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Housing + CitiesTransportation + Transit
From Highways to Homes: The Opportunity to Reconnect Communities Divided by Freeways
This article is part of the series YIMBYtown 2022 The conversation shared below was part of the YIMBYtown 2022 conference, cohosted by Sightline Institute and Portland: Neighbors Welcome.* At its peak, federal highway construction demolished 37,000 homes a year to make way for roads. More than 1 million Americans—a significant …
Seattle to See Bigger Presence from Little Cars
This morning, car2go—the free-floating car-sharing system featuring perky, pay-by-the-minute Smart cars across 60 cities worldwide—announced it would grow its Seattle fleet by …
The Dark Side of Cheap Gas
In case you hadn’t noticed, gas is a lot cheaper now than it was this time last year.  Starting last June, a glut in the international oil markets tipped oil prices into a sustained, seven-month decline. Falling oil price were quickly passed through to consumers, with fueling stations across the country regularly slashing gas prices to levels not seen since the depths of the Great Recession.
So now that gas is cheaper, are we driving more? The answer is both clear and unsurprising: yes, low gas prices have prodded Americans to drive more.
Seattle’s Vision Zero Plan
Seattle became the second major Northwest city this week to promise to end all traffic deaths and serious injuries by …
Portland’s Vision Zero Plan
Editor’s Note 6/23/2015: A SUV driver recently killed a pedestrian in Portland. Eight days earlier, a driver under the influence killed a jogger. A series of fatal bike collisions and pedestrian deaths in Portland concerned citizens and prompted a protest ride to hold the city to its Vision Zero commitment. Portlanders are saying enough is enough. Sightline profiled Portland’s Vision Zero commitment earlier this year, and the urgency of the plan’s goals has only grown greater since. Read up on it below, and help move our cities forward to make streets safer for all pedestrians, bikers, and drivers alike.
Last week, I outlined some of the key principles of Vision Zero—an approach to designing streets that prioritizes safety and human life above other considerations. Today, the city of Portland rolled out its Vision Zero commitments, including an ambitious goal of working toward zero traffic deaths and serious injuries within the next decade.
What is Vision Zero?
When you ask people to estimate how many people are killed on American roads each year, the answers vary widely: 1 million? 500,000? 40,000? 2,000?
As the video below shows, when you ask them what Washington state’s traffic death goal should be, most people have no idea. They offer tentative guesses, ranging from fewer than 100 to 5000. (For context, there are actually about 33,000 annual US traffic deaths now, and 437 people lost their lives on Washington roads in 2013.)
But watch the video until minute 2:22, when the interviewers ask people what the traffic death goal for their family should be. Everyone knows immediately: Zero. Zero. Zero. None. Absolutely zero. Zero, of course. I would want zero.
Cascadia’s Car-Sharing Super Bowl
You’ve probably heard that Seattle’s about to launch into a heated contest—one that pits city against city vying for honor, …
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Meet the Team
Michael Andersen
Senior Housing Researcher and Transportation Lead.
Michael leads Sightline’s work transitioning Cascadia away from fossil fuels and toward cleaner energy sources.
Catie Gould
Senior Researcher
Laura is a fellow with Sightline Institute, focused on energy policy, particularly natural gas infrastructure and building decarbonization.
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The Progress Playbook
