Here is a look at some of the transportation headlines gathered by us and the Metro Library. The full list of headlines is posted on the library’s blog.
Helmets Ready! Mayor Hosts First Bike Summit (Streetsblog LA)
Streetsblog attended yesterday’s Bike Summit and has a run down of what went down. Most notably, and to the dismay of cyclists, the mayor promoted a statewide mandatory helmet law for cyclists over the age of 18. This news received audible boos from the audience and Streetsblog notes that requiring helmets usually deters people from cycling.
Deadliest for Walkers: Male Drivers, Left Turns (NY Times)
New York City transportation planners have released a report that sheds some light on the nature of auto/pedestrian collisions in the city. Private cars account for 79% of serious accidents – taxis are in a distant second at 13%, something that is likely to surprise most New Yorkers. 80% of accidents resulting in pedestrian death had a male driver behind the wheel. One thing I know from my time spent visiting my sister in New York City: pedestrian crossing signals are routinely and blithely ignored by pedestrians.
Vintage Tokyo subway manner posters (Pink Tentacle)
Check out some amazing vintage subway posters from Tokyo in this post from Pink Tentacle (a blog that celebrates Japanese culture). One thing I learned from these posters: leaving umbrellas behind on the train is a HUGE issue in Tokyo.
Walk Score expands into Transit Score; housing plus transportation costs (Transportation for America)
WalkScore, the site that ranks the walkability of any given address, has added a new feature: transit scores. Using transit data provided by agencies the site will now give your address a transit ranking based on the number of nearby transit services. To test it out, I entered my home address here in downtown Los Angeles and found out that where I live has a Transit Score of 100 – a “Rider’s Paradise” – thanks to the 54 (!) nearby bus routes and 3 nearby rail routes. The site also lists six bus routes within .2 miles of my address.
Categories: Transportation Headlines, Transportation News
[…] The Source and my friend Katie Matchett’s blog, Where the Sidewalk Starts, report that WalkScore, the non-profit that introduced the idea of assigning a numerical value to a neighborhood’s pedestrian-friendliness, has introduced an effort to do something similar for measuring a neighborhood’s transit-friendliness. TransitScore, as it is called, has been launched in 40 cities around the country, including Los Angeles. I decided to give it a spin. […]