Monday’s Headlines

By Blake Aued |
  • Buses are the workhorses of U.S. transit, but they get no respect. City Lab interviews author Steven Higashide about how bus riders are marginalized and deserve to be a higher priority.
  • The Covering Climate Now initiative brought together hundreds of news outlets to share stories related to the recent UN climate summit. Among those Media Matters singled out for praise in an overview of the coverage was Streetsblog Denver’s Andy Bosselman, who wrote an op-ed for the Colorado Sun urging the state to “stop building new roads and expanding the ones we have.”
  • A Houston political action committee backing a $3.5-billion transit referendum has raised over $437,000 — far outpacing the anti-transit PAC, which has raised just $6,000, barely enough for a website. (Chronicle)
  • Waymo is telling customers in Arizona that completely autonomous cars, with no backup drivers, are on their way (The Verge). This is the same state where a self-driving Uber car killed a woman crossing the street last year — although in that case, the backup driver didn’t stop the deadly collision.
  • Montgomery County lawmakers are furious that the state is cutting funding for bus rapid transit through the Washington, D.C. suburb. (Maryland Matters)
  • A leap in JUMP bike prices has some Sacramento residents wondering if the company is pricing out the people who need the bikes the most. (News & Review)
  • MARTA is looking to lease or buy — not build, as we previously stated — 2,000 parking spaces near three metro Atlanta train stations, and surprisingly, urbanists aren’t mad at it. (Curbed)
  • Police have issued over 1,000 warnings but just six tickets since San Antonio banned riding scooters on sidewalks in July. (Rivard Report)
  • Google is proposing a massive mixed-use development in downtown San Jose designed to encourage walking, biking and transit use. (Mercury News)
  • When the Tacoma Link light rail extension is finished in 2022, it’ll simply be called the Orange Line. (News Tribune)
  • San Francisco could make Market Street car-free next year. (Hoodline)
  • A group of Charleston residents spent their Sunday canvassing the East Side neighborhood to drum up support for bus rapid transit. (ABC 4)
  • A Florida man who shot and killed another man in a dispute over a parking space has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. (NBC News)
  • Bust out the bagpipes and play a dirge, drivers: The Scottish Parliament has finally banned parking on sidewalks (Forbes).

Friday’s Headlines

By Blake Aued |
  • Driving is the largest source of greenhouse gas, and this New York Times interactive map lets you see how much carbon dioxide is coming from your metro area and how much it’s gone up or down. Emissions are growing fastest in cities and suburbs — even ones with decent transit, although in cities with poor transit, emissions per capita are higher.
  • Electric cars aren’t the solution to climate change because building them creates pollution, and the electricity they run on is often produced by burning fossil fuels. (New Statesman)
  • At The Atlantic, former Streetsblog editor Angie Schmitt writes that Uber’s helicopters are a symptom of American inequality.
  • Lyft is shutting out third-party apps from accessing the New York bike share Citi Bike. It could be the first volley in a showdown between two different visions of digital mobility: “walled gardens” and neutral platforms. For the public good, cities should insist on the latter. (City Lab)
  • The Los Angeles city council president is proposing a minimum wage of $30 for Uber and Lyft drivers — half to cover expenses and half to keep for themselves. The current average wage is $9.21 an hour. (KCAL)
  • Bay Area Rapid Transit is considering raising its absurdly low $3 parking rate. (San Francisco Chronicle)
  • Richmond’s new transit chief talks about how she plans to get people out of their cars and onto buses. (Greater Greater Washington)
  • As Utah grows, it’s going to need to implement congestion pricing, improve transit and encourage walkable neighborhoods. (Pulse)
  • Atlanta is installing its first pop-up bike lane on 10th Street in Midtown. (AJC)
  • Louisville is now fining people for standing in streets and medians in a misguided attempt to protect pedestrians (and punish panhandlers). (WLKY)
  • E-scooters are coming to St. Petersburg (WUSF) and Eugene (KEZI).
  • Toronto transit users are clamoring for police to crack down on drivers who speed past streetcars, endangering people getting on and off. (Narcity)

