#streetsblog

[the-city-in-mind]

Streets once had MUCH wider sidewalks! Here’s what we can do to give more space back to pedestrians.

[biketalkla]

5:13 on.soundcloud.com/mJcC1 Bike Wars: Seamus Garrity interviews Streetsblog LA Editor Joe Linton and Streets For All Founder Michael Schneider on Los Angeles's misleading claims about its progress towards Mobility Plan 2035, and the ballot measure that would force the city to implement its plan. la.streetsblog.org/2023/04/13/asto…-mobility-plan/

22:26 on.soundcloud.com/Kj2sx Driver Lobby: Toronto Star Journalist Matt Elliot counters anti-bike bad faith arguments with guest host Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher. www.thestar.com/opinion/contribut…ke-lobby-are.html

37:16 on.soundcloud.com/8uiY2 Thoreau on a Bike: Mark Cramer, author of "If Thoreau Rode A Bicycle," talks to Taylor Nichols.

49:45 on.soundcloud.com/WqyM2 A Challenge: Anna Zivarts, Director of the Mobility Disability Initiative, on the #WeekWithoutDriving, with Nick Richert.

Editing by Kevin Burton. Closing Song, "Bike," by Mal Webb. Interstitial music, "Just Moving," by Don Ward. Visit BikeTalk.org to be involved.

[biglisbonnews]

Monday’s Headlines Want Safer Streets Almost 43,000 Americans were killed by drivers last year, which Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg calls a "national tragedy." https://usa.streetsblog.org/2023/04/24/mondays-headlines-want-safer-streets/

[carhatred]

Legend has it that sometime in the late 1920s, an Ohio governor issued an unusual (and possibly visionary) order: that after every fatal car crash, a marker would be placed on the site of tragedy to remind the public about the dangers of driving.

"But his successor said, 'You know, you're going to cover Ohio with crosses if you do this,'" adds historian Peter Norton. "So he reversed the practice."

Some of the details of the story may be apocryphal, but Norton tells it as a particularly pointed example of a much more well-documented phenomenon: the obliteration of all evidence of traffic violence, and the lives it claims, from streets where nearly 43,000 Americans died just last year.

(...) The sheer absence of mass memorials for car crash victims, of course, is not an accident. And that's in part because, since the earliest days of the automobile — which Norton detailed in his landmark 2008 book Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City — powerful interests have argued that many people who die in traffic violence shouldn't be memorialized at all.

(...) Those sorts of tactics, Norton says, helped reinforce the auto industry's preferred narrative that car crashes, at best, were unfortunate but unavoidable accidents that didn't quite rise to the level of a tragedy deserving of a public expression of grief — much less public demands for life-saving policy reforms. And at worst, automakers reinforced the narrative that dead pedestrians were lawbreakers who only had themselves to blame for their own deaths, rather than innocent people whose killings could and should have been prevented."They wanted the problem to be redefined as a personal loss to be grieved privately by the family," he adds. "And they wanted the victim, [particularly] when the victim was on foot... to bear some of the responsibility — and in the case of children, for their parents, and sometimes their schools [to bear it too.]“

(...) Traffic violence, of course, isn't limited to deaths alone. When it was first launched in St. Louis in 2003, the now-international "ghost bike" movement — or white-painted cycles chained up near sites where cyclists were killed by drivers — was actually called the "Broken Bikes, Broken Lives" project, and its organizers placed markers not just at the sites of traffic fatalities, but at the site of any crash involving a person on two wheels. That approach can help the sheer ubiquity of roadway aggression impossible to ignore, even if an individual memorial is vandalized or scrapped by the DOT."

To me, another big piece of this invisible problem is the amount of mostly invisible intimidation on our streets among people who are not injured and not killed, but who are [nonetheless] struggling to navigate environments that are hostile to them as people on foot or on a bike," Norton added. "It may not even register in the consciousness of a driver for years [but] it's a daily experience for me."

As that Ohio governor pointed out long ago, commemorating all the violence that vulnerable road users experience on U.S. roads every day probably would blanket vast swaths of America in crosses and ghost bikes. Grieving those losses in public, though, would probably be healthier than the silence that enshrouds the U.S. traffic violence epidemic now — especially if the markers we make as we mourn also serve as reminders that traffic deaths can, and must, end.

[deanmarywinchester]

what if we were power utility employees fast asleep together in an illegally idling truck. and we were both boys

[gudamor]

Write your alderman to support this ordinance!

[amtrak-official]

This should get you to pay attention to the news

[antoine-roquentin]

The conclusion by the Department of Investigation — reached in February 2022, but only provided last month to Streetsblog via a freedom of information request — stems from extensive reporting in Streetsblog about four people who came forward to describe a pattern of bizarre and intimidating phone calls they received from blocked numbers that appeared to have been placed by police officers.

The first victim, Paul Vogel, came forward for in Streetsblog’s deep, award-winning investigation into the NYPD’s general failure to follow up on 311 service requests. In that story, Vogel, of Brooklyn, detailed the strange voicemails he received from blocked phone numbers after he filed 311 complaints. In one, a man says Vogel’s name repeatedly without identifying himself. In another, the caller breathes heavily into the phone and hangs up.

And in a third, the caller is creepy: “Hi Paul,” begins the call from March 2, 2021. “Just calling to see how you’re doing. I thought I saw you on Vanderbilt, but I guess not. I tried to wave you down. Just want to let you know that I miss you, and I hope you pick up my call next time. You’re still the best I ever had. I hope you still dream about me. Love you, baby boo. Bye Paulie V.” (You can listen to that call here.)

