Friday’s Headlines Have Their Fingers Crossed
Will the Supreme Court stop the feds from even attempting to address climate change? Plus, the problem with AVs and the new "traffic bible," and more.
By
Blake Aued
12:01 AM EDT on November 5, 2021
- An upcoming Supreme Court case will decide whether the EPA even has the power to restrict greenhouse gas emissions. (Vox)
- The problem with Big Tech’s vision of a future filled with autonomous vehicles is that it takes car dependency as a given when ordinary public transit is safer, cheaper and more efficient. (Fast Company)
- The updated Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices inexplicably left out many ideas for making streets safer. (The Urbanist)
- A conservative think tank is advancing the argument that more gas and oil production is good, actually, because the alternative is to burn even dirtier coal. (Washington Post)
- Consolidation and competition from freight and buses, and later cars, killed off L.A.’s streetcar system, once the grandest in the country. (Los Angeles Times)
- The Memphis Area Transit Authority is testing a new streetcar on a trolley line that last ran in 2014. (WREG)
- Clayton County officials approved plans for a bus rapid transit line through the Atlanta suburb. (AJC)
- San Diego labor and environmental groups are gathering signatures to put a sales tax hike for transportation on the ballot in 2022. (Voice of San Diego)
- A proposal for a monorail linking Miami Beach with the mainland barely snuck through a citizens’ transportation panel. (Miami Today)
- Portland should not go along with plans for a 12-lane I-5 bridge over the Columbia River (City Observatory).
- A new bike- and bus-only lane in Madison has cleared up a confusing bottlenecks, although bikes and buses must share a lane in one direction while buses run in traffic in the other because the city wouldn’t remove parking. (Wisconsin State Journal)
- Kentucky christened a 265-mile bike trail, but unfortunately it appears to be little more than signage along two-lane country roads. (WLKY)
- If you ignore all of Qatar’s human rights abuses, as CNN Travel did, the new metro it’s building for the 2022 World Cup could be the future of transit.
Blake Aued has been doing Streetsblog's daily national news digest for years. He's also an Atlanta Braves fan, which enrages his editor in New York.
Read More:
More from Streetsblog USA
What It Will Take To Turn the ‘Blue Wave’ Into a Watershed Moment for Transportation Reform
Democrats won big at the ballot box in the midterms. Will they fight for multimodal travelers when they're in office?
November 5, 2026
Thursday’s Headlines Voted for Transit
Measures funding transit and safe streets passed across the country on Tuesday.
November 5, 2026
The Simple Design Change That Could Open the Doors to Automated Rail
"Platform screen doors" are all over the planet's best transit networks. Is it time for the nation's capital to give them a try?
November 4, 2026
The Races Transportation Reformers Are Watching This Midterms
What will the midterms mean for US mobility? Here are a few key races advocates are watching.
November 3, 2026