News Roundup › Transportation

Plans to bring the iconic New Orleans streetcar to neighborhoods surrounding the St. Claude Corridor have been scaled back due to lack of finances. The previously proposed line was initially slated to reach Press Street, with the hope that it would someday extend to Poland Avenue. As it stands, the streetcar to be installed presently will connect with the existing Canal Street line, run along N. Rampart Street to St. Claude Avenue, and terminate at Elysian Fields Avenue. RTA and city officials are hopeful that the project will receive additional funding from various state and national grants, which will be used to extend the line further along the St. Claude Corridor. The extension of streetcar lines throughout the city will benefit local businesses and communities as their visibility and accessibility increase.

Source: The Times-Picayune | Archived Copy

Now, taking down freeways has gone mainstream. Cities as diverse as New Haven, New Orleans and Seattle are either doing it or talking about it. The chief motivation seems to be money. “Listen to the story here.”:Download file

Source: National Public Radio | Archived Copy

Although streetcar development is nothing new, the phenomenon was rediscovered in the early 1990s and earned its own terms of art: transit-oriented development and development-oriented transit.

Source: The Times-Picayune | Archived Copy

Source: The Times-Picayune | Archived Copy

Variations in neighborhood density mean your ZIP code has a lot to do with whether you can live without a car.

Source: Gambit Weekly | Archived Copy

Ending our love affair with the automobile, no matter how unhealthy it has become, seems overwhelmingly disruptive. Although more and wider roads lead only to more congestion, states are loath to reject federal highway dollars such as those offered in economic stimulus packages. Highways are easy things to spend money on, so who cares if what they stimulate is sprawl?

Source: The Washington Post | Archived Copy

With pedicabs already commonplace in many large cities, supporters have said New Orleans is one of the last major tourist cities in the world without such vehicles.
The ordinance sets a maximum of 65 pedicab permits, with no one owner or company allowed to have more than 15. First, however, there will be a pilot period of 12 to 24 months during which only 45 permits will be issued. After the pilot period, the director of the city’s Ground Transportation Bureau is to recommend to the council whether to keep the limit at 45 or expand it to 65.

Source: The Times-Picayune | Archived Copy

Several speakers who own or have operated pedicabs elsewhere said the vehicles are operating successfully in many large cities, where one said they have a “very symbiotic relationship” with taxicabs and other forms of for-hire transportation.

Travis Stowers, who owns a large fleet of pedicabs in Houston, said New Orleans is one of the last major tourist cities in the world without such vehicles.

Source: The Times-Picayune | Archived Copy

The new report sums up the criticisms of the Claiborne expressway this way:
“Once a thriving commercial corridor, the area defined by Claiborne Avenue suffered serious decline following the construction of the I-10 expressway in the 1960s. Pushed through over the wishes of the area’s largely disenfranchised African-American population, it was intimately tied to the overall decline of the neighborhood, replacing a lively strolling street, oak-covered neutral ground and business corridor with an eyesore that made Claiborne Avenue both a physical and symbolic barrier between the area’s neighborhoods.”

Source: The Times-Picayune | Archived Copy

New Orleans is home to a bevy of historic neighborhoods — all of them fascinating, all of them topographically flat. Touring by bike is an easy way to take in the details.

Source: Time Magazine | Archived Copy

“There are over 100 cities in the U.S. that have these and there is no city more perfect for it than New Orleans,” Lynch said.

Source: New Orleans CityBusiness | Archived Copy

The perfect city isn’t static. It’s evolving and ever changing, and its laws and structure allow that to happen. Neighborhoods change, clubs close and others open, yuppies move in and move out—as long as there is a mix of some sort, then business districts and neighborhoods stay healthy even if they’re not what they once were. My perfect city isn’t fixed, it doesn’t actually exist, and I like it that way.

Source: The Wall Street Journal | Archived Copy

The city and a land trust are working to create a new parkway through Treme and Mid-City.

Source: The Times-Picayune | Archived Copy

Through a mix of city, state and federal efforts, the commercial strip along Lakeview’s Harrison Avenue is being transformed into a picturesque thoroughfare with wider sidewalks, landscaping, better lighting and bike lanes. Read more.

Source: The Times-Picayune | Archived Copy

The drive to remove I-10 has recently gained steam, not only because it has support from professional planners but also because the expressway itself may soon need a major overhaul. Read more.

Source: The Times-Picayune | Archived Copy

After five months of testing the use of minibuses to ferry passengers from the sparsely populated blocks of the Lower 9th Ward to streets served by larger buses, the Regional Transit Authority is bringing the service to two once-devastated areas that have recovered more robustly: Lakeview and Gentilly. Read more.

