Friday’s Headlines

By Blake Aued | | 1 Comment
  • Lack of investment by the federal government is causing America’s public transportation system to fall into disrepair. (Smart Cities Dive)
  • Driverless cars won’t save Uber and Lyft. (MarketWatch)
  • It seems like common sense, but new research suggests that easier access to transit will lure drivers away from their cars. (Bloomberg)
  • The California beach cruiser helped kick-start the cycling renaissance in the 1970s and ’80s. (City Lab)
  • A candidate for district attorney in San Francisco is proposing having an on-call prosecutor come to the scene of every traffic death. He says the DA’s office has been lax in prosecuting drivers who kill cyclists, pedestrians and other motorists. (Examiner)
  • Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner signed an executive order officially adopting Vision Zero. (Click 2 Houston)
  • The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority recently rolled out new cars on the Orange Line, but as Curbed points out, the T still has major problems.
  • The Complete Streets Louisville Coalition walked 15 miles of streets and found they need major safety improvements. (Courier Journal)
  • Expanding transit is a top priority for Portland, Maine, which is surveying residents to find out how they want to go about it. (Press Herald)
  • Toledo, Ohio, was supposed to be testing a self-driving shuttle bus by now, but what do you know? The technology just isn’t ready yet. (Blade)
  • Westword has an in-depth explanation of Denver’s Vision Zero efforts.
  • Seattle has a new superhero: the Bus Lane Avenger. (Patch)

Thursday’s Headlines

By Blake Aued |
  • E-bikes are supplanting traditional bikes in cities all over the country. (U.S. News & World Report)
  • Thanks in part to gas-powered cars, breathing city air can be as unhealthy as smoking. (Fast Company)
  • Houston will ask voters in November to let the city borrow $3.5 billion to extend light rail lines and build bus rapid transit and freeway HOV lanes. (Chronicle)
  • A New York Times Magazine interactive map shows how segregation — from I-2o’s winding route to the suburbs’ resistance to transit — is contributing to Atlanta’s traffic jams.
  • Golden Gate Transit may soon join other Bay Area transit agencies in offering half-price fare to low-income riders. (San Francisco Examiner)
  • Seattle’s Center City streetcar is inching forward again after the city council approved $9 million for engineering and design work. (MyNorthwest)
  • A “premium” — whatever that means — transit link between downtown and West Miami is still a decade away. (Miami Today)
  • CycleHop is supposed to provide 250 rental bikes in Cleveland, but maintenance and redistribution problems mean there are often 40 or fewer on the streets. (Scene)
  • Cycling advocates want a protected bike lane outside Amazon’s new Northern Virginia headquarters. (ARLnow)
  • QR codes are slowing down transit boardings in China, where people are fumbling with their phones to pull up the app to pay. Near field communication technology like Apple Pay is faster, and some cities are experimenting with facial recognition. (Abacus)
  • Inside the Wild West world of parking lot booting. (NPR)

Wednesday’s Headlines

By Blake Aued |
  • Several automakers are investing in e-bikes and e-scooters, betting that they — not cars — are the future of urban transportation. (Business Insider)
  • Infrastructure is expensive in the U.S., but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because if it were cheaper, governments would build more and wider roads. (Strong Towns)
  • Light rail opponents’ claims about Phoenix’s South Central extension are misleading, according to an Arizona Republic fact check.
  • Cleveland has chosen four vendors — Bird, Lime, Spin and Veloride — to bring e-bikes and dockless scooters back to the city after banning them last year. (Plain Dealer)
  • Boston is considering taxing Uber and Lyft rides to drive users toward transit, but some ride-hailers say that won’t get them to change their routines. (Globe)
  • An Atlanta architectural firm says the new $33-million pedestrian bridge over Northside Drive is the poster child for cities wasting money on flashy projects rather than basic infrastructure. (Curbed)
  • Montgomery County, Maryland, is building what planners there say is the East Coast’s first protected intersection. (WAMU)
  • Governing profiles Pennsylvania’s new transportation secretary, Leslie Richards, who is trying to make community engagement a priority. Ah, Governing, we’ll miss you when you’re gone.
  • Philadelphia cyclists are pushing for a protected bike lane on Delaware Avenue. (KYWN)
  • Growing Boise needs better transit, and those Potato State officials are looking to Portland and Salt Lake City as examples. (KTVB)
  • Your hate-read for the day: Colorado pundit Mike Rosen says he doesn’t hate cyclists — but he sure doesn’t want to do anything to keep drivers from killing them, either (The Gazette). Allow a Denver Post columnist to retort.
  • In the latest example of #FirstWorldProblems, Twitter is mad that the font on some new D.C. Metro station pylons is wrong. Metro says the contractor will fix the error, so rest easy, Helvetica Bold fans! (WAMU)

