Streetsblog USA

OK, it’s not an Onion headline (except that it was 15 years ago): the state of California is studying the potential of running 140-mile-per-hour “high-speed buses” on highways, even though the state’s first high speed rail line has been in the works for decades.

We love the latest from Cities by Diana, which explores where versions of the high-speed bus concept are actually a thing around the world, and debates the pros and (mostly) cons of the model for the Golden State and beyond. It’s a big departure from her channel’s usual found-AI-urbanist-fever-dream videos (which you might have seen on Streetsblog before, because we love them), but it’s no less wild, absurd, and fascinating.

• Cities are using porous pavement, light-colored paint, and native plantings and solar panels for shade to cool down parking lots and reduce the urban heat island effect. (Associated Press)
• Suspending gas taxes hurts transportation funding a lot more than it helps drivers (NPR). Gas taxes are already inadequate, and the State Smart Transportation Initiative recommends fees based on mileage and vehicle weight.
• The Federal Transit Administration is releasing $166 million to replace aging train cars. (Metro)
• The Trump administration is loosening regulations on refrigerator trucks, which will result in millions of tons of harmful chemicals leaking into the environment. (Carbon Upfront)
• Elaborate requirements for public comment and a fear of lawsuits are paralyzing bureaucracies and making simple street safety fixes all but impossible, writes Stephanie Nakhleh. (We Can Have Nice Things)
• Car-centric cities in the Midwest and Rust Belt are redesigning their public spaces to be more people-friendly. (Common Edge)
• Salt Lake City recently completed new protected bike lanes on the South Viaduct, offering a safe route to bike and walk over train tracks and freeway approaches. (Salt Lake Tribune)
• About two out of every five pedestrians killed in Austin is a person experiencing homelessness. (KVUE)
• Crashes in the Columbus, Ohio area are down from last year, but there have still been 8,000 so far in 2026. (WOSU)
• Houston is fixing Midtown sidewalks as part of a “walkable place” pilot project. (Chron)
• Pittsburgh’s POGOH bikeshare is expanding outside the city limits. (Axios)
• Portland transit agency TriMet is lawing off hundreds of employees and cutting back bus service. (Tribune)
• Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill reorganizing the Regional Transportation District board, which oversees Denver transit. (Newsline)
• Maryland passed a law removing parking minimums near transit stops and requiring cities to zone those areas for mixed use to encourage more transit-oriented development. (National Center for Smart Growth)
• Iranian hackers were likely responsible for a March breach at the Los Angeles Metro. (Tech Crunch)
• A California city is using robots to assess sidewalk conditions. (KSBW)
• Washington, D.C. is auctioning off several unused streetcars. (DC News Now)

This week on Talking Headways, Jaime Benevides and Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou of Brown University discuss their new paper showing how community severance by road infrastructure and traffic has led to more mental health-related hospital visits in New York City.

We talk about the role of roads cutting people off from social connections and how impacts of roads on mental health were separated out from air quality.

There are three ways of following the conversation: The audio player embedded below; a full transcript generated by artificial intelligence; and further down this page, a partial, human-edited transcript.

Jeff Wood: I think it’s so interesting that you all kind of lasered in on that specific idea of, like, traffic severance or transportation severance because you mentioned, the research and the findings are independent of the traffic-related air pollution, which has been shown to have impacts on things like Alzheimer’s and dementia and other brain health things.

I wonder what made you look past the air quality impacts and laser in on this specific thing that was the traffic and the connections that people are severed from.

Jamie Benavides: On one side, we have scientific evidence on space used in a way that benefits social cohesion and also exercise, and also that this green space benefits mental health as well. You know, like things like parks or green space. But we don’t have awareness or understanding of what happens on the other side of the range of how we use the space in the city, right?

Like, there is a lack of understanding of if we occupy all that open space with, again, huge volumes moving very fast of these machines, is that good or bad for our mental health? So yeah, it was, as Marianthi said, from my perspective at least, looking beyond air pollution and imagining if the city will have still the same levels of noise and air pollution but had another use of space, would it be more healthy or not?

Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou: Exactly. I think it was similar for me. I’ve been working on quantifying air pollution effects on adverse health outcomes, including depression, Alzheimer’s, all of the above. And I started getting a little bit antsy and frustrated that, okay, we’ve characterized this impact, but two things: One, and so what?

We don’t necessarily see the regulations following in the rate that I would have wanted to protect human health. And so how can we then figure out modifiable, intervenable pathways so communities can protect their residents? And the urban form is one such intervenable pathway. That’s part of it.

