Thursday’s Headlines Spin in Circles
Despite their advantages, it takes some deft messaging to get Americans to accept roundabouts, CityLab reports.
By
Blake Aued
12:01 AM EST on January 9, 2025
- Can Americans learn to stop worrying and love the roundabout? After all, they save lives, reduce congestion and cut emissions. But without proper communication, people just don’t like change. (CityLab)
- Effective transit is a popular issue for leftists to run on, which is why conservatives try to undermine it at every turn. (The New Republic)
- Commercial flights accounts for 4 percent of global carbon emissions, and one expert doesn’t see an easy way to decarbonize the airline industry except to stop flying. (New York Times)
- Climate activist Bill McKibben lauds President Jimmy Carter as a clean energy visionary. (New Yorker)
- The National Association of City Transportation Officials is out with a new urban bikeway design guide.
- A waterfront development near San Francisco’s Oracle Park is one of the most pedestrian-friendly urban spaces in the nation. (Fast Company)
- Many cities were ripped apart by Urban Renewal, but New Haven more than most. Governing takes a deep dive into what it’s doing to turn a sea of freeways and parking decks back into a downtown.
- California state lawmakers are mounting a last-ditch effort to finalize federal funding for transit projects before the Trump administration takes over and cancels the grants. (Mass Transit)
- An anti-streetcar group thinks driverless pods are the answer to Atlanta Beltline transit. (AJC)
- The Washington state DOT is proposing to expand intercity bus service. (The Urbanist)
- Miami-Dade is looking for someone to run the new Northeast Corridor railway when it opens in 2027. (Miami Today)
- Streets.mn argues for funding local transit service in Minnesota over flashier, more expensive projects like high-speed intercity rail.
- Car crashes have killed more than 300 people since Sacramento committed to Vision Zero in 2017 as the city has failed to fund the initiative. (Bee)
- Indianapolis received a $159 million federal grant for the Blue Line bus rapid transit project. (Fox 59)
- Arizona State University is partnering with cities to provide shade in a region where temperatures routinely top 100 degrees. (Inside Climate News)
- Fourteen Dutch cities have created no-emissions zones where polluting freight vehicles are prohibited. (Zag Daily)
- Bike usage doubled in Paris between 2022 and 2023 — proof that if you build it, they will come. (Momentum)
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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