Friday’s Headlines Drink From the Firehose
A key DOT nominee's role in Project 2025, more dubious executive orders, climate change accelerates and more headlines.
By
Blake Aued
12:06 AM EST on February 7, 2025
- Recent plane crashes and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s executive orders show the Trump administration is not serious about transportation safety. (The New Republic)
- More from Trumpworld: The administration’s anti-DEI stance also extends to environmental justice (Slate). It’s freezing grants for electric vehicle chargers, potentially illegally (Politico). And it is disregarding the damage caused by carbon emissions when making policy (Washington Post).
- Steven G. Bradbury, Trump’s nominee for deputy secretary at the DOT, is hostile toward transit, thinks drivers’ ability to speed is more important than safety and cowrote Project 2025’s chapter on transportation, according to Transportation for America.
- A leading climate scientist testified to the UN that temperatures are rising faster than expected, and the target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius is “dead.” (The Guardian)
- As the world gets hotter, cities should be investing in walking and biking infrastructure instead of replacing cooling greenspaces with roads. (Sustainable Transport)
- People with certain vision problems that prevent them from driving can still ride e-bikes. (streets.mn)
- A new poll found that 60 percent of New Yorkers support congestion pricing and don’t want President Trump to block it. (CBS News)
- Washington state legislators are working to double Amtrak service on the Cascades route. (The Urbanist)
- Oklahoma City is pushing back a vote on regional transit by a year after receiving a federal grant to study rail crossing improvements. (Oklahoman)
- Connecticut Democrats are dealing with a lot of misinformation about transit-oriented housing. (CT Mirror)
- A Denver experiment that paid people to bike found that not only did they bike more while receiving incentives, but kept biking when the money stopped. (Denverite)
- A new stage of express buses connecting London’s outer boroughs is expected to be up and running this year. (BBC)
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.
Read More:
Streetsblog has migrated to a new comment system. New commenters can register directly in the comments section of any article. Returning commenters: your previous comments and display name have been preserved, but you'll need to reclaim your account by clicking "Forgot your password?" on the sign-in form, entering your email, and following the verification link to set a new password — this is required because passwords could not be carried over during the migration. For questions, contact tips@streetsblog.org.
More from Streetsblog USA
Talking Headways Podcast: Measuring the Pulse of Urban Development
This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined by Karen Seto at Yale University and Zhe Zhu at the University of Connecticut to talk about their new study, The Urban Pulse.
August 27, 2026
Thursday’s Headlines Are Living for the City
Suburban retail models are making cities less walkable, while climate change is doing the same in the suburbs.
August 27, 2026
NYC Mayor Doubles Down On Robert Moses’s Great Mistake And Will Rebuild An Urban Highway
Mayor Mamdani wants to build a temporary bypass road to allow for a 10-year, $4-billion rebuild of the BQE triple-cantilever.
August 27, 2026
NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani Apologizes For Not Wearing A Helmet And Activists Lose Their Minds
Reminder: Bike helmet campaigns turn a collective problem into an individual one.
August 26, 2026
Wednesday’s Headlines Ride in Style
Amtrak's new trains sound like a win-win for passengers and the environment.
August 26, 2026