The other big part of it is, okay, as we are electrifying our fleet, I will keep saying that the cons of car dependency are not only noise and air pollution, it’s lack of physical activity, it’s lack of social cohesion and in-person social cohesion.

It’s very interesting. We were talking with a colleague of ours who’s from Texas, and Jaime and I both grew up in Europe in very dense, not car-oriented societies, or not so much at least, and our colleague from Texas was saying, “But it’s so easy. I get into my car, in 10 minutes I can go and see my brother. What are you talking about isolation?”

And so that’s a disconnect there because, okay, you are more connected to a family member, but you’re not necessarily connected to our neighbors. Neither of us lives in New York anymore, but we used to live [there] and I did not know any of my neighbors in the buildings I was living in. Maybe that’s on me. But, I think that’s a general trend, right? We don’t know our immediate community, and there’s so much work on the benefits of both physical activity. Even if I have to walk for five minutes to go get a bus, that’s five minutes more than, you know, garage door and driving, right, door to door.

If you have the plaza, as Jaime said, you go there, you interact with the people more. People check in on you. So that’s beyond just removing the air pollution from the equation. There are so many other benefits from reshaping our immediate environment outside of the house to help us build healthier lives that I think we haven’t looked as much, or at least in environmental epidemiology, other fields probably have, but as much into.

Jeff Wood: There was an interesting part of this as well, is like how you split out the air quality impact, which was like looking at black carbon data. And I’m curious about that data, like what that is and how that impacted the ability to split out the traffic impacts versus the air quality impacts.

Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou: So when we started talking, when Jaime came up with the idea of looking at community severance and mental health and came to me and said, “I want to do this,” and we had the hospitalization data for mental health, my main concern was exactly because of the very big literature on the air pollution impacts on mental health.

My concern was, okay, but if we publish this as is, everybody will just say, “Okay, then it’s just all through air pollution.” Obviously, what you’re capturing is air pollution, so we wanted to see, is it all air pollution, or if we could somehow block the air pollution effect, do we still see impacts? So we used black carbon predictions. Black carbon is a combustion byproduct that is usually associated with traffic in urban cores. And New York City has an amazing program, NYCAS, that has multiple rotating monitoring sites. The number of monitoring sites varies from year. I think it goes from 60-something to 100-something. But they rotate these, and they then integrate these with land use data and traffic data and all other kinds of data to build these pretty high resolution, 300 meter predicted annual surfaces for different pollutants. Black carbon is one of them. And so we then included black carbon in our model, hoping to block the path from community severance to mental health from air pollution. So we said, okay, if we compare now two communities to zip code levels that have the same air pollution, but different community severance, do we see differences in mental health outcomes?

And indeed, what we saw was, as expected, once we added air pollution into the model, our effect estimates attenuated a little bit, became somewhat smaller in magnitude. But importantly, they didn’t completely disappear, which does mean that, yes, air pollution explains some of the effects that we saw, but not everything.

So community severance doesn’t solely act through air pollution to induce the increased rates in mental health hospitalizations that we saw. And I keep saying mental health hospitalizations. We examined multiple causes, but our biggest finding was on schizophrenia hospitalizations, actually.

So it’s not all of it through air pollution, but there are some other pathways, we don’t know exactly how yet, that’s to be, you know, next studies, future studies, but that not through air pollution, that community severance results in higher rates for these mental health hospitalization rates.

