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Wednesday’s Headlines Are Bigger and Beautiful-er

There's a lot of bad news in the Big Beautiful Bill — but it also may have helped kill a major highway expansion in Oregon.

  • The passage of the so-called "Big Beautiful Bill" and the Oregon legislature's failure to pass a transportation funding package have effectively killed the I-5 widening project in Portland's Rose Quarter. (City Observatory)
  • Stephen Miller went on a Fox News rant about how immigrants are causing traffic jams. (The Daily Beast)
  • A couple of little-noticed provisions in Republicans' massive reconciliation bill are bad news for sustainable transportation: Bike commuters are losing an already-meager tax benefit (Politico Pro), and car buyers will be able to write off of to $10,000 in interest on their auto loans (Kiplinger's).
  • Urban planners need to figure out a way to deal with speedy e-bikes. (The Architect's Newspaper)
  • David Zipper likes a lot of Zohran Mamdani's ideals, but fare-free buses isn't one of them. He argues that it wouldn't cut into driving, and that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority needs the revenue. (Slate)
  • A Queens neighborhood has a plan to turn a COVID-era open street into a permanent park that Fast Company says cities everywhere should study.
  • The Oregonian editorial board urges lawmakers to go back to Salem and pass that transportation bill.
  • California Democrats are capitulating on climate policy. (Politico)
  • A Washington, D.C. pilot project will provide app-based delivery drivers with low-cost e-bikes and stations for charging and batter-swapping. (WUSA 9)
  • Atlanta's Midtown Alliance is developing a plan for bike and pedestrian infrastructure on 3rd Street. (Rough Draft Atlanta)
  • Building Salt Lake has the inside scoop on a new Utah law taking away the city's control over its own streets, including a paper by two professors that appears to be AI-generated.
  • Duvall County's 2025 traffic death toll hit 83 as a Jacksonville task force is set to release a Vision Zero report later this month. (First Coast News)
  • An analysis by The San Francisco Standard found little correlation between traffic deaths and traffic enforcement.
  • Dallas Area Rapid Transit is proposing eliminating nine bus routes, longer headways on light rail and raising fares for paratransit riders due to a five percent budget cut. (KERA)
  • On the Saturday of Pride weekend, Seattle set a one-day record for scooter and bikeshare rides with more than 44,000. (Fox 13)
  • UK mayors outside London are planning to create a 3,500-mile national network of safe routes to school. (The Guardian)

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