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Rolling the Streetcar Dice
There’s been a sea change at the Federal Transit Administration. After the FTA created a preliminary set of rules for the Small Starts program (the program that Earl Blumenaur and other congressional leaders designed for Streetcars) that strongly favor bus projects, the new FTA Administrator, James Simpson, was just shocked to learn that no Streetcar…
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Designing the Transit Mall, Twenty Feet at a Time
A little whilte ago, the Daily Journal of Commerce ran a “conversation” with Tad Savinar, who is working on the streetscape design for the Transit Mall. The core of the conversation is the idea of looking at the Transit Mall in micro-increments, a single block face, or even a single store front. Savinar was kind…
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Patience Not Always a Virtue
The cover article in today’s Trib (“Streetcar planning calls for patience”) seems to suggest that Streetcar is going too fast! For the record, I don’t think we need to slow down, all I’m concerned about is that our Streetcar lines are well-planned and that every potential community has the opportunity to make their case for…
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An Intriguing Bus Idea
Hat tip to reader Elly Blue who pointed us to this essay on an interesting plan for integrating intercity buses and urban transit from the UK. Maybe we should move the bus station to the Rose Quarter to be near the intersection of I-5 and I-84?
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Can we get a Hawthorne Streetcar group going?
In a number of recent discussions, the idea of a Hawthorne Streetcar has come up. This was especially the case in Tuesday’s “Burnside-Couch Couplet” thread. I think there is sufficient interest to get local interested parties together (transportation advocates, Hawthorne-area businesses, residents, taxpayers, bicycle and pedestrian activists, and even pure motorists (Hi, Terry)) to try…