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StreetNEWS (August 12)

Submitted by Charlie Denison on Tue, 08/12/2008 - 12:32pm.

StreetNEWS 8/11/2008


Park Avenue in NYC, part of Saturday's "Summer Streets" event
(Photo courtesy Flickr user Philly Bike Coalition)

Highlights
  • Boston's bike lanes are nearly set for riders (Boston Globe, Boston Metro, WCVB,  Bulletin Newspapers, Brighton Centered, Boston Biker, City of Boston, Planetizen)
    2 stretches are first for the city
    In a city renowned for hair-raising traffic and teeming streams of pedestrians, Boston officials say they're ready to take the first steps toward making streets friendlier to bikes. Mayor Thomas M. Menino, at a press conference outside Kenmore Square yesterday (8/5), said the first bike lanes on city streets - a mile stretch on Commonwealth Avenue near Boston University and a 2.2-mile section of the American Legion Highway by Franklin Park - are about ready for use.

  • The Future of Crossing the Street (Boston Globe)
    Boston drivers are bad, but Boston pedestrians might be worse. Now some very smart people think they've got the answers to help everyone play nice on our roads.
    It's a Friday afternoon in Boston, and I'm being forced to stand 10 feet off the curb on Causeway Street across from North Station - just stand there in the street - because I've off ended Christopher Hart by using the wrong word to describe an idea. The word I used was "wild." In retrospect, it wasn't right. I think it slipped out because the idea reminds me of the Wild West. But I don't regret using the word, because it forced Hart to teach me a lesson.

  • Rethinking Mass. Ave. (Boston Globe)
    How do you reconstruct a major, urban artery notorious for its traffic congestion and safety issues, but do so in a way that pleases not only neighborhood residents but supports the street's many users - cars, pedestrians, bicyclists, and buses? Such are the challenges faced by the city's reconstruction of seven blocks of Massachusetts Avenue in the South End, from St. Botolph to Albany streets.

  • Reassessing the streetcar's values (Dorchester Reporter)
    It wasn't too long ago when businessmen returning from their downtown offices alighted from streetcars at Fields Corner, Uphams Corner, Grove Hall and many, if not most, of the major streets in Dorchester. Those days are gone, the tracks in the roadbeds destroyed during the heyday of America's love affair with the automobile some sixty years ago. Now urban designers and city planners are looking back on those mass transit-rich days as the end of a long evolution that American cities need to reconnect to, using new methods tied to old traditions. Or to follow the analogy, America is beginning to realize the automobile is a high-maintenance lover, and yearns again for the romance of the streetcar suburb.

  • 2,000 line up for new T station (Boston Globe, Medford Transcript, Somerville Journal, Boston Metro)
    Route 16 stop backed for extended Green Line
    A group of Medford residents presented transportation officials last week with a petition indicating "broad support" for extending the Green Line all the way to Route 16. At a Green Line Project Advisory Board meeting, the Medford Green Line Neighborhood Alliance handed over a petition with 2,022 signatures to state officials who are expected to make a decision next month on whether the Green Line should be extended to Route 16 or College Avenue, closer to the Somerville line. The group also presented demographic data that showed around 9,000 residents would live within a half-mile walk from a Route 16 stop.

  • No Traffic on a Saturday? Well, No Cars, Anyway (New York Times, Streetfilms, Streetsblog)
    NEW YORK, NY -- At Grand Central Terminal, the trains ran as usual on Saturday. Tourists studied maps, vendors hawked water and magazines — but outside, something was off. On one side of the station there were no cars, taxis or delivery trucks. Instead, the street was filled with pedestrians and bicycles. Jason Phelps, 34, stepped off the curb, tilted his sunglasses and froze. [...] The ding of bicycle bells and the chatter of people on foot replaced the usual automobile noises along 6.9 miles of Manhattan for six hours on Saturday. It was the first day of Summer Streets, the city’s experiment in car-free recreation modeled on similar efforts in Guadalajara, Mexico; Bogotá, Colombia; Paris; and several American cities.

  • All Aboard: Too Many for Amtrak (Wall Street Journal)
    Surge in Ridership Leads to Crowding On Intercity Trains
    WASHINGTON -- The number of people riding Amtrak surged 13.9% in July from a year earlier, as high gas prices caused more commuters to rely on intercity rail. But many Amtrak trains are getting overcrowded, and a backlog of infrastructure problems stands in the way of expanded service. Since last fall, Americans have been driving less while Amtrak usage has steadily increased. The latest figures suggest that the migration from highways to rail is accelerating.
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