• From 1983 to 2022, the number of 18-year-olds with a driver’s license fell from 80 percent to 60 percent. Uber sees this as an opportunity to make ride-hailing (Fortune) and eventually autonomous vehicles (CNN) the standard mode of transportation. Shouldn’t it also an opportunity to get these kids who don’t want to drive acclimated to walking, biking and transit?
• It’s no wonder young people aren’t all that interested in driving, considering that the average car payment is now over $600, not to mention gas, maintenance and insurance. A new car is a luxury item, and a used one will eventually cost you plenty in the repair shop. (Jalopnik)
• The House transportation bill drastically cuts funding for transit and Amtrak, but hey, at least it includes a historic amount for bridges! (Smart Cities Dive)
• Henry Grabar writes more about why suspending the gas tax is a bad idea, any way you look at it. (The Atlantic; paywall)
• The CEO of the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority has resigned. Lona Edwards Hankin’s three-year tenure saw a significant uptick in bus ridership, but she faced several controversies as well. (Times-Picayune)
• Despite their efficiency, Denver is abandoning future center-lane bus rapid transit lines due to business complaints. (Denverite)
• $50 million and 25 years after its inception, Greensboro, North Carolina’s downtown greenway opened (The Thread). A couple hundred miles away, on the coast, Wilmington is installing more speed humps to calm traffic (Star News).
• Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson took a bike ride last weekend, joined by hundreds of supporters and a few dozen Nazi protesters, including one with a sign that read, in a play on an antisemitic slogan, “Bikes will not replace us.” (Seattle Bike Blog)
• Seattle protesters turned out ahead of a key Sound Transit vote today on potential cuts to long-range plans for light rail. (KOMO)
• If you listen to Reddit, drivers are getting more abusive toward cyclists because they don’t see them as human beings. (Momentum)
• Dublin officials thought bike-sharing would a flop, but is now looking to replace a private operator with a publicly owned system that would triple the number of bikes. (Irish Cycle)
• The frustration of fighting for safer bike facilities in Australia will be familiar to many readers in the U.S. (Australian Broadcasting Corp.)

Washington, D.C. is preparing to make the same mistake too many American cities keep making: building a billion-dollar destination without building the transportation system to match it.

The proposed redevelopment of the Robert F. Kennedy Stadium site — the once and potentially future home of the Washington Commanders football team — is being sold as “transit-first.” And that phrase sounds ambitious — until you look at the numbers.

The plan anticipates that roughly 40,000 people — the overwhelming majority of attendees — will arrive by Metro, bus, walking, biking, or other non-car options. Only about 25,000 are expected to arrive by automobile, despite thousands of planned parking spaces.

In other words, the project depends on transit to function.

So why isn’t the city building a new Metro station?

Recommended Opinion: Adding Parking to Sports Stadiums Makes It Harder for Everyone To Get Around Streetsblog March 23, 2026

Instead, Washington is preparing to funnel tens of thousands of people through the existing Stadium—Armory station and supplement the gap with expanded bus service. That may satisfy transportation modeling spreadsheets. But anyone who has stood shoulder-to-shoulder on an overcrowded platform after a concert, playoff game, or public event already knows what those models often miss: transit systems break down long before they technically fail.

They break down when stations become bottlenecks.

They break down when crowds overwhelm sidewalks, fare gates, escalators, and platforms.

They break down when moving people safely becomes secondary to simply moving them eventually.

And they break down when cities mistake “having transit nearby” for actually designing around transit.

That distinction matters.

Recommended This Chicago Stadium Could Go From a Sea of Sprawling Parking Lots to a Bustling, Walkable Pedestrian District AJ LaTrace January 15, 2025

The RFK redevelopment is not a suburban football stadium surrounded by parking lots. It is being positioned as a dense entertainment and mixed-use district capable of hosting NFL games, concerts, festivals, international events, and potentially World Cup-related activities. This is the kind of project cities spend generations talking about and decades financing.

Yet the transit conversation surrounding it feels stuck in the 1990s.

Globally, cities that build major stadium districts understand a basic truth: transportation is not an accessory to development. It is the development.

Look at London. Paris. Tokyo. Even newer international stadium districts in less transit-rich countries are designed around layered mobility systems, with multiple rail access points and distributed pedestrian circulation. These elements work together with bus integration, dedicated bike infrastructure, and redundancy to prevent one station or corridor from collapsing under pressure.

American cities, by contrast, too often approach mobility like an afterthought. We build first, celebrate renderings second, and only later realize we forgot to ask how 60,000 people are supposed to leave at the same time.

Then comes the predictable cycle. Overcrowded stations. Overwhelmed transit staff. Traffic spillover into neighborhoods. Emergency access concerns. And millions — sometimes billions — spent retrofitting infrastructure that should have been included from the start.

Recommended Can ‘Transit-Oriented Entertainment’ Help End the National Ridership Decline? Terenig Topjian October 1, 2024

The most frustrating part is that Washington already knows what successful high-volume transit design looks like.

Stations like Gallery Place and the Farragut corridor work because they distribute people. Riders can enter and exit from multiple points. Crowds disperse across blocks instead of collapsing into a single choke point. Pressure is absorbed by the system instead of concentrated into one vulnerable node.

That is not just convenience. It is safety infrastructure.

A single overloaded station serving a massive stadium district creates risks that extend far beyond game day inconvenience. That might look like dangerous crowd surges, delayed emergency response, or simple platform overcrowding. It could even result in accessibility failures and ripple effects across the broader transit network.

