Wednesday’s Headlines
- Bridge ramps and a crosstown interstate tore apart Charleston’s primarily black neighborhoods in the 1920s and again in the ‘60s. Now, with the bridges dismantled, the city is planning affordable housing and a park to knit those neighborhoods back together. (Next City)
- The Federal Highway Administration gave preliminary approval last week for Oregon to start tolling parts of two freeways. (Willamette Week)
- The Atlanta City Council is refocusing on Complete Streets while planning a slate of upcoming road projects. (Curbed)
- A University of Washington study found that, while bike-share bikes are concentrated in “advantaged” neighborhoods, they’re available everywhere in Seattle regardless of racial or socio-economic lines. Also, people who rent bikes rarely wear helmets. (UW News)
- Wired asks if bike activists are "selling out" by jumping to Uber, Lyft, Bird or other private companies.
- Segway is producing a new, sturdier type of e-scooter for Lyft, with a wider base, thicker wheels and longer battery life. (The Drive) In other scooter news, 100 Limes have arrived in Little Rock for a six-month pilot program. (Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)
- The Tampa Bay Times is not happy with the candidates to lead Hillsborough County’s growing transit agency.
- California Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to withhold road and transit funding from cities that don’t address the state’s affordable housing crisis by building more and denser housing — an ingredient for efficient transit. (LA Times)
- London’s ban on polluting vehicles in one of its most traffic-choked neighborhoods is getting pushback from taxi drivers, although cyclists say they’ve already noticed a positive change. (The Guardian) The streets aren’t the only part of London that are polluted — the air quality in the fabled Underground is up to 30 times worse than on the street. Why? The Tube is deep and poorly ventilated, trapping exhaust that wafts in, and even though the trains are electric, their brakes throw off particulates. (City Lab)
- Call it Uber for monorails or Elon Musk’s tunnel but aboveground — either way, autonomous floating pods in St. Louis probably aren’t going to fly. (KMOX)
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