Past Articles

This year, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (Metro) decided that a ribbon-cutting alone would not suffice. The agency announced the opening of the first phase of its long-awaited Silver Line—a heavy rail extension through the suburbs and edge cities of northern Virginia—with a singular video. In it, suburbanites are roused from their homes by an irresistible groove.

Of course it does. Everything we make is the result of design. Design knows no scale. To paraphrase Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus, the most famous design school of the 20th century, design should cover everything from the teacup to the city.At the scale of the city and its infrastructure, design can be overwhelmingly complex, taking enormous time and effort.

On a North Carolina interstate, a van cruises with traffic at 65 miles per hour while taking 1,000 pictures per mile. A half-dozen 2D and 3D cameras mounted on the vehicle—some trained forward, others sideways or straight down at the road—capture a high-definition view of its surroundings

In the past year or so, two innovative companies emerged, amid bitter competition but parralel success, to solve some of transportation's most vexing problems. They have brought spirited late-night revelers home safely. They have gotten travelers to the airport on time. They have dropped off sandwiches to hungry offices. They have given taxi companies fits

Handwritten notes on bulletin boards at truck stops were once a principal means that shippers with goods to haul and willing truck drivers found each other. Then in a groundbreaking move, Dial-A-Truck in 1978 installed television monitors in truck stops to post trucker and shipper notices.Today, finding freight to haul – or truckers to move merchandise – is as easy as logging into one of many smartphone applications on the market

How do you get from 38,000 to zero? It’s a life-or-death question that has fogged minds, baffled and simply eluded policymakers, transportation professionals and the general public for years.Thirty-eight thousand is the number of people killed nationwide in motor vehicle accidents, including pedestrians, in 2014.

They’re called smartphone zombies. Walking head down, so engaged in their phones they don’t notice other people around them, obstacles in their path or oncoming traffic. Waking them up from their cell phones is one of the focuses of the “Heads Up, Phones Down” message 

In St. Louis, a non-profit group is seeking to integrate an abandoned train trestle into its ambitious plans to complete a 600-mile trail network connecting rivers, parks and communities. In Chicago, the city this year celebrated the first birthday of The 606, a recreation trail along an abandoned rail line. In New Jersey, the City of Newark is planning to expand the initial phase of its Riverfront Park built on reclaimed industrial properties along the Passaic River.

Cross Ocean Avenue at Broadway in Santa Monica, California and you can see the sun slowly rising, painting the sky in oranges and reds. This vibrant scene, with the Pacific Ocean in the distance, is visible at any time of day—it’s painted on the pavement.  Santa Monica is one of many cities across North America that has been getting creative with crosswalks at busy intersections

On a busy city street in Minneapolis, a blind pedestrian needs help figuring out his next move. He pulls out a cell phone, points it straight ahead and taps the screen once. A recorded voice provides information about his location, the street’s geometry and what direction he’s heading.

CERT programs educate volunteers about disaster preparedness and train them to assist first responders durign emergencies ...

While specific services differ, each of these brick-and-mortar centers are designed to make the transit experience a little more tangible ...

Portland's TriMet needed a way to connect with a sizable but hard to reach segment of its ridership—Spanish speaking residents with limited reading skills. What the agency came up with was something of a "marvel" among transit communication products.

It's been said that every map tells a story. So can several hundred form a transportation plan? Transportation agencies are increasingly turning to partcipatory mapping as a means of collecting data ...

Metropolitan planning organizations and transportation providers across the country are turnign away from reliance on traditional public meetings ...