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When a fatal crash occurs, we tend to focus immediately on the individual: What was the driver doing? What did the cyclist or pedestrian do? Who made the mistake? 

Emergency Streets aims to shift that framing. A fatal crash is also a failure of the surface transport system. And often it is a failure that, at some level, was predictable. For aviation or rail sectors, thorough review protocol are enacted upon to reveal systemic failures. Why not for streets? 

Those of us who study streets know that certain priorities have become deeply embedded in transport planning in the United States. Speed and vehicle movement are institutionalized through turning radii, lane widths, multiple travel lanes, sight distances, signal timing, slip lanes, pedestrian crossing times, and measures such as automobile Level of Service.

No single one of these practices created our safety problem. Collectively, however, they have shaped the system we have today—and what we expect.

The problem is that when the system fails, our normal response is often to clean up the crash, restore the street, investigate what happened, perhaps conduct a traffic study — and eventually, return the system to normal. But what if the crash itself became a reason not to return immediately to normal?

Recommended Steal This Idea: ‘Emergency Streets’ Strategy Gets First Real-World Pilot Kea Wilson October 1, 2026

That question led us to develop Emergency Streets. The idea is straightforward: following a fatal crash, temporarily change the street in ways that meaningfully reduce kinetic energy. Make the intervention visible. Explain to the community why it is happening. Use the event not only to respond to one crash, but to ask what the crash reveals about the larger surface transport system. And, how to prevent such crashes in the future — including how money flows and how future practices are prioritized.

The underlying proposition is that we already know a great deal. We know the relationship between speed and crash severity. We know that accessibility, particularly local accessibility, does not necessarily require maximizing vehicle speed. And we increasingly have new ways to provide access, from e-bikes and smaller mobility devices to changing patterns of connectivity and travel. 

So the question becomes: Can a fatal crash become a catalyst for doing something differently?

Spokane: The Real-World Test

That idea has now moved from a theoretical idea, to an academic proposition, to a municipal practice. Spokane, Washington, has adopted an Emergency Streets pilot protocol and recently deployed its first intervention following a fatal motorcycle crash. 

The significance isn’t simply the cones or temporary street treatment. Spokane has created an institutional response: following a qualifying crash, the city must develop and implement a temporary traffic-management plan. That means the crash triggers action, rather than simply analysis.

The intervention is deliberately temporary because part of its purpose is learning. It is temporary to shortcut/circumvent traffic engineers’ long habits to over-engineer and study stuff, to provide decision-makers cover from public pressure for making uncomfortable changes to the street, to use swift timing to tie the error with the correction, to allow drivers to practice more careful driving for a non-trivial but non-disruptive period of time, etc. 

Recommended Talking Headways Podcast: ‘Normal’ is Not Correct, Someone Died Here Jeff Wood May 8, 2025

At the end of the treatment period, the city must decide what happens next: extend the intervention, return the street to its previous condition, or meaningfully move toward a more longer-lasting change.

That creates an unusual opportunity. Emergency Streets isn’t simply a traffic-calming intervention. It’s intended to become a way of asking whether a disruption to normal practice can change the trajectory of future transportation decision-making.

So what should we measure, and how? There are at least three dimensions.

First, physical and behavioral change, largely tied to kinetic energy. Did speeds decline? Was hard-braking reduced? Did vehicle behavior change around the intervention? Did the kinetic energy around the crash site lessen? These are relatively tangible questions and can be measured using speed observations, GIS and mobility data (including vehicle characteristics), and other behavioral indicators.

Second, institutional change. Did professional understandings change? Did organizational routines change? Did departments begin working together differently? Did the intervention influence subsequent funding, design standards, or decisions about how accessibility should be provided? 

An institutional trace is evidence that something generated through Emergency Streets persists beyond the physical removal of the temporary intervention. This trace may not be immediate or tangible. It might be visible in changed professional understandings; altered organizational routines; new relationships between departments or agencies; different expectations about how fatal crashes should be treated; changes to approval, design or decision-making processes; the use of evidence generated during deployments; subsequent temporary interventions; proposed capital works; allocation of funding; or permanent physical changes to the street.