Thursday’s Headlines

By Blake Aued |
  • Um, ya think? Congestion pricing could help Americans break their addiction to cars and raise funds for public transit. (Sierra Magazine)
  • A Vice podcast delves into Uber and Lyft’s financial losses and safety scandals since the companies went public earlier this year.
  • A San Diego congressman has introduced a bill requiring local governments that receive federal funds for transit projects to commit to building dense housing nearby. (Union-Tribune)
  • Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker is pitching an $18-billion transportation package that includes $9 billion for highway work and $6 billion to modernize the state’s fleet of trains and buses, as well as funding for bus lanes and bike and pedestrian infrastructure. (Salem News)
  • Strong support for bond referendums in Austin and Houston suggests that good public transit is becoming politically viable in purplifying Texas. (D Magazine)
  • Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (Project Q) and Seattle officials (KOMO) say those cities’ rainbow crosswalks are here to stay.
  • Philadelphia police will soon be able to access crash data from cars’ “black boxes,” which they hope will help them better understand the city’s epidemic of traffic deaths (WHYY). (What’s to “understand”? Cars are bigger than ever and drivers are more distracted than ever.)
  • University of Washington researchers showed how Seattle’s failed docked bike-share, Pronto, paved the way for the success of dockless bike-shares to come. (UW Today)
  • After three years, the North Carolina DOT is finally finishing a sidewalk along a Raleigh freeway overpass. (CBS 17)
  • An American traffic engineer would call this Zurich street a failure. And that’s the problem. (CityLab)
  • Do you have $200, live in Manhattan or California and need to get to the airport fast? As Arnold Schwarzenegger might say, “Get to da Uba choppa!” (Vogue). But commuting by helicopter is not all it’s cracked up to be (CityLab, NY Post).

Wednesday’s Headlines

By Blake Aued |
  • Bike advocates often wonder why America can’t be more like the Amsterdam, and opponents often counter that Amsterdam isn’t (insert your city here). A second look at history shows that the anti-car movement in the U.S. was stronger than previously thought, even at the peak of car culture in the 1950s and ‘60s, while an enlightened Dutch government didn’t simply design bike-friendly cities — people had to demand them. (City Lab)
  • The media should stop calling bike lanes “controversial.” A third of Americans rode a bike in the past year, and many more say they would cycle if it were safer, writes Outside Magazine Bike Snob Eben Weiss.
  • Today in autonomous vehicles: A driverless shuttle is ferrying Peachtree Corners shoppers around in Gwinnett County (Atlanta Journal-Constitution). Meanwhile, Uber has put self-driving cars on the road in Pittsburgh, and is hoping to do the same in Dallas (Morning News). Most driverless cars have gotten safer, but The Drive contends that Tesla’s, in particular, remain reckless.
  • In Las Vegas — where streets are built for cars, and transit and low-income neighborhoods are mainly located along wide, busy roads — drivers kill an average of 60 pedestrians a year. (Nevada Current)
  • Denver’s transit agency marks the 25th anniversary of light rail. It’s grown to eight lines since 1994 despite multiple hurdles along the way. (Denver Channel)
  • Seattle’s city-owned and privately operated monorail is one of the few transit options in the region that doesn’t accept ORCA cards, but that’s about to change. (KOMO)
  • Are Southern California and Bay Area businessmen and politicians conspiring to redirect funds for what little remains of California’s high speed rail line in the Central Valley? The Fresno Bee is asking. While abandoning the line entirely could adversely affect the Fresno area, it’s also worth asking if the money isn’t better spent elsewhere if the line won’t connect the population centers of Los Angeles and San Francisco.
  • Provo’s bus rapid transit line is a big success with almost 15,000 riders per day. (Salt Lake Tribune)
  • Minneapolis is lowering speed limits and adding safety improvements like bump-outs and pedestrian refuges to its most dangerous streets as part of Vision Zero. (KSTP)
  • Portland has won federal approval to paint bus-only lanes red, which has proven effective in keeping car drivers out of them. (Bike Portland)
  • It’s a common turn of phrase, but one San Francisco poet/cyclist wants to know, literally, “Which Hill Will I Die On?” (Bay City Beacon)
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