Wednesday’s Headlines Want to Get Beyond Cars
Cities need to change how people move around, and here's how they can make themselves follow through.
By
Blake Aued
12:00 AM EDT on April 6, 2022
- While most of the funding is devoted to roads, the federal infrastructure act is still a chance for cities and states to think beyond cars. (The Hill)
- Cities don’t tend to follow through on their safer-streets plans. One way to avoid the red tape, community pushback and bureaucratic inertia that dooms many projects is for cities to require themselves to implement planned bike projects whenever streets are repaved. (City Lab)
- A new UN report says cities must be redesigned to tackle the climate-change threat, including by moving away from cars and toward walking, biking and transit. (Politico EU)
- The U.S. DOT’s stricter new emissions rules fail to close the light-truck loophole. (Streetsblog USA)
- People who live on urban street grids that encourage contact with neighbors tend to be more tolerant of others. (MIT)
- A Pennsylvania bill would remove barriers to cities building protected bike lanes. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
- At 295 miles, Ohio’s Greater Miami River Trail connecting Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus is the longest paved bike network in the U.S. (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
- A referendum on taxing the rich to fund transit could be on the Massachusetts ballot this November. (Streetsblog MASS)
- Detroit is installing speed humps to slow down drivers on 2,700 streets, mostly near schools and parks. (Click on Detroit)
- Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed a bill to suspend the state’s 27-cent gas tax, but could be open to suspending the 6 percent sales tax on gas (MLive), while Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin is proposing suspending Virginia’s gas tax for three months (WTOP).
- A deadly weekend in Austin is bringing renewed attention to Vision Zero. (CBS Austin)
- Is Honolulu throwing good money after bad on its beleaguered light-rail line? (Civil Beat)
- Arkansas’ Ozarks Regional Transit Authority, which serves four cities, is pushing for more reliable funding. (Axios)
- Tesla’s billionaire CEO bought a share of Twitter, and Hard Drive‘s headline won the internet: “Elon Musk Now Owns 9.2% of App That Constantly Owns Him”
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.
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