Streets as uniters, not dividers

New Urban News Article with images, 12/1/2005

Forum planners focus on improving transit service and creating multimodal thoroughfare designs.

The Mississippi Gulf region consists of 11 cities, strung out in a single line along the coast, a condition that would appear to support transit. Yet the area is one of the most car-dependent in the US, planners say, with 95 percent of workers commuting via autos and only 0.5 percent via buses, the only transit choice that was available prior to the hurricane.

Meanwhile, the street network along the coast is anything but ideal. Many of the thoroughfares are not designed to support pedestrians and bicyclists. The wide, high-speed Route 90, for example, is a significant barrier that separates residents and tourists from the beach. Transportation and regional planners at the Mississippi Renewal Forum focused on this pair of problems — how to introduce transit and make streets more pleasant and multimodal.