B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition

Nota editorial – Tejiendo economías para la vida Por Melanie E L Bush, Halwest Karim y Madhuresh Kumar Introducción El mes pasado, el Banco Mundial y el Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) celebraron sus Reuniones Anuales en Bangkok, Tailandia, reuniendo a gobiernos, instituciones financieras y responsables de la formulación de políticas para deliberar sobre el futuro de la economía mundial. Más de ochenta años después de su creación, estas instituciones continúan ejerciendo una enorme infl…

Editorial Note – Weaving Economies for Life By Melanie E L Bush, Halwest Karim and Madhuresh Kumar Introduction Last month, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) held their Annual Meetings in Bangkok, Thailand, bringing together governments, financial institutions and policymakers to deliberate on the future of the global economy. More than eighty years after their establishment, these institutions continue to exercise enormous influence over the economic policies and dev…

Events Upcoming events Kurdish Experiment in Radical Democracy and Autonomy: Struggles and Risks - November 13th As part of the webinar series for building a Global Alliance for Radical Democracy and Autonomy (GARDA), the Global of () invites you to a conversation on the Kurdish experience of radical democracy and autonomy, focusing on its struggles and risks.GTAGTATapestryAlternativesGTAalternativesTapestryAlternativesAlternativesalternativesTapestryAlternativesGTAGTATapestryAlternatives…

El experimento kurdo de democracia radical y autonomía: luchas y riesgos Fecha y lugar * Fecha: viernes, 13 de noviembre de 2026 * Hora: 1:00 p. m. – 2:30 p. m. GMT * Formato: Seminario web en línea * Idioma: Inglés, con interpretación simultánea al españolGTA

Kurdish Experiment in Radical Democracy and Autonomy: Struggles and Risks Date and venue * Date: Friday, November 13th, 2026 * Time: 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm GMT * Format: Online webinar * Language: English, with simultaneous Spanish interpretation TapestryAlternativesGTAGTAGTATapestryAlternativesGTA

This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re heading to the capital of Texas for Movability Austin’s Movability Summit, where I’m giving the keynote speech. I discuss how cities and density create long-term value, and how auto-dependent monocultures affect household budgets by extracting wealth.

Dedicated listeners of Talking Headways know the program: You can listen to the audio in player embedded below, read the full transcript here or check out the excerpt below.

Today, we design transportation systems primarily for cars alone, disabling 30% of society that can’t drive or doesn’t want to. Ana Zivarts shared this number with us on Episode 488. This is also what’s frustrating about the idea of running cities, quote-unquote, “like a business.” As my friend Laurel Padgett-Seekins told us on Episode 573, businesses can have market segments.

They can exclude specific people who aren’t in their target demographic. But cities, transit agencies, public agencies, they can’t do that. They are meant to serve everyone. As we develop new technologies that can serve a great purpose, sometimes we become over-reliant on them or don’t build parallel infrastructure paths that allow people to participate meaningfully without them.

And by leaving people out, we’re reducing the value that supports a greater quality of life. Our cities have value in the proximity they can create, but our systems are built to extract value, not generate it. We allow speculation and give our value to speculators only to extract it through taxes and suffer the resulting boom and bust cycles.

In a car-oriented monoculture, we are extracting value from cities the way a venture capital firm would treat an older business, stripping it for parts and giving the value to others. And let me be clear, I’m not blaming the car here. They are but one tool in a toolbox. I’m pushing back on a system that puts them at the top of the pyramid and ignores geometry, space constraints and the value of proximity and access.

The car monoculture is an evolutionary dead-end, like the redwood tree. Redwoods are my favorite tree. They are majestic, but also a time capsule of a planet that doesn’t exist anymore. They used to exist in the whole northern hemisphere, and through evolution specialized to take moisture out of the air.

That atmosphere no longer exists except in certain parts of California and one small part of China. We are limiting ourselves in the same way with our evolution into a car monoculture, requiring cars and phones to participate in a society that’s always changing and trying to extract resources from us.

Stepping away from a monoculture of automobility towards a multimodal culture of access will create more long-term value for people and likely diversify our ability to adapt into the future.

Sewage is full of organic matter that can be a source of energy. But it also carries harmful chemicals as well as leftover medicines that conventional treatment methods can’t remove easily.

Researchers now report a technology that can solve three sewage-related problems at the same time. Their new device uses bacteria in wastewater to generate electricity while breaking down a hard-to-degrade antibiotic and producing a valuable industrial chemical. The team published their results in Journal of Power Sources.

There have been plenty of research efforts to harness microbes for treating wastewater while producing renewable energy. The approach uses microbial fuel cells, which are battery-like devices with two electrodes.

In microbial fuel cells, bacteria grow on an electrode and devour organic matter, converting chemical energy into electrons, which flow in an external circuit to produce electricity. Then those electrons meet oxygen at the other electrode to create water.

