Tuesday’s Headlines

By Blake Aued |
  • Parents are more apt than transportation experts to see biking to school as dangerous, according to a new study. The authors think revising the street safety classification system might help convince parents that “low stress” streets are safe. (Science Daily)
  • Customers have carpooled through the Waze app over half a million times since the company started the service last September, mostly in congested cities like San Francisco, Seattle and Dallas. A fifth of Americans carpooled during the gas shortage in the 1970s, but that number is down to 7 percent now. (The Verge)
  • From Friend of Streetsblog Mark Brown’s blog Car Free America: E-scooters and dockless bikes can replace a lot of short car trips, but only if quality infrastructure and reasonable regulations are in place.
  • West Palm Beach is the latest city to allow e-scooters, with restrictions. (Palm Beach Post)
  • A private consortium of bike, e-scooter and ride-hailing companies is working with the Pittsburgh transportation officials to provide last-mile “mobility hubs” near transit stops. It’s the first time a city has invited private companies to help create an integrated system. (City Lab)
  • California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill requiring his state DOT to consider bike and pedestrian improvements on state routes that run through local communities (CalBike). But he did sign a bill allowing local governments to set up special tax districts for transit with voter approval, a funding mechanism that San Diego plans to use (Times of San Diego).
  • The Atlanta Journal-Constitution debunks the Federal Highway Administration’s notion that rainbow crosswalks are unsafe.
  • Lyft has joined Uber in suing New York over the city’s rule the amount of time drivers can spend cruising around in empty cars looking for passengers and causing needless congestion. (Reuters)
  • South Phoenix business owners remain wary of light rail, even after voters overwhelmingly opted to continue expanding the system. City officials have said they’ll help those businesses stay open during construction, but owners want the city to do more. (Biz Journal)
  • The Las Vegas Sun opines that the overwhelming defeat of Prop 105 in Phoenix shows that Las Vegas should forge ahead with light rail of its own.
  • St. Louis’s Loop trolley needs $200,000 to continue operating through November and $500,000 for 2020. At least one city councilman wants to use the money for roads instead. (KMOV)
  • Several Cincinnati bike and transit projects are getting federal assistance. (City Beat)
  • Only two streetcars survived when Minneapolis scrapped its rail system in favor of buses in the 1950s. One wound up in Maine, restored by a man whose grandfather operated a Twin Cities streetcar. (Star Tribune)

Monday’s Headlines

By Blake Aued |
  • Buses are the workhorses of U.S. transit, but they get no respect. City Lab interviews author Steven Higashide about how bus riders are marginalized and deserve to be a higher priority.
  • The Covering Climate Now initiative brought together hundreds of news outlets to share stories related to the recent UN climate summit. Among those Media Matters singled out for praise in an overview of the coverage was Streetsblog Denver’s Andy Bosselman, who wrote an op-ed for the Colorado Sun urging the state to “stop building new roads and expanding the ones we have.”
  • A Houston political action committee backing a $3.5-billion transit referendum has raised over $437,000 — far outpacing the anti-transit PAC, which has raised just $6,000, barely enough for a website. (Chronicle)
  • Waymo is telling customers in Arizona that completely autonomous cars, with no backup drivers, are on their way (The Verge). This is the same state where a self-driving Uber car killed a woman crossing the street last year — although in that case, the backup driver didn’t stop the deadly collision.
  • Montgomery County lawmakers are furious that the state is cutting funding for bus rapid transit through the Washington, D.C. suburb. (Maryland Matters)
  • A leap in JUMP bike prices has some Sacramento residents wondering if the company is pricing out the people who need the bikes the most. (News & Review)
  • MARTA is looking to lease or buy — not build, as we previously stated — 2,000 parking spaces near three metro Atlanta train stations, and surprisingly, urbanists aren’t mad at it. (Curbed)
  • Police have issued over 1,000 warnings but just six tickets since San Antonio banned riding scooters on sidewalks in July. (Rivard Report)
  • Google is proposing a massive mixed-use development in downtown San Jose designed to encourage walking, biking and transit use. (Mercury News)
  • When the Tacoma Link light rail extension is finished in 2022, it’ll simply be called the Orange Line. (News Tribune)
  • San Francisco could make Market Street car-free next year. (Hoodline)
  • A group of Charleston residents spent their Sunday canvassing the East Side neighborhood to drum up support for bus rapid transit. (ABC 4)
  • A Florida man who shot and killed another man in a dispute over a parking space has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. (NBC News)
  • Bust out the bagpipes and play a dirge, drivers: The Scottish Parliament has finally banned parking on sidewalks (Forbes).

