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Updated: Smart Cars, Smart Roads
Updated: 7/24/07 The Daily Journal of Commerce has a slightly different take on this. They see safety improvements for road construction crews. Original Post: 7/20/07 The Oregonian reports on the ITS demo earlier this week. What happens when your car can talk to the road? Will driving get safer? Less congested?
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How Walkable is Your Neighborhood?
There’s an interesting new Google Maps Mashup called Walk Score that looks at how far it is from any given address to key services like a grocery store, drugstore, schools, parks, etc. and computes a walkability score. Mine was 95 out of 100 :-) Note that the site has had some problems with heavy traffic…
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Updated: Centers Happen?
Update: 7/20/07 Almost two years ago I asked the question: what happens when a center may be coming into existence where we didn’t plan one. Now the Oregonian reports on discussion among some Metro Council members about just that question, about that same center. Original Post: 7/26/05 Metro President David Bragdon has been spending the…
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Long Commutes Undermine Social Structures
Via Planetizen: A study by The Corporation for National and Community Service finds a correlation between longer commute times and decreasing volunteerism. This agrees with a correlation that sociologist Robert Putnam reported in his book on declining social capital: Bowling Alone. Portland of course was the counter-example in his book. We also have declining average…
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Streetcar on Your iPhone
If you’re an early adopter, and already have your iPhone (guilty – I got mine at 11pm on the first day – after the lines were gone), an interface to the NextBus arrival time system used by Portland Streetcar has just been released. Check out pdx.munitime.com. I’m jealous, I’d love to have a spiffy iPhone…