Daniel Herriges
@dpherriges.bsky.social
1.9K followers 890 following 170 posts
Urbanist advocate. Policy Director at the Parking Reform Network. Writer at Strong Towns. Co-author "Escaping the Housing Trap." St. Paul, Minnesota.
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Getting one of these for my front yard.
This is my favorite so far because it does double duty as anti-king and pro-Shoupism agitprop
Good thread:
The American centrist punditocracy has decided that what the US transit industry needs are endless lectures about the importance of security.

These writers misunderstand the problem, and are making things worse. 1/

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
The Other Reason Americans Don’t Use Mass Transit
People will take buses and trains only if they feel safe while riding them.
www.theatlantic.com
I will also add as an addendum here that I think the "time tax" argument is way less cut-and-dry with a bike, especially e-bike, than it is with transit.

I can drive my kid to preschool in 13 minutes (including a predictable rush-hour traffic jam) or bike him there in 17. The bike wins every time.
You can sell a lot of people on the vision of the kinds of great urban places that we can have *if* we build out transit-rich cities. Even suburbanites who don't want to take the bus to the grocery store can get on board with that.
Which makes the point: transit makes it *possible* to build certain kinds of great places that couldn't be great if they had to accommodate every visitor's car! Manhattan or the Chicago Loop would be impossible. So would a big college campus, or a downtown stadium surrounded by bars and restaurants!
Transit shines when it sucks to drive and park at your destination. Here in the Twin Cities I only really take transit to the airport, the U of M, or downtown. All places where I don't want to deal with parking.

All of Manhattan basically also falls into the "sucks to drive and park" category.
And of course you can multitask on the bus.

But I agree that many transit boosters are a bit dishonest about the quality-of-life case—in almost all US cities not named New York, transit is going to be a lot slower and less convenient than driving. It just is. We've built things that way.
At points in my life when I've been car-free, I found that deliberate-ness made my daily travel feel purposeful and accomplished, and often the journey became rewarding in itself or led to serendipitous discoveries I wouldn't have made. (Like a park or a restaurant in a less familiar part of town.)
It *is* an inconvenience to not drive. It's also less of one than drivers think. But you do have to be more thoughtful and deliberate about your travel. Thinking about when in the week it makes sense to hit up a given store because it's on the way to something else, for example.
A thing I struggle to communicate concisely is that the "time tax" is mitigated by arranging your life differently, and those choices can be really rewarding.

Most habitual drivers envision car-lite living as making all the same trips at the same times, just without the car. That sounds terrible!
One thing I wish we would do far, far more in our ped/bike/transit writing and advocacy is acknowledge the time tax those modes of transport often incur, and what it means for people to absorb that tax. When we don't, I think it makes us a bit dishonest and weakens our advocacy!
Reposted by Daniel Herriges
More people should understand that this is standard practice in American urban planning. The zoning on paper is not a real plan for growth, it's the opening bid in a highly politicized negotiation between home builders, elected officials, and activists with the power to kill projects.
The “clean” way to do this is to intentionally downzone the by-right option and make the actually economic option only available via special permit. That’s the skeleton key to all manner of shenanigans.
People hate the idea of backroom negotiations and insider deals, but people also like the idea of having arbitrary veto power over the things they don't like. And they don't understand that you can't have the latter without encouraging the former.
I find that most people incorrectly assume that it works the logical way, where the zoning actually tells you what you can build, but also they get super uncomfortable at the idea of expanding by-right approval ("What, you mean developers can propose things and the council won't even get to vote?!")
I watched a CNU session in 2023 where Peter Calthorpe pitched this kind of "grand boulevard" vision—and explicitly said it wasn't worth the political fight to upzone single-family neighborhoods when you could redevlop 40 miles of El Camino Real with 5-over-1's.

Just a totally misguided approach.
i'm sorry but this is not a future that prioritizes affordable housing and climate - it's a future that prioritizes cars

look at all those paved surfaces. want to cross the street to get to a restaurant? hold on we've got an 8-lane stroad for you to cross.

connectcascadia.com/wp-content/u...
Reposted by Daniel Herriges
The following is REAL footage from Portland, 2025. Viewer discretion is advised.
Somehow this is the same writer who came up with "You kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oath" and "You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter."

Crass / cringe can be fun, too! (Sabrina Carpenter is Exhibit A there.) But this is... not it.
"Who wants to buy or build in a place that might be condemned? Hanging the possibility of demolition over a community is itself a slow form of demolition.

This is the cruelest feature of zombie projects: They do damage even when they never get built."
I-49 Threatened To Destroy This Neighborhood for a Decade. Is It Finally Dead? | Strong Towns
The regional government of Northwest Louisiana recently canceled discussions on the I-49 Connector project. But is this highway project really dead?
www.strongtowns.org
Reposted by Daniel Herriges
This is why we fund scientists to study things like oyster slobber even if you don’t think it sounds important
⚠️ Chinese researchers have invented bone glue that mimics how oysters stick to surfaces underwater.

The adhesive can reportedly repair orthopedic fractures in 2-3 minutes, even in blood-rich environments, and is bioabsorbable.

interestingengineering.com/science/chin...
China's oyster-inspired 'bone glue' bonds fractures in minutes
A new oyster-inspired Bone-02 adhesive can revolutionize bone repair without metal fasteners.
interestingengineering.com
Reposted by Daniel Herriges
I wish I could deny this…but it’s true. It’s who we are.
I’m at a @moreneighbors.org fundraiser that’s organized as a fun Mpls vs St. Paul comedy roast. It’s fun because the Mpls folks roast St Paul, and the St Paul people… also roast St Paul.
My grandparents' car, on the other hand, was Anne Murray's Greatest Hits, which is far and away the album I am most embarrassed to love for nostalgic reasons (but the nostalgia is unbeatable). That cassette got worn out (by me. I did it.) over several of our summer trips to Seattle when I was a kid.
My earliest Dad's Car memories are of bouncing happily to Dire Straits' "Walk of Life" on the way to the farmers' market, and I'll be honest, that song still brings a huge grin to my face for that reason.
What is Dad playing?
The play here, if you're trying for political reasons to mollify homeowners afraid of losing their street parking, is to grandfather existing residents in with subsidized permits, while new arrivals (tenants + owners) are eligible but pay market rate. Eventually you'll just have market rate parking.
It's now common that residents of new developments be excluded from applying for on-street parking. I understand this is as a path to appease local NIMBYs but it strikes me as horribly unfair. Granting more special privileges to wealthy homeowners.
secure.toronto.ca/council/agen...
That's just what I found in a quick search, but there are HUNDREDS of these! Check out the map at www.myparkingday.org
Park(ing) Day
www.myparkingday.org