Turns out that microbial fuel cells usually generate very small amounts of electricity. “So we asked a different question: What else could those electrons do when they arrive?,” writes the team from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Advanced Materials and Processes Research Institute in Science X Dialog.

 

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If all the electrons don’t combine with oxygen and hydrogen at the second electrode, the product is hydrogen peroxide instead of water. Hydrogen peroxide is a household chemical used for disinfection and bleaching. It is also used widely in chemical manufacturing. The chemical industry makes it today using an energy- and chemical-intensive process in large plants.

To get the right reaction in the microbial fuel cell, the researchers designed a new electrode. They embedded iron and nickel oxides on a flexible carbon fiber cloth. When they heated the cloth in the presence of acetylene at 800°C, a forest of carbon nanofibers grew out of it. “The metal particles rode the growing fibers upward, so every fiber ended with a metal oxide tip,” the researchers say.

So the electrode has conductive fibers with a catalytic tip. And bacteria cling to this rough conductive surface and form a thick film.

The team used the same electrodes on both side of the fuel cell. When they ran sewage spiked with the antibiotic chloramphenicol through the cell, it removed 99.99% of the drug while producing hydrogen peroxide in two days.

“Next, we plan to run it longer, test other drugs, check the toxicity of the breakdown products and link several cells in series to raise the power,” the team writes. “So can dirty water help pay for its own cleanup? Not completely yet. But in two days, our system turned sewage into cleaner water, a useful chemical and a little electricity.”

Source: Yashmeen Budania et al. In-situ CVD grown FeO & NiO CNF electrode for integrated antibiotic degradation, peroxide production, and bioenergy generation in microbial fuel cells. Journal of Power Sources, 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine (AI-generated)

 

A “blue wave” crashed onto US shores on Tuesday — but what does it mean for America’s broken transportation system, considering how many Democrats and Republicans have blind spots when it comes to ending mass car dependency?

If you focus on bottom of the midterms ballot, at least, America is becoming a bona fide nation of transportation reformers on Tuesday, with voters making historic rail investments in Colorado, saving transit agencies in the Bay Area, and instituting a raft of street safety measures in New York City, to name just a few of advocates’ big wins on Tuesday.

That isn’t terribly surprising, considering that transit, biking and walking pretty much always win — at least when Americans get the chance to vote on them directly.

Despite a constant drumbeat of lies about how much we all “love our cars,” countless Americans recognize that they are trapped, endangered and bankrupted by a transportation system that forces many of them to drive virtually everywhere, all the time. Multiple surveys show most of them desperately want more options.

Whether our new federal leaders will deliver on that demand, though, is far from a foregone conclusion — even in the midst of a blue wave. But that wave may still represent our best chance in years to lock in and finally turn the tide.

Recommended Why Democrats and Republicans Alike Keep Expanding Highways Kea Wilson September 11, 2023

Of course, that’s not to dump cold water on anyone celebrating yesterday’s Democratic wins. Republican losses in the House and the Senate are a clear rebuke to a White House that used every trick in the book (including some outright illegal ones) to roll back billions of dollars and countless policies aimed at making U.S. streets less deadly, polluted and dominated by a single unsustainable mode.

And President Trump and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy couldn’t have done it without Congress. Led by the GOP, elected officials in the House and Senate alike gleefully rescinded badly-needed funds to heal neighborhoods torn apart by highways, and found innovative ways to gouge shocking sums for transit and rail when they were forced to extend a Biden-era infrastructure law — all while a war in Iran sent gas prices through the roof.

Many of the politicians who supported that war and passed those bad policies in the midst of intertwined safety, affordability and climate emergencies lost their jobs on Tuesday.

At the time of this writing, at least five Republican members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee have conceded their seats to Democrats, and fifth district is leaning blue.

Recommended Why Progressives Don’t Deliver on Federal Transportation Policy Beth Osborne October 13, 2026

Don’t all assumed those new “radical lefties” will come out of the gates ready to fight for buses or cyclists or pedestrians, however.

Despite the fact that many of their platforms were heavy on rhetoric about the rising cost of living and the rising rate of deadly climate disasters, you’d be hard-pressed to find a progressive politician who’s ever breathed the words “car dependency” on the campaign trail, despite how foundational mass auto use is to both issues.

That was certainly true of the major Senate and House races this season, in which transportation itself was almost never mentioned on campaign websites, never mind its single most glaring problem: all the damn cars.

And not much tends to change when progressives actually get into office, either.

As Transportation for America’s Beth Osborne pointed out last month, left-leaning politicians have a long history of collaborating with right-leaning politicians to pass bad transportation bills, even when they control both chambers of Congress — like they did when the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed. In that bill, like in reauthorizations for decades before it, 80 percent of funding into highways and 20 percent into transit — with almost zero accountability if states fail to accomplish their stated goals for that money, which they rarely do.

