Government Organizations

The Biden administration wants to erect a multi-billion dollar network of charging hubs for electric vehicles, but advocates warn the country can’t drive its way out of the climate crisis, whether cars run on fossil fuels or electricity.

"The lesson here is, Secretary Pete is not going to come in and save the day," said one highway opponent. "And he probably isn’t capable of saving the day."

We chat with Miami-Dade County Commissioner Eileen Higgins about the South Dade Busway, the importance of FTA ratings in getting projects built, and why she thinks it’s important as an elected official to ride transit.

Blindspots the size of a pre-school classroom. Hulking curb weights. Tall, aggressive hoods that can easily strike a fully-grown adult at the level of the neck. Those are just a few of the design features common on American SUVs and pick-up trucks that experts suspect are driving the U.S. roadway death crisis.

The Biden administration has caved to GOP pressure and will no longer push states to repair existing highways before building new ones, a move that angered livable cities advocates.

A long-stalled bill that would allow people to report drivers who block bike or bus lanes is about to move forward in the City Council, but without its central feature: people who make complaints will no longer receive 25 percent of the resulting ticket revenue.

The Department of Transportation's first picks for a historic new grant program aimed at repairing neighborhoods torn apart by highways were met by applause from advocates — even as they cautioned that far more remains to be done.

Pedestrian deaths are continuing to skyrocket as the pandemic drags on — and since 2019, analysts say the death rate for walkers has eclipsed the rate of population growth by a factor of at least nine. According to the latest fatality estimates from the Governor's Highway Safety Association, U.S. drivers killed 3,434 people on foot in the first six months of 2022, an increase of five percent over the same period the prior year — and a staggering 18 percent increase over the number of walkers who died in early 2019, the last year before the pandemic.  The group also pointed out that those numbers can't easily be explained by non-traffic-related factors, noting that since "2019, the last pre-pandemic year, pedestrian fatalities have surged 18 percent in just three years – nine times faster than U.S. population growth."

A new study finds that departments of transportation can and must do more to protect a particularly vulnerable group: the unhoused people who take shelter on and alongside American roads.