Thursday’s Headlines Aren’t Going Back
The Biden administration has awarded just $110 million of $3.5 billion for tearing down urban freeways. A future Trump administration could end the program.
By
Blake Aued
12:38 AM EDT on August 8, 2024
- A Donald Trump victory in November would jeopardize the Biden administration’s funding for tearing down divisive urban freeways. (E&E News)
- Practically every city in the world is going all-in on building fast, high-quality transit except those in the U.S. Why? (Fast Company)
- More people are using bikeshares, but they’re also getting more expensive. That’s because of a lack of subsidies, and the fact that increasingly popular e-bikes are more expensive than pedal bikes. (Velo)
- Miami, where 90 percent of workers commute by car, has become a traffic-choked hellscape since the pandemic turned it into a boomtown. Upcoming transit projects will help, but are years away. (City Lab)
- Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s transit plan is smaller, simpler and drawing less organized opposition than the one voters rejected in 2018. (WPLN)
- Boston Mayor Michelle Wu announced 1,000 vouchers for elderly, disabled and low-income residents to buy e-bikes. (Globe)
- Amtrak wants to replace the car loop at Baltimore’s Penn Station with a pickup/drop off area for buses, but taxi drivers and even the Maryland Transit Administration are opposed to the idea. (Banner)
- Southwest Airlines has spent decades fighting proposals for high-speed rail between Houston and Dallas. (Simple Flying)
- Austin and transit agency Cap Metro rolled out several downtown projects with protected bike lanes, pedestrian safety enhancements and priority lanes for future buses. (KXAN)
- Cutting funding for Dallas transit makes no sense to the riders who rely on it, but several suburban cities want to contribute less to the system anyway. (KERA)
- Charlotte police are not pursuing charges against a driver who crashed into a streetcar station, destroying it. (WSOC)
- Berlin has a new online map that lets cyclists and pedestrians see pollution levels on a given street at a given time. (The Mayor)
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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