Source: The Times-Picayune | Archived Copy

A bemused mother pressed her right palm against her young son’s eyes as she watched a pack of cyclists lackadaisically pedal past them on Royal Street just after noon Saturday.

The hand went over the youngster’s eyes because most of the riders, both men and women, were almost entirely naked. Read more.

Source: The Times-Picayune | Archived Copy

Source: Louisiana Recovery Authority | Archived Copy

Since the day the Claiborne Expressway was constructed nearly 50 years ago devastating the historic Treme neighborhood, attorney Bill Borah has been shouting into the wind, “Tear down this monstrosity.”

But few people listened and even fewer believed the chances of the city demolishing the elevated highway was anything more than a fantasy.

“People looked at me like I was crazy,” Borah said. “I may as well have been having a conversation with my cat.”

But last week Borah’s fantasy moved one step closer to becoming a reality when the city released its master plan. Read more.

Source: New Orleans CityBusiness | Archived Copy

The Northern Lights Express is little more than an idea — a proposal for a 110-mph passenger train between Minneapolis and Duluth, Minn., that has crept along in fits and starts for years.

But the slow ride may soon be over. The project is one of dozens nationwide that are likely to benefit from President Obama’s initiative to fund high-speed and intercity passenger rail programs, including $8 billion in stimulus money and $5 billion more over the next five years in the administration’s proposed transportation budget. Read more.

Source: The Washington Post | Archived Copy

High Speed, High Cost, High Income Rail

Undernews
Sam Smith
February 26, 2009

There’s nothing wrong with high speed rail except that when your country is really hurting, when your rail system largely falls behind other countries’ because of lack of tracks rather than lack of velocity, and when high speed rail appeals more to bankers than to folks scared of foreclosing homes, it’s a strange transit program to feature in something called a stimulus bill.

One might even call it an $8 billion earmark.

I watched this development with a sense of deja vu. Long ago, I was a rare critic of DC’s Metro subway plans, not because I was against mass transit, but because it was a highly inefficient way of spending mass transit funds compared to light rail or exclusive bus lanes. At the time we could have had ten times as many miles of light rail for the same price of the subway system. Read more.

Source: Undernews | Archived Copy

Enhancements to make bicycling more attractive come at a time when the environmental impact of heavy automobile use is getting more attention, and also when higher fuel prices are making habitual driving more expensive.

Source: New Orleans Magazine | Archived Copy

Following Hurricane Katrina, the removal of the highway was recognized in the Unified New Orleans Plan as a means of reconnecting Treme to surrounding neighborhoods in the French Quarter, Marigny and Esplanade Ridge. UNOP planners predicted the full removal of the interstate overpass would renew 35 to 40 city blocks and create 20 to 25 blocks of open space along Claiborne Avenue. But since the UNOP declaration no plans have been made to tear down the overpass and local officials have said nothing to imply support for the costly maneuver.

“Motivated by the desire to exploit the metered parking space as a site for art, activism, and cultural expression, REBAR offers PARK Day as a prototype for open source urban design accessible to all,” says a statement in the project’s “assembly manual.”

Source: MSN City Guides | Archived Copy

“What Americans will really want in the coming years are walkable communities,” Fields said. “Where New Orleans has its real strength is that we fit that type of model.”

Source: New Orleans CityBusiness | Archived Copy

A year after the introduction of the sturdy gray bicycles known as Velib’s, they are being used all over Paris. The bikes are cheap to rent because they are subsidized by advertising, and other major cities, including American ones, are exploring similar projects.

Source: The New York Times | Archived Copy

“The time has come to see the potential for this corridor not only be used as a path for people to walk or bike to work and to better their health, but also to knit communities along the greenway together,” said Bart Everson, the FOLC’s board chair.

Source: The Times-Picayune | Archived Copy

“New Orleans is a great place for biking,” says Lando, his enthusiasm undimmed by potholes and a paucity of dedicated bike lanes. “It’s flat, everything is so close together. I can get from the French Quarter to the Riverbend in 20 minutes. I can go from our house to Petco on Manhattan (Boulevard) and come back with 30 pounds of dog food in the same amount of time it takes me to go by car. And it’s a great way to see the neighborhood.”

Source: The Times-Picayune | Archived Copy

Long before the recent spike in the price of energy, environmentalists decried suburban sprawl a waste of land, energy and tax dollars. Governments from Virginia to California have in recent decades lavished resources on building roads and schools for new subdivisions in the outer rings of development while skimping on maintaining facilities closer in. Many governments now focus on reviving their downtowns.

