Advocates in New York City, San Francisco, and Seattle are pushing for more transit and pedestrian priority, and less car-centric streets, as a wave of high-profile projects capture national attention.
After the New York City Department of Transportation converted a section of 14th Street in Manhattan to a pedestrian-friendly, bus prioritizing, car-lite complete street, advocates in the city started pushing for more of the same on other corridors in the city. A few days later, New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg was on the record saying the pilot project could provide a template for more busways. An article by Kevin Duggan in the Brooklyn Paper offers a few suggestions.
In San Francisco, the same day the city approved a plan to block cars from Market Street to prioritize transit and pedestrians, county supervisors were going on the record with their willingness to study the concept for more streets in the city. Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez reports the responses of all 11 supervisors to the idea.
Finally, in Seattle, the city has been flying under the radar a little bit because it's been stopping short of blocking cars from streets, but the city has built out a wave of bus-only lanes, with fresh paint to demarcate the bus priority lanes, around the city. Doug Trumm write to recommend the next nine potential routes that could benefit from the same treatment.
Read the full story: Transit advocates ID likely candidates for Brooklyn ‘busway’
Watch the Miracle on 14th Street in Action
The changes to 14th Street in Manhattan have proven innovative ideas about bus priority and congestion relief.
Miracle on 14th Street
Predictions of carmageddon have not come to pass after New York City blocked most car traffic of a section of 14th Street in Manhattan to make way for buses.
The Radical Remaking of a New York Street Launches This Week
The 14th Street Busway will make its debut on Thursday of this week. Cars will be prohibited from the street and buses will gain newfound freedom, in a model that duplicates other efforts in Europe and Canada.
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City of Thousand Oaks
City of Wisconsin Rapids
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
Northern Illinois Transit Authority (NITA)
The Pocatello Development Authority
The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Pocatello