And those burdens will not fall equally.

Residents east of the Anacostia River — many of whom already rely heavily on public transportation and endure longer commute times — will inherit the operational strain of a project largely marketed toward visitors, tourists, and regional entertainment consumers.

That is why this debate matters beyond football.

Recommended Opinion: Make This Summer’s World Cup A Car-Free Paradise Norman Brown March 12, 2026

The RFK site is ultimately a test of whether American cities are serious about building transit-oriented futures — or whether “transit-first” has simply become another branding phrase used to justify mega-projects without making the hard infrastructure investments required to support them. Because a project cannot claim to be transit-first while treating transit capacity as optional.

If tens of thousands of people are expected to rely on Metro to make the project viable, then Metro infrastructure should expand alongside the project itself — not years later after overcrowding, delays, and public frustration become politically impossible to ignore.

And this is bigger than Washington.

Cities across America are racing to build stadium districts, innovation hubs, entertainment corridors, and waterfront megaprojects. But too many are still planning transportation the way previous generations planned highways: as something engineered around cars first and people second.

The result is infrastructure that looks impressive in renderings but feels dysfunctional in real life.

The RFK redevelopment offers Washington a rare opportunity to do something different:
2to treat mobility as core civic infrastructure, to prioritize long-term public movement over short-term construction savings, and to build a stadium district designed not just to attract crowds — but to handle them.

Because great cities are not judged only by what they build. They are judged by whether people can actually move through them.

SFMTA has received $600 million over the past ten years from the state’s cap-and-trade program—now rebranded “cap-and-invest”. “These funds have gone to crucial efforts like replacing our light rail vehicles and improving transit service through our Muni Forward program (the 38 Rapid Geary bus is an example),” explained SFMTA’s Michael Roccaforte.

That’s part of why some 100 transit, clean air, and affordable housing advocates held a rally at San Francisco’s Civic Center Wednesday afternoon to demand that Governor Newsom quash an effort by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to allocate as much as $4 billion in new free emission permits to Chevron and other corporate greenhouse gas emitters. This would cut funds to Muni and other transit operators, plus defund several affordable housing programs.

Seamless Bay Area’s Adina Levin (in yellow) with other advocates at the rally. Photo: Streetsblog/Rudick

“It’s terrible that we have to be here today,” said the Transbay Coalition’s Carter Lavin, who helped organize the rally. “CARB said: ‘You know who really needs help right now? Chevron and big polluters,” he told the crowd. “The state should be doubling down on affordable housing and transit.”

“CARB is proposing something that supports our biggest polluters at the expense of public transit riders,” said the San Francisco Transit Riders Dylan Fabris, who also addressed the crowd. “I don’t love having to come here every year to tell the governor to stop divesting in public transit.”

Advocate George Spies calling Governor Newsom’s office. Photo: Streetsblog/Rudick

The argument for the free pollution credits: to reduce the price of gasoline. But, of course, the way to reduce demand for gasoline is to give people alternatives, such as quality public transit.

Advocates expressed frustration that this is coming on the heels of the announcement that they had massively exceeded signature gathering requirements to qualify a regional funding measure for transit. It’s as if the state saw that as an opportunity to grab transit funds and divert it to gas and oil interests.

After a few speeches, the crowd walked from Civic Center Plaza to the steps of the state office building. There, they took out their cell phones and called Governor Newsom’s office and demanded he intervene to stop the proposal, which will be discussed at CARB’s regular board meeting on Thursday and Friday.

Affordable housing advocate Sally Greenspan at the rally. Photo: Streetsblog/Rudick

Some callers reported that they “couldn’t get through,” suggesting they had overwhelmed the governor’s phone exchange. Organizers recommended they call again later from their homes and offices. Not long afterwards, officers with the California Highway Patrol, tasked with guarding the state office building, informed the demonstrators that their San Francisco demonstration permit did not apply to the state building’s stairs. The group moved back to the civic center, which is San Francisco territory, apparently.

El Cerrito city council member and Bike East Bay Co-Executive Director Rebecca Saltzman calling the governor’s office during the rally. She managed to get through. Photo: Streetsblog/Rudick

“Without Cap-and-Invest funding for these vital programs, California will not hit our climate goals, we will not build the affordable housing we need, and our transit systems will languish,” said Zack Deutsch-Gross, Executive Director at Transform. “CARB’s decision to push through this last-minute change is not only a major setback for climate and affordability, but undermines the agreement made by the Governor and Legislature to reauthorize Cap and Invest last year.”

