After reading and discussing the article, The CTA’s Blue Line has a big problem, I’ve decided I need to weigh in on this. Because, guess what, the Blue Line does not actually have a big problem – in fact, it’s a victim of its own success! That doesn’t mean there isn’t any problems that can’t…
…Comes to us from London, my brief one-time home. Courtesy of Crossrail, the major commuter rail project linking East and West London together more seamlessly with dramatic expected time savings. While Crossrail is not scheduled to open until 2018, the benefits that the Crossrail project is promising to deliver have already impacted the local real…
I have not mentioned this before, but my favorite planning book in the last year has to be Human Transit. Authored by Jarrett Walker, the book is based on much of what he has been saying on his blog by the same name. Reading his interview with the Urban Land Institute on how developers need to…
I’ve been mulling over Josh Barro’s contention that cars should not be blamed for the failures of mass transit and his conclusion that planning and zoning is to blame. His basic contention is thus: …the real culprit keeping Americans away from mass transit and inside cars isn’t subsidies; it’s planning and zoning. Cities impose barriers…
Of great interest to this site is the connection, or nexus, between transportation and land use. One prominent example of this failure of this nexus is at the southwest corner of Ashland Ave., Division St. and Milwaukee Ave., historically known as the Polish Triangle. Now part of the East (Ukrainian) Village neighborhood, this site is commonly…
This morning’s Atlantic Cities article on whether big box stores can reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) because it “brings shopping closer to where people live” fundamentally misunderstands the problems that big box stores cause in urban communities and why many urbanites do not want them in their communities even though they may patronize these stores….