Recent Posts
- Sustainable Transportation in Freiburg
- Cool Planning in Boulder
- Another City is Possible: Cars and Climate
- Boulder Biketopia at the ULI Salon
- A Goss Grove Neighborhood Greenway?
- Making Boulder into one of Jan Gehl's Cities for People
- Preventing Bicycle Fatalities at US-36 and Violet
- Bikes and Bus Rapid Transit
- The High Cost of Free Parking in Boulder
- Revisiting Junction Place, the TVAP and Multi-Way Boulevards
Linkstream
- Break out the Bikes for the next Hackfest
Boulder's QuickLeft is hosting a Bicycle Hackfest, the evening of Tuesday, May 14th, from 6-9pm. Unfortunately, I can't make it, but it would be great if someone could work on getting our Mark-A-Spot Open311 testbed built out... contact me if you're interested! - Portland Retailers Love Bike Corrals
On street bike parking (bike corrals) have become very popular with local street-level businesses in Portland, Oregon. I think it's time for Boulder to regularize our bike corral program. We need to get some decent non-diagonal racks in there with higher capacity, like the Portland racks, and also create a process through which businesses can request the racks, and get them. Portland has nearly 100, by population, Boulder ought to have something like 16. - A Profile of Freiburg, Germany
A good short profile of the city of Freiburg, Germany, and their many sustainability initiatives. Freiburg is a little more than double Boulder's size -- both in population and area, so it has a similar average population density. It's also a university town with a strong tech sector locally. The whole city was re-built post WWII, but they chose to build it along the same lines as the old city, with a dense core, and well defined boundaries. Today about half of daily trips are done by foot or on bike, with another 20% on public transit. They have a - An ultra-low energy neighborhood in Germany
The German university town of Heidelberg is developing a near zero energy neighborhood, housing 5000 people and providing jobs for 7000. All the buildings will meet the ultra strict Passivhaus energy efficiency standard. It's in the center of town, and will be extremely well served by transit, with easy bike and pedestrian access to the rest of the city. This would be a great thing to see in, say... the Diagonal Plaza. More info on the development here. 93% of the unites are already sold... - Depaving Rural America
Rural counties across middle America are turning paved roads back into gravel. The WSJ article is from 2010, and I wonder to what extent this trend has continued. I can't say that it seems like much of a loss. I suspect that much of the rural pavement was laid down without a good understanding of how much O&M it was committing the local governments to paying for. As state and federal budgets shrink, and counties are left to pay for their own infrastructure, they realize that maybe cheaper gravel and lower speeds are actually a better value proposition.
- Break out the Bikes for the next Hackfest
Boulder Bikes
Incoming Memes
Tag Archives: cars
Depaving Rural America
Rural counties across middle America are turning paved roads back into gravel. The WSJ article is from 2010, and I wonder to what extent this trend has continued. I can’t say that it seems like much of a loss. I … Continue reading
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Tagged cars, collapse, decay, dirt, finance, funding, gravel, infrastructure, pavement, roads
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Steamships, Landlines, and the Decline of the Private Car
A fun little musing from the Atlantic Cities on the difficulty of envisioning a very different world, even when we all know that big changes do take place over time. Old technologies slowly decay, and fade into the background, as … Continue reading
Another City is Possible: Cars and Climate
Last week I taught a class at the University of Colorado for a friend. The class is entitled Another City is Possible: Re-Imagining Detroit. She wanted me to talk about the link between cars and climate change. As usual, I … Continue reading
Cars and Robust Cities Are Fundamentally Incompatible
A writeup by The Atlantic Cities of a paper in the Transportation Research Board journal of the National Academies looking at the effects of parking on the vitality of urban centers. It’s found that the detrimental effects of dedicating urban … Continue reading
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Tagged cars, data, development, economics, parking, planning, transportation, urban
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Orange County toll roads’ under review by California
Orange County’s toll roads are unable to pay their own way, leading the state of California to investigate whether their administrative agencies are viable as a going concern. Obviously the situation is complicated by the fact that there are public … Continue reading
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Tagged cars, economics, freeway, policy, subsidy, tolls, transportation
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Making Boulder into one of Jan Gehl’s Cities for People
A couple of months ago I finished reading Jan Gehl’s book Cities for People, and I’ve seen Boulder differently ever since. I’m both more frustrated with it as it is today and more excited about what it could be in … Continue reading
Posted in journal
Tagged architecture, book, cars, cities, design, jan gehl, policy, review, transportation, urban
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Europe’s Vibrant New Low Car(bon) Communities
ITDP wrote up case studies of 8 relatively new car-free (or very car-light) neighborhoods in Europe, with scales ranging from a few hundred to tens of thousands of people, and how they compare to adjacent, similar communities, in terms of … Continue reading
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Tagged carfree, cars, cities, climate, europe, itdp, transportation, urban
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Even The Economist thinks cars are in decline
Don’t Expect Driving Rates to Rise Again, says that eco-leftist rag… The Economist. People don’t want to spend more than 30 minutes each way commuting, and you just can’t give very many people access to that much opportunity within 30 … Continue reading
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Tagged cars, cities, demographics, planning, transportation, urban
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Cutting dependence on cars isn’t anti-car, it’s common sense
The problem with cars in an urban context isn’t (just) related to sustainability… It’s a problem of space, and the best way to allocate it in the pursuit of a high quality of life. Even if you don’t care about … Continue reading
Cars? Not For Us
The Atlantic recently had a piece looking at the decline in home and car ownership amongst the young, and their migration to urban centers, dubbing this “The Cheapest Generation” This demographic felt the need to explain the freedom of not … Continue reading