Friday’s Headlines

By Blake Aued |
  • Driving is the largest source of greenhouse gas, and this New York Times interactive map lets you see how much carbon dioxide is coming from your metro area and how much it’s gone up or down. Emissions are growing fastest in cities and suburbs — even ones with decent transit, although in cities with poor transit, emissions per capita are higher.
  • Electric cars aren’t the solution to climate change because building them creates pollution, and the electricity they run on is often produced by burning fossil fuels. (New Statesman)
  • At The Atlantic, former Streetsblog editor Angie Schmitt writes that Uber’s helicopters are a symptom of American inequality.
  • Lyft is shutting out third-party apps from accessing the New York bike share Citi Bike. It could be the first volley in a showdown between two different visions of digital mobility: “walled gardens” and neutral platforms. For the public good, cities should insist on the latter. (City Lab)
  • The Los Angeles city council president is proposing a minimum wage of $30 for Uber and Lyft drivers — half to cover expenses and half to keep for themselves. The current average wage is $9.21 an hour. (KCAL)
  • Bay Area Rapid Transit is considering raising its absurdly low $3 parking rate. (San Francisco Chronicle)
  • Richmond’s new transit chief talks about how she plans to get people out of their cars and onto buses. (Greater Greater Washington)
  • As Utah grows, it’s going to need to implement congestion pricing, improve transit and encourage walkable neighborhoods. (Pulse)
  • Atlanta is installing its first pop-up bike lane on 10th Street in Midtown. (AJC)
  • Louisville is now fining people for standing in streets and medians in a misguided attempt to protect pedestrians (and punish panhandlers). (WLKY)
  • E-scooters are coming to St. Petersburg (WUSF) and Eugene (KEZI).
  • Toronto transit users are clamoring for police to crack down on drivers who speed past streetcars, endangering people getting on and off. (Narcity)

Thursday’s Headlines

By Blake Aued |
  • Um, ya think? Congestion pricing could help Americans break their addiction to cars and raise funds for public transit. (Sierra Magazine)
  • A Vice podcast delves into Uber and Lyft’s financial losses and safety scandals since the companies went public earlier this year.
  • A San Diego congressman has introduced a bill requiring local governments that receive federal funds for transit projects to commit to building dense housing nearby. (Union-Tribune)
  • Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker is pitching an $18-billion transportation package that includes $9 billion for highway work and $6 billion to modernize the state’s fleet of trains and buses, as well as funding for bus lanes and bike and pedestrian infrastructure. (Salem News)
  • Strong support for bond referendums in Austin and Houston suggests that good public transit is becoming politically viable in purplifying Texas. (D Magazine)
  • Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (Project Q) and Seattle officials (KOMO) say those cities’ rainbow crosswalks are here to stay.
  • Philadelphia police will soon be able to access crash data from cars’ “black boxes,” which they hope will help them better understand the city’s epidemic of traffic deaths (WHYY). (What’s to “understand”? Cars are bigger than ever and drivers are more distracted than ever.)
  • University of Washington researchers showed how Seattle’s failed docked bike-share, Pronto, paved the way for the success of dockless bike-shares to come. (UW Today)
  • After three years, the North Carolina DOT is finally finishing a sidewalk along a Raleigh freeway overpass. (CBS 17)
  • An American traffic engineer would call this Zurich street a failure. And that’s the problem. (CityLab)
  • Do you have $200, live in Manhattan or California and need to get to the airport fast? As Arnold Schwarzenegger might say, “Get to da Uba choppa!” (Vogue). But commuting by helicopter is not all it’s cracked up to be (CityLab, NY Post).
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