Source: The New York Times | Archived Copy

From Elysian Fields to the St. Bernard Parish line, St. Claude Avenue now hosts New Orleans’ first bike lane. Consider this a down payment on what’s to come.

Source: WWOZ Street Talk | Archived Copy

So what are intelligent responses to our predicament? First, we’ll have to dramatically reorganize the everyday activities of American life. We’ll have to grow our food closer to home, in a manner that will require more human attention. In fact, agriculture needs to return to the center of economic life. We’ll have to restore local economic networks — the very networks that the big-box stores systematically destroyed — made of fine-grained layers of wholesalers, middlemen and retailers.

Source: Washington Post | Archived Copy

Nineteen grants totaling more than $581,000 have been awarded to help bring to life some of the neighborhood recovery projects envisioned in the Unified New Orleans Plan for rebuilding the city after Hurricane Katrina.

Source: Times-Picayune | Archived Copy

“We built the opera house in two months, the botanical gardens in three months, Niemeyer’s museum in five months. We transformed the city’s main street into a pedestrian area in 72 hours. It wasn’t that we were chasing after records - it was necessity.”

Wally N’Dow, former head of the UN Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), has described Curitiba as “a wonderful example, because cities that follow this lead can jumpstart the economies, assist the poorest of their poor, and clean up their cities.”

Source: Guardian | Archived Copy

It’s not necessarily the billion-euro development, star-architect-designed gallery or shiny new ferris wheel that makes locals feel good about their town. Monocle believes that the measure of a city is more about everyday wonders — pavements, well-designed schools, punctual transport — rather than one-off, grand projets. Here’s our list of the top 25 urban elements that make the city.

Source: International Herald Tribune | Archived Copy

Cameras at intersections increase, not decrease, accidents, according to a University of South Florida study … . The university’s yearlong review, published Friday in the campus journal Florida Public Health Review, warns that drivers are at higher risk of having accidents at intersections where cameras are installed.

Source: Tampa Tribune | Archived Copy

FOLC said the Lafitte Greenway will encourage economic revitalization; create transportation alternatives, such as walking, biking and connections to transit; improve public health; and promote cultural tourism by connecting to neighborhood attractions.

Source: City Business | Archived Copy

Once completed, the concrete segment of the Wisner route will be among the city’s major paved off-street bike infrastructure, joining the 1.79-mile Mississippi River Levee path and the 1.38-mile West End path, said Jennifer Ruley, a bicycle and pedestrian engineer with the Louisiana Public Health Institute.

Source: Times-Picayune | Archived Copy

For the last two weekends, protesters opposed to plans to extend the city’s fastest-on-earth magnetic levitation train—the maglev—took to the streets in marches that organizers dubbed “collective walks,” to avoid seeming too controversial when confronting a regime that often deals harshly with acts of dissent.

Source: The Nation | Archived Copy

The Mayor of Paris is about to launch another novel scheme for fighting congestion and pollution: self-service cars Bertrand Delanöe aims to start with 2,000 electric-powered vehicles that subscribers can drive off without booking at dozens of sites 24 hours a day and then leave anywhere in the city.

Source: The Times | Archived Copy

The streetcar has represented something else besides the connections through time and space: the city’s living room, a privileged spot for tentative social encounters across lines of race, class and nationality, in a place not otherwise given to them. Thanks to an accelerated repair schedule, that meeting place, absent since the hurricane, is back.

Source: New York Times | Archived Copy

Now, Ms. Birk said, the city is nurturing the cycling industry, and there are about 125 bike-related businesses in Portland, including companies that make bike racks, high-end components for racing bikes and aluminum for bikes mass-produced elsewhere. There are small operations that make cycling hats out of recycled fabric. Track, road and cyclo-cross races are held year-round, and state tourism groups promote cycling packages. There is Ms. Birk’s firm, which had two employees in Portland in 1999 and now has 14. There are nonprofit advocacy groups and Web sites, including www.bikeportland.org, that are devoted to cycling issues and events in Portland.

Source: The New York Times | Archived Copy

Pre-Katrina, the St. Charles line, which extended from Canal Street to Carrollton Avenue and Claiborne Avenue, ran 24 hours a day, but the new Canal-to-Napoleon service will operate daily from 5:27 a.m. to 11:55 p.m. with a fleet of five 1923 Perley Thomas streetcars running 10 minutes apart.

