Twin Cities Streets for People

A new parking and pricing pilot project in San Francisco to

"Find parking faster. Pay more easily. Avoid tickets. SFMTA’s SFpark project is a two-year federally funded pilot of new parking management technologies and approaches. Less circling and fewer double-parked cars give us cleaner air and safer streets for bicyclists and pedestrians. With less traffic, public transit and emergency vehicles move more easily."

Via the Strong Towns Blog

The city of Guadalajara's new two-story expressways plan is shown to participants at this year's Carfree Cities Conference. They have some comments.

Via Ciudad Pedestre and Ciudad Para Todos

The National Journal has an interesting and wide-ranging debate w/ policy experts about whether or not the fight for pedestrian and cyclist space is a 'zero sum' game or not. There are lots of answers from alternative transportation's heavy hitters. Read more >

(Reuters Health) - Middle-aged and older adults who live near high-traffic roads may have a heightened risk of dying from heart disease -- but the odds seem to go down if they move to a less-traveled neighborhood, a new study finds. Read more >

From the Star Tribune: "... oil continues to gush from beneath the Gulf of Mexico in what has become an epic environmental catastrophe with no clear end in sight ... the United States consumes more than 20 percent of the world's oil but has less than 2 percent of the world's reserves ... We've got to thoughtfully, gradually and inexorably kick our oil habit" Read more >

From the University of Hawaii's School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. More information here >

You're paying for 'free' parking
By Conrad deFiebre | Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Hidden in plain sight is a huge nonuser subsidy for driving, one that researchers say rivals U.S. spending on Medicare and national defense. But it's so engrained in our motoring behavior that it's practically invisible, at least until it's used up:

"Free" parking.

Somewhere around 99 percent of auto trips in the United States — to shopping, work, church, recreation or whatever — make use of 9-by-19 foot chunks of real estate for which motorists pay nothing directly. That doesn't mean the spaces are actually free; the costs of acquisition, paving and maintenance are spread among drivers and nondrivers alike in taxes, store prices and other economic mechanisms that emit no price signals to curtail demand for parking.

See full story here>>>

From SF.Streetsblog.org:

Two parking spaces have been transformed into a trial "parklet," providing several hundred square feet of re-purposed public space with benches, tables, planters, and bike racks.  

"This is a change in philosophy and how we think of the public rights-of-way," said Department of Public Works Director Ed Reiskin, who noted that approximately 25 percent of the public space in San Francisco is taken up by streets. 

Representing the North of Panhandle Neighborhood Association, Leela Gill praised the Divisadero reconstruction project for helping to bring the Alamo Square neighborhood closer to the North of Panhandle neighborhood, and with inspiring the creation of the Divisadero Merchants Association. Gill said the rapid turnaround of the street and the commercial corridor had improved safety.

"Twenty years ago, you wouldn't catch me walking down Divisadero, and now I would bring both of my children anytime, any day, down Divisadero," said Gill. 

"No remedy in sight, President Barack Obama on Sunday warned of a "massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster" as a badly damaged oil well a mile deep in the Gulf of Mexico spewed a widening and deadly slick toward delicate wetlands and wildlife ... a 30-mile oil slick ... 210,000 gallons of crude gushing into the Gulf each day.

The spill threatens not only the environment but also the region's abundant fishing industry, which Obama called "the heartbeat of the region's economic life." As of now, it appeared little could be done in the short term to stem the oil flow."

Via Dan Burden of The Walkable and Livable Communities Institute > comes this very brief and very interesting interview of Todd Litman of The Victoria Transport Policy Institute >.