News & Notes

Hubway bike share system launched this morning in Boston. Photo from Government Center from Hubway’s Twitter feed:

A beginning agenda for making smart growth legal [Switchboard]

When then-governor Parris Glendening announced a key portion of what was to become Maryland’s path-breaking land use legislation in the 1990s, he stood in the historic district of Annapolis, where Maryland’s State House is located. He told the crowd that the best parts of downtown Annapolis – a picturesque, highly walkable and much-loved collection of 17th- and 18th-century homes, apartments, shops, civic and church buildings, restaurants and small offices just above the city’s harbor – could not have been built in the late 20th century.

Pop-Up Malls in New York and London.

Raquel Nelson will fight on, but should she have to? [Tranportation for America]

The judge yesterday declined to give her jail time, and instead granted her the right to a new trial, which Ms. Nelson has said she intends to pursue in order to clear her name. Our view, of course, is that a grieving mother who didn’t even own a car should never have been charged with vehicular homicide in the first place. We would hope the Georgia board of pardons and paroles and/or Governor Nathan Deal would see fit to spare her the agony of a retrial and simply absolve her | and by extension the other pedestrians and bus riders who are put in a similarly dangerous situation every day.

Sign this petition urging her full pardon, or a refusal to try her again in a retrial.

The next meltdown: Gas tax renewal [Politico]

Looking beyond the horizon of the current insoluble legislative meltdown, a nervous Democrat pointed me yesterday to the next one: Most of the gas tax is set to expire on Sept. 30.