Source: Times-Picayune | Archived Copy

The ORM has $2.4 million of an estimated $2.5 million needed to complete phase one, which includes developing a greenway between North Broad and Jefferson Davis Parkway. ORM will use $2 million from the $117 million authorized by the Louisiana Recovery Authority for the city, $313,000 from the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development and a $95,000 grant from the American Institute of Architects to develop the park.

Source: City Business | Archived Copy

Face it. We have a driving problem, and it’s killing us. We are addicted to driving, and we are in denial about it. We lash out at those who bring it to our attention and label them as “anti-car.” Unfortunately, that is about as constructive as labeling a doctor as “anti-food” if that doctor recommends a diet.

Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinal | Archived Copy

Launched in July, the “Velib” bikes were part of the Paris mayor’s idea of making the city more ecologically friendly and reducing traffic. Just two months on, the self-service bicycles have clocked some 3.7 million rides and seem to be changing the way people get around the city.

Source: National Public Radio | Archived Copy

We help homebuyers, renters, and real estate agents find houses and apartments in great neighborhoods. Walk Score shows you a map of what’s nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. Buying a house in a walkable neighborhood is good for your health and good for the environment.

Source: Walkscore.com | Archived Copy

Source: City Business | Archived Copy

The model city for road closure is Bogotá, Colombia, which in 1983 embarked on a program called ciclovia (bike path), in which designated streets were closed to cars every Sunday but open for jogging, biking, dancing, playing ball, walking pets, strolling with babies — anything but driving. One-and-a-half million people now turn out each week for ciclovia. Other cities in Latin America followed suit, closing parts of parks or whole urban districts to cars — some intermittently, some permanently. A result: revitalized neighborhoods and an influx of people. Smaller US cities, from Davenport, Iowa, to Huntington Beach, Calif., are also starting to create car-free zones.

Source: Christian Science Monitor | Archived Copy

Black Sheep Bakery, maker of surprisingly yummy vegan treats at 833 SE Main Street, has installed Portland’s first bike-thru window. And the best thing about it? No cars allowed.

Source: PortlandBike.org | Archived Copy

The first time the group struck was on May 30. The gang spray-painted an illegal bike lane in the Annex, between Spadina Ave. and Bathurst St., along Bloor. To make the paths appear legitimate, painters stencilled the city’s bike lane logo - a bicycle and large diamond - along the road as well.

Source: The Star.com | Archived Copy

On July 15, the day after Bastille Day, Parisians will wake up to discover thousands of low-cost rental bikes at hundreds of high-tech bicycle stations scattered throughout the city, an ambitious program to cut traffic, reduce pollution, improve parking and enhance the city’s image as a greener, quieter, more relaxed place.

Source: The Washington Post | Archived Copy

Mayor Marcelo Ebrard proposed the programme last year — and was the first to get on his bicycle from his home south of the city to his office in the central Zocalo.

[Louisiana] is getting ready to spend three hundred and fifty-eight million dollars on a gigantic automobile overpass along the northern edge of the Lower Ninth Ward, to connect downtown New Orleans with neighboring St. Bernard Parish. St. Bernard was home to sixty-seven thousand people before Katrina and to maybe a little more than a third of that now. Opponents call the overpass “the bridge to nowhere.”

Source: The New Yorker | Archived Copy

A recently completed stretch of paved bike path that runs atop the Mississippi River levee from downtown Baton Rouge to LSU soon could be extended all the way to New Orleans.

Source: City Business | Archived Copy

Penalosa made strides by ignoring some experts and their conventional wisdom. When Japanese consultants suggested he build seven elevated highways to solve the city’s traffic woes, Penalosa recalled, he did the opposite. Instead, the city invested in a world-class bus system, built pedestrian-only streets (one stretches 20 miles) and restricted car use in downtown Bogota. Thanks to a much-improved and “sexier” bus system, Penalosa said, public transportation in his city is actually too popular and 20% of rail riders own cars they don’t use.

Source: LA Downtown News Online | Archived Copy

The main junction in Drachten handles about 22,000 cars a day. Where once there were traffic lights, there is a roundabout, an extended cycle path and pedestrian area. In the days of traffic lights, progress across the junction was slow as cars stopped and started. Now tailbacks are almost unheard of � and almost nobody toots a horn.

Source: Telegraph | Archived Copy

The Regional Transit Authority will receive $43 million to repair its hurricane-damaged public transportation system.

Source: City Business | Archived Copy

Lipman said many communities have identified a lack of affordable housing, traffic-clogged roads and longer commutes as critical issues but have not linked them. “One thing this study shows is the need to have regional solutions about both housing and transportation,” she said.