“The Governor’s Air Resources Board is about to allow California’s refineries to ramp up emissions and pollution in working-class communities. Forget ‘cap’ or ‘invest’–CARB is forgoing both as they zero out investments in our people. We know what this rule change represents: a massive giveaway to the oil industry, rushed in at the last minute,” said Megan Zapanta with the Asian Pacific Environmental Network.

The rally was organized by the Transbay Coalition, Seamless Bay Area, TransForm, San Francisco Transit Riders, and several other aligned groups.

If you don’t think CARB should be cutting breaks for Chevron and other polluters on the backs of transit riders, send an email and/or call into the hearing.

America’s next major transportation bill could potentially strip railways of more than 80 percent of their federal funding — even as its first draft appears to promise Amtrak and other rail operators more money on paper, a top advocacy organization warned.

Last week, advocates at the National Rail Passengers Association declined to endorse the BUILD America 250 Act, which they said failed to provide “reliable funding and a clear commitment to growth” for train operators across America — despite more than doubling operations funding for Amtrak in the first fiscal year alone.

That’s because the money wouldn’t be guaranteed. And over the course of the bill’s five years, that funding is widely expected to plummet.

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

Unlike the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which the new bill would theoretically replace when it expires on Sept. 30, BUILD America 250 includes no “advanced appropriations” for any transportation program not secured by the Highway Trust fund — a $106 billion category which includes all funding for passenger rail. That means that every single dollar it “promises” to train operators would need to be approved by Congress again as part of the annual budget process before it actually goes out the door.

By contrast, BUILD America 250 promises more funding for highway programs without subjecting that money to the appropriations process — even though gas taxes have failed to actually cover the costs of America’s asphalt addiction for decades, and growing highways have failed to curb congestion, cut traffic deaths, or delivery any of the benefits that road builders so often promise.

“The message of this bill is loud and clear: highways and roads are a core federal priority and intercity rail is a state-level vanity project that Congress is willing to play along with —but only up to a point,” wrote Sean Jeans-Gail, the association’s vice president of government affairs and policy.

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

Jean-Gails and his colleagues aren’t entirely negative about the BUILD America 250 Act. They pointed out that the legislation could at least theoretically provide about $64 billion for rail programs — which is 38 percent less than the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, but significantly more than what rail operators enjoyed prior to “Amtrak Joe” Biden’s signature transportation bill set a new bar for federal rail funding.

By making most of that money subject to appropriations, though, advocates fear Congress is once again turning America’s train network into a massive bargaining chip that lawmakers could easily wager away to end a funding fight — and setting up advocates to take the blame for a government shutdown if rail fans in Congress stick to their guns.

Under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, appropriators struggled to scrounge up more than $3 billion additional dollars for transportation programs in any given year during the annual budgeting process. BUILD America 250 would require them to find $13 billion in the couch cushions every year just for rail — not including the other transportation priorities that would be subject to appropriations, too.

And if rail boosters in Congress don’t win that stalemate, their failure could slow or halt America’s railway renaissance just as Amtrak scores all-time records for ridership and revenue — and possibly even threaten route expansions that, by their very nature, take years to implement.

“In the leadup to this bill, Chairman Graves repeatedly made statements about getting ‘back to basics’, where he explicitly referenced highways and bridges,” wrote the Association. “The repeated emphasis on non-federal share for passenger rail is a strong indicator that this philosophy won out in this bipartisan process.”

The absence of guaranteed money would also complicate some of the other rail policies in BUILD America 250, including its mandate to create a new “national intercity passenger railroad partnership program” and “equipment leasing pools” that would make it easier for operators to acquire trainsets without waiting years for manufacturers to fulfill their orders.

The association supports both those ideas, but doubts Congress will actually get them done if they can easily pull the rug out from under operators the next time they pass a national budget.

“Given an annual appropriations process that is more likely to generate an extended government shutdown than pass a bill on time, we can say with a high degree of confidence: there won’t be enough funding,” Jean-Gails wrote. “An improved policy framework with insufficient funding is like getting a fancy new car and popping the hood to find an ‘IOU’ note where the engine should be.”

With people across the U.S. relying on threadbare train networks to meet their basic intercity travel needs — not to mention yearning for the world-class rail system America truly deserves — association president and CEO Jim Matthews said an IOU just won’t do.

