Tuesday’s Headlines Are the Reason for the Season
An MTA worker's delightful after-work hobby, a viral sidewalk meme revisited and a few wonkier deep dives to get you through the holidays.
By
Blake Aued
12:01 AM EST on December 24, 2024
The national headlines are taking a short break and will return on Friday.
- This Metropolitan Transportation Authority worker brings New Yorkers joy by dancing and shadow-boxing in Prospect Park for hours to blow off steam after long shifts on the subway. (NY Times)
- Not your (great-grand) father’s Hindenburg: Slow but comfortable fuel-cell powered airships could be future of sustainable air travel. (Jalopnik)
- Got time to kill? This Eno Center series on each president’s influence on transportation will suck you down a wormhole for hours.
- Here are a couple of podcasts to keep you company: A War on Cars interview with urban planning professor Tara Goddard, and another from Streetsblog about how Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego keeps her constituents cool outside of cars.
- If you’re in the mood for something wonkier, check out Transportation for America‘s primer on the upcoming surface transportation reauthorization bill.
- Paris, Jakarta, Bogota and Bengaluru, India are among the cities where transit emerged from the pandemic relatively unscathed, thanks to creative funding. (World Resources Institute)
- Speaking of Bogota, it has the oldest and most successful open streets program in the world. (Slate)
- Graphic artist Cameron Booth is tracing the history of streetcar systems in Portland and beyond. (BikePortland)
- Workers on Atlanta’s Summerhill bus rapid transit line uncovered old streetcar tracks and a forgotten underground parking garage. (Axios)
- How one Los Angeles Times editor learned to love L.A. bike lanes.
- The CEO of Heartland Bike Share rode a stationary bike for 12 hours to raise money for replacing stolen bikes around Omaha. (WOWT)
- Ten years later, the originator of a viral sidewalk meme explains why he had to do it to ’em. (Tampa Bay Times)
From the editors: Streetsblog provides high-quality journalism and analysis for free — which is something to be celebrated in an era of paywalls. But the work Streetsblog does is not free; we rely on the generosity of our readers to help support our reporters and editors as they advance the movement to end car dependency in our communities.
If you already support our work, thank you! Can you brag about us to your friends and ask them to support?
If you aren’t a supporter yet, please join us and help us push for a more livable, walkable, bikeable, equitable and enjoyable country for all. And happy holidays from the Streetsblog team!
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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