transportation
« Previous EntriesMetro mania
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009Tens of thousands of people stood in line for hours yesterday to experience the new rapid transit line in Vancouver. Such excitement has not greeted new transit options before, which got me thinking about the relationship between metro lines, a city, and its residents.
Unlike two previous routes, which primarily link suburban residential areas to downtown, […]
Automotive advertising and newspaper struggles
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009Many city newspapers in North America are struggling. A few months back in a post I suggested it was because they were not covering local topics, instead picking up on non-analytical wire copy and propaganda media releases rather than reporting actual events.
The Global Urbanist has another theory, suggesting in a recent e-mail that newspaper declines […]
Special civic advocates for walking? cycling?
Sunday, May 10th, 2009Cities need to offer residents and businesses a variety of transportation options to maximize livability. Only facilitating automobile travel makes for a polluted, congested, and concrete-freeway-based environment. Only facilitating bikes or walking in 21st century life and you hamper citizens’ ability to go any distance or carry very much while doing it. As recently […]
Diversity of transport essential for livability
Saturday, May 2nd, 2009This weekend I attended Gordon Price’s “Jane’s Walk” through Vancouver’s West End — a densely populated neighbourhood situated between downtown, English Bay beach, and Stanley Park. Price told the neighbourhood’s story, connecting it to more universal ideas including those of Jane Jacobs about how city’s work, and mixing in wisdom from his years on city […]
Stimulus and Suburbia
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009A number of urbanista bloggers have expressed disappointment with President Obama’s stimulus package and its focus on road infrastructure over transit (and tax cuts over transit).
As vehicle miles are declining and dense urban areas gentrifying, advocating for better transit certainly makes sense from a long-term planning perspective.
However, I think there is a good argument to […]
Is infrastructure spending the answer?
Monday, January 19th, 2009Many North American cities face crumbling infrastructure along with a need to offer residents new mass transit options. During the current economic slow down, the conventional wisdom seems to be that investing in infrastructure is a win - win, offering short term employment and long term needs.
But, what if many of the people needed to […]
Transit should be an essential service
Friday, January 16th, 2009A transit strike has afflicted Ottawa — Canada’s capital city — for over five weeks. Ottawa usually has a fairly good transit system, relied on by many people who have chosen not to have a car (or a second family vehicle) as well as those who cannot afford one.
People who have made the ecologically and/or […]
Reinvention of the Lada
Sunday, December 14th, 2008Moscow, 2002: During my visit I noticed that the city streets contained a strange mix of automobiles. The police and government as well as many taxi drivers drove fume-spewing small Ladas that seemed to have a top speed of around 40 mph. Meanwhile, the new wealthy as well as (or including?) the criminals drove fancy […]
Is Congress bailing out suburbia?
Thursday, September 25th, 2008There’s a lot going on this week in Washington DC and the economy. It’s challenging to follow all the strands and interpret the econo-speak and political-speak in terms of what it actually means in the big picture.
I may be off base here, but could one not interpret the current plans as bailing out the suburban […]
Parking and cities
Thursday, September 25th, 2008Few things can make a street feel less engaging and less safe than a parking lot or stand-alone parking garage.
In most cities, new buildings — whether private homes or office towers — must offer a certain amount of off street parking. But are those minimal standards too many in an era when transit, walking, cycling […]