Tuesday’s Headlines

By Blake Aued | | 1 Comment
  • Lyft says ride-hailing apps are replacing personal car ownership, but the evidence is mixed at best. (The Street)
  • City Lab and the Arizona Mirror delve into the effort — guided by both corporate dark money and the misguided notion that road diets hurt small business — to halt light-rail expansion in Phoenix. Streetsblog covered last week.
  • Mopeds are the latest entrant into the Washington, D.C. app-based mobility sweepstakes. Next up? Tricycles and e-cargo bikes (WaPost). In Detroit, MoGo is putting e-bikes in suburban Oakland County (Free Press).
  • South Carolina has the highest traffic death rate in the U.S. It’s also one of the few states without a Complete Streets law. (Charleston Post and Courier)
  • Curbed thinks Atlanta leads the nation in e-scooter deaths with four in the past three months.
  • San Gabriel Valley officials approved $126 million to extend L.A.’s Gold Line light rail to Ponoma. (Inland Valley Daily Bulletin)
  • Milwaukee’s streetcar hit its highest ridership ever in July, eclipsing the previous high in November 2018, the month it opened. (Urban Milwaukee)
  • New bus-only lanes in Portland, Ore., will speed up commutes on six TriMet routes. (KOIN)
  • A white Asheville, N.C. police officer convicted of beating a black man accused of jaywalking in 2017 will receive no jail time. (Charlotte Observer)
  • Bike Share Toronto is free every Wednesday in August. (Daily Hive)
  • This is why we can’t have nice things: St. Joseph, Mo.’s entire bike-share fleet has been stolen. (News-Press)

Monday’s Headlines

By Blake Aued |
  • Cities everywhere are embracing life in the slow lane. Lowering speed limits not only makes streets safer, but also contributes to a sense of place. (City Lab)
  • Uber and Lyft both posted massive losses in the second quarter, and executives acknowledge they’ll have to raise prices soon to become profitable (Wired). The companies are hiking bike share prices towards the goal of getting into the black (Time).
  • Even the bond rating agency Moody’s says growing income inequality will make future transit fare hikes in New York City — and presumably elsewhere — untenable, and suggests spending more tax dollars on transit instead. (Crain’s)
  • A Seattle city council member has introduced a bill requiring the city to build a protected bike lane anytime it spends at least $1 million to repave a street where a bike lane is shown on the master plan. (Seattle Times)
  • Three quarters of Salt Lake City residents favor making bus service free, according to a Salt Lake Tribune poll. Streetsblog also covered it.
  • San Francisco is allowing a food delivery company to test sidewalk robots for the first time. (The Verge)
  • L.A. Metro is bringing 16 new bike-share stations to North Hollywood. (CBS2)
  • Instead of making roads safer, the Louisville city council is fining people for crossing the street in an effort to reduce pedestrian deaths. (WFPL)
  • A vehicle-miles traveled tax and a gas tax hike are both on the table to fund transportation in Illinois. (News-Record)
  • If the Netherlands can rid its cities of cars, why can’t cities in other countries? (City Metric)
  • The world’s four most fab pedestrians are still causing a traffic jam in London 50 years later. (City Lab)
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