Thursday’s Headlines

By Blake Aued | | 2 Comments
  • Lyft e-bikes are back in San Francisco, two months after the company pulled them from three cities due to brake problems. They’ll return to New York and Washington, D.C., this fall (CNN). Lyft also rebranded its Bay Area bikes as Bay Wheels, replacing the Ford GoBike moniker (Engadget).
  • For cities to wean themselves off of cars, even incremental changes add up. (Strong Towns)
  • A Montreal company has developed an app that uses machine learning to better predict when buses will arrive. (Gazette)
  • Bond rater Moody’s says Pittsburgh and Philadelphia’s transit agencies will face dire fiscal consequences if Pennsylvania doesn’t start remitting the toll revenue that make up half their budgets. A lawsuit filed by truckers halted the payments in 2018. (Bond Buyer)
  • New York City announces more restrictions on Uber and Lyft’s ability to clog streets (Streetsblog)
  • Houston’s I-45 project has the potential to knit downtown back together, and Rice University’s Kinder Institute is publishing blog posts going into detail about the project twice a week through the end of June.
  • Atlanta’s Streets Alive — when nine miles of streets are closed to vehicular traffic for one day — broke its attendance record, with 145,000 people walking, skating, scooting and biking. Next year’s route will feature streets with high rates of crash injuries. Tell us again why the idea of streets “alive” has to be a once-a-year stunt? (Curbed)
  • The Tacoma city council voted on recommendations to Sound Transit on a route and station locations for a light rail line. (K5)
  • Columbus, Ohio, cyclists are worried about a plan to convert a bike lane into one bikes share with buses. (Dispatch)
  • A federal grant will allow Milwaukee to install 4,000 new bike racks over the next eight years (urbanmilwaukee). Nearby Madison is about to become the first U.S. city to convert its entire bike-share fleet to e-bikes (Channel 3000). Baton Rouge’s bike share will launch later this month with 500 bikes (The Advocate).
  • Ten (10!) dockless scooter companies will participate in a Chicago pilot project (Streetsblog Chicago). Wichita is delaying a decision on e-scooters after some complained that proposed regulations are too restrictive (Eagle). Tell that to Atlanta residents, who face fines of up to $1,000 for riding e-scooters on the sidewalk (WSB).
  • You’ll look sweet upon the seat/of a bicycle built for two (The Driven).

Wednesday’s Headlines

By Blake Aued |
  • Uber’s dream of flying cars is undeterred (CNN) even after a helicopter crashed over Manhattan on Monday (USA Today). Uber was already offering $200 chopper rides to JFK (CBS News). Never fear: Fast Company says one doesn’t have anything to do with other, and Bloomberg predicts flying taxis might be just four years away. We’ll take the over on that.
  • Lyft’s lawsuit seeking to keep bike-share competitors out of San Francisco shows it doesn’t care much about ending car ownership (Quartz). Case in point: An appreciation party Uber threw for drivers in Chicago turned into chaos when they all decided to drive themselves (Tribune).
  • Houston is committing to Vision Zero. Mayor Sylvester Turner made the pledge at a ceremony honoring two people killed by a driver in March. The intersection now has a new crosswalk, wheelchair ramp and flashing beacon. (KHOU)
  • Nashville Mayor David Briley says he’s pro-transit, but he’s proposing cutting bus service. (Tennessean)
  • The Tampa Bay Times clears up some myths about a planned St. Petersburg bus-only lane.
  • The arrival of e-bikes in Portland is being pushed back to 2020. (Willamette Week)
  • Some people in Washington, D.C.’s Adams Morgan neighborhood are upset to lose three parking spaces to Capital Bikeshare. (Greater Greater Washington)
  • If “Speed” were set in 2019, not even Keanu Reeves could save that bus. The average speed for a bus in Santa Monica, Calif., is now 9 miles per hour. That’s one reason ridership is declining. (Transfer Magazine)
  • A $2-billion transit terminal in San Francisco still needs repairs, but is close to reopening. (KCRA)
  • Vancouver is on pace to meet its ambitious biking and walking goals, thanks in part to bike infrastructure where even beginners feel safe. (Fast Company, StreetsblogUSA). TBH, Canada as a whole is kind of kicking America’s butt (CUTA).
  • Pod people will not be zipping across Madison anytime soon. (Next City)

