Streetsblog USA

• Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy may have nine kids, but the self-described “fertility president” tying transit funding to birth rates is not going to help families that fled cities for car-centric suburbs — nor will it help struggling parents who can barely afford a metro card, let alone a car. (Vox)
• Another of the Trump administration’s priorities is to spend billions of dollars completing an interstate highway system that was actually finished in 1992. (Transportation for America)
• FedEx is spending $300 million on 2,000 electric delivery trucks, but could save almost three times that much on diesel fuel. (Electrek)
• In the face of fiscal uncertainty, too often cities make short-sighted cuts, like deferring maintenance on transportation infrastructure, that lead to long-term problems. (Governing)
• New Trump administration press secretary Katie Zacharia was cited multiple times in Los Angeles for distracted driving. (L.A. Material; registration required)
• Climate change is causing a Southern California coastal Amtrak line to collapse into the Pacific Ocean, and it could cost $5 billion to fix. (Los Angeles Times)
• Austin’s main street, Congress Avenue, is getting a major bike- and pedestrian-friendly makeover. (My San Antonio)
• The Detroit city council is urging the Michigan DOT to prioritize safety on Gratiot Avenue, a major six-lane thoroughfare. (Bridge Detroit)
• MARTA was expected to roll out new train cars before the World Cup came to Atlanta, but they still haven’t arrived. (Fox 5)
• A Salt Lake City business owner who almost ran over a cyclist is now on a crusade to get rid of a new bike lane. (KSL)
• Mass Transit explains how a small New Mexico transit system is shooting for zero emissions.
• Uber is testing robotaxis in Manchester, England. (The Guardian)
• A new European initiative will help up to five cities tackle transportation inequality. (Cities Today)
• Police are arresting Toronto demonstrators trying to stop the Ontario government from ripping up bike lanes. (CTV News)

What good is a “walkable” city if average people can’t afford to live in it?

That’s just one of the questions asked by this provocative new video from Safe By Design, which argues that even the urbanist darlings of Europe can fall short of their potential when “design, governance, and affordability failures” get involved.

And while livable streets policy itself isn’t responsible for, say, the wave of tourists overwhelming Barcelona or collapsing pedestrian walkways in Naples, it is an interesting reminder that the conversation about building great places can’t stop at the edge of the sidewalk.

Watch this video YouTube.

Caltrans will have to measure its highway projects against regional climate goals, and the state’s metropolitan planning agencies will update those plans every eight years instead of four, under a bill Gov. Gavin Newsom signed last month.

Senate Bill 1087, authored by Sen. Christopher Cabaldon (D-West Sacramento), updates the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act of 2008, better known as SB 375. The new law requires each region to plan housing, transportation and land use together to cut greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light trucks. It also extends the law’s emissions targets through 2045 and changes the conditions some regions must meet to receive state transportation funds. The bill passed the Senate 31 to 9. Supporters, including regional planning agencies and environmental groups, say it will shift the focus from planning to building projects.

Senate Bill 1087, authored by Sen. Christopher Cabaldon (D-West Sacramento), updates the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act of 2008, better known as SB 375. The new law streamlines regional planning requirements, extends greenhouse gas reduction targets through 2045, and strengthens the connection between state transportation funding and regional climate plans.

The legislation was sponsored by a coalition of regional planning agencies and environmental groups, with support from more than 80 organizations, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the regional planning agency for the nine-county Bay Area.

“We’re proud to have supported SB 1087. SB 375 established the idea that California needs to plan for housing, transportation, and land conservation together to meet its climate goals. Nearly 20 years later, SB 1087 starts to move that framework beyond planning by pushing the state to align its transportation investments with regional plans and putting more focus on getting the right projects built,” said Lesley Beatty of Climate Plan, a sponsor of the bill.

That shift from planning to implementation is central to the new law.

…more of this. Lead image: Caltrans. This image: City of Los Angeles From regional plans to projects

SB 375 requires California’s metropolitan planning organizations to develop Sustainable Communities Strategies as part of their regional transportation plans. These strategies coordinate land use, housing and transportation investments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light trucks.

Under SB 1087, metropolitan planning organizations will prepare their strategies every eight years instead of every four, with a progress report after four years. The change is intended to reduce duplicative work and administrative costs while maintaining accountability for progress toward emissions-reduction goals.

The legislation also extends the framework’s greenhouse gas reduction targets through 2045, bringing regional planning into closer alignment with the state’s long-term climate goals. It increases transparency around the California Air Resources Board’s process for setting emissions-reduction targets and reviewing regional strategies.

The Southern California Association of Governments, which develops regional transportation and land-use plans for six counties, said the changes will give regional agencies and local governments more flexibility and certainty while helping them focus on implementation.

“SB 1087 refocuses the sustainable communities strategy on its core purpose to align housing, transportation, and climate,” said SCAG Executive Director Kome Ajise. “We believe these reforms will give regional agencies and local governments more certainty, flexibility, and tools to turn planning into real action.”

For Southern California, the changes could free up resources to advance projects included in its regional plan, Connect SoCal. The law does not guarantee funding for any particular project, but it changes how regional plans are developed and connected to implementation.

Opposition from Business Groups

The Orange County Business Council (OCBC) was one of the leading groups opposed to the legislation. In a statement released while the legislation was moving through committee, the group said it supported modernizing SB 375 but objected to CARB’s expanded role in reviewing regional strategies, warning that the changes could limit regional flexibility and raise concerns about regulatory transparency and stakeholder participation.

While debates over regional autonomy and state oversight are legitimate, SB 1087 does not give CARB control over local zoning or housing approvals. Instead, it strengthens coordination between regional climate plans and state transportation investments while reducing the administrative burden of planning. That balance is central to the law’s effort to turn California’s climate goals into real-world results.

Caltrans must better align with regional goals

One of SB 1087’s biggest changes is that it makes it easier for California to ensure state transportation spending supports regional climate goals.

The law requires Caltrans to consider measures of success that help advance the goals of the California Transportation Plan. It also changes the rules for some state transportation funding programs to better connect which projects get money with the goals in regional plans.

The changes are especially important in regions whose plans fall short of state greenhouse gas reduction targets. In those areas, projects seeking money through programs such as the Solutions for Congested Corridors Program and the Trade Corridor Enhancement Program must meet additional requirements tied to reducing emissions or addressing barriers to meeting regional targets.

The goal is to reduce the chances that state money goes to transportation projects that undermine regional climate plans, while still allowing projects that meet the law’s requirements to move forward.

The law does not prohibit highway projects outright. Its impact will depend on how state agencies apply the new requirements and select future transportation investments. But it creates a stronger statutory link between regional climate goals and decisions about which projects receive state support.

“For the first time, SB 1087 also requires Caltrans to better align state planning with regional goals—which should yield fewer highway boondoggles and more safe streets on which people of all ages and abilities can travel,” said Zak Accuardi of the Natural Resources Defense Council, another sponsor of the legislation.

This week on Talking Headways is Part 2 of our discussion with Reece Martin in Toronto at the Mpact Transit + Community Conference. We discuss the media picking projects apart, the gap between talent and passion in transit agencies, high speed rail and the threat of AVs to bad transit.

Listeners can hit play on the audio player embedded below, study an AI-generated transcript, or read the edited excerpt further down.

Jeff Wood: I was reading through a lot of your posts, and I came upon this idea that after we build something, the people that built it don’t wanna talk about it, or they don’t want to talk if it went over-budget, they don’t want to talk about the things that they did wrong. They want to find better ways to do it, but they don’t want to have this public inquiry about what happened. I was curious what your thoughts were on that.

Reece Martin: It’s a problem I’ve definitely identified in Toronto and it exists in the US as well, obviously. There will be a project that just gets slammed in the media for years and years, and then it’s done. It’s surprising to me, in Toronto, because we actually are pretty well-governed by North American standards, though maybe not by international standards.

But I’m a little surprised that with the Eglinton Crosstown, this tunneled light rail line that famously delayed for a very long time, there wasn’t a public inquiry. But there was an inquiry in Ottawa. Ottawa also built a light rail system and it had a bunch of problems and there was an inquiry, but you just don’t see that as much.

