This is my eighth year living car free. I sold my car on a whim while living in Baltimore in 2010 after a broken water cooler led to an expensive repair on my Prius. Well, it wasn’t exactly on a whim. I was getting fat […]
8 Years Living Car Free
Lessons from South Florida’s Brightline Train
I recently took the new Brightline (now Virgin Trains) service between Miami and West Palm Beach. Touted as America’s first privately funded high-speed rail service, the first phase of service currently serves downtown Miami, downtown Ft. Lauderdale and downtown West Palm Beach. Expansion plans for […]
Are Peak Hour Parking Restrictions Necessary?
Walk around the downtown of any major U.S. city and you’ll probably see signs indicating time-of-day restrictions for on street parking. Some streets have AM peak restrictions, while many have PM peak restrictions. The rationale behind these policies is to better accommodate peak hour traffic […]
Car Free in Miami
Car Free America has been on hiatus, but now it’s back. I relocated for work this past winter and I’m now car free in Miami. How does it compare to Dallas? Here’s my run down: Awesome things: I find myself using Miami’s metro for useful […]
Lessons From John LaPlante at the Transportation Research Board
A few years ago I was lucky to see John N. LaPlante, P.E., PTOE speak at a TRB conference. As Chief Transportation Planner at the world–renowned T.Y Lin International, I was expecting road-widening rationales, travel demand models and an overview of ITE guidelines. Instead, he […]
Jane Jacobs, Anthony Downs and Road Widening
The last book Jane Jacobs completed before she died was Dark Age Ahead. It’s a rant against the evils (real and imagined) that she felt were crippling society. Meandering and pessimistic, it lacks the eureka moments of Death and Life of Great American Cities, but […]
Design-Oriented Traffic Safety Vs. Passive Safety
I recently read “Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty” by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo. The book makes an interesting case for understanding the cycles of disease and poverty, and explains how small, incremental changes can have huge […]
Turning Dallas’ McKinney Ave. Into A True Transit Street
McKinney Ave. in Dallas is a gem. It has interesting new architecture, lively night life and high end apartments all connected by one of America’s best vintage streetcar fleets. As Dallas’ McKinney Ave. trolley service expands and eventually connects to the Oak Cliff streetcar, ridership […]
Interview with Streetfilm’s Clarence Eckerson
Clarence Eckerson has spent more than a decade documenting complete street best practices all over the world with Streetfilms. Produced by OpenPlans, a 501c3 non-profit organization, Streetfilms produces educational videos about sustainable mobility and interviews the policy makers, planners, and engineers responsible for creating these […]
Donald Appleyard’s Livable Streets
Updates on Car Free America may be a bit sporadic for the next couple of months. I’ll be working on a book tentatively titled “Human Speed” which will chronicle my time living car free and the city planning lessons I learned from the experience. It […]