Cars

Senate Republicans celebrated Earth Day by releasing a counter-offer to President Biden’s infrastructure plan that would only deepen America’s dependence on gas-powered cars.

One promising trend in urban planning is the push from a growing number of U.S. cities to reduce minimum parking requirements for new developments. As the name suggests, parking minimums require developers to build a certain amount of spaces, regardless of whether a community wants or needs them. The result is an excess of parking that can lead to more vehicle pollution, worsen traffic congestion, and drive up housing costs. In some cases, the steep cost of building parking prevents a project from moving forward at all.

"Cruise control" technology was invented to help drivers maintain a safe and steady speed — but more often, they use it to go faster than they would without it, a new study finds. 

Former Dallas Mavericks player Shawn Bradley announced today that he was struck by a driver while riding his bike, paralyzing the NBA star and reminding America that no one is safe from our national traffic violence epidemic until we commit to ending it. 

"Electric vehicles won’t save us from climate change, but parking reform might," one researcher said.

While local officials debate the best ways to improve their respective transit systems, the truth is that most of them lack a real-world perception of their own local transit systems.

The 19th Secretary of Transportation may be the first in recent memory to publicly recognize that the need to remove excess asphalt from cities to meet our climate, safety and mobility justice goals.

Advocates from St. Paul, Minn. are hoping to restore some of what the Black community lost when a highway was run through their core neighborhood — and to provide an unconventional model for other communities across the country to do the same.

Your city can't sell a road to the next town over when it needs a little cash. So why do our municipal accounting standards count highways as "assets"? Advocates say it's time to fix that. Image: Jay Galvin via Creative Commons