US-19 Pedestrian Safety – Now?

Today I attended a FDOT sponsored focus group for a new US-19 “frontage road safety plan”. *sigh* FDOT is now addressing our shoehorned freeway from its south at the Ulmerton/Roosevelt fork up to Countryside mall on the north; where it returns to a 9-lane arterial, the next FDOT mega-project. Yes, absolutely, I was honored to …

CNU/DC – The Wharf Tour

I'm in Washington for the CNU Transit Workshop this week. Every CNU event includes a local tour, to showcase some local site. This time we toured “The Wharf” development just south of L’Enfant Plaza; a few blocks east of Jefferson Mem, south of the Smithsonian, on the banks of the Potomac. It was guided by the …

US-19, Marchetti’s Law, Jevon’s Paradox

I left the CNU conference with a head full of information, reams of notes, and one incredible insight to the mess here in North Pinellas. Everybody stuck in a traffic jam on US-19 or McMullen Booth wants to “Add a lane”. Most of us know this never works, due to “Induced demand”. But I learned …

CNU Keynote: Lifetimes & Changes

The keynote address at CNU in Louisville, like most national conferences, stopped to honor several stellar members that had passed in the last year. Strangers to me (as a newbie) they were obviously well known, well loved, and described as people that had spent their lives in the calling of Urban Planning, Property Development, Alternative …

CNU26: First Floor Retail

My morning session at CNU-26 in Savannah addressed "first floor retail"; what you see in modern urban office & residential towers: which designs, ideas, zoning, layouts work & which don't. The great idea that was being pitched is to code for immediate "flexible" residential that can later flip to retail as the local economy grows …

People HATE Transit

I spend a lot of my retirement advocating for transit, “for social justice”, so poor people can get to work and avoid the crazy expenses and the charlatans selling, repairing, stealing, towing, and ticketing cars in their neighborhood. And for the sons and daughters of middle class Americans being sent off on one after another …