Vision Zero has had a mixed record in U.S. cities. Perhaps it's time to ask more fundamental questions about the purpose of our public spaces. The latest Infrastructure and Its Discontents essay is up: sethlajeunesse.substack.com/p/what-and-w...
Профиль
Seth LaJeunesse
Профиль VivelyTransportation systems researcher. The reason cities keep failing cyclists and pedestrians isn’t engineering. It’s deeper. It’s coalition politics and cultural signaling. That’s what I write about.
Milwaukee's mayor protecting "decades of established traffic patterns" from a boulevard that would free 16 acres and add $16M/year in tax revenue. Which patterns count as the unquestioned default, and which have to prove themselves? usa.streetsblog.org/2026/07/23/m...
Rebuilding the BQE costs 3x what removing it and building light rail would. Off-Ramp NYC ran the numbers. Street-level transit beats elevated highways every time: cheaper, pays for itself in tax and farebox revenue. We need to make highway removal a thing. www.nydailynews.com/2026/07/21/t...
A freeway split Santa Monica's Pico Neighborhood 60 years ago. The city just funded a study asking: repair it, or undo it? Where else are we choosing the band-aid because removal feels too big to study? www.smdp.com/santa-monica...
BRT is often dismissed as the "cheap option." Guadalajara built one that serves 325K trips/day with universal accessibility across 46 stations. Maybe the consolation prize framing is the problem. itdp.org/2026/06/23/i...
The "right to the city" started as a radical demand. Now it shows up in displacement-inducing development proposals and community organizing campaigns against it. What happened to the concept and does it still impart critical force? www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Cities track every car parking space but often have no idea where cyclists can lock up. Las Vegas residents are fixing that themselves. This is both civic spirit and the city outsourcing its own planning failure. usa.streetsblog.org/2026/06/01/t...
It’s remarkable to consider how the U.S. was just as bad as their wealthy peers in the ‘90s, but damn have we shown our American exceptionalism in recent decades!
Cosáin ClimateInternational best practice (OECD/ITF) is to use three main indicators: Total road deaths (absolute scale of the problem) Deaths per 100,000 population (public health burden) Deaths per billion vehicle km travelled (risk per exposure). The USA is a notable outlier among developed nations.
California may gut its climate transit fund to hand free pollution permits to oil companies. Gas prices are the excuse. Transit riders, housing advocates, and the climate will no doubt pay the price. cal.streetsblog.org/2026/05/26/c...