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  • Our new Secretary of Transportation, Anthony Foxx, has pledged to make bicycle and pedestrian safety a priority.
  • Foxx also pledged to have the U.S. Department of Transportation post details about the Highway Trust Fund Balance which is mere months away from going broke. Keep that in mind when you think about whether the majority of drivers are paying their full share of keeping the roads in a functional state.
  • Citibike in New York City has been a great success, but some New Yorkers don’t find that the service meets their needs.
  • Atlanta got its first cycle track last year, and now the city has plans and an implementation strategy to construct an entire network of “high quality bicycle facilities” in the core of the city. Meanwhile, San Diego’s first road diet on 4th and 5th Avenue in Banker’s Hill (originally scheduled for January and then postponed to February) still hasn’t been installed.
  • “Want to know how it is that we spend so much money on transport infrastructure and get so little value? It’s because far too many of our highway dollars go into boondoggle mega-projects ginned up through political pressure … instead of into projects that make transportation sense.” This comes to us from Oregon, but state DOTs seem insistent on demonstrating how wasteful they are with public funds. For example, see Ohio.
  • Things have gotten so bad on our streets that race car drivers have resorted to pleading with drivers to be nice to cyclists.
  • Philadelphia’s Jon Geeting has mapped out the city’s most dangerous streets for walking. Preventable road deaths have still not become a rallying point around the country.
  • What do protected bike lanes (cycle tracks) cost compared to the mega projects that the DOTs are eager to push? Some perspective from Seattle.