Two months ago, Mayor Bill de Blasio debuted a proposal for a streetcar line that would link the Brooklyn and Queens waterfronts. His announcement was welcomed by many, as it addresses the inequities of travel around New York City. As denizens of the city are well aware, commuting to and from the Manhattan central business district is easy and convenient, but inter and intra-commuting between … Continue reading A Streetcar Named de Blasio
Some are questioning whether the exuberant lower Manhattan Transportation Hub was a good investment. The first iteration of the new World Trade Center Transportation Hub opened in early March, 2016. The new transportation hub forms the main transit access point for the new WTC complex, which includes 1 World Trade Center, several other high-rise office buildings, and the September 11th memorial, flanked by reflecting pools … Continue reading The World Trade center Transportation Hub: Worthwhile or Wasteful
Back in January, most of the UNC Planning students specializing in transportation made their annual pilgrimage to Washington, DC, to attend the Transportation Research Board conference. Here are a few of the highlights that we wanted to share: It turns out that sharrows might make roads less safe for bikes. 2. There’s still no consensus about exactly why people are moving back to cities at … Continue reading 12 Takeaways from TRB
We are all on the edge of our seats waiting for the Triangle’s light rail to start making tracks. But where will its course lie? What cities will be graced with a stop? And what will it look like? Let’s look to a far off and distant land yet one near in Northern nomenclature to gain inspiration for this new transit infrastructure. Few tourists are … Continue reading A Look at Pyongyang’s Placemaking in Metro Stations
There’s a narrative surrounding public spending, and transportation infrastructure and transit projects are no exception. Typically regarded as short-term economic stimuli to a local economy, transit projects provide quality jobs and are investments in the future. Despite the current political climate around public spending, these jobs are generally popular because they are geographically constrained and cannot easily be outsourced. This perception was recently reinforced with … Continue reading Employment Equity & Transit Construction
This article is adapted from a piece originally published by Rachel Wexler and Rachel Dinno Taylor in San Francisco Planning and Urban Research’s [SPUR] journal The Urbanist, on May 11 2015. Transit hubs are often massive, and massively underutilized, public spaces. Take for example the Bay Area Rapid Transit [BART] and San Francisco Muni Metro systems. Nearly 500,000 riders traipse the drab halls of these transit stations, heads down … Continue reading Placemaking, Underground: BART to Revitalize all 44 Stations
Planners who aren’t familiar with their local airport can easily overlook the facility. Here is what you should know: Our aviation system is expansive: At any given time, there are around 7,000 aircraft in the air over the U.S. which are being served by airports of varying sizes and roles. Only 12 percent of the public airports that receive federal funding are primary commercial service … Continue reading Seven Things Planners Need to Know About Airports
This post originally appeared on the Safe Routes to School National Partnership Blog on October 21 2015. In advocating for Safe Routes to School programs in your area, you might face two major questions from school administrators, local planners, or political leaders: Will Safe Routes to School really increase students’ rates of walking and biking to school? Is Safe Routes to School worth the investment? … Continue reading The Case for Safe Routes to School
In the age of fast everything, it’s about time the United States builds some fast trains. After all, Americans like fast things. It’s why we use Keurig coffee machines instead of French presses and why more of us get news from the New York Times Twitter feed than from an actual newspaper. Despite our desire for everything fast, the overwhelming majority of Americans get … Continue reading High Speed Rail: The Momentum is Building
In this report, authors Aaron Hursey and Melanie Morgan explore the often overlooked ways of getting from here to there. The pair identified and analyzed thirteen informal pathways between Hillsborough Road and Raleigh Road to the East and West, and between the UNC campus and Rosemary Street to the North and South for Professor William Rohe’s Urban Neighborhood Revitalization course. In a report prepared for the … Continue reading Exploring Downtown Chapel Hill’s Informal Pathways
Carolina Planning Journal 