Wednesday’s Headlines
- E-scooter and bike rentals doubled to 84 million in 2018. Most of the increase came from e-scooters and dockless bikes, but experts say docked bike-shares are more likely to be sustainable. (Deseret News)
- Google subsidiary Sidewalk Labs is preparing a detailed report on its controversial plan to remake Toronto’s waterfront as a “smart neighborhood” with heated sidewalks and robots making deliveries — and everything collecting data on everyone. (NY Times)
- Hoping to appease critics of its proposed expansion, Stanford University is offering Santa Clara County, Calif., $4.7 billion to address affordable housing and transportation issues — including $1.1 billion for transit improvements. (San Francisco Chronicle)
- Lacking funding to extend Metrorail lines themselves, Miami officials are looking to China for help with supposedly cheaper maglev technology. However, only American-built transit systems qualify for federal grants, and a city analysis said maglev likely wouldn’t save money over elevated ordinary rail lines. (Herald, Streetsblog)
- President Obama’s transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, is among those will serve on a new safety review board looking into Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority operations after a series of derailments. (Boston Herald)
- The death of the Durham-Orange light rail line has a silver lining: It could free up funds for Chapel Hill, N.C., bus rapid transit. (Herald-Sun)
- Milwaukee will lose $8 million in funding every year city officials delay extending its streetcar line. (Urban Milwaukee)
- Opponents of Minneapolis’s Southwest light rail line have seized on bee habitats as their latest tactic to stall the project. (WCCO)
- Public hearings on New Orleans transit updates start Monday. (WWNO)
- Two D.C. suburbs recently rejected road diets after citizen outcry, even though the projects would make those streets safer and hardly affect traffic at all. (Greater Greater Washington)
- Some people will do almost anything to save a few seconds behind the wheel. A London woman even posed as a dead cyclist’s aunt to oppose a separated bike lane. (The Guardian)
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