Category Archives: Mobility

Mobility refers to land use as it concerns mobility, all transportation modes including roads, aviation, public transit, pedestrian programs, bicycle programs, ground transportation, taxicab regulation, Lone Star Rail, core transit corridors, and related matters.

Racing to the finish line in the Smart City Challenge

congress-blog
April 18, 2016
By Mayor Steve Adler

At first glance, a federal grant about technological innovations for mobility might not have much to do with racial equality in Austin, Texas. After all, Austin is one of seven finalists for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge, a $50-million competition to use technology to make mobility safer, cheaper, cleaner, and more effective for everyone – not just some. But as much as winning the Smart City Challenge would help Austin with mobility, it would also have a transformative impact on entire communities in my city that have never equally shared in our prosperity. Continue reading →

What I learned in Copenhagen

snow jobBy Steve Adler

We just left Copehagen, Denmark, on our innovation exchange trip for the Smart City Challenge, and the deep immersion in all things mobility prompted me to share some thoughts with you.  Clearly, increased mobility is a tool to help improve quality of life – directly in terms of minimizing congestion and indirectly to help mitigate runaway housing costs, gentrification, economic segregation, and even things like disparate health outcomes by zip codes.

I also want to explain this picture that’s posted above, but I’ll get to that below. Continue reading →

10th Annual Louis Gregory Symposium on Race Unity keynote

HTU Race-Unity Symposium Keynote

Wednesday, April 13, 1:30pm

 

Louis-Gregory-Symposium-on-Race-UnityThank you to Dr. Michael Hirsch of Huston-Tillotson University.

Thank you to President Collette Pierce Burnette, who seems to be settling into the job quite well and making her formidable presence felt in this city.

It is an honor to deliver the keynote at the Tenth Annual Louis Gregory Symposium on Race Unity.

But it is a daunting honor. The theme I was given was quote – building and/or creating race unity in Austin – unquote.

I was further asked – again, I’m quoting from the instructions I was given by Dr. Hirsch, who must really think the Office of the Mayor is imbued with unheard of powers – to lay out how Austin can – quote — “overcome racial prejudice, discrimination, and conflict and build a more powerful and inclusive city that heals wounds and looks forward to accomplishing Louis Gregory’s vision of race amity and race unity.”

Endquote. Continue reading →