That’s true of the House’s attempt at an infrastructure bill this spring, Build America 250, which many advocates argue even worse than the IIJA. Still, it won bipartisan support — and insiders say some Democrats will face internal pressure to vote for it again in the next Congress unless advocates push back hard.

“Democrats don’t take their progressive stances into transportation,” Osborne wrote. “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.”

Recommended “Why Do We Do This Bill?”: Preparing Congressional Staff for Surface Transportation Reauthorization Steve Davis April 14, 2026

The real question, though, is why federal progressives so often sacrifice their core values when it comes time to negotiate a major transportation bill — which, by the way, they will almost certainly need to do soon, or else keep extending the IIJA every few months.

One simple answer may just be that transportation policy is usually out of sight and out of mind. As analyst Steve Davis has noted, because the federal government only reauthorizes its core mobility programs once every five to six years, “there’s little reason [for lawmakers] to interrogate the overarching purpose of this program, to look back at how it has performed, or what everyone is getting for the money.”

That’s true even for veteran pols who have served multiple terms, and their legislative staffers who juggle countless competing priorities.

Even those who can navigate the labyrinthine maze of the reauthorization process may not realize that pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into curing congestion by expanding highways doesn’t even work — even though most of their constituents do.

Put another way: advocates need to mount a full-court press right now to educate their lawmakers not just on why transportation reform matters in its own right, but how many of their other legislative priorities simply can’t be achieved without confronting car dependency. And that’s not just true of obvious stuff like reducing emissions, but improving public health, promoting racial justice, addressing income inequality, and so many other progressive and even moderate goals.

Recommended How To Train an Army of Sustainable Transportation Advocates Streetsblog June 6, 2023

Of course, education alone won’t be enough to make progressives put their money where their mouths are on transportation reform. That’s because it’s become politically easy — and sometimes, even salient — for politicians to throw it under the proverbial bus.

The hard truth of the matter is, “infrastructure” has long been treated as a neutral and bipartisan good in Washington — even if that specific “infrastructure” is a downtown highway that slaughters people, empties their wallets and hastens the warming of the planet and the destruction of the human species.

Much like the disproportionately Black neighborhoods within a stone’s throw of those highways, transportation is too often treated like a sacrifice zone which liberals can offer as an olive branch to conservatives in the minority, to show voters their willingness to compromise. Those conservatives, though, rarely do the same when the tables are turned, so our transportation network gets more car-dominated no matter who’s in power.

Meanwhile, many members of both parties are in thrall to the highway lobby, which one study found spends over $100 million a year to ensure that federal money for asphalt keeps flowing. That can take the form not just of direct support to political campaigns, but also direct lobbying efforts, industry-funded research and more.

Recommended Presidential Elections Hinge on Gas Prices. Why Not on the High Cost of Car Dependency? Kea Wilson November 6, 2024

But the “blue wave” proved that the American people can beat big money. And now, we have to keep the momentum going as our new lawmakers are sworn in.

That means organizing to show Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed (D-MI) that even “Medicare for all” won’t mean much if U.S. residents without cars can’t physically get to the doctor.

It means helping Sen.-elect James Talarico (D-TX) understand how his “new American Dream” economic agenda will be relentlessly undermined if poor Americans can’t even walk to the corner store safely on a street without a sidewalk, and are forced to buy vehicles they can’t afford.

It will mean holding Gov.-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms (D-GA) to her promise of finally delivering dedicated state funding to transit agencies, and helping the dozens of new governors who didn’t mention transit on the campaign trail understand how critical it is to maintaining their goals.

And yes: if you happen to be represented by a conservative, it still means engaging your lawmakers around how senseless, endless highway spending undermines their priorities, too.

So if you’re thrilled about the midterms, please, by all means: take the day to celebrate. But tomorrow, it’s time for advocates across the political spectrum to lock in and help this blue wave become a watershed moment — by finally demanding that every elected official make transportation reform a core part of their platform, like it always should have been.

American voters rejected the status quo on Tuesday — and turned towards sustainable mobility options and their supporters instead.

In case you haven’t heard (just kidding, you heard), the Democratic Party dominated the midterms as its candidates took several key congressional and gubernatorial seats. But another big winner emerged in dozens of races: the livable streets movement.

Streetsblog analyzed over 50 contests, from local tax renewals to Senate seats, to uncover where voters stand on car dependency.

Spoiler alert: they’re ready to move on without it.

Recommended The Races Transportation Reformers Are Watching This Midterms Kea Wilson November 3, 2026 Candidates

Across the country, candidate races suggested that affordable transportation options are a top priority for Americans. Nearly 90 percent of voters in NBC’s early exit poll reported feeling concerned about the cost of gas, which hit a record high on Election Day.

