Transit

Lunch links: Transportation of our desire edition

by David Alpert   •   August 18, 2008 1:22 pm

The actual (film) streetcar named Desire. Photo by Billy V on Flickr.

A streetcar mapper named Matt': Track Twenty-Nine's Matt' created a streetcar map. It's a nice looking map and a good starting point. I'd quibble with a few of the alignments, and we need several lines east of the river. But wherever we put them, we need a streetcar network yesterday (hopefully even half as good as the network of yesterday).

Union Station still being dumb: NBC sent a news crew to interview the bicyclist whose bike was taken by Union Station officials for being "ugly". And, quelle surprise, during the interview a security guard tried to stop the crew from filming, just as they did to Fox in June and despite Congresswoman Norton's browbeating. Via CommuterPageBlog.

Rowhouse parking requirements steering Brooklyn toward havoc: While much of New York City has no parking requirements and the high transit ridership that comes with it, parking requirements in other areas—including new single-family townhouses in Brooklyn—will add one billion more VMT to the city by 2030 and change the pedestrian character of America's most pedestrian-friendly city. Park Slope, Brooklyn, for example, currently has 0.06 off-street spaces per dwelling unit and correspondingly low car ownership.

David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington and Greater Greater Education. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.