Recommended What If We Treated Car Crash Sites Like Disaster Zones? Streetsblog August 6, 2024

The institutional part of the evaluation therefore distinguishes between temporary effects and institutional consequences, without assuming that institutional change must result in permanent infrastructure at the crash site. Rather than simply asking “does Emergency Streets reduce vehicle speeds?”, this study asks whether temporarily refusing to restore a fatal-crash site immediately to “normal” can interrupt the routines, assumptions and institutional relationships through which unsafe street conditions are reproduced.

More specifically, a thorough evaluation can reveal:

• What, institutionally, is different from when the trial began?
• How did Emergency Streets contribute to those changes?
• What mechanisms appear to have enabled change?
• What institutional structures or countervailing mechanisms constrained or prevented change?
• What disappeared when the cones disappeared, and what remained?

A null or uneven outcome can reveal organizational, legal, procedural or resource barriers that prevent rapid-response approaches from influencing longer-term infrastructure decisions. The broader theoretical contribution is to understand whether deliberately disrupting the normal institutional response to road death can create conditions for institutional change.

Third, public expectations. Did people begin thinking differently about what a street is for, what constitutes an acceptable level of risk, or what should happen after someone is killed? Did the intervention create public discussion about what could be done differently to provide for accessibility?

And that leads to the larger research question: To what extent can Emergency Streets empower municipalities to adopt meaningfully different transportation-planning practices?

The cones eventually disappear. The more important question is what remains after they are gone. 

If professional practices, institutional relationships, public expectations, investment decisions, or street designs begin to change, then Emergency Streets has accomplished something much larger than temporarily slowing traffic at one location. It has used a specific failure as an opportunity for the system to learn from itself — and change. 

• The Trump administration’s war on electric vehicles continues, as the U.S. DOT rolled back average mileage standards from 50 miles per gallon by 2031 under President Biden to 35, which will further increase the amount of greenhouse gases vehicles are pumping into the air (New York Times). The decision will cement this country’s reliance on fossil fuels for years to come (Heatmap). Not only that, it will cost the average driver up to $1,600 a year, thanks to Trump’s war with Iran driving up gas prices — far outpacing the $1,300 the administration claims consumers will save when buying a vehicle (Autoblog).
• Meanwhile, we’re falling behind the rest of the world. China has developed a charger than can refuel an EV to 70 percent in five minutes (Ars Technica). And in Europe, driving an EV is now only half as expensive as a diesel-powered vehicle (Transport and Environment).
• Politicans who call for suspending gas taxes are just pandering to voters. It has a minimal effect on gas prices, but blows a big hole in transportation budgets (Politico). A better way to reduce household costs is to invest in transit so that people don’t have to drive so much (Urban Institute).
• Federal transit funding from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act expired at midnight, meaning steep cuts are coming for passenger rail and local transit. (Smart Cities Dive)
• Jalopnik explains how a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration rule meant to protect car drivers and passengers from rollovers resulted in thick A-pillars around windshields that put cyclists and pedestrians in blind spots.
• Philadelphia is creating green corridors to connect an increasingly dense and walkable city. (The Architect’s Newspaper)
• Some Philly bikeshare users who want exercise are frustrated that 70 percent of Indego’s offerings are electric. (Billy Penn)
• Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law giving the California High-Speed Rail Authority eminent domain power. (Railway News)
• The Federal Transit Administration is only giving the Utah Frontrunner double-tracking project half the money it requested. (Railway Supply)
• Cyclists took over Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C. to emphasize the need for better bike infrastructure. (WUSA)
• A debate is brewing in Houston over whether Metro funding would be better spent on infrastructure or improving service. (Fox 26)
• Ontario health care providers denounced Premier Doug Ford’s plan to rip up Toronto bike lanes, citing the lives they save. (CBC)
• Aukland leaders hope the city’s first subway line will erase its reputation as a cultural backwater. (Monocle)

Responding to a vigorous campaign by climate, environmental justice, faith, labor, and public health advocates, as well as the urging of County Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas and city governments in Richmond, Emeryville, and Berkeley, Governor Gavin Newsom today signed the Community First Coal Review Act (AB40) into law.

