Law Commons^™

Reclaiming The Streets, Vanessa Casado-Pérez

Faculty Scholarship

Pedestrians have been getting the short end of the stick in street policies and regulations. Drivers and cars dominate our streets even though automobiles’ externalities kill thousands of people every year. Given the environmental, health, safety, and community effects of cars, municipalities should embrace a policy that puts pedestrians at the center and produces more miles of wider, well-maintained sidewalks. Sidewalks make communities greener, healthier, safer, more socially connected, and even, wealthier. COVID-19 lockdowns have shown both the relevance of sidewalks, as well as the possibility of pedestrians regaining space currently allocated to cars by widening sidewalks.

This Essay identifies, …

License Plate Reader Technology: Transportation Uses And Privacy Risks, Johanna Zmud, Jason Wagner, Maarit Moran, James P. George

Faculty Scholarship

NCHRP Report/Task 136: License Plate Reader Technology: Transportation Uses and Privacy Risks, presents a review of transportation uses of license plate reader (LPR) technology, relevant regulatory and judicial cases, and current trends in public opinion. Detailed case studies were completed for five transportation uses to assess current context, benefits, and challenges. Guidance on strategies and practices is provided to guide transportation agencies in balancing between beneficial uses of LPR data and the protection of individual privacy. These best practices should be understood as the minimum aspirations for an agency’s policies, procedures, and controls. Due to the unique requirements of individual …

Locomotives V. Local Motives: The Coming Conflict, Statutory Void, And Legal Uncertainties Riding With Reactivated Rails-To-Trails White River Environmental Law Writing Competition Winner, Matthew J. Mcgowan

Student Scholarship

Study after study projects that the United States economy will come to rely more and more on freight rail in the twenty-first century. Few would have predicted the industry's reemergence 30 years ago when Congress, alarmed at the mass exodus from railroad and the resulting anemic rail infrastructure due to abandonment, began passing laws that culminated in 1983 with a rail-banking amendment to the National Trail System Act of 1976. The new statute streamlined the transfer of these rail corridors to private groups for safekeeping in the event railroads once again needed to reactivate the corridors. Since then, parks departments, …