Sustainable cities are built on a foundation of transportation choices that provide access for residents to economic and social opportunities. As more communities adopt transit oriented development (TOD) as their primary land use strategy, the dependability and safety of the transit systems becomes even more important. For example, nearly half of the assessed land value [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Washington DC’
Fully Funded Transit: Choosing Sustainability
September 29th, 2012 
Stephen Wade Industry Spotlight: Capital Bikeshare – An Update
September 20th, 2012 John Basalla Several weeks ago I wrote about Alta Bicycle Share, a company that manages the bike share process from helping municipalities prepare initial bike sharing proposals to repositioning bikes once the program is up and running. Alta runs the Capital Bikeshare program that has numerous stations in the area where I live. After writing the article [...]
Posted in 2nd Green, Transportation 
Tags: 2nd Green Revolution, Bike Sharing, John Basalla, Mass Transit, Washington DC 
No Comments »A Community’s Most Valuable Resource, its Land
September 1st, 2012 Stephen Wade Publicly-owned, well-located land is a finite resource. When it is well-designed it has the ability to catalyze new development and reinvestment. However, poorly thought-out development can also discourage revitalization and placemaking. Public land is particularly valuable because it can also provide community benefits that are not being provided by the private sector, e.g., affordable housing, [...]
Streetcar vs. Bus-Rapid Transit: Which is best for your community?
August 25th, 2012 Stephen Wade Despite the recent economic downturn, communities continue to grow and change. Local governments are having to think even more strategically about how to invest limited resources to get the biggest bang for the buck, quantitatively and qualitatively. Communities as disparate as Lansing, MI and Arlington, VA (and DC) are investing in public transit as a [...]
Double Set of Five Friday Facts: Traveling the Northeast Corridor Part 2
August 24th, 2012 Eric Wilson As a follow up to last week’s Five Friday Facts, and the post earlier this week about high speed rail, both of which were derived from a recent article in the New York Times, comes this week’s set of facts. Last week focused on ridership, but today looks at the competition that Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor [...]
Posted in Behavior, Business, Eric Wilson, Five Friday Facts, Transportation Tags: Bus, High Speed Rail, New York City, Trains, Washington DC No Comments »Putting High Speed Rail Back on Track
August 22nd, 2012 Eric Wilson Early in the current presidential administration high speed rail was bandied about as a potential boon for the economy and the environment. Political, practical, and economic obstacles arose to a national network of high speed trains. At one point, $53 billion in funding was proposed to develop rail. It looked like the government would take [...]
Posted in Eric Wilson, News, President Obama, Transportation Tags: High Speed Rail, New York City, Washington DC No Comments »Five Friday Facts: Traveling the Northeast Corridor
August 17th, 2012 Eric Wilson This week’s Five Friday Facts come via a recent article in the New York Times which looked at the increase in ridership on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor line. Here are some general facts about the rail line, including current and future projections of ridership. Check back for next week for another set of facts about the [...]
Posted in Behavior, Business, Eric Wilson, Five Friday Facts, News, Transportation Tags: High Speed Rail, New York City, Trains, Washington DC No Comments »DOE’s SunShot Initiative Announces Funding Opportunity for “Plug and Play” Photovoltaic Systems
May 4th, 2012 Chris DeArmond The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) SunShot Initiative is an ambitious program that aims to dramatically reduce the cost of solar energy. By the end of the decade, one of SunShot’s official goals is to cut the cost of photovoltaic (PV) systems by 75 percent, or to about 6 cents per kilowatt-hour. Besides making the cost [...]
Five Friday Facts: U.S. Navy as Energy Innovator
May 4th, 2012 Justin Manger Here is an interesting time line from a pamphlet from the Esri Federal GIS Conference on the Navy’s evolution with energy, including last year’s large purchase of biofuels. 1774: USS Alfred, Navy’s first battleship, powered by wind and sails. 1955: USS Nautilus, first nuclear submarine 2009: First Navy aircraft engine tested on biofuel blend 2010: [...]
Another Baseball Season, Another New (LEED) Ballpark
April 21st, 2012 Eric Wilson Last year I came across a story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the possibility of replacing the Georgia Dome, a structure that opened in 1994. As a result I wrote about the debate of whether to build open-air or closed stadiums for sporting venues. This idea of stadiums has been on my mind quite a [...]
Posted in Eric Wilson, Green Building Tags: Colorado, Cradle to Cradle, LEED, Los Angeles, Minnesota, Sports Facilities, Washington DC No Comments »
