Wednesday’s Headlines Want to Cool Off
Stay hydrated, y'all: Summers are getting hotter and longer, and with the feds unable or unwilling to do much about it, activists are turning their attention to cities and states.
By
Blake Aued
12:00 AM EDT on July 6, 2022
- With a right-wing Supreme Court and gridlock in Congress, state and local governments are becoming increasingly important in the fight against climate change. (New York Times)
- Summers are getting longer and hotter all over the country, but especially in the West, where the average temperature has risen 2.7 degrees since 2000. Climate change is to blame, but so is urban sprawl that’s creating more paved-over heat islands. (Washington Post)
- Instead of chastising gas companies and pushing to suspend the gas tax, President Biden should be fighting high gas prices on the demand side, by promoting transit and offering incentives to buy e-bikes. (Slate)
- Bus ridership is still just 70 percent of pre-pandemic levels, and commuter rail ridership is unlikely to fully recover for another decade. (Eno Center for Transportation)
- The federal infrastructure law’s $1 billion to reconnect communities, released last week, is only a start to repairing the massive damage done by urban freeway construction. (CNN)
- Amazon is replacing thousands of vans with cargo e-bikes and delivering more packages on foot in urban areas. (Electrek)
- Last year’s spike in traffic deaths was even worse in Florida, particularly the Tampa area, than the nation as a whole. (Tampa Bay Times)
- Atlanta should join the growing number of cities that are doing away with parking mandates. (Journal-Constitution)
- A new San Francisco report blames Uber and Lyft for an increase in congestion on city streets, but officials don’t seem to be taking it too seriously. (48 Hills)
- So many rogue drivers used a walking and biking trail to bypass a Chicago traffic jam that they would up creating another traffic jam. (Block Club Chicago)
- Cincinnati transportation officials are encouraging residents to get in shape by walking, biking and taking transit. (Local 12)
- An ad for ginormous Chevy pickups that mocks Atlanta transit was spotted at an Atlanta bus stop. (Twitter)
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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