• Michigan’s Senator-elect, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, campaigned on using transportation alternatives to beat high fuel prices amidst the surge. But he and other big-name Democrats didn’t discuss sustainable mobility very much beyond how it can reduce fuel consumption, teeing up a longer fight for advocates once they’re sworn in.
• Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown won back his Senate seat after losing in 2024 to Republican Bernie Moreno. Brown previously chaired the Senate Urban Affairs committee, a key player on federal transportation issues.
• In Maine, Democrat Troy Jackson ousted longtime Senator Susan Collins. Last month, he advocated for federally-funded passenger rail in his state.
• New York Governor Kathy Hochul fended off Republican challenger Bruce Blakeman. Blakeman sought to end New York City’s congestion pricing program, City and State reported.
• Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker also defeated a conservative challenger, Darren Bailey. Axois previously reported on a proposal by Bailey to eliminate toll roads across the state.
• Georgia Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms was elected the first Black woman governor in US history, defeating Republican Rick Jackson by nine points. Georgia is one of the only states in the US that does not allocate any funding to its public transit systems, which Bottoms has vowed to change.

Transit advocates in the San Francisco Bay Area anxiously awaited results for Measure RTM Tuesday night. Ballot Measures

Americans voted for walking, biking and transit in a majority of their chances to do so. Their support is hardly new, but still earned some especially high-profile wins this election.

• Measure RTM, a half-percent sales tax to prevent drastic transit cuts across the San Francisco Bay Area is on track to pass with more than 60 percent of the vote. A similar measure in San Francisco easily reached more than 70 percent approval.
• A new passenger rail line is coming to Colorado with the victory of Measure 7A, which funds the southern portion of the project.
• New York City will speed up bus and bike lane projects by reforming the transportation laws that opponents leverage to cause delays, Streetsblog NYC reported.
• San Francisco voters also rejected a proposal to close Sunset Dunes Park, formerly the Great Highway, and re-open it to cars, Streetsblog SF reported.
• Seattle, Washington grew its already-large investment in transit with 72.5 percent of voters saying “yes” to Proposition 1, the Urbanist reported. Pierce County, Washington also voted to fund more bus service.
• It was a big night for countywide ballot measures to support transit service. Voters backed several across the US to renew or sustain transit funding, not limited to Cobb County, Georgia, Stark County, Ohio, Charleston County, South Carolina, Macomb County, Michigan, and Arlington County, Virginia.
• A measure in Eaton County, Michigan to fund dial-a-ride and bus services won 66 percent of the vote. Compare that to the county’s road tax, which passed with only 53 percent approval, NPR affiliate WKAR reported.

Taj Herzer-Baptiste, a safe streets advocate and EMT, was amongst a 75 person crowd gathered in Berkeley, California Tuesday night to watch election results come in across the US.

Don’t count out the little guys, either. While the country had its eyes on Congress, several smaller cities were winning big.

• A city of less than 9,000 people, Benton Harbor, Michigan passed a property tax to fund their county’s transit authority and dial-a-ride service.
• Lawrence, Kansas raised its sales tax to prevent bus service cuts, keep fares free, and build a new downtown transit center, according to the Lawrence Times.
• Roadway improvement projects in Palmetto Bay, Florida will soon be required to come with pedestrian, bike, and golf cart infrastructure.
• Routt County, Colorado approved a half-cent sales tax to fund the creation of a brand new transit service for its 25,000 residents, Steamboat Pilot reported.
• A resounding 88 percent of voters in Converse, Texas opposed leaving the VIA transit district, rejecting its own city government’s proposal.

In a sea of victories, the livable streets movement still couldn’t win it all. Delaware County, Ohio didn’t get the votes for its transit funding sales tax. Fresno, California and Greenville County, South Carolina rejected sales taxes that would have funded pedestrian, bike, and transit infrastructure, although both measures primarily financed roadway projects.

Florida passed Amendment 3 to increase exemptions to the state’s property tax, which the American Public Transportation Association warned could deplete funding for transit. Voters in Arizona banned speed and red light cameras, citing concerns with Flock surveillance. The proposition doesn’t actually ban Flock, as the Capitol Times reported, but does limit the state’s ability to reduce road deaths.

Recommended Could Congress’s Anti-Flock Surveillance Bill Ban Automated Traffic Enforcement, Too? Ren Zaro Fitzgerald October 29, 2026

With Congress soon to determine how it allocates our federal transportation dollars, the big wins of the midterms could shake up what was a bleak outlook before the election. But any progress depends on elected officials taking ending car dependency seriously — like their constituents already do.

Election results last updated at 7:30 pm ET on Wednesday, November 4th.