The DOI report concluded that “the caller who left the [harassing] message called from a phone number registered with the NYPD: [redacted]. The caller used the *67 function before dialing [Sherwood’s] phone number, which had the effect of concealing the caller’s name.”

The Civilian Complaint Review Board had previously substantiated Vogel’s account and blamed 15-year NYPD vet Brendan Sullivan for placing the calls, as Streetsblog reported last year. The CCRB recommended discipline against Sullivan, but an internal hearing is pending. NYPD records show Sullivan was reassigned in 2022 to the “Quartermaster Section,” where the department keeps office supplies. An NYPD source told Streetsblog the transfer was likely a punishment, but Sullivan made $131,717 in 2022, according to city records. (Sullivan did not respond to a request for comment.)

The second victim, Justin Sherwood, also of Brooklyn, had been anonymous in Streetsblog’s coverage until he sued the city over the NYPD’s behavior, which included harassing phone calls and even a text message reading, “Keep fucking around,” that he received mere hours after Streetsblog’s first story went up.

The DOI investigation confirmed Sherwood’s allegation that a Det. Sturman had sent the text by tracing the IP address of a computer that, indeed, was “registered” to the home address of Samantha Sturman, a detective who made $141,055 last year, according to city records. Sherwood also said that Det. Sturman had called him a “dickhead;” the DOI report only says she had Sherwood exchanged “obscenities.”

Sherwood told Streetsblog that he is “satisfied” with the DOI findings, but added, “I’m disappointed that neither the NYPD nor Brooklyn DA have taken any disciplinary action.”

The police department, at least, claims it has not closed that door: “The NYPD does not tolerate misconduct of any kind,” the agency said in a statement issued by an unidentified “spokesperson.” “The disciplinary process in regard to this incident remains ongoing.” (Caveat: Streetsblog had asked about both incidents.)

Two other New Yorkers have come forward to complain that NYPD officers harassed them after they made 311 service complaints about illegal and dangerous parking. Park Slope resident Tony Melone told Streetsblog last year that after he placed a 311 complaint, an unidentified man called him an hour later and said, “I’m gonna kill you, Melone.” He received four more calls from the same man, including one threat: “I’m gonna fuck you and your wife.”

Melone said he was most disturbed by the fact that the calls were even placed, given that the city claims that callers’ information is confidential. But cops can see the phone numbers of complainants.

[atlurbanist]

Drive-to urbanism: trying to make 'fetch' happen

Darin Givens / 12-11-2023

Someone asked me recently how long I've been posting about urbanism with the ATL Urbanist handle (across various platforms) and it occurred that it's been about 14 years.

I've been extraordinarily lucky to have this platform, all these great followers on my accounts, and to have gotten coverage from local and national media.

One anecdote from my journey...

In the early days I essentially "tried to make fetch happen" by coining a phrase to describe a type of urban density that's not particularly walkable: drive-to urbanism.

Angie Schmitt covered one of my posts on the Streetsblog website in 2017 and the phrase seemed to take off a bit. In the post, I was writing about the problematic lack of sidewalk & crosswalk connectivity on Atlanta's Huff Road, where apartment development was booming. You could drive to the apartments, but you couldn't walk to them from nearby neighborhoods in a safe, inviting way.

In the end, fetch didn't quite happen. But I do feel privileged to have had at least a small voice in a large conversation about urbanism.

And I'm optimistic that Atlantans and other American city dwellers are increasingly aware of a problematic type of infill density that gets built the wrong way in terms of walkability. Our urban growth needs to be matched with great pedestrian routes and connective 'tissue' between neighborhoods, and it needs to avoid being weighed down with excessive parking. (In other words, stop building drive-to urbanism).

Anyway, this probably all sounds like a humble brag, and maybe it is. But it's also me being genuinely grateful. My amateur interest in urban design hasn't paid off in money (not that I tried) but it's given me a voice in the conversation. I appreciate it.

[biglisbonnews]

How Communities Can Fight Back Against Ever-Larger Cars and Trucks What can cities do to stem the megacar crisis while the feds drag their feet? The post How Communities Can Fight Back Against Ever-Larger Cars and Trucks appeared first on Streetsblog USA. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2023/08/09/how-communities-can-fight-back-against-ever-larger-cars-and-trucks

[thoughtportal]

undefined

Sneckdown

The 99% Invisible City A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design https://99percentinvisible.org/book/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneckdown

A sneckdown (or snowy neckdown) is a temporary curb extension caused by snowfall, where snow has built up in the road but not been flattened by traffic, effectively reshaping the curb. Sneckdowns show how the space is being used by vehicle and foot traffic, and may reveal points where a street could be usefully narrowed with neckdowns to slow motor vehicle speeds and shorten pedestrian crossing distances.

The term was coined by Streetsblog founder Aaron Naparstek in 2014,[1][2] popularized by Streetfilms director Clarence Eckerson, Jr. and spread widely via social media.[3] Other Twitter hashtags that have been used to describe snow-based traffic-calming measures include #plowza, #slushdown, #snovered and #snowspace.[4]

In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at Baltimore and 48th Street, a sneckdown-inspired permanent upgrade to the pedestrian environment was made in 2011.[5] In the 1980s, some planners in Australia distributed cake flour in intersections to observe patterns of vehicle movement hours later.[4]