Friday’s Headlines Celebrate Juneteenth

Streetsblog USA will be off today for the Juneteenth holiday. See you all Monday!

• Building transit projects is far more expensive in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world. Slow Boring put together a playbook to address procurement, red tape and other causes. California YIMBY recently addressed similar issues — such as artificial budget constraints, the collapse of local news and the public’s failure to hold leaders accountable — as exemplified by a Los Angeles subway line that took 46 years to build (L.A. Times).
• Wildlife crossings in Appalachian states reduce car crashes involving animals by up to 97 percent. (Governing)
• The slow-moving East River Tunnel project is the result of 116 years of deferred maintenance. (Rail Passengers Association)
• The Eno Center for Transportation provides an overview on how Salt Lake City is using transit-oriented development to stabilize housing costs.
• MARTA officials responded to a federal investigation by saying that trains are safe, outside of a few “outlier incidents.” (Atlanta News First)
• Can Sound Transit avoid consigning certain Seattle transit projects to purgatory? (The Urbanist)
• Grand Rapids opened Michigan’s first daycare inside a transit station to serve parents who commute by bus. (Detroit News)
• Richmond has issued more than 167,000 speeding tickets since cameras were installed in 13 school zones a little over two years ago. (6 News)
• Two Iowa City streets are getting protected bike lanes. (Press-Citizen)
• Walking and biking account for three-quarters of daytime trips in London (Momentum). But even though it’s doing a lot more than U.S. cities to reduce driving, London is still falling short of its goals (Yale Climate Connections).
• Dutch children are unusually healthy and happy, and it may be because of an annual festival that encourages them to explore their neighborhood on foot. (The Guardian)