Look at Seattle. It’s building a lot of stuff, it’s very expensive, and a lot of projects have a lot of problems. It would be healthy to have some sort of legislated process where there is a review. I think there are a lot of reasons this stuff doesn’t happen. 

Part of it, and this is sadly pretty cynical, is that in the public transit industry in North America, you’re looked upon with great skepticism if you’re very interested in it. It’s like, “Why do you care so much about this stuff? Wqhat are you doing? Why are you asking these questions? What are you, why are you…? You go to a place like Japan and they really embrace the sort of enthusiasm for public transit.

And I get it — it’s overbearing, it’s tiring. But if you’re really passionate and you’re a great engineer and you live in Austin, are you going to work on a transit project or are you going to work for Tesla? And unfortunately, I think the reality is you’re probably gonna go work for Tesla or you’re gonna go to San Francisco and work for Apple or work for Google, and help extract more dollars out of every citizen.

Whereas in China, you would probably go work at the high-speed rail authority or you’d go work at one of 50 cities building a huge subway system. Because it’s competitive — there’s so many cities doing it at once.

This is a real problem. I don’t know how to solve it. The passionate people, for example: I have basically never worked for a transit authority in my life, and I think that’s bad. You’d think, in the ideal world, someone who’s really passionate about this stuff would be brought into the tent.

And if you’re the Prime Minister of Canada, or you’re a leader of a country, and you’re looking and you think, “How do we get the people who are really invested in this going right working on this stuff?” And it doesn’t happen.

The same is true for the Marron Institute in New York City. It’s great that they’re doing that work, but shouldn’t they be working for the MTA and just solving these problems instead? It’s actually really valuable for the whole world that they’re doing the research, and I love it and I promote it a lot. But if you’re Mamdani or you’re Hochul, it’s clear that the actual best thing is for those people to be working on subway expansion so that New York isn’t ossified and stuck with the subway network they built 100 years ago.

But they’re not doing that. The institutions are not very well-equipped. They’re arrogant and they turn up their noses at people who are really passionate. Alon Levy sometimes releases articles at very odd hours of the night. It’s like people who work at Apple. A lot of those people have crazy working hours.

A lot of that is because they’re paid very highly. But a lot of it is because those people really care about their work. And transit would benefit by getting more people like that to work on transit projects. I just don’t think it exists. There isn’t a bridge.

There are a lot of passionate people in transit. I meet a lot of them. But I meet a lot more passionate people who aren’t working in it. Or I meet people who are in other industries that say, “I would love to get involved in the transit industry,” and they don’t really see a way. And I think if they got involved, they might be like, “Oh.”

A lot of people I know are really smart. They work at a transit agency, they get frustrated, and they leave and go work in private consultancy or they work in a totally different industry because they’re frustrated. And so that’s clearly part of the problem. It’s a human resources problem.

• Tesla has stopped referring to its “Full Self-Driving” feature as “self-driving” in response to European regulators who pointed out that a human is still required to be behind the wheel and alert (Bloomberg).
• Back in the States, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is looking into reports of Tesla robotaxis speeding through school zones (The Verge). That’s in addition to the NHTSA’s own investigation into Tesla’s self-driving mode, as well as the Cybercab’s lack of features like pedals, mirrors and a steering wheel, and Waymo traffic infractions.
• A lack of safe infrastructure is the main reason people cite for not biking more. (American Society of Civil Engineers)
• New York City’s congestion pricing policy reduced fine particulate air pollution in Lower Manhattan by 13 percent, according to a Columbia University study.
• A Twin Cities carshare is the latest victim of the Trump administration’s belief that everyone should own and drive their own personal vehicle. (MinnPost)
• The Seattle suburb of Everett is considering folding its bus system into Sound Transit. (KUOW)
• Phoenix is on track with its 2050 transit expansion and transportation safety plan. (KJZZ)
• The Texas DOT is adding lanes to I-10 between Houston and San Antonio. (Express-News; paywall)
• Los Angeles is exploring ways to create more shade to keep people comfortable in extreme heat. (Governing)
• Bay Area Rapid Transit ridership is up by double digits this year with a referendum looming on regional transit funding. (ABC 7)
• The St. Louis MetroLink completed its first rail expansion in 20 years. (Metro)
• Grand Rapids won a $6 million state grant to expand bus service during major downtown events. (MLive)
• Jacksonville is ending an expensive and ultimately unsuccessful autonomous shuttle program, and advocates want them to getback to basics to create a more useful transit system. (Streetsblog USA)
• St. Augustine partnered with a local bike rental company on a new bikeshare program. (Record)
• One of the few bike commuters in Honolulu has a plan to get more people pedaling. (Civil Beat)
• The Washington Post highlights six Amtrak routes where you can watch the leaves change color.

Fueling up America’s most popular car now costs an extra $85 every month compared to last year — and it costs even more in car-dependent states that require more driving, a new analysis finds.

Motorists who choose the ever-popular Ford F-150 in transit-poor states like Alabama, Kansas, and Kentucky can expect to pay $110 more at the pump per month than they did in 2025, according to a new report published by the Urban Institute.

Big pick-up drivers aren’t the only ones who are struggling — because motorists who picked smaller cars are, too.

The average American driver spends $65 more each month fueling up now than she did just one year ago, following the start of the Trump administration’s war with Iran which resulted in a dramatic increase in fuel prices. And because America is so car-dependent, the vast majority of people have no choice but to pony up.

“A bigger car is just going to end up consuming a lot more gas over time, and that means people are going to end up spending more money as a result,” said Yonah Freemark, who conducted the analysis.

Recommended Trump’s ‘Freedom Means Affordable Cars’ Rings Hollow As Gas Prices Surge Kea Wilson March 30, 2026

Of course, some transportation reform advocates might be tempted to shrug off the news that Ford F-150 drivers are struggling to pay their fuel bills — especially considering how few of them use pick-ups to actually haul anything bigger than a bag of groceries, and how deadly their vehicles are to pedestrians.

But advocates point out that “light trucks” — a category which includes pick-ups and SUVS — have surged in popularity on US roads not just because of consumer demand, but because of structural forces like the “SUV arms race” and regulatory loopholes that exaggerated their profit margins compared to smaller vehicles.

Production of light-duty trucks surpassed car production for the first time in 2018, and today, only four US automakers even produce a sedan. And as light truck purchases grow, more Americans are shouldering the financial burden.

Since fuel costs and the availability of mobility alternatives vary by state, that financial burden does, too. Wyoming residents pay $4.51 per gallon, nearly identical to the national average. Yet because they have so little transit, they spend more overall than any other state, averaging $347 per month on gas alone.

Recommended The ‘Affordability Crisis’ Conversation Can’t Leave Out the Cost of Cars Kea Wilson January 7, 2026

In transit-rich states, by contrast, sticker-shock at the pump doesn’t always mean high household transportation budgets. Even California’s $6.37 per gallon only adds up to $266 each month, because more residents can substitute drives with walking, biking, and public transit.

That’s why Freemark argues that expanding alternatives to driving is necessary to lowering costs. And while electric vehicle owners are able to dodge gas prices, the other costs of car ownership still create significant expense for households, like financing, maintenance, and insurance.

“Driving is inevitably going to be super expensive,” Freemark said. “It’s not like there’s a great way out of it.”

Recommended Sustainable Transportation Can Ease the Affordability Crisis — And Help Climate Champions Win Streetsblog May 19, 2026

Making it easier to walk, bike, and take transit, on the other hand, could unlock major cost savings for families. Congress’s recent purge of federal transit funding could jeopardize progress, but Freemark says that all levels of government can step up by shifting transportation funds away from highway expansions and towards transit operations, sidewalks, and bike lanes.

However they do it, providing alternatives to cars — big or small — can provide families with relief from rising fuel costs.

“Transportation is such a high share of many people’s daily expenses,” Freemark said. “People have to have alternatives in order to save money.”

This post is sponsored by Ride Illinois.

Last Friday, the Chicago City Council’s Traffic Safety Committee unanimously voted to expand the Smart Streets Pilot Program’s, camera enforcement of bus/bike lanes and bus stops in the central city, so that it eventually becomes a permanent, citywide program. Today it went to the full council for the final decision.

The Smart Street expansion plan.