It’s been a long, mostly celebratory night. Here’s a quick rundown on how the votes that Streetsblog California covered are turning out heading into today’s counts. There’s also more election results in Today’s Headlines, a national roundup at Streetsblog USA and Streetsblog MASS, and a Bay Area celebration at Streetsblog SF.

Streetsblog’s Endorsements

As part of a federally recognized 501c(3) public charity, Streetsblog cannot endorse candidates but can endorse ballot measures. Streetsblog urged “no” votes on two statewide measures, and both are heading for defeat.

Proposition 43 would have made it harder for Californians to fund transit and transportation projects by giving just over 1/3 of voters the power to block locally backed tax measures. The measure trails by nearly 10% as counting continues today.

Proposition 45 would have made significant changes to the state’s landmark environmental review law, CEQA. While the law isn’t perfect, Prop. 45 would have gutted the best parts of it…the parts that made it harder to do massive highway expansion projects. That measure also trails by nearly 10%.

The Bay Area

Streetsblog San Francisco reported in the middle of the night that the two major transportation funding measures had passed and the effort to turn the Sunset Dunes Park back into a highway had failed. Head to Streetsblog SF for full coverage.

State Senator Scott Wiener (D-SF) may be the most-written about politician at Streetsblog California not named Newsom or Trump in the past decade. Wiener was in a competitive race against San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan to replace the retiring Nancy Pelosi. There are still votes to be counted, but Wiener has a 10.8 percent lead as of the morning of November 4.

Fresno County

There was some bad news. Measure S in Fresno appears to be headed for defeat. The measure would have replaced a 30-year sales tax that will expire on July 1 with a new one that had a much more progressive spending plan. Supporters of the measure had to jump through so many hoops to get the measure on the ballot (forming a coalition, drafting a plan, collecting the signatures, fighting with the supervisors, getting state legislation passed and signed, fighting with the supervisors again, and winning a court cast), that the defeat is all the more heartbreaking.

This essentially means that if there’s a major or minor transportation project that the county wants to build, it will need to find the money to do it in their general fund. It also greatly hinders their ability to earn grants from the state or federal government lacking matching funds.

However, the City of Fresno had the foresight to see this possibility and had their own tax on the ballot which would only go into effect if Measure S failed. That tax, Measure D, is sailing to approval. Measure D raises the sales tax in the City of Fresno by the same amount, .5 cents per dollar, that the expiring county-wide tax currently charges. Funds raised go to the city’s general fund, but Mayor Jerry Dyer and a majority of the city council pledged to use those funds for transportation purposes, including funding citywide transit. Of course, that promise expires when the current political leadership leaves office.

While Streetsblog didn’t cover this election with original reporting, if you followed “Today’s Headlines” you are familiar with the story of Naindeep Singh. Singh was arrested for suspicion of DUI last week, while locked into a tight race with Rob Fuentes for a city council position. After the Fresno police admitted they “made an error,” Singh was cleared of all charges. Singh holds a six vote lead as counting continues.

Both Regional Measures We Urged a “No” Vote on Are Barely Passing As of the Morning of 11/4

While Streetsblog didn’t spill much ink in the effort, we did urge voters to reject a pair of transportation tax renewals in Riverside and San Bernardino County. Neither measure had a fast-approaching deadline requiring renewal at this moment in time, and both had spending plans that are out-of-step with the state’s climate goals and won’t create the kinds of transportation systems to make these areas better places to walk, bike, or take transit.

However, both Measure A in Riverside and Measure I in San Bernardino have over the ⅔ of the vote that they need heading into today’s count. Streetsblog will keep an eye on these numbers and update this story should either slip below the ⅔ threshold.

New York backers of mass transit, livable streets and cities won big on Tuesday, as Democrats vanquished foes of congestion pricing, sent street safety champions to Congress and re-elected a governor who has enthusiastically embraced transit.

Congestion pricing’s mightiest haters turn out to be extremely meek

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman and U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-Hudson Valley for a couple more months) made a big show of opposing congestion pricing. Blakeman promised to end the toll and attacked the MTA throughout his campaign. Lawler, for his part, spent the past few years lying and whining about the same toll.

Neither politician survived Tuesday’s wave. Blakeman couldn’t even find enough voters in Nassau County who were mad enough about congestion pricing to lift him to victory on his home turf, and Lawler conceded to his opponent Cait Conley before midnight — even before election workers in Westchester County could hand-count a quarter-million ballots in the Democratic stronghold.

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Elected officials should remember this fact about congestion pricing: fewer than 300,000 people drive cars into Manhattan’s Central Business District every single day from around this vast metropolitan area. There are simply not enough drivers whose opposition to congestion pricing would propel you to higher office.

