Articles by Jay Walljasper

Source: Shareable.net

For the past year powerful voices around Washington have singled out programs to improve biking and walking as prime examples of wasteful government spending.

Since last summer, Republican proposals have flown around the Capitol to eliminate all designated funds to make biking and walking safer—even though biking and walking account for 12 percent of all trip across America but receive only 1.6 percent of federal funding.

Last week (March 29) the U.S. House of Representatives—a hotbed of opposition to biking and walking as well as transit programs—voted to extend the current surface transportation bill for another three months, saving the funding of bike and ped programs. The Senate followed two hours later. (This marks the 9th extension of the existing transportation bill since 2009 and another victory for the growing movement to ensure federal support for biking and walking projects.) read more

Source: Yes Magazine

Last spring, public officials from Madison, Wisconsin, returned home from a tour of the Netherlands, and within three weeks were implementing what they learned there about promoting bicycling on the streets of their own city.

This month, I joined a similar group of latter-day explorers on a quest to discover what American communities can learn from the Dutch about transforming bicycling in the U.S. from a largely recreational pastime to an integral part of our transportation system. read more

Source: Yes Magazine

It feels a bit strange to be sitting in the middle of one of the world’s wealthiest neighborhoods and to be so thoroughly engrossed in conversation about the prospects of poor cities across the planet. But here, in an office building at New York University on the island of Manhattan, is where former Bogotá mayor Enrique Peñalosa is working on a book about how life can be improved for people in mega-cities of the developing world. That is, when he’s not in Beijing or Delhi or Dar es Salaam or Jakarta or Mexico City sharing his visionary plans with local leaders. read more