Currently, the initiative involves cams mounted on CTA buses and City vehicles, which issue tickets to cars and trucks parked or standing in bus and bike facilities. (State legislation would have to be passed to legalize cam enforcement of driving in these lanes and stops.)

An enforcement camera attached to a City vehicle. Photo: City of Chicago

While some other news outlets have reported that the bill involves the camera enforcement of “double parking,” that’s only true if the double parking in question involves a paint-only, non-protected bike lane located on the left side of parked cars. “The program is not currently enforcing double parking [when no bike or bus lanes are present],” Chicago Department of Transportation spokesperson Erica Schoeder told Streetsblog this afternoon. “You’re right they may be confusing it with parking/stopping in bus and bike lanes, and bus stops, which are all being enforced.”

A misleading, basically erroneous Fox Chicago headline.

Committee Chair Ald. Daniel La Spata (1st) who co-sponsored the ordinance with Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th), heralded the win in an email to constituents. “This program has issued over 140,000 citations and generated roughly $2 million in revenue,” he write. “And 82 percent of drivers who get a warning never get a ticket and 64 percent of those that get a first ticket never get a second.”

This morning, Vasquez held a press conference about the legislation at City Hall. Several other alders and civilian Safe Streets advocates gave speeches in support of the bill.

Vasquez, at podium. Active Transportation Alliance Campaign Organizer W. Robert Schultz III is fourth from left. Photo: ATA spokesperson Nathan Cordero

“We support the proposed expansion of the Smart Streets ordinance,” said ATA’s W. Robert Schultz III during the presser. “Many times, when I’m a rider on the Chicago CTA bus number 66, it’s especially frustrating to be delayed when [drivers] park illegally in clearly marked red bus lanes. The Smart Streets program can help buses move faster in designated lanes and protect people biking from [having to make] potentially deadly maneuvers around vehicles parked in bike lanes.” 

Streetsblog live-posted parts of today’s City Council hearing. During Traffic Safety Chair La Spata’s (somewhat hard for a lay person to understand), presentation to the Council, the Smart Streets expansion ordinance was passed without the need for a full vote. Vasquez’s office and CDOT’s Schroeder confirmed this great news.

La Spata makes his (sort of esoteric) presentation to the Council. Screenshot of the livestream.

Here’s what I was able to record from La Spata’s uncharacteristically low-key presentation on the subject: “…passage of this item by the first, most favorable roll call vote from the Committee on Finance, and the associate unsuccessful motion to reconsider the vote.”

“Hearing none, so ordered,” responded Mayor Brandon Johnson.”

Sorry, but I haven’t done enough reporting at 121 N. LaSalle St. to be 100 percent fluent in Chicago City Council lingo.

But anyway, this is a great step forward for making bus and bike travel in our city safer and more efficient, which will likely save lives and prevent heartbreak. It will also make riding buses and bikes in our city a lot more pleasant. Congratulations to Ald. Vasquez, Ald. La Spata, and the Chicago sustainable transportation advocacy community for getting this done!

“Expanding the Smart Streets program citywide is a no-brainer,” Vasquez said in a statement. “We know that enforcing bus and bike lane violations changes driver behavior. The Smart Streets pilot showed that over 80 percent of drivers who received a warning did not commit a repeat violation. Now, with the citywide expansion, we have the ability to go after the companies who have proven to be repeat offenders. I truly believe this legislation will save lives, and I’m enormously proud that we were able to get it passed.”

Here are some more reactions to the win from other folks and organizations that helped make it happen.

this is fantastic news, enactment without enforcement is pointless. don’t park in the bike lanemissing you today Bean, nice to hear you remembered and honored by City Hall with this.

— TGS (@lilybeansdad.bsky.social) 2026-10-14T19:09:43.632Z

“Bean” is the nickname for Lily Shambrook, 3, who lost her life on June 9, 2022. She was riding on the back of her mother’s bicycle when a truck driver obstructed the bike lane they were riding in on Leland Avenue in Uptown, which caused the fatal crash.

Lily Shambrook by a fountain at McCormick Place during a bike ride on the Lakefront Trail. Photo: Provided

Today in the Committee on Pedestrian & Traffic Safety: The Divvy contract extension was NOT voted on. Committee members voted to hold the item in committee to further discuss concerns. The ordinance to make the Smart Streets Pilot permanent and expand it citywide PASSED!

— Alderman La Spata (@aldermanlaspata.bsky.social) 2026-10-09T21:31:47.324Z

Screenshot of posts by Bike Lane Uprising.

If you appreciate Streetsblog Chicago’s livable streets reporting and advocacy, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to support our work. Thank you!

An overwhelming majority of US motorists say they feel they have zero choice in how much they get behind the wheel — and most of them explicitly want to transportation system that doesn’t force them to drive almost everywhere they go, a new study finds.

A stunning 73 percent of self-identified drivers in a recent survey by the Climate and Community Institute said they “have no choice but to drive as much as they do,” with another 53 percent reporting that they “would like to have more transportation options” beyond endlessly reaching for the keys.

That second number may be an undercount — both because CCI conducted the poll before the war in Iran sent gas prices soaring, and because many Americans simply cannot imagine a future where their own cities make driving optional and offer attractive alternatives.

For the one in three US residents who can’t drive or lack reliable access to a car, though, those auto-centric cities are just a difficult fact of life — and they need more motorists to join them in the fight for more and better travel options.

“Whether you get around mostly by car or you don’t drive at all, most people in the U.S. are united by feeling unhappy with their daily transportation options,” said Emmett Hopkins, the transportation policy manager at the Institute and co-author of the study. “Broadly speaking, they want the same thing: more good transportation options that don’t [leave] a car as the only choice — or basically, the forced choice.”

Source: Data for Progress, Percentages may not total 100 percent due to rounding.

Unfortunately, most US policymakers haven’t exactly gotten the memo about how many of their constituents feel trapped by car dependency — never mind how many of them long to escape it.

Co-author and researcher Kira McDonald points out that the federal government routinely guarantees 80 percent of federal funds to automotive uses alone, while making much of the funding for shared and active transportation all too easy to claw back. As those ratios propagate across state and local transportation policies, highways, parking lots, and other car-centric infrastructure have come to dominate our physical environment.

Worse, car dominance has created the illusion that America is a “nation of drivers,” rather than a nation of people who drive because they have no other choice — and quite often, despite the fact that a lot of people can’t really afford cars.

Two in five adults surveyed said they struggled to weather an unexpected transportation cost like a car repair, and the same share said they sometimes have to make significant adjustments to their budget just to stay on the road.

“A ludicrous percentage of adults use cars to get to work — [but that’s] because we are under-investing in other modes,” McDonald added. “The novel contribution of this report was to supplement those [mode share statistics] with survey data, and ask people what they actually want.“

To get even further beyond the statistics, co-author Ruth Rojas led an effort to gather stories from non-drivers about how car dependency impacts their lives — and help explain why so many US residents are hesitant to join their ranks.

Again and again, she found that non-drivers struggled with unreliable transportation, navigating transit-poor neighborhoods, and lengthy commutes across sprawling regions. She cites the example of immigrant communities, where she says those challenges can fuel a belief that life would be easier on four wheels — until they actually get a car, and find themselves trapped in it for much of the day.

“[I personally grew up in] an immigrant family who didn’t have access to cars in a small town that was very spread out and didn’t have public transit,” added Rojas. “My family really bought into that idea that cars meant freedom, cars meant getting a job, cars meant more economic growth. … The narrative ends up being that cars give us a perceived freedom… What gets left out is everybody who doesn’t — or maybe can’t — [drive them].”

Rojas and her co-authors acknowledged that it’s not enough to simply make policymakers aware of how poorly the transportation system is serving is non-drivers and compulsory motorists alike — or even what a sheer majority of Americans belong to those categories.

Hopkins stressed that much of US transportation policy is the product of “profit-seeking forces” that have successfully influenced lawmakers to privilege automotive interests over the needs of everyday people — and it will take organizing among those people to change the tide.

“This call to offer more people more choices is really a call to stand up for working people against corporate power determining what options they have in their lives,” he adds.

