For a while now the city of Seattle has wanted to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which cuts through its downtown waterfront, but residents have debated whether to reconfigure the highway into a grade-level street or replace it with a tunnel. Though many urbanists preferred the grade-level option — a “sustainable surface street with transit,” in the words of the Congress for the Urbanism — the tunnel won out in an August referendum. In the end pro-tunnel interests raised substantially more campaign money than the anti-tunnel faction did.
US highway system displayed as a subway map. I’m a sucker for stuff like that.
Oh and check ou the Pacific Northwest corner of the map. You might have to jump over to his Flickr feed and enlarge the picture to see it all. Olympia, my hometown is largely labeled as the city the 101 ends. All the way from LA. Beautiful.
The people of Baden-Württemberg have spoken: In a referendum on Sunday voters backed state funding for the controversial €4.5-billion Stuttgart 21 rail project.
The Local as the media roundup in English.
Will the huge rail project finally get build?
I know a friend of mine was working on a similar technology for Daimler Benz over 15 years ago. Considering that technology still hasn’t advanced shows how hard this much be to implement. From what I remember what he said was the hardest part is to “read the road”. Stretches where all the street signs are in the proper places and markings on the road are relatively simple to navigate, but what happens when you enter a construction zone or go off-the-beaten path?
What if the NYC street grid would extend across the world? Fun website to check your imaginary street address if we wouldn’t live on Planet Earth, but Planet New York.
Our studio would be on 15651 Ave. and S 1405 St. But from here, you can’t see New York City.
Photos of bicyles, from all over the world. Beautiful.
Seattle is currently drowning in traffic due to the begin of the huge construction project which will lead to the destruction of the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the construction of a massive tunnel underneath downtown. While everyone is waiting and being stuck in traffic, it’s a good idea to consider moving out of the metropolitan area and consider smaller Cities, like mine, Olympia, as a viable option for living and working!
“Expect heavy congestion” isthe warning again today, but at this point, there’s no reason for it to be worse than yesterday. Updates to come!
Alaska Way Viaduct is now closed to all traffic and WSDOT will immediately begin removing the structure connecting downtown Seattle with the waterfront opening up huge new opportunities and building a giant, GIANT, tunnel. Keep up to date with the project on the WSDOT site.
Wonderful.
In Dubai, traffic accidents fell 20 per cent from average rates on the days BlackBerry users were unable to use its messaging service. In Abu Dhabi, the number of accidents this week fell 40 per cent and there were no fatal accidents.
Fascinating. I rarely drive and don’t have a cell phone, so I can’t speak to the temptations, but this story seem to make the obvious case: Don’t text and drive!
Transportation for America is collecting photographs of streets designed and maintained with cars in mind, but unsafe for pedestrians and those using public transportation.
Space required to transport 60 people.
Poster in the City of Münster, Germany planning office.
Pedestrian signals from around the world. Fun photo series in the Spiegel.
Awesome collection of old railroad posters.
He started with a blog highlighting bicycling in Copenhagen, now Mikail Colville-Andersen runs a consulting firm Copenhagenize Consulting, an international consultancy based in Copenhagen specialising in bicycle planning, marketing and communications.
Aside from the fact that bicycling is cool and I am inspired to pick up my bike again, after I broke my arm over a year and a half ago, the other interesting observation is that someone can start with a passion: bicycling, adds a blog, and now runs a international consulting firm. Nice way to Crush it!
Tom Grünweg takes us on a tour of the modified cars for the holy man.
Tonight, over Olympia.
Space junk is a growing problem in low-Earth orbit. More than 20,000 pieces of debris, at least 4 inches in diameter, are being tracked on a daily basis. These objects pose a serious threat to the International Space Station.
If you really think about this then this is absolutely amazing. Wall-E anyone?
A 60-mile-long traffic jam on a major Beijing highway’s entered day nine, with stranded drivers taking to playing chess on their cars as local vendors organize roadside shops like in a Cortázar short story.
That’s Seattle to Olympia, 60 miles. Bumper to bumper, for over 9 days!