Before a lead agency or air district can grant discretionary approval of a large coal storage, handling, or export facility, the new law mandates an Environmental Impact Report (EIR), California’s “gold standard” environmental review. 

This legislation will ensure that the enormous coal export terminal proposed for West Oakland will be required to fully disclose environmental impacts and live up to developers’ promises of a state-of-the-art facility because impacts will need to be mitigated to the maximum feasible extent.

“West Oakland will not become a sacrifice zone for the fossil fuel industry,” said Veronica Eady, executive director of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project. “Our neighbors have fought against industrial pollution and corporate greed for decades, so we’re not about to let a major polluter come into our neighborhood without studying their impact, putting mitigations in place, and bringing community members to the table around decisions that affect their lives.”

No Coal in Oakland opposes any use of our publicly-owned waterfront for the shipment of coal from Utah or Wyoming to Asia, and doubts investors will be found to build a state-of-the-art terminal. A newly released report commissioned by the Rural Utah Infrastructure Coalition to support investment in the project estimates it would take 53 months to build the project as currently proposed, assuming it is not delayed by permitting or environmental review. That report estimates the cost of construction between $430M and $625M, significantly higher than estimates put forward by developers and by the Trump administration.

Crucially, before it can break ground, the project will need a permit from the Bay Area Air District. Seventy organizations and more than 3,000 Bay Area residents have signed an open letter to the Bay Area Air District, circulated by No Coal in Oakland, calling on the Air District to exercise its full regulatory and permitting authority in reviewing the project.

Oakland’s Assemblymember Mia Bonta introduced AB 40 shortly after Trump’s June announcement. The bill soon picked up co-authors Senators Jesse Arreguín and Henry Stern and  Assemblymembers Stephen Bennett, Liz Ortega, and Chris Rogers. The bill was co-sponsored by Earthjustice and the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project.

 

 

Image: Still from “Bulk Terminal Animation,” illustrating operation of the proposed coal terminal as currently designed, including two open-air “bunkers” with combined storage capacity of 300,000 tons of coal. The animation was submitted to City of Oakland’s Planning Department by Insight Terminal Solutions on August 28, 2026.

Frontline municipalities, worker cooperatives, and civil society prove decentralized organic waste systems are ready for immediate scale as climate finance continues to favor capital-intensive disposal. 

Jakarta, Indonesia 29 September 2026 — At the conclusion of  the Second Regional Congress on Organics and Climate held on September 23-24, city and municipal leaders, civil society organizations, researchers, and waste workers across Asia united to adopt the Jakarta Declaration.  The declaration sets out a roadmap calling on national governments and financing institutions to halt funding for  incinerators and redirect climate finance into low-cost decentralized organic waste management systems and measures for food loss and waste reduction. 

With COP31 approaching and as governments face mounting scrutiny to demonstrate tangible climate mitigation measures, delegates  underscored a staggering funding imbalance: while the world has funneled nearly 4 billion USD into capital-intensive waste incineration projects, capturing 94% of waste-sector methane finance, barely 1% reaches organic waste management and food rescue systems. 

Speakers at the Congress, which was organized by GAIA Asia Pacific together with Dietplastic Indonesia and Aliansi Zero Waste Indonesia, demonstrated that preventing food loss coupled with scaling low-cost, decentralized organic waste diversion is  the single fastest climate intervention. Organic matter, primarily discarded food and agricultural matter, makes up 50% to 70% of the total municipal solid waste stream in Asia, rotting under anaerobic conditions in landfills and open dumps, generating climate superpollutants such as methane. 

Participants of the Second Regional Congress on Organics and Climate.

For the delegates, the debate over whether community-led solutions work is closed. The urgent challenge now is securing the policy mandates, institutional support, and dedicated public financing to make decentralized organic waste management and food waste prevention a permanent public service. 

The human and environmental toll of centralized dumping took center stage as a spate of landfill disasters, from massive fires to landslides, struck the region within months, blanketing cities and  towns in toxic fumes and claiming residents’ lives, many of them waste pickers

GAIA Asia Pacific’s Regional Coordinator, Froilan Grate delivers keynote address.