Still, the report argues that change is possible, starting with “an overhaul of Departments of Transportation (DOTs) at the federal and state levels, as well as massive investment in diverse transportation options to help people have choice in how they get around.” The executive branch, meanwhile, must overhaul auto-centric “rules, guidelines, and culture,” while Congress must use its power of the purse to robustly fund that shift.

Needless to say, local governments must work fast to implement those changes on the ground, in ways that actually engage with the majority of residents who are clamoring for other options. And they have an even more critical role to play among residents who would embrace a different transportation landscape, if they just got a taste of how good life with a broader menu of mobility options can be — even if the transition feels temporarily uncomfortable.

“I think there’s a kind of induced demand [among] people who want to live outside of car dependency, but they don’t know it yet, because they haven’t experienced it,” added McDonald. “These policies always see their popularity improve after implementation.”

A version of this article is the first in a short series that was originally appeared on the author’s Substack. It is republished with permission; read part one in the series here.

Let’s look at some states’ transportation performance, starting with climate. Democrats support reducing climate emissions and Republicans don’t — right?

Not necessarily. Former Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee was often called the climate governor. But he didn’t apply his climate leadership to the state’s transportation program. He liked to build new highways too much. See our report, Fueling the Crisis, on how states spent their federal transportation funding under the Biden era Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).

Why did North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana perform so much better at reducing emissions than California, Washington, and Connecticut?

It wasn’t because they promised climate action and delivered. It’s because they are less likely to build highways they can’t afford to maintain. In other words: fiscal responsibility might be better for the climate than a climate champion.

Most people believe that Democrats care about more than just reducing traffic congestion. They want to provide ways to move around outside of a car. But do they?

North Carolina likes to brag about putting some money into rail and bike/ped projects, but that amount is very small compared to their highway building budget. That is no surprise when you look at the five scoring criteria North Carolina uses to prioritize statewide projects for funding:

• 30 percent travel time benefits v cost, which is how much vehicle speeds increase vs cost (safety is not part of their economic case);
• 30 percent congestion, which scores the problem of congestion, not how an investment will affect it;
• 10 percent economic competitiveness, which estimates how speeding up vehicles affects the economy according to the TREDIS model;
• 20 percent multimodal, which is just existing congestion on military and truck routes plus truck volumes; and
• 10 percent safety, which is the existence of a safety problem rather than how a project might improve it.

In other words, it’s 90 percent the existence of congestion and/or how an inaccurate transportation model claims a project will improve it … and 10 percent safety.

Recommended Oregon Highway Expansion Facing Second Lawsuit for ‘Cumulative Impacts’ George Kevin Jordan August 16, 2024

Oregon is often held up as a leader on transit — but it has a constitutional restriction on using the gas tax or vehicle taxes for transit and spends a fraction of what they spend on highways for transit.

The state has lost a lot of goodwill due to its roughly $1 billion budget gap that caught lawmakers and the public by surprise. Oregon’s truck taxation system has generated years of controversy over whether heavy trucks were paying too much, followed by calculations indicating they were paying too little.

And while the state pleads poverty about transportation maintenance and staffing, it commits billions in borrowing and matching funds to megaprojects, like the I-5 Rose Quarter expansion that will induce traffic and likely cost way more than whatever ODOT is saying it will cost now. Further, ODOT struggles to deliver the Columbia River Crossing project after decades of talking about it; I worked on this project when I worked for Rep. Brian Baird in the late 1990s.

The governor is looking for a new ODOT leader now. The fear is that she will pick someone who is an expert in how ODOT has run in the past rather than someone who understands how ODOT needs to modernize to deliver the results it has consistently promised to the Oregon taxpayers.

In fact, this is a challenge that many new governors — at least the 18 of them who will face after the election in November. Stay tuned, because we will have a memo for those newly elected leaders calling for and explaining how to connect their transportation priorities to their transportation spending.

Recommended Did Minnesota Just Release the Best Statewide Transportation Bill Yet? Streetsblog July 18, 2023

Some states have made progress but it isn’t always clear whether a new governor will maintain it.

The State of Minnesota will have a new governor, likely Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who has a voting record in the Senate of supporting a status quo transportation policy. But many of the exciting updates in Minnesota’s transportation policies were legislated, and the legislative champions, such as Sen. Scott Dibble, are likely to still be in office to protect them.

Under Gov. Jared Polis, Colorado has funded some pretty massive highway expansions that will do little-to-nothing to address congestion or spur the economy. But his administration also established a rule that requires the Colorado Department of Transportation and the state’s five metropolitan planning organizations to show that their transportation plans cut greenhouse gas emissions. If they can’t, they must offset those emissions or remove the projects that cause emissions increases.

The progressive Democrat that is likely to be the next governor of Colorado, state Attorney General Phil Weiser, was rumored earlier in the campaign to be squishy on this important policy. But recently, supporters sound more hopeful.

Recommended State DOTs Aren’t Stacking Up On Sustainability and Equity Kea Wilson April 2, 2025

This is not a comprehensive write-up of where progressive state DOTs land on transportation policy. There are blue states doing very interesting things, like Virginia and Smart Scale and Minnesota on transit funding and climate. There are red states that are being ridiculous, like Florida which has made some safety projects illegal even though it is the most deadly state for cyclists and third most deadly for pedestrians. I can’t cover everything here.

But which states are willing to try new things and innovate does not always track with their partisan leaning. For example, my organization has had success working on quick build safety demonstration projects on state roads in Alabama, Kentucky, and Tennessee — while being told by Pennsylvania and North Carolina that they simply couldn’t do the same. We have also worked with California, Connecticut, and Maryland on some awesome quick-build safety projects. Just don’t assume.

Recommended It’s Time For State DOTs to Step Up and Do a Better Job Kea Wilson March 24, 2025

The point is this: just because leaders claim to share your priorities does not mean they will do anything meaningful to move those priorities forward. And sometimes those who claim to oppose one of your goals (like reducing emissions) support other goals (like fiscal responsibility) that will get to the same outcomes.

Conservatives might sometimes produce better progressive outcomes than progressives, even if it is unintentional.If you support transit or more walkable communities or climate or reconnecting communities or fix-it-first or whatever, do not assume that a Democrat will be your champion or that a Republican will block your priorities.

No matter who is in charge, figure out what they care about and where your priorities might overlap or lead to similar outcomes. Demand leadership that is fresh and expert in where you want to go, not where you have been. And then demand that the transportation agency be held accountable for the results it achieves — whether that means criticizing your supposed allies or praising your supposed opposition.

• The rate of pedestrian deaths in the U.S. is more than twice that of most developed nations, and experts believe it will likely rise under Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s “car-obsessed MAGA ideology.” Under his leadership, the Trump administration scrubbed references to and proven safety measures like road diets and bike lanes. (The Guardian)
• More transit agencies are using tap-and-go fare payment systems. (Eno Center for Transportation)
• Boston is building a protected bike lane at the intersection where a driver killed transportation planner and cyclist Louisa Gag. (WBUR)
• Automated speed cameras in Denver and expanded hours when parking fees are in effect are expected to generate $6 million in revenue. (Denverite)
• Uber is spending $2.5 million to help re-elect New York Gov. Kathy Hochul at a time when state lawmakers are considering regulations on its competitors, like Waymo. (Politico)
• WalletHub ranked Philadelphia as the worst city in the U.S. to drive in. (Billy Penn)
• A walkable New Urban development in Utah is facing backlash from opponents of density. (Salt Lake Tribune)
• Tacoma is studying potential improvements to crash-prone Portland Avenue. (The Urbanist)
• Richmond is making more than 3,000 repairs to broken sidewalks near schools. (Standard)
• Relaxed zoning laws around Edmonton light rail have led to a 50 percent increase in new housing units. (CBC)
• Even some transit advocates like Reece Martin are starting to think high-speed rail is too expensive for Canada, and that frequent service might be more important. (The Transit Brief)
• Cyclists are challenging Ontario’s policy of tearing up bike lanes at Canada’s Supreme Court. (CP24)
• European cities are not electrifying their bus fleets fast enough to meet climate goals. (DW)

Streetsblog supports California high-speed rail because for all of the headaches caused by missteps in the early years, when all is said and done the state deserves, and one day will get, a high-speed rail line.

But these last few weeks have been rough. 

