Streetsblog New York City

Here's an interesting dose of outside-the-box transportation thinking that recently bubbled up from the Livable Streets community. Smart ParaTransit -- a group that "targets new ways of getting people in and around cities in road vehicles, smaller than full sized buses, driven by real human beings, dynamically shared with others, and aided by state of the art communications technologies" -- is intrigued by the potential of Google Latitude:

Google now offers a service that uses the GPS hardware found in smart phones (such as the iPhone, Google Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile handsets) to pinpoint your position on a map and share that information with your friends... The same technology can be used to pinpoint the location of any location-aware transpo resource: a bus, subway, taxi, car-share, or parking space, and share that with the public (as well as display it at bus stops, subway stations, taxi stands (we can dream, right?) etc.

For more on Smart ParaTransit, read Streetsblog publisher Mark Gorton's five-part series exploring the idea and how it might work. If you'd like to strategize or chime in on the discussion, join the Smart ParaTransit group.

And on a different note, we'd like to give a warm welcome to all the new LSN members from Jacksonville, Florida who joined in unprecedented numbers this week.

As impassioned LSN members continue to hash out the pros and cons of the "pedestrian peek-a-boo" featured in Robin Urban Smith's daylighting Streetfilm, an uplifting success story has come to light.

Back in August, Peter Frishauf used the NYC Dangerous Intersections group to catalog a spot severely in need of some daylighting at 79th Street & Riverside Drive. He then presented the information to DOT's Manhattan Borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione. Says Peter:

"Within weeks she had engineers look at the intersection. DOT agreed with my assessment that two parking spaces be removed from the corner, and they had new signs up a few weeks later. So the lesson, here, is speak up and let DOT know."

As we've said before, it would be great to see more of the information and zeal invested in blog comments directed towards collaborative StreetsWiki and groups pages so we can better share best practices, as Peter has.

In other news, livable streets activists around the country are looking for co-conspirators in their cities:

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Despite, or perhaps because of, the roller coaster we've been riding over the last few weeks, there's a lot of interesting activity starting to take place in the Livable Streets Network online community. And you can join us.

Some activists are really starting to use the blogs, StreetsWiki and discussion groups, and we at LSN want to highlight these efforts and encourage more livable streets activists to get involved. By doing so, you can also help improve the available tools by making sure that what we're putting out there is useful -- that it helps activists get connected to information, resources and each other in a way that forwards your work in cities and towns across the US. With these new LSN Community News posts, we'll be bringing you news of this exciting activity.

We’re seeing LSN members jump into action using Groups like PA Bikes and Walks -- as LSN member Michelle Barrett says -- to get "this virtual coalition [to] work for us so that we can collectively get more done, more efficiently, more quickly."

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