Safety

Wednesday’s Headlines Hop on Board Carefully

Riding the bus is safe. Walking to and from the bus stop, not so much.

By Blake Aued

12:11 AM EDT on April 15, 2026

Wednesday’s Headlines Hop on Board Carefully

While buses are an extremely safe mode of transportation, getting to and from the bus stop is not. Pedestrians are five times more likely to be hit by drivers while walking to a transit stop than crossing an intersection. (Smart Cities Dive)
How many people can drive five or six hours without stopping? Between better batteries and faster charging stations, range anxiety will soon be a thing of the past. (Heatmap)
“Right to charge” laws make own an electric vehicle easier by preventing HOAs from banning chargers (Yale Climate Connections). But EV charging and affordable housing are coming into conflict in California, where a bill would lift the requirement for new apartments to provide charging (Canary Media).
Lloyd Alter continues his series on older drivers, writing that most seniors are confident in their ability to keep driving, and few have made a plan for if and when they have to surrender their keys. Given that three-quarters of the Baby Boom demographic live in car-dependent areas, that’s a problem. (Carbon Upfront!)
Cities looking to remove urban freeways should look to San Francisco’s Embarcadero as a model. (Arch Daily)
Citing a Streetsblog USA post, The Cool Down thinks a Chicago-St. Louis line could be the key to popularizing high-speed rail in the U.S.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is proposing to cut state funding for transit at a time when high gas prices makes transit service more important than ever. (MinnPost)
The Charlotte Area Transit System is asking for $10 million to hire more fare inspectors. (Observer)
A Vanderbilt poll found that almost three-quarters of Nashville residents support bike lanes. (WKRN)
The Vancouver, Washington city council is opposed to a plan for a new I-3 bridge that would cut short light rail. (Oregon Public Broadcasting)
Iowa City saw a 68 percent spike in ridership when it made buses fare-free, but is struggling to find a permanent funding source as federal funding runs out. (Daily Iowan)
SUVs are getting more popular in the U.K., and they’re damaging the country’s roads (The Guardian). As a result of the influx of SUVs, Transport for London is considering a “Range Rover tax.” (London Reconnections)
Vietnam is spending $76 billion — an incredible 17% of its annual gross domestic product — on a high-speed rail line running north-south along the coast and connecting all of its major cities. (The B1M)

Blake Aued

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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