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StreetNEWS (July 7)

Submitted by Charlie Denison on Mon, 07/07/2008 - 9:05am.

Highlights
  • Shoddy sidewalk grate$ on nerves (Boston Herald, Bostonist)
    Boston’s priciest sidewalk just got more expensive, putting taxpayers nearly $500,000 in the hole as the city continues to defy a court order to make the Huntington Avenue walkway handicapped accessible.  “I’m speechless that no one in the administration or the City Council has done anything,” said John B. Kelly, who uses a wheelchair and heads the Neighborhood Access Group. “It says to me the rule of law doesn’t enjoy much respect in this city.”

  • Plans unveiled for East Broadway transformation (Somerville News)
    The hub of East Somerville is set for its makeover. Engineers and city officials say they have a plan to transform the eastern strip of Broadway into a “pedestrian-friendly, multi-modal, transit-oriented street,” rather than the two-lane speedway it is now.  At a community meeting on Wednesday, June 25, Kimo Griggs, an architect with Design Consultants Incorporated, said Broadway has the potential to become a “more identifiable and stronger central business district.”

  • Suburban peace vs. pedal power (Boston Globe)
    Looking out at a lushly wooded area beyond a stone wall on her 100-acre estate, Carole Wolfe's face darkened. There, in the distance, she said, nervously pointing a finger, stretches a former rail corridor that, if some have their way, could bring trouble upon this town where her family's roots date to Colonial times.  "Instead of solitude," Wolfe said, "you'd be having people.  Wolfe is among a band of vocal Sudbury residents raising the alarm against a proposed bike trail along a pathway where trains once chugged.

  • If only drivers would share the road, bicycling would be safer (Boston Globe)
    Last week, as I was riding my bike in Milton, I noticed a guy in a pickup truck at a stop sign perpendicular to my path. I'm always looking out for possible danger when I ride because it's everywhere, and this time was no exception. After stopping at the sign, the truck came straight at me. If I hadn't swerved and yelled, I'd be roadkill right now. He missed me by a foot.

  • In Park Slope, Frustration With a Parking Holiday (New York Times)
    Many of the cars on Richard Herbert’s block, in the Park Slope neighborhood in Brooklyn, seem to be on vacation, and a very lazy one at that.  Someone’s Maserati sat in the same spot for most of a week, sunning itself, with one of its windows left open. “That’s a hundred-thousand-dollar car,” Mr. Herbert said.  Another car, with New Jersey plates and a “For Sale” sign, has not moved from a parking spot for weeks now, he said. Other cars on the block have been similarly sedentary.  The car holiday started in May, when the city announced the suspension of alternate-side parking rules to allow the city to replace 2,800 parking signs in the neighborhood.

  • Politics Failed, but Fuel Prices Cut Congestion (New York Times)
    Soaring gas prices and higher tolls seem to be doing for traffic in New York what Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s ambitious congestion pricing was supposed to do: reducing the number of cars clogging the city’s streets and pushing more people to use mass transit.  In May, with gasoline at more than $4 a gallon, traffic at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s bridges and tunnels dropped 4.7 percent compared with the same month the previous year.  Preliminary data for June shows a similar decrease in traffic, and officials say the change is largely because of higher prices at the pump.

  • In Germany, Traffic Signals Become a Thing of the Past (ABC News)
    In the small town of Bohmte, near Hannover in Northern Germany, traffic lights and road signs are a thing of the past.  The city is the first one in Germany to have scrapped all 'road clutter' in a bid to make the streets a safer place for its 13,500 inhabitants.  The community has taken part in project called "Shared Space," which was sponsored by the European Union.  Seven partner cities from five European countries cooperated over the past four years in the project, which aims to combine rather than separate the various functions of public spaces.
"Streets"
Walking
Bicycling
Transit
Cars/Parking
Parks
Development projects
Transportation financing/Government
Out-of-state
National trends
International news
  • Road rules 'set against' cyclists (BBC News)
  • In Germany, Traffic Signals Become a Thing of the Past (ABC News)
  • Arriba Sevilla! (Streetsblog)
  • Contested Streets: Why Copenhagen Is the World's Happiest Capital (Streetsblog)
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