Source: Washington Post | Archived Copy

When the Central Artery expressway was built in the 1950s, it carved through Boston indiscriminately, destroying sections of Chinatown and effectively cutting off the North End from the rest of the city. Half a century later, as part of the massive Big Dig construction project, much of the elevated expressway has been torn down. In its place will be the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a nearly 30-acre stretch of parks and public spaces that promises to reunite neighborhoods long divided.

Source: Good Magazine | Archived Copy

Chicago is set to unveil new plans for becoming a bicyclist’s haven. And this time, it means business. The new Bike 2015 Plan wastes little time on breezy rides in the park. Instead, the city’s Department of Transportation is bent on getting people to bike to work, to school, to stores and to mass transit stops, cobbling together a 500-mile network of designated routes.

Source: Chicago Tribune | Archived Copy

Mike Bolliger, president of Bolliger & Sons, Inc., and a board member of Central Eastside Industrial Council, also prefers the Grant/King route.

“One of the reasons we’re pushing for the streetcar is not so much as a transportation piece as for a development tool,” he says. “Economically, the thing that makes sense is the redevelopment potential. The streetcar could be a huge tool if it does over here what it did on the westside.”

Source: The Oregonian | Archived Copy

All 24 of the new cars for the recently completed Canal Street line and six of seven of the River Front cars were destroyed by the flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina. The antique St. Charles cars were safe, but the power system that propels them past the famous mansions, universities and parks was wrecked and must be totally rebuilt.

Source: wwl | Archived Copy

Peering out from a white-fenced balcony that looks out on nothing much, Katrina evacuee Stephanie Gleason said, “To tell the truth, I don’t know where we live.”

There is no bus stop here. The nearest supermarket is a $20 cab ride away.

Gleason’s cookie-cutter apartment complex, Eagles Landing, feels more like a bird cage than a nest.

Flushed out of their city — one of the most dense and most vibrant in the country — many of the New Orleanians who came here car-less find themselves living amid Austin’s car-enabled sprawl.

More or less trapped, their lives are a quick, sharp study of the isolation of suburbia.

Source: Austin American-Statesman | Archived Copy

Analyses of the failure of all levels of government to prevent or effectively manage the Katrina calamity in New Orleans have generally missed a crucial point. Alongside bias against poor people and African-Americans is automobile apartheid, born of fifty years of suburban sprawl. First-class citizens drive motor vehicles, second-class Americans walk, cycle, or ride public transit. Certainly many of the latter are poor, but millions more are middle-class Americans.

When emergency response largely ignores the plight of second-class citizens, no one should be surprised.

Source: Grist Magazine | Archived Copy

“Imagine, for a moment, a busy downtown intersection with no traffic lights, signs or sidewalks…There are no markers on the ground, no speed bumps, no police officer conducting the flow of vehicles. There’s not even a curb. Every element of traffic — pedestrians, bikers and drivers — is left to fend for itself…Sounds like a recipe for chaos, right?”

Source: Toronto Star | Archived Copy

Though a bike with no brakes sounds insane to many, Wirtanen swears by it. “Basically, a track bike is the perfect invention,” said Wirtanen, who now works as a mechanic at Harris Cyclery. “You can’t make it any better.”

Source: Wired | Archived Copy

“Critical Mass is neither a protest nor demonstration. Generally, riders are not out to make some previously agreed upon point. Critical Mass is not an “organization” or a “cyclists’ rights group,” as the media so often refers to it; rather, the term “spontaneous coincidence,” commonly used by participants, best defines it. One of the so-called founders of Critical Mass, Chris Carlsson, sums it up nicely when he says the rides are “about the demise of public of space… [and] the breakdown of human communication and community.” According to Carlsson, while Critical Mass was originally intended to secure space on the road for cyclists, it has evolved into a form of “self expression,” where “bikes are curiously incidental.” Most importantly, Carlsson contends that “every individual brings something of their own to the ride,” showcasing what he thinks is “a better life in urban America.”

(Thanks, Mary Gail)

Source: Planetizen | Archived Copy

“Shifting housing demographics are stoking interest around the USA in development near transit, according to a study for the Federal Transit Administration released last month. City living draws singles, aging baby boomers, minorities and young couples more than suburban families with kids. And those groups are growing faster than suburbanites.”

Source: USA Today | Archived Copy

The study showed that people living in sprawled cities are more likely to: drive further, own more cars per capita, breathe more polluted air, die in car crashes and walk less.

Source: City Business | Archived Copy