10 In 1 StreetTalk: Ten Transportation Talks

Tuesday, December 13, 6:00pm-9:00pm
@ 70 Pacific St Cambridge, MA 02139
$5-$10 suggested donation. Beverages provided.

Do you want to learn about transit equity and the Silver Line, youth empowerment through cycling, and a Broadway Bikeway and Urban Renewal proposal all in the same night? Come hear innovative transportation research and advocacy stories given by students, advocates, consultants, planners and engineers from around the Boston area. LivableStrees Alliance has put out an RFP to attract some of the best transportation presentations you will hear all year. Come enjoy 10, seven minute presentations from case studies as far as Glasgow, Scotland to projects as close to home as Massachusetts Avenue.

70 minutes of presentations with a “social break” in the middle to chat, ask questions, network and discuss presentations.

More presentation details revealed each week.

LivableStreets is your advocate for a balance of biking, walking, and transit with automobiles—creating safe streets and livable communities—making the Boston region a better place to live, work, and play.

>Invite friends on Facebook here >>
> For more information: www.livablestreets.info /  617.621.1746 / [email protected]

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Street Talks: What We Can Learn From Spain

What we can learn from Spain: Urban mobility planning in Barcelona
by Marius Navazo, Urban Planner, Barcelona, Spain
@ LivableStreets office, 100 Sidney St [ map…]

Thur, June 25 @ 7pm

What are the results of implementing better transit networks, traffic calming zones, and a bike sharing program? Are these measures always environmentally-friendly? Are they enough to create better places to live and enjoy? Learn about the development of urban mobility plans in Greater Barcelona and Catalonia, Spain. See what the Catalan Government is encouraging municipalities to do.

Marius Navazo is a geographer who has been working for the last 10 years in town and regional planning, focused on transportation and its impacts to improve cities from a social and environmental perspective. He has been working at the Catalan Government for the last 4 years, and now he is a freelancer working for different municipalities in the Barcelona area. Marius is currently a 6 month visiting fellow at the LivableStreets Alliance.

For more information about this StreetTalk, click here.
free and open to the public, donation suggested, beer/sodas provided compliments of Harpoon Brewery and delivered thanks to Metro Pedal Power!

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Street Talk Series: Transportation Reform For The US- Are Americans Ready?

“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,” (pdf) (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

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