Happy Friday! Wherever your feet take you this Labor Day weekend, we suggest you take some time to peruse the latest pedestrian news.
The Atlantic Cities: Americans are driving less, and the economy is not (entirely) to blame. A recent report found no relationship between reductions in driving at the state level and the health of each state’s economy.
Changing Skyline: Inga Saffron praises Temple’s Morgan Hall, the university’s towering new addition to its student housing, but laments the building’s failure to adequately connect to Broad Street and the existing urban fabric.
Greater Greater Washington: Thanks to the automobile lobby, America has been waging a war on pedestrians since the 1920’s. Pedestrians were framed as the dangerous component of traffic, and after World War II, engineering practices began to prioritize cars and discourage people from walking.
Streetsblog: Walk21, the group that brought you the International Charter on Walking, has assessed walkability in various cities based on standardized factors such as transportation funding allocated to walking and obstacles to walking, including crime. In general, they found that people would walk more if their city had “better street lighting, less traffic and more crossing points.”
Transportation Nation: New York City’s Republican mayoral candidates take differing views on the city’s pedestrian plazas, and at least one candidate suggests removing the plazas in Times Square and Herald Square.
PennDOT is holding its first-ever online public meeting on September 26th. For more details and to voice your opinion on transportation projects in the Commonwealth, see this post on Bike Pittsburgh’s blog.
Feet First Philly 