A state investigation found nearly $600,000 in questionable consultant travel expenses. The governor vetoed legislation intended to strengthen oversight earning jeers from the media. Republican politicians are demanding resignations, and the familiar chorus declaring the entire project a failure has gotten louder.

But the headlines about the latest scandal shouldn’t obscure another important story: work to prepare California’s first high-speed rail line continues. Construction is advancing in the Central Valley, and the authority is still working to connect that segment to the Bay Area.

The authority has completed 66 structures along the first 119 miles of the future rail line, including four projects in Tulare County earlier this month. Bridges, viaducts and underpasses must be finished before crews can install tracks through those locations, while the railbed and guideway must be prepared to support them. Once the civil works are complete, crews can install tracks, electrical power, signaling and communications systems.

The scandal is real, and the board is taking action

The latest controversy centers on a September investigation by the High-Speed Rail Authority’s inspector general. Auditors reviewed travel expenses submitted by four consulting firms over two years and found that authority staff had approved nearly $600,000 in questionable expenses.

Some consultants flew first class, took expensive rides and visited nightclubs, cigar lounges, bars and other destinations on the public’s dime. Many, but not all, trips lacked adequate justification or prior authorization. 

Ian Choudri.

On October 9, the authority’s board voted 7-2 to restrict authority CEO Ian Choudri’s contracting powers. He can no longer independently sign or manage contracts under $25 million, and the authority’s in-house attorneys must approve changes to new and existing contracts. The board already had authority over contracts exceeding $25 million.

The authority also paused travel payments to the four consulting firms, began reviewing their expenses and promised to seek reimbursement for questionable charges. Choudri told the board that disciplinary action had been taken against some consultants, although he did not provide details.

Meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed Assembly Bill 1608, a bill that would have given the inspector general more flexibility to hire specialized auditors and investigators and sign certain contracts. The governor argued that the office should work through existing state procedures, despite the inspector general’s concerns that those procedures have hampered timely investigations.

Vetoing AB 1608 seems to be an unforced error on the governor’s part as concerns that the construction authority is not well-run have spread well beyond just opponents of high-speed rail or Republicans looking to score political points. The legislation was authored by the Chair of the Assembly Transportation Committee Lori Wilson (D-Suisun City) and was passed overwhelmingly in the Assembly (64-8 with 7 abstentions) and Senate (39-0 with 1 abstention.)

Next Steps

The authority is also continuing the environmental review and planning needed to connect the Central Valley to the Bay Area.

In October, the agency issued a notice of preparation for a supplemental environmental impact report covering the San José-to-Merced project section through the Diablo Range, southeast of Gilroy to northeast of Los Banos. The previously approved alignment includes 15.1 miles of tunnels through the mountains. With construction costs rising and federal funding becoming less reliable, the authority is considering alternative ways to deliver the connection.

Residents can weigh in on the proposed alternatives for the San José-to-Merced high-speed rail route by attending public scoping meetings on November 4 at Casa de Fruta in Hollister or November 5 at the Los Banos Community Center, both from 5:30 to 7 p.m., or joining a virtual meeting on November 9. Written comments on the scope of the environmental review are due November 13 and can be emailed to the California High-Speed Rail Authority with the subject line “G-Y Project Segment HSR Scoping Comment.” For more details, click here.

What was supposed to be America’s first “autonomous” transit system is on pause in the midst of a fiscal crisis at the agency that built it — and some advocates say it could be a cautionary tale about deprioritizing a tried-and-true transit solutions in favor of untested ideas.

The Jacksonville Transit Authority recently announced that it would suspend operations on the Neighborhood Autonomous Vehicle Innovation system, known locally as NAVI, amidst a $39 million budget shortfall that also temporarily shuttered the Florida city’s eight-stop monorail system, Skyway, and resulted in the layoffs of nearly 200 people.

View this post on Instagram

That shortfall eventually drew the attention of Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who subpoenaed the JTA last week for a range of financial documents — including statements on NAVI ridership that have implications for state funding. (Information on more colorful expenditures, like massages, was also requested.)

Some local advocates, though, argue that the problems with NAVI began long before the current fiscal crisis, and speak to larger issues with an agency with a history of chasing shiny new technology when residents without cars are struggling to get around.

“It all spiraled out of control,” said Marcus Nelson, a Jacksonville native and public transportation activist. “[NAVI] was originally supposed to be affordable — and then it became this expensive monstrosity, which I guess that might not happen at all now.”

‘A lot of promises’ — but not many results.

Nelson isn’t the only Jaxson who has doubts about NAVI.

Even when it first launched in June of 2025, the system drew criticism for its $65 million price tag — $39.5 million of which came from local funds. That’s larger than the current shortfall, and indeed, the entire operating budget of some transit agencies, like the Michigan capital of Lansing.

“If there wasn’t this insistence to force this type of autonomous technology into the transit system and to be the first to do this, you’d have plenty of money within budget to maintain your core operations and keep the Skyway running — not lay people off,” said Ennis Davis, a local transpiration planner and co-founder of Jacksonville Magazine.

Running a downtown route of just 3.5 miles, mostly along a single road — and with a fleet of just 14 Ford shuttle vans, each with a capacity of only nine passengers — NAVI has also faced pushback for not meaningfully expanding shared mobility access in America’s single largest major city by land mass outside Alaska.

Jacksonville measures a staggering 747.3 square miles in all, and was recently ranked in the top 10 most-sprawling large metro areas in the country; critics say NAVI has little hope of scaling out to its farthest reaches and attracting meaningful ridership.

In November 2025, though, local investigative journalists even alleged that transit agency employees were being paid to spend hours on the autonomous vans to boost ridership and make NAVI appear more viable on paper. The agency denied this, and claimed employees were simply acting as “ambassadors to help riders become familiar with the service.”

Perhaps most outrageously, though, NAVI’s so-called “autonomous” transit system has never been truly autonomous, requiring a human “attendant” behind the wheel of each of its vehicles at all times.

And while there are federal restrictions outside JTA’s control on what type of cars are allowed to operate on local roads without drivers, some locals say the agency still fell short of its lofty promises. (The JTA did not respond to a request for comment on this story.)

“The technology is still risky,” said Davis, who is also a member of the downtown development review board for the city. “There are a lot of things beyond the city of Jacksonville’s control, beyond JTA’s control; there are federal regulations that have got to be dealt with. But still, a lot of the promises that JTA has made are not coming to fruition.”

‘Political poison’

In Davis’s view, though, perhaps the most damning aspect of NAVI was how it diverted attention and resources from the broader public transportation options Jacksonville sorely needs — which residents have demanded for years.

He traces that groundswell back to the 1970s, when Jacksonville first won its bid to build the Skyway automated monorail system with help from the federal Downtown People Mover program — though unlike the the NAVI, the Skyway is actually driverless.

Originally conceived as the last-mile component of a larger shared mobility plan, Davis says that system’s ambitions were quickly undermined by policies that incentivized suburban sprawl — not to mention ever-more driving. Jacksonville recently ranked in the top 20 most-dangerous US metros for pedestrians.

The Jacksonville Skyway

At its height in 2015, the Skyway logged just 5,000 riders a day in a city of more than a million. And since it was approaching the end of its useful life anyway, local officials were doubtful about its future.

“[Today, even the name] ‘Skyway’ is political poison,” Davis adds. “It’s associated with being a transit boondoggle; [the JTA] doesn’t want to use that term. So they decided, ‘we’re just gonna call it something new.'”

In acronym-happy Jacksonville, that rebranding and planning effort became known as “U2C,” short for the “Ultimate Urban Connector” program. Davis says, though, that despite past griping about the Skyway “boondoggle,” the process revealed that many residents actually wanted more public transportation options — and they even wanted to see the Skyway become a meaningful part of the larger shared network they’d been promised decades ago.

Rather than asking where Jaxsons wanted to go and then determining the best mode to get them there, though, critics say agency officials over-focused on the next-gen transit options they wanted to provide. On JTA’s website today, U2C is referred to simply as “a program to introduce autonomous vehicles (AVs) into the JTA’s transportation system.”

“The community overwhelmingly recommended that the Skyway be modernized and expanded,” Davis counters. “Somewhere along the line, though, JTA took that ‘as we’re going to advance new technology’ — so, autonomous vehicles.”

