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June 16, 2009

Larimer Square Denver
Larimer Square, Denver
(Photo courtesy New York Times)

Highlights

  • Editorial: Why we need to save the T from ruin (Boston Globe)
    By Marc Draisen -- ONE OF the greatest improvements to life in Metro Boston over the past 20 years is the MBTA. Whatever its shortcomings, the T today is a far cry from the one many of us rode as children. It is, for the most part, reliable, clean, and safe. The rebuilt Orange Line runs quickly downtown, and north to Malden. The Red Line has doubled in length, linking Braintree with Cambridge. Commuter rail lines knit the region together, and ferries bring passengers into town from the South Shore.
     
  • Parking: It's All About Access (Somerville News)
    By Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone -- When the news spread across the city that the Traffic Commission had authorized a move in August to citywide permit parking, a rise in meter rates to one dollar an hour, and the extension of metered parking hours to 10 p.m. in Davis and Magoun Squares (and 8 p.m. everywhere else) - the aldermen and I started to hear plenty of comments. [...] Understandably, everyone wants free, or at least subsidized, parking. Businesses want it for their employees and customers; residents want it for themselves and their visitors. But Somerville is, by a wide margin, the most densely populated city in New England. Except in one or two specific locations, we don't have the big open lots and empty curbs associated with suburban sprawl. Parking is a scarce and valuable resource here, and we need to treat it that way.
    • Letter: Mayor, what's good for Union Square business is good for Magoun (Somerville Journal)
  • Editorial: Greenway in need of density (Boston Globe)
    By Frederick  A. Kramer and Lynn Wolff -- AT RECENT public meetings about the Rose Kennedy Greenway, attendees have voiced their concern about the vital importance of new and strategically programmed activity to bring life to the open spaces that stretch from Chinatown to the North End. "There's no food market," one said. "There are few places to sit and have lunch outdoors, and there's a dearth of public shelter from the cold or rain or snow," said another.
     
  • Muni Bus-Stop Spacing Analysis Shows 70 Percent of Stops Too Close (Streetsblog SF, San Francisco Chronicle)
    By Matthew Roth -- The MTA this afternoon released analysis of bus stop spacing showing what anyone who has been on Muni knows: there are way too many stops too close together (PDF). Overall nearly 70 percent of the 4,000 bus and rail stops in the city don't adhere to the MTA's own distance policy, and its clear to the operator that consolidation of stops would speed service and cut costs dramatically.  Furthermore, staff suggests the board might want to consider an increase to the distance between spaces as a matter of policy.
     
  • Rethinking the Mall (New York Times)
    By Allison Arieff -- One doesn’t pop in to make a quick purchase at the Forum Shops at Caesars. Once inside this pseudo-palatial labyrinth, your path is blocked, er, directed by faux-marble benches, enormous planters and ill-placed concierge desks. You may see the store you need to get to in your line of sight, but access to it is, fittingly for Las Vegas, a mirage. There are no short cuts allowed, no direct paths. Your leisurely stroll is in fact carefully choreographed, and ensures that you will come into contact, however briefly, with every single store in the mall. Ah, if only the designers and developers of shopping malls paid as much attention to the foot traffic outside the mall as they do to the orchestrated promenade within it.
     
  • New Rail Lines Spur Urban Revival (New York Times)
    By Amy Cortese -- WHEN it was incorporated in 1913, Carrollton, Tex., was a thriving farm community. Three freight railroad lines intersected to help farmers get their grain, livestock and cotton to market. Today this city of around 123,000 people, just 14 miles north of Dallas, is again looking to the rail lines for its economic prosperity. In April, the Carrollton City Council approved a $38 million mixed-use development next to a commuter rail station being erected downtown. The station is Carrollton’s main gateway to the 28-mile Green Line, a $1.8 billion expansion of Dallas Area Rapid Transit. After the line’s scheduled completion in late 2010, it will link Carrollton with downtown and southern Dallas

"Streets"

Walking

  • Sidewalk on Longfellow Bridge to reopen [scroll down] (Boston Globe)

Bicycling

  • Advocacy notes ... small steps forward (Dot Bike)
  • Rain can't stop Bike to the Sea Day (Boston Globe)

Transit

Cars/Parking

Transportation financing/Government

Parks

Development projects

Land Use/Zoning

Out-of-state

National trends

International news