Gov. Hochul, America’s transit champion, must build Nassau County II

In 2023, Gov. Hochul dreamed of solving New York State’s housing crisis by upzoning certain parts of the New York City metropolitan region that had spent decades refusing to build new homes. Her commendable ambition died on the rocks of her own inexperience and the catchy but evil chant, “Local control, not Hochul control.”

But that was three years ago. Get ready to learn Hochul control, not local control. In addition to trouncing Bruce Blakeman across the Empire State, America’s most prominent Bills fan won Nassau County — her opponent’s home and a longstanding metonym for NIMBYism.

If there was ever a time to go big on transit-oriented development and finding a way to fit one million more people into Nassau, this is the time to push it through. Nearly 80 percent of New York State voters support the construction of multifamily housing around transit stops.

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Furthermore, Hochul now has time to fulfill an impressive slate of pending projects, including the Interborough Express, the second phase of the Second Avenue Subway, the 125th Street crosstown subway, Penn Access and the joint city-state plan to speed up buses. Hochul will oversee the creation of one more MTA capital plan during her new term, when the agency publishes its 2030-2034 five-year plan. She’ll be responsible for the headache of funding that plan, too.

Southern Brooklyn gets the blues

Recent election cycles have seen southern Brooklyn going increasingly Republican, as Democrats wrote off the region and conservatives made inroads among immigrant populations frustrated by crime or prices. But, as in so many states across the country, Republicans managed to completely alienate those voters by rewarding these them with ICE raids and tariffs that made their lives here harder and more expensive.

Republican State Sen. Steve Chan and Assembly members Lester Chang, Alec Brook-Krasny and Michael Novakhov all lost to Democratic challengers in districts that encompass neighborhoods including Bensonhurst, Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, Midwood and Sheepshead Bay.

Streetsblog readers may remember Novakhov as the pol who essentially defended speeding after a recidivist speeder struck and killed a mom and two children on Ocean Parkway. He later signed on to the “Stop Super Speeder” bill that passed in Albany earlier this year.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a supermajority!

In January, Democrats will control at least 46 out of 63 seats in the state Senate, giving them a historically comfortable supermajority in the upper chamber of the legislature. That provides a big cushion if legislators want to override Hochul’s veto on any of their priorities, and leaves room for defections from bills that certain members might find unpalatable.

For Streetsblog purposes, the supermajority will include two new street safety champions into the senate: Nyack Mayor Joe Rand and Dutchess County Legislator Lisa Kaul. Both stressed their livable streets bonafides in office and on the campaign trail. Rand wants to make his district more walkable and bikeable and also wants better MTA operations west of the Hudson Valley, while Kaul has talked about dragging the New York State Department of Transportation’s attitude out of the car-centric thinking of the 1950s and 1960s.

The safe streets route to Congress

With the formality of the election out of the way, New York’s Congressional delegation will add at least three new members with a real interest in street safety. Micah Lasher told Streetsblog in June that he believes the federal government should make street safety a condition for getting transportation funding, and locally he said that he welcomed the 72nd Street bike lane proposal.

Brad Lander is an extremely well-known quantity on street safety. As a City Council member, he devised the Dangerous Vehicle Abatement Program in order to give the city’s automated camera enforcement some teeth, and constantly provided oversight of the city’s failure to properly implement it. Lander supported the Ninth Street protected bike lane, the redesign of Fourth Avenue and answered the Dave Colon Open Challenge in 2025. In Washington, he’ll push to create a 50-50 split between highway and transit funding for surface transportation rather than the current 80-20 split towards highways.

The pair will head to the capital with Claire Valdez, who will succeed Nydia Velázquez in Congress and penned an ambitious vision for federal involvement in transportation for Streetsblog. Valdez wants to pursue ideas like funding the QueensLink, giving more federal money to cycling infrastructure, sending money from the FHWA directly to cities instead of routing the money through state DOTs and directing more federal money to mass transit accessibility projects.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, meanwhile, seems poised to run for higher office — either the senate or presidency. Ocasio-Cortez talked about changing the 80-20 split, and a lot more, on a bike ride with Streetsblog earlier this year:

Mamdani voters delivered for Hochul

Gov. Hochul ran up the score big time in New York City, capturing 76 percent of Gotham’s vote. Even though he wasn’t on the ballot this time, Mayor Mamdani can claim some credit.

Analyst Michael Lange found that in the Mamdani-friendly Commie Corridor, Hochul’s vote share rose by 38 percent, compared to 18 percent in the rest of the city.

NEW: In the Commie Corridor, Democratic turnout increased at twice the rate of the rest of the city. Across these eight Assembly Districts, Hochul's raw vote rose 38% over 2022, versus 18% in the rest of the city.

