Monday’s Headlines to Kick Off the Holidays

Don’t forget that donation drive! And now the news:

• Congestion isn’t the issue; people simply have to go too far to get where they need to go. Cities should be designed for shorter trips. (Brookings)
• Better scheduling and more frequency where it’s needed most will help transit agencies recover from the pandemic and better serve transit-reliant riders. (Mass Transit Mag)
• Residential streets are the new frontier in the war over “free” parking. (Governing)
• Transportation secretary nominee Pete Buttigieg is off to a good start, saying on Twitter that the Biden-Harris administration will right the wrongs that have left Black and brown neighborhoods divided by freeways and without adequate transit service.
• A New York Times interactive feature lets you see what three streets would look like if they were turned over to people permanently, rather than cars. (New Yorkers are flipping their lids over it.)
• The Federal Transit Administration awarded $544 million in grants to projects in Phoenix, San Francisco, Gary, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Raleigh and Ogden, Utah. (RT&S)
• About half of parking spaces at apartment buildings near Denver transit stations go unused, and the excess parking is driving up rents. (Colorado Public Radio)
• Seattle’s Sound Transit will stop citing riders who don’t pay their fare next year. (Seattle Times)
• The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority has hired a consultant to help revamp Philadelphia’s bus system. (Inquirer)
• Some Mecklenburg County commissioners are opposed to a 1 percent sales tax hike to fund Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyle’s transit expansion plan. (Observer)
• The small Georgia city of Gainesville has started an app-based on-demand transit service with 15 vans and a flat $3 fee (Gainesville Times). Salem, Oregon also has a similar program (Salem News).
• To much ridicule and exasperation, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that the city’s getting into the flying taxi business. (Curbed)