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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 …
The Top 14 of 2014
2014 was a big year for Sightline, inside and out. We took deeper dives into family-friendly urban policy, money’s influence on our democracy, and making polluters pay for their carbon pollution. We also continued our leading research on coal and oil exports out of Cascadia; traffic trends, transit funding, and rideshare safeguards;Â and a number of other key topics for promoting sustainability across the Northwest. And you, dear reader, you dove right in with us! Thanks for a great year of wonking out, and cheers to 2015! Now a look back at your faves:
14. Bertha vs. the Bus: As Seattle prepared to vote on key funding for King County public transit earlier this year, a snappy infographic from Jennifer Langston proved a jaw-dropping comparison between the cost of digging a single foot of Seattle’s doomed tunnel and that of funding a better transit system.
13. New “Safer” Tank Cars Were Involved in Lynchburg, VA, Oil Train Fire:Â In which we saw (again) that no, Big Oil and rail companies’ claims about their industry’s safety do not in fact hold up.
Why 20 Is Plenty on Neighborhood Streets
Next time you’re in a car driving through a residential neighborhood, try this experiment. Glance at the speedometer when you’re in the middle of a block. You’ll probably find it’s pretty easy to reach or top 25 mph, the standard residential speed limit for cities in Oregon and Washington.
I did this yesterday on my way to pick up my daughter from elementary school. And you know what I got from other parents walking on the sidewalk, often with a toddler or two in tow? Super dirty looks.
To someone on foot navigating narrow streets with parked cars and unprotected intersections, it feels like you’re driving too fast. And they’re probably not wrong. As I was cruising up to 25 mph (on streets outside the school zone), I tried to imagine that a ball rolled right in front of me with a kid chasing it. Or that someone with an armful of groceries opened a car door without looking, or that a pedestrian in dark clothes stepped into a poorly lit intersection. Would I be able to stop in time? Maybe, maybe not. It would depend on how soon I saw whatever I was about to hit.
5 Tips for Portland and Vancouver BC on Uber
Portland and Vancouver BC officials, welcome to Seattle’s pain. With Uber launching (or threatening to launch) its app-based personal transportation …
How Portland’s Neighborhood Greenways Evolved
In my last post, I focused on Seattle’s nascent neighborhood greenway system, which aims to create a network of residential …
Weekend Reading 11/21/14
Clark A new report from Frontier Group and TransitCenter makes a provocative (and almost certainly true) point: federal tax policy …
A Mom Rediscovers Her Bike
Editor’s Note 5/3/16: Does the record-warm spring have you craving to hop back on your bike… but still a bit nervous to …
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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.
Transportation + Transit research in the news
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The Progress Playbook