Ballots cast on the WFP line increased 82% here—the Mamdani Bump! pic.twitter.com/Gy3u4hqdCr

— Michael Lange (@MichaelLangeNYC) November 4, 2026

Two of Mamdani’s big campaign promises, free buses and universal childcare, will require state help to come to fruition. That means Hochul must either raise taxes or find a couple billion dollars in the state’s couch cushions.

Between the Assembly and state Senate, Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America sent 11 legislators to Albany to support the mayor’s agenda. Next year, Hochul and Mamdani will find out what each can get out of the other when neither has to worry about an election.

Mamdani’s show of force also had some closer-to-home implications: All five of ballot initiatives passed, including Proposal 1 to speed up outdoor dining approvals and Proposal 3 to clear bureaucratic hoops that slow bike lane and bus lane implementation.

Recommended



New York City Voters Give Mamdani A Green Light to Transform City Streets
Kevin Duggan

November 4, 2026

Transportation wasn’t explicitly on the ballot yesterday in Massachusetts, but the major “blue wave” that swept the country will eventually have major implications for federal transportation policy, and stave off the Republicans’ proposals for disastrous budget cuts for public transit and safer streets.

When StreetsblogMASS interviewed our newly re-elected Senator Ed Markey earlier this summer, he predicted this result, and pledged that the Democrats would “etch-a-sketch” the next transportation bill to start over with a new version that centers their own priorities.

“We’re not passing any bills before the election. So, let’s just etch-a-sketch. We win the House and Senate, let’s start all over again,” Markey told StreetsblogMASS. “Let’s use our power in order to make sure that we get it right. Not come hat in hand, oh pretty please, you know, allow us to have a little more from here for something else. Let’s do it right, right from the get-go.”

Ballot questions for conservation projects, housing

Massachusetts voters approved two ballot measures that will have some impact on transportation programs in the Bay State.

Question 6, the “Protect Water and Nature” ballot initiative, will carve out a portion of existing sales taxes on sporting goods equipment, RVs, and golf courses to create a new “Nature for All” fund for conservation projects. This new fund is expected to generate around $100 million a year.

A new 15-member board appointed by the Governor would make recommendations for the fund’s expenditures, but proponents say that the spending could include new trail projects and support the MassTrails grant program and support the buildout of the Commonwealth’s priority trails network (lawmakers in the state legislature will ultimately have the last word on how the money gets spent, because ballot questions can not technically dictate state budget decisions).

The ballot initiative explicitly does not create any new taxes, but instead carves out a portion of existing sales taxes for the new conservation fund. However, the wording of the law stipulates that won’t affect the MBTA’s dedicated one-cent share of the sales tax.

Another ballot question, Question 7, aims to legalize more housing in built-up areas of the state that already have water and sewer infrastructure – and these are also areas of the state that are either in more walkable downtown districts, or have access to public transportation.

As of 10 a.m. Wednesday, question 7 was still too close to call, but the ballot measure was leading in many of the Boston-area suburban areas where it would have made the most impact.

Elsewhere in the nation

Some notable results from other parts of the country:

• Bay Area voters approved an increased sales tax to support regional transit, including BART and Caltrain, while San Francisco voters approved an additional new property tax to support Muni bus and streetcar operations. San Francisco voters also voted, by a 2-to-1 margin, to keep the Sunset Dunes park on the city’s beachfront, instead of reverting it back to the four-lane highway that it had been before 2020. StreetsblogSF has more details.
• In Los Angeles, City Councilor and urban planner Nithya Raman (who grew up in Massachusetts) is leading against incumbent Karen Bass in the mayoral race, but the contest is still too close to call.
• Seattle voters overwhelmingly approved a sales tax increase to avoid cuts and make small increases to service on local buses and the city’s streetcar.
• Colorado voters approved a new regional sales tax to fund a new “Colorado Connector” intercity passenger rail service. With the new funding in place, Colorado plans to run 8-10 daily trains along the state’s most densely-populated corridor at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, between Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Denver, and Fort Collins.
• In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul faced her first election challenge since implementing New York City’s congestion pricing program in 2024. Her challenger, Republican Bruce Blakeman, promised to cancel congestion tolls, and warned that “whether it’s New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, Binghamton or any town in between… congestion pricing will come to you if Kathy Hochul is reelected.” Don’t threaten New York’s voters with a good time: they gave Hochul an overwhelming 20-point victory.
• Closer to home, Providence’s new mayor-elect David Morales has a transportation platform that includes pledges to build more raised crosswalks throughout the city to calm traffic and to provide free RIPTA transit passes to Providence public school students.

