Saturday, December 27, 2014

Minimal Parking Subvert Diversity

Discourage families, the arts via denying pace for collectible automobiles and denying potential storage space, making a less diverse more transient neighborhood, is it any wonder that 'new urbanists' position for maximizing developer profits.
http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/douglas_proposes_295_units_in_two_buildings_near_rhode_island_metro/9296
  1. Mary said at 3:03 pm on Friday December 5, 2014:
    I also live in SW and agree with DC225. I think this new trend towards buildings with very few spaces tends to assume that all residents will always be 24 year olds with jobs and friends all right in the city and disinclined to take on the expense of a car. SW is an interesting case because it has a really long standing set of residents and isn’t too high turnover (we’ll see if that changes when the Wharf and its micro-units arrive). In my observation, people do tend to drive more when their household expands and they’re buying groceries and things for more than one person, when they have kids, when friends move to the suburbs, when they’re no longer in the metro-accessible job they had when they bought their place and now have to drive…And accomodating a place to put a car does allow people to stay in a building and community they like even when other lifestyle factors change. And construction that helps build permanent rather than transient neighborhoods that accomodate a mix of families and ages is a really useful thing.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Rockefeller Foundation Forgets Trucks With Push Against 12 ft Lanes



A new push against 12 foot wide lanes, calling for vehicular traffic lanes to be narrowed to 10 feet.

 http://www.citylab.com/design/2014/10/why-12-foot-traffic-lanes-are-disastrous-for-safety-and-must-be-replaced-now/381117/

Sobered by my now palpable failure, I have steeled myself for the task of explaining here, in a manner that can never be disputed or ignored, why the single best thing we can do for the health, wealth, and integrity of this great nation is to forbid the construction, ever again, of any traffic lane wider than 10 feet.

Is authored by Jeff Speck, AICP, LEED-AP, CNU-A, Honorary ASLA - a city planner and writer based in Washington, D.C., and author of, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time, which was the best-selling urban planning title of 2013.

It assumes a safety advantage of narrower lanes upon an assumption that people will necessarily drive sufficiently slower resulting in lower speeds when pedestrians are hit.


It makes no mention of trucks or emergency vehicles.  Nor buses.

It is funded by the  Rockefeller Foundation, furthermore indicating that entity's disregard for common sense and beholdence to neo-feudalism.


http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2014/02/what-about-trucks.html

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Solar Roadways

Solar Panel - Heat Generating Road Tiles that would generate electricity and be self regulated to melt snow



For more info upon this monumental building block ... http://www.solarroadways.com/intro.shtml

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Birmingham 20/59


an interesting proposal to replace an existing elevated freeway with one below ground, would cost $700 million, which is deemed too expensive by officials choosing instead $400 million elevated reconstruction

Existing 20/59


 Proposed Lowered 20/59

  Proposed Lowered, Partially Covered 20/59

Proposed Lowered Covered 20/59


Monday, February 17, 2014

What About Trucks?


'Streetsblog' shows off corner snow-bergs as traffic calming measures without even mentioning trucks or buses...

 http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/02/14/sneckdowns-4-aint-snow-stoppin-us-now/#disqus_thread

Remember how advocates against widening roads used to say that the extra capacity was only needed at intersections?

This is yet another example of how the class of people likeliest to fund transportation subversive endeavors as 'Streetsblog' are hopelessly out of touch with what happens far away from the lower 2/3rds of Manhattan's Central Park, with zero appreciation of how the food that stocks their local markets arrives- by roads and cars.

They are so anti road and anti car that they even blow the opportunity for a Hudson River freight rail crossing with the configuration of the Tappan Zee Bridge.

So how could we expect the sort of ilk that fund "Streetsblog' to ever ask the perspective of say truckdrivers?