Tuesday’s Headlines

By Blake Aued |
  • Looks the ol’ swamp still needs some draining: Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao intervened on behalf of allies of her husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to get grants approved in their home state of Kentucky. (Politico)
  • Cities with the highest rents also tend to be the cities with the worst traffic problems. The most egalitarian solution — congestion pricing sends the message that city centers aren’t for the poor — is to build more housing near transit and jobs, writes a Bloomberg columnist.
  • Lyft-Owned Motivate is suing San Francisco over whether the city can let in bike-share competitors. But the dispute is bigger than that, according to Wired — it’s another front in the Uber vs. Lyft war, and whether private monopolies can limit access to what should be a public good. Meanwhile, a retired professor is suing Uber and Lyft, claiming they’re infringing on his patent for GPS and cellphone billing technology (Daily Report).
  • The Federal Rail Administration announced a $33 million grant to help restore Amtrak service along the Gulf Coast. (Fox 10)
  • Honolulu leaders hand-delivered a revised light-rail plan to the Federal Transit Administration in hopes that the personal touch would lead the FTA to finally release $744 million in federal funds. (Civil Beat)
  • The Colorado DOT is considering widening or double-decking I-25 through Denver, but seems to be leaning toward transit and incentives like congestion pricing instead (Denverite). But as Streetsblog Denver points out, the agency’s already eliminated the most progressive option: tearing down the freeway and replacing it with an urban boulevard.
  • Cincinnati city council members want to raise parking fines and use digital ad revenue to plug a $1.2 million hole in the streetcar’s projected operating budget. (WCPO)
  • A new stretch of Atlanta’s PATH400 trail linking the Lindbergh and Buckhead neighborhoods opens this fall (AJC). Curbed also has a photo essay on the underutilized trail system.
  • The arrival of e-bikes in Portland is being pushed back to 2020. (Willamette Week)
  • Why are D.C. Metro subways so windy? (City Lab)

Monday’s Headlines

By Blake Aued | | 3 Comments
  • We disagree with the notion that human-driven cars are “remarkably safe,” but this Vox article raises interesting questions about how safe autonomous vehicles will have to be to be accepted. According to Smart Cities Dive, an advocate for self-driving cars thinks they can alleviate the public health crisis of road deaths, but the industry has a lot of work to do convincing the public.
  • Even automakers oppose the Trump Administration’s plan to roll back Obama-era fuel efficiency standards. (The Hill)
  • Take it with a grain of salt, because these people build roads for a living, but the American Society of Civil Engineers says failure to fix the nation’s infrastructure would cost the U.S. economy $4 trillion. (Fox Business)
  • More than 60 percent of California residents — including a majority of homeowners — want denser development near transit, according to a new poll. (L.A. Times)
  • If Atlanta is a world-class city, it shouldn’t wait decades to build a world-class rail system, argues the AJC.
  • Chicago taxes Uber and Lyft rides to fund transit, but ride-hailing remains popular in affluent neighborhoods that are already transit-rich. (Tribune)
  • Drivers have killed 25 pedestrians so far this year in San Antonio, outpacing the past three years. (KSAT)
  • Two American Heart Association board members say a Complete Streets policy will make New Orleans a healthier city. (Times-Pic)
  • Charleston, S.C. planners are evaluating routes for the city’s first bus rapid transit line. (Post and Courier)
  • A Cincinnati official admits in an Enquirer podcast that the city’s embattled streetcar is really just a tourist attraction.
  • Wisconsin Republicans want to raise fees rather than gas taxes to fix roads, which Democrats argue lets out-of-state drivers off the hook. (Cap Times)
  • The South Carolina town of Rock Hill launches a free, all-electric bus system today. (WBTV)
  • A writer who faced the wrath of Twitter and lost her book deal after calling out a D.C. Metro worker for eating on a train is suing her publisher. (WTOP)
  • A glitch in some Bird scooters allows them to exceed the speed limit (Consumer Reports). Um, y’all know cars have that glitch, too, right?

Friday’s Headlines

By Blake Aued |
  • Crowdfunding bike infrastructure can help raise public engagement and prevent bikelash. (Greenbiz)
  • Forbes has a thousand different ways to say that Uber will never be profitable. Meanwhile, CNBC interviews struggling Uber drivers.
  • Skateboarding is soon to be an Olympic sport, and Curbed traces its history back to federally funded “slum removal” projects in the mid-20th century.
  • A Shreveport, La. freeway that could slice through a neighborhood received $100 million in funding from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill settlement. (KTBS)
  • Salt Lake City is one of the few cities in North America where congestion is improving despite population growth, thanks in part to more bike lanes and better transit. (Tribune)
  • New York City passed a sweeping street-safety bill last week, but will it be taken seriously? (Bicycling) Our StreetsblogNYC colleagues also covered it.
  • Amazon wants its delivery robots to be treated like pedestrians. So you mean like garbage? (Business Insider)
  • A Milwaukee development that will include a transit station is behind schedule, threatening a federal grant for a streetcar extension. (Urban Milwaukee)
  • Washington, D.C,’s new bus-only — bus-mostly, really — lanes seem to be working pretty well so far. (Greater Greater Washington)
  • ICYMI: Offering childcare at public meetings could help encourage more parents of young children to participate. (Next City)
  • Amsterdam has managed to remove about 1,500 parking spaces a year without ticking off drivers (City Lab). Streetfilms did a great mini-doc on it.
  • Seattle is a surreal hellscape for drivers, and Crosscut makes that out to be a bad thing.
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