Recent Streetsblog LA posts about DC Streetsblog

It’s well-established that density and mixed-use development reduce driving. Right? But strategies like those don’t work the same way everywhere, according to new research published in the Journal of Transport and Land Use. While in major cities, denser development is linked to lower rates of driving, researchers found that in smaller cities it might not […]

The most significant part of the fiscal cliff deal for transportation was the bump that some transit riders got in the form of a commuter tax break that’s now on par with what drivers get. There are two more minor elements in the bill for transportation — both of them random enough to fit into […]

In a sign of the increasing market for car-sharing, Avis car rental is expected to purchase Zipcar today for a tidy $500 million. With the acquisition, the car rental giant will begin offering short-term car rentals, as have competitors Global and Enterprise. Car-sharing has the potential to help households make more trips via transit, biking, […]

Happy New Year, transit riders! Thanks to some shrewd maneuvering on the part of some U.S. Senators, transit commuters will be able to claim as much in tax benefits as car commuters do in 2013. Slipped into the fiscal cliff deal approved by the House of Representatives last night was a provision to boost the […]

“Government Motors” no more. The federal government is calling in its loans to General Motors, which received a taxpayer-funded injection of almost $50 billion at the height of the financial meltdown in 2008. Over the next 12 to 15 months, President Obama says the world’s largest automaker, which has been turning a healthy profit since 2010, […]

Matt Yglesias made an excellent point about NIMBYs over at Slate yesterday. Writing about opposition to multifamily residential construction in the tony neighborhood near Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis, Yglesias wondered how much value residents really place on keeping the area a “single-family residential community.” Just because there’s value in something doesn’t mean people are willing to […]