maryland and the yellow and blue lines in Virginia. There was no active work to connect the two lines, but a handful of people in the planning process wondered about dedicating some space on the bridge for a future, useful Metro connection.
Parris Glendening, Governor of Maryland from 1995-2003, said that planning for a future transit connection was just common sense.
“Those stations are just a few miles apart as the crow flies, but no one in Maryland who has a choice is going to ride all the way up into DC to switch trains and ride all the way back out to Virginia — and end up only a few miles from where they started,” he said.
(Continue Reading)
Photo of the Week: Senior Cyclist
June 10, 2009By Stephen Lee Davis
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| Senior cyclist Originally uploaded by Humane Design |
| Our photo of the week shows a street that is so safe and accessible that anyone can bicycle. Unfortunately, it’s in Germany and not here. Thanks to Humane Design for the submissions. |
| Add your photos to the T4 America Flickr pool |
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- Atlanta-area transit system 14 days from shutting down, 2 million rides disappearing
March 17, 2010 - U.S. Transportation Department makes good on promise to ensure our streets are made safer
March 16, 2010 - Obama’s livability programs help rural America too
March 16, 2010 - Transit grants out the federal door, but what about the cuts?
March 8, 2010 - Transit riders in Atlanta face massive cuts, “wholesale restructuring” of service
March 5, 2010
- Atlanta-area transit system 14 days from shutting down, 2 million rides disappearing
The United States of Transit Cutbacks
Driving is down and transit ridership is at record highs. Yet transit agencies across the country are considering layoffs, service cuts and fare hikes. Find out more and learn what you can do to help at t4america.org/transitcuts
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