The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Esri offers insights into five new ways to analyze the success of transit service in cities of all kinds.

October 5 - ESRI

A summer of drought and devastating fires has demonstrated the dangers of allowing residential developments to sprawl ever farther into wild, natural environments.

October 5 - CityLab

BLOG POST

The Bloomingdale Trail, the star attraction of the 606 in Chicago, has been compared to NYC's High Line. But with its restrained design and focus on high-use activity, it is nothing like it, and, in certain ways, it's even better.

October 5 - Mark Hough

Slowing traffic by reducing the width of lanes should not be a one-size fits all approach to reaching Vision Zero.

October 5 - The Urbanist

More evidence is piling up that commuting by anything but private automobile can increase happiness, social capital, and health.

October 5 - Gizmodo

Too often, street-side parklets become little more than semi-private patios for the businesses that sponsor them. Pavement parks, replacing dangerous intersections, may be a more worthwhile option.

October 4 - Next City

Washington, D.C.'s DOT has adopted TransitIQ, a straightforward tracking technology, to help dispatchers keep buses on schedule.

October 4 - Mobility Lab

It's a tradeoff that 3.9 percent of the Bay Area workforce are willing to make to own an affordable home. It's often not even a choice between living in the city or the suburbs, but the close-in suburbs or the exurbs or San Joaquin Valley.

October 4 - San Jose Mercury News

It's serious, and the data is surprising. You need not be a pedestrian to experience injury while walking using your cell phone: half of all injuries occurred in the home. Two thirds of all walking-using-cell phone injuries were females.

October 4 - The Washington Post

Initial planning steps toward replacement of the 105-year-old tunnels under the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York's Penn Station are underway, with New Jersey Transit, Amtrak, and the Port Authority of N.Y & N.J. all playing key roles.

October 4 - The New York Times - N.Y. / Region

The Emerald City's affordable housing difficulties mirror those of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and others: too much demand and too few resources.

October 3 - Crosscut

Unusually scarce precipitation last winter has left little snow on the mountains, endangering a key California water reserve.

October 3 - KPCC

San Diego quest to find solutions to repairing damaged city sidewalks continues, with home and business owners potentially facing liability for trip-and-fall accidents

October 3 - Voice of San Diego

Something needs to change if Arizona is going to be able to pay the bills for maintaining and building new roads, according to the findings of an audit by the state.

October 3 - Phoenix Business Journal

A new study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology has linked an increase in the likelihood of being in a traffic fatality to a person's educational level.

October 3 - The Washington Post - Wonkblog

A case study of media coverage in Connecticut finds a double standard between the CTFastrak and Interstate 84 projects.

October 2 - Tri-State Transportation Campaign

Not all transit maps are created equal. The new Portland TriMet map, for instance, does a much better job of illustrating the usefulness of its high-frequency network.

October 2 - Human Transit

The decision to shut down a 4.7-square-mile swath of Philadelphia's Center City on the occasion of the Pope's visit last weekend has converted a lot of new believers to the open streets cause.

October 2 - Philly Voice

A new regional transit oriented development initiative in Seattle will focus on affordable housing and walkable communities. The Executive's Transit Station Housing and Development Initiative will partner King County and Sound Transit.

October 2 - The Urbanist

The EPA chose to reduce the current standard of 75 parts per billion, unchanged since 2008, by 5 ppb. Public health and environmental groups insist that a safe standard would be 60 ppb, while businesses point to the high costs to comply with 70 ppb.

October 2 - The Wall Street Journal