• From Seattle to Charleston, voters all over the country approved local ballot measures funding transit. (Mass Transit)
  • In what was expected to be a close race, Bay Area voters overwhelmingly approved a measure to shore up funding for regional transit agencies like Muni and BART. (Mission Local)
  • Colorado voters approved a train connecting Pueblo, Denver and Fort Collins. (Westword)
  • Charlotte voters approved a bond issue for affordable housing and transportation. (WFAE)
  • Charleston voters approved a $4 billion transportation sales tax. (News 2)
  • Seattle voters backed a tax for bus service by a 40-point margin. (KOMO)
• Cara Stern spoke to writer Henry Grabar about how parking increases the cost of housing. (Missing Middle Initiative)
• Streamlining the permitting process is fine, but it needs to be part of a new transportation paradigm that prioritizes transit over highways. (Transportation for America)
• The Federal Railroad Administration released $550 million for passenger rail in North Carolina and Virginia. (High Speed Rail Alliance)
• Traffic calming and speed cameras helped lower pedestrian deaths in Philadelphia by 26 percent. (Voice)
• Knoxville is installing automated speed cameras in school zones. (WVLT)
• Late buses are costing Boston students a lot of instructional time. (WBUR)
• Operating high-speed rail in Spain sounds a lot like being an air traffic controller. (El Pais)
• Police arrested four people protesting the removal of a Toronto bike lane. (CBC)
• France shows that good transit is possible in smaller cities and towns. (The Transit Brief)

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As more of the planet’s wild places are consumed by human sprawl, people are increasingly trying to protect wildlife by moving it out of harm’s way.

While such relocations might help a construction project clear a regulatory hurdle, it’s often not doing much good for the wildlife, according to new research.

Just 6% of amphibian and reptile relocations tied to development could be classified as successful, according to a review of such projects published recently in Conservation Biology.

“Moving these species away from a construction site does not mean they will survive in their new home,” said Megan Winand, a University of British Columbia biologist and the lead author.

The results offer a sobering look at the performance of this increasingly popular strategy, as development of everything from pipelines to parks clashes with species protections. And while the authors found evidence of ways to improve the performance of such transplant projects, the main takeaway is that it’s usually better to avoid destroying a wild animal’s home than moving the creature to a new one.

“We need to prioritize protecting habitat and explore alternatives to current mitigation practices, which this review shows are often failing to achieve meaningful conservation outcomes,” said Winand.

The scale of the issue is staggering. While there is no comprehensive count of how often critters are moved to make way for development, a separate 2026 study by many of the same authors found that in British Columbia alone, some 5.1 million amphibians and reptiles were moved just between 2019 and 2022. And the long-term fate of these animals was unknown, because the province didn’t require monitoring.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:As the world warms, butterflies are relocating at an astonishing scale

 

The new study focuses on cases from around the world where at least something is known about how the transplanted animals fared. They scanned the scientific literature for papers published between 2007 and 2023 that examined the fate of relocated amphibians and reptiles. All told, they looked at 256 case studies tracking everything from tortoises to alligators. Most of the research was concentrated in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Nearly 70% of the translocations were done for conservation purposes, such as releasing an animal into habitat that it once occupied. The rest were cases involving animals moved to get them out of the way of development.

The researchers then graded a relocation’s performance based on a four-tiered system. The first level was when the original transplants were surviving. A project reached level two when those survivors were reproducing. The third level came when the population was growing. The final, highest level was if a paper showed evidence that the population had achieved longterm viability.

Based on that grading system, development-related relocations earned an abysmal grade. Just 6% of the cases were shown to have reached the third or fourth benchmarks. Nearly half of them failed to hit even the first level – that the original population had survived the move.

While conservation-related transplants performed more than three times better, that still meant they only reached the top two levels 19% of the time. They had total failures in nearly a quarter of cases.

A closer look at the different studies revealed two factors that seemed to contribute to the greater success of the conservation transplants, the scientists found. Things turned out better in cases where people tried to removed threats to an animal in the place where it was being relocated. Higher scores were also linked to more long-term monitoring after the move.

“Without adequate follow-up, we won’t know whether animals survive in their new location, reproduce or establish a population that can survive over time,” says Winand. “Relocated animals may also leave the release sites, encounter new threats or face difficult habitat conditions.”

So there are things people can do to increase the odds that the transplants will endure.

The high failure rate of even the conservation-related measures shouldn’t be taken as a sign of poor execution by the people involved, the authors note. Rather, it illustrates how hard it is to do such translocations, especially for long-lived species that reproduce slowly.

It also reinforces a common insight into biodiversity-related work: It’s a lot easier to avoid breaking something in the first place than to try to fix damage later.

Winand, et. al. “Reevaluating the suitability of amphibians and reptiles for translocation.” Conservation Biology. Sept. 17, 2026.

Winand, et. al. “Scale of herpetofauna mitigation translocation in British Columbia, Canada.” The Journal of Wildlife Management. April 14, 2026.

Photo: U.S. Air Force/Samuel King Jr. via Flickr

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