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StreetNEWS (May 19)

Submitted by Charlie Denison on Mon, 05/19/2008 - 7:51am.

Highlights
  • Menino pedals for cycle-friendly city (Boston Globe, Boston Herald)
    Blue track suit billowing, Mayor Thomas M. Menino pedaled up Congress Street, legs churning against a stiff wind that turned a ceremonial half-mile ride into an exercise in perseverance.  "I didn't think we'd ride into a hurricane," the mayor shouted from his Specialized bicycle. The mayor's campaign to make Boston a bike-friendly city has forced to him to fight headwinds of another sort: an entrenched transportation culture that has long considered the car the king of the road.

  • MBTA to provide more parking spaces - for bicycles (Boston Herald, Boston Metro)
    The MBTA is offering more parking spaces at one T stop — for bicycles, that is.  The transit system is planning to install its first "bike cage" at the Alewife station in Cambridge. The cage will be able to hold up to 50 bicycles for the increasing number of commuters who want to peddle to the station, then take public transportation.

  • New T car pulls out all the stops for bike riders (Boston Herald)
    G    ood news for gasoline-weary commuters: Now it’s easier than ever to take your bike on the T.  Yesterday, MBTA General Manager Daniel A. Grabauskas unveiled a new commuter rail coach on the Greenbush Line specifically for bicylists traveling to and from the South Shore.

  • Anatomy of a Parking Space (Brookline Perspective)
    The standard dimensions for a perpendicular parking space are 9 ft. x 19 ft., with an additional 24 ft. of pavement required behind the rows for access and egress. Parallel parking spaces must be 9 ft. wide and 24 ft. long. So, each car requires 216 to 279 sq. ft. of pavement to park. That is a lot of space for one vehicle that often carries only one person. That is also a lot of land to cover with an impervious surface. At the dawn of the auto age America seemed a vast and limitless reservoir of both space and land and we quickly set about dispersing ourselves.

  • Oklahoma City swaps highway for park (USA Today)
    Oklahoma has a radical solution for repairing the state's busiest highway. Tear it down. Build a park. The aging Crosstown Expressway — an elevated 4.5-mile stretch of Interstate 40 — will be demolished in 2012. An old-fashioned boulevard and a mile-long park will be constructed in its place. Oklahoma City is doing what many cities dream about: saying goodbye to a highway.

  • Wreck-Less and Car-Free (redOrbit)
    Cities across the United States are creating more space for walking, running, and hiking by shutting down roads through parks and neighborhoods. If the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives gets its way, 2008 will be the year New York banishes motor vehicles from Central Park and Prospect Park all summer long.

  • How the politics of parking can defile a city (Toronto Star)
    Tolls may be an idea that some people and some cities are finally willing to debate, but free parking remains the blind spot in urban and transportation planning. I'd heard various estimates (four, eight, 13) for the number of parking spots per car in North America, and I have to admit that, initially, I was shocked. After all, like most people, when I'm driving around hunting for a legal space – all the while burning fossil fuels, spewing emissions and adding to the traffic congestion – it never occurs to me that North American cities devote so much space to parking.
"Streets"
Walking
Bicycling
Transit
Cars/Parking
Parks
  • It's The Pits: North End's Rose Kennedy Greenway (WBZ)
  • 1,500 help beautify state parks, beaches (Boston Globe)
Development projects
  • Editorial: Not my dad's Peabody Square (Boston Globe)
  • A Chinatown Resident Responds to Dainty Dot Compromise (The Chinatown Blog)
  • Boston to hold design contest for Dudley Square site (Boston Globe)
  • 1,000 feet too tall for Hub tower, FAA rules (Boston Globe)
  • Local architect/activist group launches fight to save City Hall (Boston Herald)
Transportation financing/Government
Out-of-state
National trends
International news
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