Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood talks about livable communities

[phantom power]

Q. So tell me, what does this concept of "livability" really mean?

A. This is something I've never really talked about, but growing up, I lived on the east side of Peoria. When I was growing up, I could walk to my grade school. We had one car, but we would bike everywhere we went. We could walk to the grocery store. In those days, we had streetcars and buses, which people used to get to downtown Peoria, which was probably five miles from my house. I used to take a bus to my dad's business. I grew up in an era livable neighborhoods and livable communities -- what we're really trying to offer to people around America. When there was no urban sprawl, when you didn't have to have three cars, when there weren't houses with three-car garages, everybody had one car.

That era was lost on a generation that decided they wanted to build big malls and have cities expand in a way that didn't really reflect the ideas of livability.

When I came to this job, I thought about it in that context, but also in the context of a city like Washington, D.C., or Chicago, where you can live without a car. Where, on the weekends, my wife and I can take our bikes, and if we want to go all the way to West Virginia on our bikes from Georgetown, we can do that. If we just want to go to Bethesda, we can. If we want to go for a walk, we can. This is a city where you can live without a car and get to airports, get to your job, get to the grocery store, and it's the kind of community that offers people many different transportation options and amenities that I think have been lost in other cities.

So, as we travelled the country the last 20 months, visiting more than 90 cities in 40 states, what we found was that there's a pent-up demand in America for more walking paths, biking paths, more transit, more buses. I just helped inaugurate a streetcar program in Atlanta. I've been to New Orleans, where they want to expand their streetcar system. I've been to Portland. On the day that I was going to the streetcar inauguration in Portland, I saw over 200 people at 7:30 in the morning riding their bikes to work. I've seen what's happened here in Washington with walking and biking paths, the biking avenues or lanes that have been created along Pennsylvania Avenue, along 14th street and 16th street.

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-10-27-transportation-secretary-ray-lahood-talk-about-livable-communiti

[angstlessk]

1. I was born and raised in a city...Norfolk VA...and every neighborhood had a sidewalk

I have seen new neighborhoods in surrounding areas that have no sidewalks....but by law, the curb must accommodate a wheelchair, so the ramp is there, but no sidewalk!...heck..we would walk 10-20 miles on a summer day...all on sidewalks!