Now, the agency is asking the public to weigh in on six alternatives for the future of the Skyway — a list which Davis says presents dubiously high estimates for rehabilitating the monorail, potentially steering respondents towards AV-centric options like converting the track into an elevated road exclusively for NAVIs.

‘Zombie agency’

Still, both Davis and Nelson acknowledge that Jacksonville’s experiments with new transportation technology are not entirely to blame for JTA’s budget crisis.

Like most US transit agencies, the agency has struggled in the wake of COVID, especially in a state that systemically underfunds public services and whose voters may soon force even steeper cuts. Even with the help of federal grants, which NAVI and the Skyway both received, both advocates say expanding transit service in such an autocentric city can be an uphill climb.

Recommended Will ‘Autonomous’ Buses Force Drivers Out of a Job — Or Make Them More Important Than Ever? Kea Wilson May 31, 2022

Still, Nelson argues JTA officials should be held accountable for pushing the NAVI solution as hard as they have — if any of them are still around, that is. CEO Nat Ford announced he was leaving the agency in July when the impending NAVI shutdown was first rumored; he’s set to take the helm at the Dallas Area Rapid Transit later this month.

“Obviously, it’s a pretty bad look to have a large public agency very loudly and proudly chasing this dream to then have their financial position erode in front of them — and then the CEO in charge runs off to another state,” Nelson added. “Taxpayers feel like they’re being handed a bag … In a state where it’s challenging to bring in new local funding for transit, you’re going to be stuck with this zombie agency walking around with all this infrastructure that they can’t really afford to take advantage of.”

‘The pain is the first step’

Davis says he’s still hopeful that Jacksonville’s transit future can be resuscitated — if they get back to basics and stop chasing “national firsts.”

He cites Miami as an example, whose notorious Metromover circulator also won a Downtown People Mover grant, only to face struggling ridership much like the Skyway. Over time, though, he says the city changed its land use policy to encourage transit-oriented development around its stations, alongside improvements to the larger transit network of which it’s a part; Metromover reported a 54.5 percent year-over-year ridership jump last month, bolstered by the World Cup.

If Jacksonville can think holistically, too, he hopes it can replicate its downstate neighbor’s success – and that starts with looking at how well the entire transportation landscape is working for people, not just swapping a monorail for a fleet of glorified shuttle vans that can’t even drive themselves like they claim.

“We really need to have an honest conversation about transit in general in Jacksonville, and understand that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution,” he adds. “We’ve always tried to come up with the thing that no one else has ever done, and [we’ve always said,] ‘We’re going to be the first and greatest and best at this.’ [But you can wait to] see other cities touch the hot stove and burn themselves; you don’t need to touch the hot stove, too.”

The Miami Metromover

In time, advocates are hopeful that the JTA can get its financial house in order and start expanding the transit network, even if service cuts and layoffs hurt for now.

Some of those needs might even be met by automated technologies, which Davis says he doesn’t oppose. But if they are, it should be because vehicles like NAVIs are truly the best fit for a specific mobility purpose, in a broader ecosystem of diverse mobility options — not because the agency wants to claim the title of “first in the nation.”

“I think it’s more of a cautionary tale of not bringing the community to the decision-making table of its future,” he added. “The pain we’re going through now is the first step. Some of these things that we’ve been trying to force people into just need to die.”

A version of this article is the first in a short series that was originally appeared on the author’s Substack. It is republished with permission; check back tomorrow for part 2.

I work at a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization, but that doesn’t mean I can’t talk about my experience working with each party. And a poor understanding of what is partisan and what is bipartisan in transportation leads to poor advocacy and bad outcomes.

I pick more on the Democrats because they make loads of speeches and promises about how much they share my organization’s transportation priorities, but they don’t show it in their legislating or administration of programs. Republicans are more honest about their trepidation or even opposition.

And while it surprises people to hear this, when Republicans agree with us, they are much more likely to champion those changes. For example the creation of the intercity passenger rail program in the 2015 surface transportation bill wouldn’t have happened without Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS).

Recommended Highway to Hell: Fed Infrastructure Funding, Even Under Biden, Has Been Terrible for the Environment Gersh Kuntzman November 13, 2024

Let’s dig into this, starting with Democrats.

Democrats tend to claim that funding transit, rail, and walking and biking infrastructure is a priority. They talk about creating good-paying jobs and building a system that does not hurt the environment, public health, or the neighborhoods around it. But they tend to support the exact same projects and programs as those who do not champion these things.

Republicans talk about transportation investments that support a strong economy. They want the states to have control over federal funds and to support rural areas, improve freight movement, and to ensure that the user pays and that the user who pays reaps the benefits of the investments they fund. For the most part, they don’t actually end up funding projects that accomplish those outcomes.

Both parties do so much to undercut what they claim to care about.

Recommended Study: How The Last Three Presidents Helped Shape Our Local Transportation Landscapes Kea Wilson October 9, 2024

Democrats often focus on supporting spending that creates good construction jobs, but they are less concerned with whether the projects those jobs build accomplish anything or even cause harm. Republicans say they want to prioritize rural needs but then pour money into “fixing” urban congestion with highway expansions that create more congestion or they push highways through rural villages that hollow them out.

While both parties are foolish, they are not the same. Republicans would rather have nothing than something they don’t like. Democrats need something and make it clear they will take anything over nothing. So Republicans have a stronger negotiating position.

Republicans are also willing to use their administrative power to push their priorities, while Democrats prefer to write plans about what someone should do someday.

Some examples: I worked at the U.S. Department of Transportation during the Obama Administration. During those eight years, Congress passed and the President signed two transportation authorization bills. Both of them maintained the basic structure of the program that has existed since 1991:

• 80 percent of funding for highways (all guaranteed) and 20 percent for transit (not all guaranteed);
• no reward for improvements in priorities like safety or repairing crumbling infrastructure, and no accountability for doing worse;
• small programs (e.g., Transportation Alternatives, the Highway Safety Improvement, and Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement programs) to fix the ongoing damage caused by all of the rest of the much bigger programs; and
• continued support for tools that made it hard to do what we claimed we wanted, like a benefit-cost analysis that quantified mostly congestion benefits, travel demand modeling that was consistently wrong, and design standards that produced unsafe results, etc.

Democrats don’t take their progressive stances into transportation.

For example, when Democrats talk about addressing climate change, they mean that they want the auto companies to produce more efficient cars, not that they want to produce a more efficient transportation system.

There is a bipartisan version of this too. Such as when members of both parties say they want safer roads, they mean they want people to behave better on the roads, and maybe that auto manufacturers should build safer cars, when pushed. They do not mean that they would require roads to be designed in ways that produce safer results.

Recommended New House Infrastructure Bill: Cuts To Transit, Mixed Bag for Active Transportation Kea Wilson May 20, 2026

The first Trump Administration did not move a transportation bill. The Biden Administration did, with some fanfare.

Biden’s bill included a lot more money, but for the most part, the same structural problems bulleted above continued — though credit to them for funding rail investment and electric vehicle charging infrastructure. Unfortunately, they made both programs cumbersome, and most of the money was still sitting unused when the second Trump Administration took over, allowing them to rescind those grants and repeal or change those programs.

Last summer, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee passed a bill, almost unanimously, that cuts transit and rail, ends the climate and EV charging programs, and includes almost none of the smaller programs that fix the damage caused by the big programs, except for a couple safety programs that the Trump Administration has already said they will not to be used as the law intends.

Committee Democrats — especially the progressives — praised the bill publicly, but privately said that this was “the best they could do” in the current political environment. However, most have also made clear that, if the political environment changes in the next Congress, they will feel pressure to support the same bill, because they voted for it already.

One has to wonder who is actually supporting the progressives’ supposed priorities.

Recommended What You Missed in the Transportation Reauthorization This Summer Kea Wilson September 16, 2026

Progressive leadership does not tend to result in progressive transportation policy. If groups that want the outcomes that progressives claim to care about, then they need to dial up the pressure for real actions.

Speeches don’t create change. And decades of saying that they wish they could do more started sounding hollow years ago.

Tomorrow I will focus on the so-called progressives and champions of multimodal transportation at the state level. Spoiler alert: it is the same as at the federal level.