“The landfill crisis is not telling us to set up more landfills. It is telling us that our disposal-dependent system has reached its absolute breaking point,” said Froilan Grate, Regional Coordinator, GAIA Asia Pacific. “When communities prevent food waste and sort organics at the source, we win twice: we cut methane emissions at the source and eliminate the toxic landfill fires choking our neighborhoods. This is justice-centered, cost-effective climate action.”

Economic data released by the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) dismantled the myth that high-tech, centralized infrastructure is  superior. CPI’s cost-benefit analysis of decentralized systems in Bandung, Indonesia,showed  that community initiatives save local governments up to IDR 30 billion (USD 1.7 million) annually in avoided transport and tipping fees. 

Bandung is not an exception. Other communities in Asia taking a similar approach are proving that zero waste systems deliver measurable economic and environmental results:

• Barangay Potrero in Malabon City, Philippines: The community of 43,000 residents proved that operational costs must prioritize people over machines. With 19% of its total budget allocated to integrating  80 waste workers into its waste management system, it diverts over 100,000 kg of organic waste annually.
• Hoi An, Vietnam: Tackling commercial food waste driven by tourism, the city secured voluntary reduction commitments from over 50 hotels and restaurants to eliminate single-use plastics and curb kitchen surplus. Edible surplus is addressed upstream, while residual prep discards are channeled to the converted Eco-Hub, where workers process 200 kg of organic material daily per person via composting and bioconversion. 
• Hong Kong: Partnering across wet markets, bakeries, and supermarkets, Greeners Action established daily logistics pipelines to intercept unsold fresh produce and staples at risk of being discarded. The program routes fresh, safe food daily to registered low-income beneficiaries, proving that retail-level surplus redistribution effectively prevents edible food from entering landfills. 
• Pune, India: Solid Waste Collection and Handling (SWaCH) leverages its 4,000 door-to-door waste pickers to enforce daily source segregation across 1 million households. By working directly with 3,000 commercial bulk waste generators to prevent mixed dumping and running in-situ treatment at 270 sites, workers divert 25 tonnes daily of organic waste while eliminating secondary municipal transport entirely. 
• San Fernando City, Pampanga, Philippines: The city paired strict source-separation ordinances with commercial food-waste monitoring for restaurants, markets, and institutions. By enforcing on-site organics management for commercial establishments alongside 35 barangay recovery facilities, the city pushed municipal waste diversion to an unprecedented 89%. 
• Siquijor Island, Philippines: Lacking space for an extensive landfill, the island mandated backyard composting and decentralized collection,preventing 70%of its waste, mostly biodegradable food discards, from going into landfills.
• Surakarta (Solo), Indonesia: Confronting a city landfill where food waste makes up 60% of daily intake, youth-led network Care Food Solo partnered with hotels, bakeries, caterers, and farmers to intercept edible surplus. In 2025 alone, the initiative rescued and redistributed 46 tonnes of surplus food to vulnerable households and care homes through 12 neighborhood storefronts, routing only non-edible scraps to black soldier fly processing. 
• Tanzania: Starting in Bonyokwa, community-built recovery facilities and door-to-door education proved zero waste works in East Africa. The model has expanded to seven communities and across four major cities, replacing centralized dumping with local sorting. 

These cities and communities do not only illustrate that Zero Waste solutions are key to effective organic waste management, but, more importantly, that the path forward is to scale these proven solutions, while placing the people who make them possible at the heart of policy, program design, and implementation.

“We cannot continue treating waste management as an exercise in disposal while volumes of food and organic matter rot in landfills,” said Shibu K. Nair, Regional Organics Campaigner for GAIA Asia Pacific. “Infrastructure alone is a hollow investment if we do not fund the people who run it. Waste workers are the backbone of public health and climate infrastructure.”

GAIA members Dietplastik Indonesia and AZWI pass the baton to the Philippines—represented by Mother Earth Foundation, PNWWA, and the Zero Waste Cities Network—as the next hosts of the Regional Congress.

As the world marks the International Awareness Day for Food Loss and Waste, delegates sent a clear message to COP31 negotiators: The solutions already exist. The task now is to make them the norm.

The post Regional Leaders, Waste Workers, and Cities Urge COP31 Negotiators to Defund Incineration and Finance Community-Led Methane Solutions first appeared on GAIA.

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