Wednesday’s Headlines Fight Freeways
By
Blake Aued
12:01 AM EST on February 21, 2024
- Environmental groups are calling for a national moratorium on building new highway lanes (Washington Post, Streetsblog USA)
- Canada is actually taking such steps, with the environmental minister saying the government would no longer fund “large road projects.” (CBC)
- A little-known provision in the Trump-era tax law led to a proliferation of car washes and gas stations in Jacksonville and beyond. (Action News Jax)
- Salt Lake City’s walkable downtown is great for business — so great that it’s hard for new ones to find a space to open. (City Weekly)
- Las Vegas police say reckless drivers are running amok. Yet they blamed the victims in 12 of 13 pedestrian deaths this year. (3 News)
- Deadly hit-and-run crashes hit an all-time high in Philadelphia last year for the second year in a row. (NBC 10)
- Transit is booming in Cincinnati, which raises the question, what if the city had finished its subway system 100 years ago? (Enquirer)
- New Orleans’ Rampart streetcar, closed since a hotel collapsed in 2019, still hasn’t reopened even though officials said it would after Mardi Gras. (WWL)
- For the second year in a row, Washington state legislators are trying to pass a bill allowing more housing development around public transit. (The Urbanist)
- A Colorado bill would eliminate minimum parking requirements statewide. (Fox 31)
- Even as city officials pivot to roads to appease Republican North Carolina legislators, a group called Sustain Charlotte is pushing for more transit funding as the only way to reduce traffic. (Spectrum)
- Des Moines residents told the city council they want it to fund transit and avoid “drastic” service cuts. (Register)
- Akron included an historically high $1 million for sidewalk repairs in next year’s budget. (News 5 Cleveland)
- East Providence has started the process of creating a new bike and pedestrian plan. (ecoRI)
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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