• What really cuts down on traffic is access to driving alternatives. Yet the proposed Bipartisantransportation bill, the BUILD America 250 Act, would cut transit by 20 percent while raising road construction funding by 8 percent. (Transportation for America)
• Surprise, surprise: A network of protected bike lanes is more likely to get people pedaling than a patchwork of sharrows and off-road paths, according to a University of New Mexico study. (Cycling West)
• Darrell Owens dunked on two California newspapers’ editorials urging voters to reject a Bay Area transit funding referendum. (The Discourse Lounge)
• I-35 traffic from San Antonio to Dallas is so bad that it’s making San Antonio drivers reconsider Amtrak. (MySA)
• Speed cameras have been successful in slowing down Minneapolis drivers on the five roads where they’ve been tried. (Star Tribune)
• North Carolina suspended its 41-cents-per-gallon gas tax, but drivers are not likely to see the full savings. (Raleigh News & Observer)
• Portland is expanding its sidewalk cleaning program to historically underserved areas. (Oregonian)
• Helena, Montana is considering establishing fixed-route bus service. (Free Press)
• Vancouver police are out in force ticketing e-scooter riders for not wearing helmets. (Daily Hive)
• Pedestrian deaths in Toronto are up 24 percent this year (CBC). While perhaps not directly related, it doesn’t seem like now is a great time to start tearing up bike lanes (Sun).
• Edinburgh may extend the times when certain lanes are restricted to buses beyond traditional rush hours. (Reporter)

• In cities across the country, “friendly neighborhood vigilantes” who are tired of civic inaction are painting their own crosswalks and installing their own benches at bus stops. Some cities fight this guerrilla urbanism, while others embrace it. (Vox)
• Recent court filings include new evidence that ExxonMobile knew that fossil fuels cause climate change and concealed that information from the public. (Inside Climate News)
• How to design a deep underground subway station that doesn’t feel claustrophobic. (Arups)
• A New York transit official accused formerly beloved “Train Daddy” Andy Byford, who’s now heading the Trump administration’s effort to redesign Penn Station, of going “full MAGA.” (Gothamist)
• Indianapolis is overhauling a notoriously dangerous Massachusetts Avenue intersection. (WTHR)
• Amtrak has selected firms to design two replacement bridges in Maryland that will allow trains to go faster. (Trains)
• Seattle’s Sound Transit released a virtual tour of the future 3 Line. (Westside Seattle)
• The Austin Transit Partnership is disputing claims that light rail construction could force a popular supermarket to close. (KVUE)
• A Milwaukee suburb has banned e-bikes and e-scooters from sidewalks and parks. (TMJ4)
• Iowa City is installing its first protected bike lanes. (KCRG)
• Boston transit officials are looking into using trained falcons to keep stations free from pigeon droppings. (The Guardian)
• An alligator was blocking traffic in Florida, but police let the scaly suspect off with a warning. (Tampa Free Press)

It’s time to give you an update on what’s going on at your favorite website.

On Jan. 1, I’ll step down as editor in chief of Streetsblog and hand the reins (and reign) to David Meyer, whose talent and experience make him perfectly suited for this moment. David will be just the fourth editor in chief in our 20 years (following me, Ben Fried and founding editor Aaron “Honku” Naparstek).

I’m not doing the full George Washington — I’m not departing to my vine and fig tree. In fact, I’ll remain on hand as senior editor for as long as people think I can help make this city a better place, one street at a time. I know, some of you feel I’ve never helped do that, but we’ll have to agree to disagree.

But one thing we can all agree on is David Meyer, who was a reporter for Streetsblog under Fried and in my early days, and returned in 2023 as managing editor. In between, David worked as a reporter at the New York Post, which is certainly not our favorite paper ideologically, but we have long respected how Post reporters turn in clean, tight copy with a strong point of view.

And that’s Streetsblog’s MO: aggressive, in-the-moment, challenging, bold, and, most important, narrow and visionary at the same time. I’ve played a role in that, but thanks to his two tenures, David has been a major reason why we have become such a crucial part of the media landscape. We’ve also won many awards and broken many important stories, attesting to the importance of the work that reporters Dave Colon, Kevin Duggan, Sophia Lebowitz, Sammy Sussman and Henry Beebe-Center, and editors J.K. Trotter, Emily Lipstein and Kea Wilson have done and are doing.

We won a freakin’ Polk Award, for Pete’s sake!

That was fun, but Streetsblog needs to keep that momentum going, and David Meyer is the ideal person for the task. He needs no introduction to the scope of the road violence problem in our supposedly great city, where road fatalities remain a nearly daily occurrence; injuries from crashes are in the tens of thousands per year; and there are roughly 220 reported crashes every day. The numbers are simultaneously mind-boggling and also barely a blip on the frenzied radar screen of New York life.

The livable streets movement is, again, at a crossroads: despite New York City’s reputation as a progressive Mecca, our civic life is dominated by revanchists who fight all improvements, whether it is a simple bike lane to keep kids safe, a bus lane to speed the commutes of thousands of working people, a new residential development to house our neighbors, or even a train line to bring hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers closer to jobs that they can access without the debt cancer of car ownership.

The movement for safe streets is winning — there are open streets, there are school streets, there are investments in our buses and subways, there are more and more bike lanes — but two steps of progress are often accompanied by one step backwards.

With David in charge, Streetsblog will re-energize the movement against that sclerotic status quo. He will bring fresh strategies and energy to a movement whose arc of history definitely does not always bend towards bike lanes. Unlike my aging brain, David’s is nimble, savvy and strategic — far better able to respond to the challenges of today and tomorrow (looking at you, robo-cars).

So please welcome him to his new position by extending all courtesies — and emails and late-night texts — to him. With your help, dear readers, he’s going to do great.

One more note. Streetsblog provides its reporting free-of-charge, and we rely on your support to make it happen. If you’d like to make a contribution, perhaps in my honor, use widget below. Any amount goes a long way.

Streetsblog!

We’re all ready for the holiday weekend, so let’s take a quick jaunt up to Minneapolis, which has arguably the best cycling network in America — and some lessons to teach other communities about how to create connections for people on two wheels.

And that’s coming from a channel called “Chicagoans Who Bike.” If these ultra-wide, curb-level, full-size-snow-plow-ready paths can overcome the Bears/Vikings rivalry, you know they’ve got to be good.

Or, if you need a longer getaway, head on over to the international terminal to tag along on Shifter’s trip to Shanghai, where the prolific YouTuber unpacks China’s surprising history with the bicycle.

A few decades ago, some of the country’s megacities logged cycling mode share as high as sixty-four percent, absolutely crushing the numbers from far more talked-about bike paradises like Amsterdam and Copenhagen. Today, though, cities like Beijing may still have some of the best bike “hardware” (read: infrastructure) around, but they don’t always have great “software” (read: culture) — though he argues that could change. Watch below to find out why.

• Parking mandates raise rents by 17 percent nationally, or about $204 a month, according to a UCLA study. Even worse, 71 percent of carless households are paying for a parking space they don’t use. Minimum parking requirements drive up rents not only by bundling the cost of parking, but by reducing the number of units built. (California YIMBY)
• Early suburbs were walkable and build around railways and streetcar lines, and they can still provide inspiration today. (Planetizen)
• In addition to improving fuel efficiency, California’s new tire standards will save drivers $1 billion a year in fuel or electricity costs. (Grist)
• New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Agency is adding fare gates to more subway stations after finding that they reduce fare evasion by 72 percent. (NY Times)
• High-speed rail connecting Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia is making progress. (The Columbian; paywall)
• Plans to convert Louisville’s 9th Street from a highway to a boulevard with a bike path and linear park are almost complete. (WDRB)
• San Antonio transit agency VIA approved a $1.1 billion, five-year spending plan that will fund a second bus rapid transit line and a new transit center. (KSAT)
• Minnesota updated its statewide bicycle master plan. (BikeMN)
• Miami-Dade raised transit fares by 50 cents, the first hike in 13 years. (Florida Politics)
• Knoxville built a raised crosswalk at the site where a hit-and-run driver killed an elderly woman last year. (10 News)
• Denver scooter- and bikeshare operator Veo is paying users to stop illegally riding on the sidewalk. (Westword)

This week on Talking Headways we are sharing Part 1 of our conversation with Reece Martin of The Transit Brief in Toronto at the Mpact Transit + Community Conference. We discuss China’s transit expansion, the politics and impacts of fare policy, construction costs around the globe, the US’s existential crisis and the material benefits of progress.

