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Mom who lost son in hit-and-run could face more jail time than driver
Raquel Nelson of Marietta and her three children were hit by a tipsy two-time hit-and-runner, Jerry L. Guy, in April 2010. Nelson's 4-year-old later died of his injuries. But prosecutors dropped a homicide charge against Guy, and he was sentenced to two years for hit-and-run and served only six months. Nelson, who was convicted this week of vehicular manslaughter for having the chutzpah to cross a street, could get 36 months -- six times longer than the man who killed her child.
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Look how much more space we'd have without sprawl
If we could just get everyone in the world to pack in a little tighter, we'd have a hell of a lot more open space to work with. Imagine the possibilities! We could pack everyone into the Midwest, fill Canada with wind turbines, and leave everything else for wildlife. Okay, maybe that's not realistic, […]
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D.C. will bribe people to shorten their commutes
If you live in the D.C. area, the Office of Planning wants you to get paid up to $12,000 to avoid a car commute. Wait, really? Car commuting costs a metric pantload in fuel and destroys your soul — isn't this like trying to pay someone not to slowly pummel themselves to death with Faberge eggs? But some […]
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Developer to make sprawl slightly less bad by putting solar panels on it
Oh man, one more of these and it's a New York Times trend story: First it was sprawl developers who had to give away cars in order to sell their McMansions in the eighth circle of exurban hell, now it's some developer in Phoenix who wants to attract baby boomers to purchase 11,200 new homes by […]
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Thinking ‘like an Avon Lady’ to get suburban workers on transit
Making a greener office park.Photo: Keith CuddebackFascinating case study in The Atlantic about getting people out of their cars and onto transit for their commute. Lisa Margonelli writes about a program at a suburban California office park that has had huge success in encouraging workers to leave the car at home — by emphasizing the […]
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The drugstore chains that ate America’s suburbs [VIDEO]
What is the fabric of the modern American community? Well, a big part of it consists of an endless parade of chain drugstores selling the kind of stuff chain drugstores sell (including booze!). That’s the landscape that Chris Weagel shows us from his hometown of St. Clair Shores, Mich. It is also a landscape that […]
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Does sprawl development drive away talented professional people?
Troy, Michigan: can this place be saved?Photo: Wayne Senville, Planning Commissioners JournalThere’s a great discussion going on at the indispensable blog about the industrial Midwest, RustWire.com. It was prompted by their posting last week of a letter from Andrew Basile, Jr., the CEO of a legal firm with offices in Troy, Mich., entitled “Why our […]
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‘Slugging’ lets commuters hitchhike to work without ass, gas, or grass
Photo: BankbryanFor the last 30-plus years, commuters in the D.C. area have been commuting to and from work via modified hitchhiking. Commuters wait in “slug lines” for a driver who’s going their way — it’s a little like catching a SuperShuttle at the airport. These spontaneous carpools are beneficial for the drivers, who get to […]
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Maybe selling off government-owned fossil-fuel infrastructure isn’t such a bad idea
Might a little bit of the free market be just what we need to get Americans paying something closer to the true cost of driving?Photo: Marius WatzEveryone knows about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s unhinged attack on his state’s unions, but did you know that he’s also pushing for the right to “sell any state-owned heating, […]
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Hit by cars, pedestrians are ticketed in hospital [VIDEO]
Imagine that you get hit by a car when you’re trying to cross a busy road in a place where you can’t even see the nearest crosswalk. You’re airlifted to a hospital for treatment of your injuries. And before you leave, you get a traffic ticket. Yes, that really happened. You can hear people talk […]
