Mar 23 New biking column: "shifting gears". "The energy and collaboration between advocates and government has been much stronger and much more energized over the past few years than it has been in a long time," said Rosenblum. 
May 14 LivableStreets teams with MBTA for bikeweek. 
Nov. 2006 "The nonprofit LivableStreets Alliance has been working to reshape notions of how cars, people, and public transit should coexist." 
Sep 28 "If ever a city needed a group like the Livable Streets Alliance, this is it." 
Aug 12 quoted in "How To Live Well Without Owning A Car" 
May 24 LivableStreets briefs Brookline on Boston's BU/Comm Ave design ... 
May 15 Opinion: Legislature must increase MBTA funding ... 
May 12 LivableStreets supports public radio WBUR 
May 11 Bike Week: "What we need is a commitment from the City [of Boston]" 
March 27 Storrow Drive reconstruction. E-Bulletin #27, August 11, 2008 [ click here ]
- StreetTALK: Gary Toth (Project for Public Spaces), "Transportation reform for the US- are Americans ready? " - Thu. Aug. 21 >>>
- LivableStreets Phil Goff speaks at Comm. Ave. bike lane press event >>>
- The Future of Crossing the Street - featuring Chris Hart (Globe Sunday Magazine cover story) >>>
- Rethinking Boston's Mass. Ave. - featuring Ken Kruckemeyer (Boston Globe) >>>
- New York City first of three "Summer Streets" road closures a big success! >>>
- Staying stylish on two wheels - featuring Nina Garfinkle (Boston Globe) >>> or PDF
- What's up with the Longfellow and BU bridges? >>>
- BREAKING NEWS: Transportation officials meet to try to avoid toll, fare hikes >>>
- EVENTS:
STREET
TALK!
"Transportation reform for the US- are
Americans ready?"
Thu. Aug. 21, 7 - 8:30 pm
by Gary Toth, Director of Transportation
Initiatives for the Project for Public
Spaces
@ LivableStreets office space, 100 Sidney
Street,
Central Square, Cambridge [
map... ]
free and
open to the public, donation suggested,
beer/sodas
provided compliments of Harpoon Brewery!
"The decisions
engineers make will affect people's lives. The street
can't be looked at as just a vessel for cars. It's a place
with many uses. What we want to do is try to help
foster sustainable, livable communities,"
Toth says.
That's strong stuff coming from an engineer with 34 years experience inside the highway bureaucracy. And it's not just a line he throws out to soothe angry citizens' groups--Gary Toth during his tenure at NJDOT actually changed the way engineers think. In the old days, NJDOT would give most street widenings the green light, but Toth is dedicated to halting this vicious cycle. Instead of funneling all traffic from every residential and commercial property onto the strip, NJDOT is encouraging towns to create networks of streets with mixed-use developments, dispersing traffic over the whole system. The idea is to create livable corridors rather than endless sprawl. Sounds simple enough, but it's actually a revolutionary change in suburban transportation and land use planning. He notes how Kentucky, Utah, Florida, Vermont and other states are joining New Jersey in seriously studying Context Sensitive Solutions--the discipline's name for looking at streets and roads as something more than simply a way to move traffic. "It's becoming a national movement with 20 or 25 states already showing some signs of getting away from the same old myopia."
Gary has left NJDOT to focus on bigger transportation reform in America. He is an integral member of the T4America Coalition, which is working to shape the content of the next federal transportation bill. He is currently one of the eight instructors for USDOT's "Training Course on Transportation and Land Use." He is also a member of the Sustainable Urban Design Working Group of the American Public Transit Association and a member of the Strategic Highway Research Program’s Technical Coordinating Committee for Capacity. He was also part of the Sustainable Transportation Study Team charged with creating a conceptual plan for presentation to the US Congress, which ensures that the surface transportation system will continue to serve the needs of the U.S. throughout the 21st Century. Gary works part time for the Project for Public Spaces as Director of Transportation Initiatives.
Gary was featured in the article, "Rethinking the Urban Speedway," (For decades, highway engineers focused on designing wider, straighter, faster roads. Now, moving traffic quickly is no longer the sole goal), Governing Magazine, October 2005. "The traditional engineering solution to road problems is to make the road wider, straighter and faster," Toth says. "Well, wider, straighter and faster is not always better."
This event is sponsored by LivableStreets Alliance
Click here for more information
