T4America Blog

News, press releases and other updates

New York City sees biking go in one direction — up!

All of the videos from Streetfilms are certainly worth watching, but we wanted to call out special attention to this one, especially on the heels of the Dangerous by Design release yesterday morning. With nearly 5,000 people dying every year on our roads while walking or biking, some cities are working hard to bring those […]

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Mayor John Robert Smith on urgency and the upcoming transport bill

Aaron Renn of the Urbanophile interviewed T4 America co-chair Mayor John Robert Smith at the Rail~Volution conference a few days ago in Boston, Mass., and shot this short video highly worth watching. Mayor Smith was the longtime mayor of his hometown of Meridian, Mississippi, where he worked tirelessly to open the state’s first multi-modal transportation […]

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Dangerous by Design

Every year, nearly 5,000 Americans die preventable deaths on roads that fail to provide safe conditions for pedestrians. This decade alone, more than 43,000 Americans – including 3,906 children under 16 – have been killed while walking or crossing a street in our communities. A new report from Transportation for America and the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership, Dangerous by Design: Solving the Epidemic of Preventable Pedestrian Death (and Making Great Neighborhoods), ranks metropolitan areas based on the relative danger of walking. Read the report and view the full metro rankings.

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Bay Area bridge shutdown puts transportation network in the spotlight

Even in the San Francisco Bay Area, a renowned transit hub with higher than average rates of walking, biking and transit ridership, more than 280,000 vehicles cross the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge every day. It’s a critical artery connecting downtown San Francisco with the thousands of residents who live in Oakland and the surrounding suburbs. […]

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Bay Area business leaders push the Senate for clean transportation

A top-flight organization (and T4 America partner) representing more than 300 elite Silicon Valley businesses from Apple to Yahoo! sent a letter last week to Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, urging her to make sure the Senate climate bill adequately invests in clean transportation alternatives to reduce emissions in their region while keeping it mobile and competitive.

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Local regions serve as laboratories for transportation reform

A “comprehensive, but bottom-up approach to transportation” may sound like an oxymoron, but to a panel of regional planning experts on the frontlines of reform, it sounds a lot like common sense. Tuesday’s briefing, titled “Planning for a Better Future: Lessons from the States on Regional Sustainability Planning” featured experts from three regional laboratories on […]

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T4 America health fly-in participant meets Senator Barbara Boxer

Fourteen-year-old Julia Lopez, a childhood wellness advocate from Los Angeles, CA, met California Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer in the Capitol yesterday. Lopez is in Washington, D.C. to participate in Transportation for America’s “health fly-in” to speak with Congressional representatives about the link between and health and transportation.

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DC helps out area commuters with new Bike Station

100_8726 Originally uploaded by BeyondDC and appeared in this post Washington D.C. took another great stride towards making bicycling easier and more attractive with the grand opening of Union Station’s BikeStation almost two weeks ago. With the opening of the stunning facility at Union Station, Washington’s most visited destination and travel hub can now connect […]

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It’s time to make the link between health and transportation

Most of the news coverage about what is happening in Washington compartmentalizes health and transportation, missing key connections between the two. This week, Americans from around the country will speak to their representatives, seeking to emphasize those links. The “health fly-in” will commence Thursday and is sponsored by Transportation for America, the American Public Health […]

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Republican Senator says more transit = better health

Last week, an offhand comment by Republican Senator John Ensign about the link between health and transportation policy didn’t make the headlines, but it did make an interesting connection. Ensign was wrong in asserting that the United States has the highest life expectancy among developed countries when gun and automobile accidents are ignored. But he […]

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