Recent Streetsblog LA posts about Streetsblog.net

There’s a lot to like in the new $2.3 billion transportation package passed by the Pennsylvania House of representatives last week. Philadelphia transit agency SEPTA gets a big funding boost, enough to spare disastrous service cuts. Pittsburgh transit will also get some much welcome financial stability after years of uncertainty, fare hikes, and threats to […]

Public-private partnerships, or P3s, are hailed these days as a way to deliver public services or infrastructure in a time of fiscal scarcity. But a P3 can still end up being very costly for taxpayers. Aaron Renn at the Urbanophile points out that roads, in particular, are being built with P3s structured to shift costs to the […]

Bill Lindeke at Twin City Sidewalks calls it the “gentrification paradox”: when urbanites oppose bike lanes, streetcars, and other improvements to their neighborhoods out of fear that current residents will eventually be priced out. Lindeke says this is especially true in cities with expensive housing markets, like New York: These conversations often lead people to odd and […]

It can be hard for downtown retailers to compete with big box stores in the burbs. That’s why a lot of cities like to offer free street parking on “black Friday.” It sounds good in theory. But in practice, giving away parking might not do much to help central business districts, or their patrons. Citing […]

We wrote recently on Streetsblog Capitol Hill about a proposal by Republican members of Congress to eliminate the federal gas tax and turn transportation funding entirely over to the states. This proposal — “devolution,” it’s called — has been a conservative dream for decades. Transportation reformers tend to hate the idea because state DOTs on […]

There is a certain class of “transportation expert” that does just one thing: poo-poos rail projects. The Reason Foundation in particular has found a niche issuing easily discredited doomsday reports on local rail. These folks travel around the country as hired guns, and they’ve been recruited by politicians in North Carolina. The Triangle region of […]