The next time someone mindlessly shouts “liability” as a way to defend the status quo, don’t argue. Call their bluff.

This FND has gotten away from me.....so sorry. I wrote a ton this week (need to take more vacations -- they always bring out the inspiration and motivation) so, if you haven't yet, take some time and read this quality stuff. You won't get this kind of stuff anyplace else.

I’m rooting for Monkey Parking in this one. If you believe our cities have too many parking lots and not enough productive space, you should be too.

Instead of devaluing our city, instead of spending our money on things that aren’t paying back, there are a ton of small, affordable things that could be done to improve the value of our asset that are already outperforming other assets we are spending millions on. These opportunities are everywhere, we just need to start seeing them.

First, we need a lot more nit picking. It is attention to this kind of details, stuff that isn’t expensive to do right but is simply horrible when done wrong, that separates good places from great. This says to the world, “we don’t really care.”

I want to take a moment draw your attention to the debate over transportation funding currently going on in Missouri. The Show-Me State is having a vote next month to amend their state constitution and provide a “temporary” increase in the sales tax to fund transportation improvements. As in other states with similar status-quo extension measures, the debate has created some strange bedfellows and attracted a lot of money.

Building complex streets with the design features of roads – one version of what we call a stroad – is generally done by the engineer for safety reasons. Pedestrian and cycling advocates know that this is a narrow vision of safety.

Texting while driving is a very real problem. The cause of the problem, however, isn’t recklessness but an incorrect perception of safety on behalf of drivers who feel little risk in texting. We can write all the anti-distracted driving laws we want but, at best, we will only displace the problem, replacing texting with some other distraction. To really address this problem, we need to be willing to incorporate driver psychology, including risk response, into our engineering approach.