Hartford's (and possibly the US's) greatest poet had a great walking commute

http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/travel/for-the-poet-wallace-stevens-hartford-was-an-unlikely-muse.html

"Contrary to mythology, Mark Twain did not conjure up his masterpieces while puffing cigars on a Southern riverboat. He wrote them, or at least parts of them, at a table in a third-floor billiard room in his house in Hartford, where he and his family lived for about 17 years. (He also cranked out his books at a summer house in Elmira, N.Y., but either way the slow churn of the Mississippi River was nowhere in sight.)"

"Wallace Stevens never learned to drive. Even though many of his neighbors had no idea what he was up to, he would amble along Asylum Avenue methodically measuring the pace of his steps and murmuring phrases to himself — phrases that would become some of the most haunting lines in the English language."

The truth about traffic studies

Great post from Phil Langdon at New Urban News (now Better Cities and Towns): http://bettercities.net/news-opinion/links/15853/truth-about-traffic-studies

Excerpt "In a recent issue of Washington City Paper, Lydia DePillis raises the question of whether traffic consultants fudge their results.

In the District of Columbia, any development proposal that requires wholesale zoning changes has to be accompanied by a study describing how the project might affect pedestrians and motor vehicles, and what could be done to lessen its impact. And since Washington is doing well these days, traffic studies have become a common—yet not well understood—part of civic debates."