Avid listeners know the drill: Press play on the audio player embedded below, read an AI-generated transcript here, or digest the edited excerpt at the end of this post.

Reece Martin: The US is clearly in a civilizational struggle with China — and it’s like, hey, they’re building all this stuff, and you can’t build even highways? Even if you think that the right thing for the US to do is just build more car infrastructure, you can’t even do that.

The state is geriatric. It’s run by geriatrics. It’s an existential problem. You wanna build defense infrastructure. You wanna build transportation infrastructure, energy infrastructure — and you just can’t because of all of this proceduralism and various other problems, right?

The things that would let you build more subways, would let you build more housing, and would let you do all these other things. And I think it would make the United States a better place, a more dynamic place, right? And it’s good for the economy, right? I’m reading a fantastic book, I recommend everyone goes and reads it. It’s called Order Without Design, by Alain Bertaud.

He’s French. My French pronunciation, despite being Canadian, is horrendous. It’s great. But it’s also quite interesting because urban issues are very progressive-coded, and he’s like a total market fundamentalist, and it’s great. We impose so many constraints on ourselves, and if you actually didn’t, you would probably get better, more dynamic cities.

Cities are what creates great dynamic economies. And you look at a place like New York in the early 20th century — that’s the dream, right? They’re building a ton of infrastructure, building a ton of housing. The city was growing. It was getting denser.

It was getting more dynamic, like what Chinese cities are experiencing now, right? It’s the same thing. It’s a state-led process, whereas in the US and in London as well, this was actually run by private companies initially. And to some extent, New York subway expansion was kinda killed by the city getting involved and then kind of building all of these redundant parallel lines to the private operators.

You need to create that dynamism that lets cities grow. Look at Austin or Atlanta. They would be better cities if they had great transit systems because it would create competition. Even if you’re a driver — it’s like, well, if the roads are too busy, if they’re not improving, then I’ll just get on the train.

But because that doesn’t exist, your whole city just suffers as a result. And so I think that something that is healthy in Ontario and in Canada more broadly is that transit and transportation, while it’s still politically contentious, nobody disagrees that you need to build this stuff.

Jeff Wood: My wife’s Chinese. We’ve been going back every year. I usually spend about a month there, and it’s just eye-opening to go and see what’s happening in Shenzhen or even Hong Kong or even in northern cities.

Her city is the main city in a province, and it’s a small city compared to Beijing and Shanghai, but it has two new subway lines. And just seeing that and how the people are responding to that.

I interviewed Olivia Plotnick, who is an American from Oregon living in China. She’s been living there for the last 10 years. She’s a brand specialist, and she did this trip where she went to 30 cities in three months using high-speed rail. And I asked her: “Well, what do people think about this?” And she said, “I talked to the cab drivers, and they think it’s amazing.”

All the high-speed rail, all the infrastructure, they can see things happening. They can see more customers. And on her side, where she talks about brands and new brands, the second tier of Chinese cities, there’s a competition between these brands that are starting up because of all the infrastructure that’s happening.

And there’s a discussion about not only building the infrastructure, but about how we can make our regions better because of the infrastructure we’ve already built. How can we create better biotech investment? Well, let’s create a cluster of cities outside of Shanghai that you already connected with subways and with high-speed rail that enhance the ability of people to share information and share ideas to get more patents, those types of things.

And I feel like we’re having that discussion a little bit in the private sector. The folks that are investing in technology are doing things, but it’s not kind of the same way as thinking about how you can connect all these places so that new discussions about technology and investment and all those things can happen.

It’s really frustrating to go and see what they’ve done there and what we’re doing here, and what we’re wasting money on in the United States. And I shouldn’t say here because we’re in Canada. But in the United States, we’re still spending so much money on road expansion and the highway system, and it’s already built out.

It’s completely not valuable anymore to spend more money on it because it’s built out. You need to shift over to something else, like high-speed rail, that’s actually going to connect places and create that vitality and that collision of ideas that we really need.

Reece Martin: I think there’s two things that are pretty interesting. I’m actually a tech guy. I did computer science at university, so I’m not super-cynical about tech, even if AI is a little concerning. You have to sometimes reflect that most of the new technology developed in my life, in terms of the value extracted.

There’s a lot of good biotech. It’s great that we can cure a bunch of cancers that we previously couldn’t. So I don’t wanna be too negative. But if you look at consumer technology and software, which is a huge part of the economy, a lot of this stuff is useful, but a lot of it is actually just net-negative on people’s quality of life.

Like Instagram — the world would probably be better without it, right? There’s a lot of things like that. So you just sort of wonder. You look at China, right? They’ve spent all this money and effort building something. If you live in Portland, and you could go to Seattle for the afternoon, that is gonna make your life better in a way that Instagram is not gonna make your life better. It’s gonna let you live in the real world.

Jeff Wood: Yeah, the tourism there has exploded. People can go to different parts of the country and see some of their sights and ancient sites.

Reece Martin: And that’s good. Imagine if it were easier and cheaper to travel from California to Nevada or California to Arizona. Even politically, these things help people not be crazy because they would interact more with people with different views and from different places. And I think there’s been a real focus on this: How do we extract more money out of people for the latest iPhone? And not: How can we materially improve living standards?

I can see some of this as a Canadian because when I grew up in Vancouver, the SkyTrain system was 40 percent as big as it is today. The city looked totally different. It’s covered in high-rises now. There’s this all-new SkyTrain. There’s new highways and bridges.

The same is true in Toronto and Montréal. If you look at the population of Canada when I was born, it was probably in the high 20 millions. We’re now at 40 million. It would as if the US was at 500 million people, if it had experienced that kind of growth.

There’s housing costs, which are really difficult here. I don’t want to frame it as entirely positive. But you just recognize that positive progress is possible. When I was growing up, you couldn’t just take the train to the airport in Vancouver and then take into the city from Toronto’s airport. Now you can.

Next year it’ll be Montréal. This constant sense of progress and more options, more accessibility, more people that you can meet every year. When people don’t have that experience of living in a society that has so much forward progress and momentum, I think they underrate how valuable it is.

Even if you are a cab driver and you’re a bit worried about what you’re gonna do — well, so much is happening. I’m gonna figure it out, right? It’s a positive for all of society.

• Transportation used to be a relatively nonpartisan issue — see President Obama’s appointment of Republican Ray LaHood as his first transportation secretary, or George W. Bush tapping Democrat Norm Mineta — but not anymore. Sean Duffy and the rest of MAGA revel in revving V8 engines while attacking “DEI bike lanes,” suing over congestion pricing, and withholding funding for transit and pedestrian projects. (Bloomberg CityLab)
• It’s not just in the U.S. Worldwide, the far right is railing against sustainable transportation, according to Christian Wolmar. (Transport News)
• A recent poll shows that a Bay Area transit tax referendum only has 48 percent support. A majority are at least willing to consider decimating the region’s transit system. (SFGate)
• Michigan police are arresting immigrants on minor traffic and jaywalking charges, then turning them over to ICE. (Michigan Public)
• The Washington, D.C. city council approved $300 million for Metro improvements around the new RFK football stadium (Post). However, neighborhood residents are unhappy with a planned nine-story parking deck (The Cool Down).
• An Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributor argues that the city is obligated to build light rail along the Beltline because over 70 percent of voters approved it.
• Suburban Minneapolis communities are asking the Trump administration to help them get more local road funding. (Star Tribune)
• Can Boston’s electric trains replace overhead wires? (Grist; Streetsblog MASS)
• With 10 million riders as of late September, Seattle’s scooter- and bikeshare ridership is on pace to shatter last year’s record. (PubliCola)
• There’s a lot of tension in Minneapolis between drivers who are rudely blocking walkways and homeowners who are putting up homemade, nonenforceable no-parking signs. (Axios)
• Former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin is a big Minecraft fan. (The Ringer)