light rail

You can’t take on climate change without tackling sprawl

Carbon-belching cars, trucks, and planes are the biggest source of U.S. carbon emissions.

Tea Party: Don't build public transit, because the terrorists might attack it

Apparently public transit is now helping the terrorists win. That's according to a Tea Party group in Georgia, at least. The group wants to 86 a light rail project because "when they [THE TERRORISTS!!] blow up a rail, that just brings the system to a grinding halt." So we should not build rail in the first place, because in the event of terrorism it would cease to work. Makes sense!

To be fair, the dude who said that also seemed to be ok with a bus system, because in his words "if the terrorist blow up a single bus, we can work around that." 

 

Zip decoding: Can one Seattle area serve as model of diversity?

A south Seattle zip code once touted as the most diverse in the U.S. exemplifies the challenges and rewards of cultivating multicultural neighborhoods anywhere in the country.

Phoenix light-rail station is cooled by the sun

Passengers using a newly retrofitted light-rail station in downtown Phoenix, Ariz., can press a button to be showered in cool air, powered by solar energy and cold water from an efficient district cooling system.

 

Charlotte does light rail right

Charlotte is car-loving NASCAR country, a vast suburbia of cul-de-sacs and strip malls. Yet its new light rail line is a national model for success, outstripping ridership projections and inspiring millions of dollars in high-density development. How did sensible transportation planning come to sprawlburbia? Not by appealing for “sustainability,” that’s for sure. In the end, […]

Streetfilms: Seattle’s Link Light Rail the start of something big [video]

Right now, Seattle is making as serious a commitment to transit as any city in the nation. Recently, Streetfilms got to take a tour of the newest addition to the city’s network — the 13-station Link Light Rail, which opened in mid-2009. The route is beautiful, swift, and has great multi-modal connections. Service is frequent, […]

Is public transportation scary for women?

This article is part of a collaboration with Planetizen, the web’s leading resource for the urban planning, design, and development community. Transit agencies are failing to bring women into the planning process, according to a new report from the Mineta Transportation Institute. I talked with UCLA’s Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, author of the study, about what she […]