“Passengers, states, workers and communities are let down and left behind by the BUILD America 250 Act … We need your help to push back on this blatant disregard for the needs of millions of Americans across the country,” he wrote.

• The BUILD America 250 Act, a $580 billion transportation bill, passed out of committee and could go up for a full House vote within a matter of weeks (The Center Square). The bill fails to prioritize safety over speed, maintenance over new highway construction or adequately fund other modes of transportation besides cars, according to Transportation for America.
• The bill comes at a time when high gas prices are driving up transit ridership, and agencies need more funding to capitalize on the trend. (Jalopnik)
• How will Oregon fund transportation now that Democrats’ plan failed at the ballot box? (Axios)
• Some Virginia officials want to invest express lane tolls into transit rather than roads. (Mercury)
• Bay Area transit supporters have gathered enough signatures to put a tax hike on the November ballot. (San Francisco Standard)
• A new Amtrak station in Detroit could provide future rail service to Canada. (ConstructConnect)
• Portland drivers might actually be driving more in a quest for the cheapest gas. (KATU)
• Massachusetts Uber and Lyft drivers have officially unionized. (WHDH)
• Federal officials are expected to rule this year on an increasingly expensive and controversial freeway project in Shreveport. (WFMZ)
• Austin’s CapMetro is opening two park-and-ride lots to serve two new bus rapid transit lines. (American-Statesman)
• Pittsburgh needs better signage to educate drivers about all-way crossings. (City Paper)
• Kansas City Current fans packed out the new streetcar extension last weekend. (KMBC)
• Skateboarders can turn an empty big-box parking lot into a community space. (New York Times)

A looming overhaul of California’s cap-and-trade program is raising alarm among transit advocates, affordable housing organizations, and environmental justice groups, who warn the state could weaken a key climate funding source at a moment when cities already face transit funding crises and worsening housing pressures.

At the center of the debate is a proposal to reshape the state’s carbon market, commonly known as “cap-and-trade” but rebranded as “cap-and-invest” by Governor Gavin Newsom. The program would be retooled in ways critics say would expand free pollution permits for oil companies and other major emitters. At the end of this week, the California Air Resources Board is expected to vote on a proposal to allocate $4 billion in new free emission permits to companies with half slated for the fossil fuel industry in exchange for commitments to invest in clean energy. The putative goal is to reduce the cost of gas at a time when the war on Iran has cause nationwide gas price spikes, with California gas prices slightly higher than most states.

The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund – funded and budgeted annually by cap-and-trade proceeds – has become a major financing stream for climate-related transportation investments statewide. Transit agencies, active transportation programs, affordable housing near transit, and the state’s high-speed rail project all rely heavily on cap-and-trade revenues. Anyone interested in the details of how the program currently generates funds and/or what specific changes are proposed should read this Calmatters article.

Under legislation approved last year, high-speed rail is guaranteed $1 billion annually from the carbon market through 2045, with another $1 billion per year set aside for “legislative priorities” i.e. the state’s general fund. What’s left is divided up for housing and transit funding at the local level. A giveaway of billions in permits would likely decimate those funds for local projects.

The timing of the state’s retreat on cap-and-trade funding couldn’t be worse. Federal subsidies to help transit agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic ended last year, and while ridership is increasing across the state, nearly no transit lines/agencies have fully recovered to pre-pandemic ridership levels.

While Californians are showing they are willing to support transit, it was announced earlier this week that 305,895 Bay Area residents signed a petition to place a measure on the ballot to do just that, a further rollback of state transit funding will both undermine enthusiasm for these types of measures and blunt their ability to head-off transit service cuts.

Advocates Plan Emergency Rally

Environmental justice advocates, transit riders, housing organizations, and climate groups are organizing an emergency rally tomorrow, May 27, at San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza (335 McAllister St.), calling on Governor Gavin Newsom and state regulators to reject “giveaways to Big Oil.” Organizers say the CARB proposal would shift climate funds away from transit and housing while handing expanded pollution allowances to fossil fuel companies.

“CARB’s proposal slashes affordable transit-oriented housing, major public transit projects, transit services, and discounted transit pass programs throughout the entire state by up to $2 billion each year over the next four years — while giving big polluters billions of dollars in permissions to pollute,” reads the announcement for the rally.

Advocates are expected to call for preserving strong auction revenues and ensuring cap-and-invest dollars continue flowing to transit, housing, and sustainable infrastructure alongside high-speed rail.

The California Air Resources Board is expected to vote on the updated regulations in the coming days, setting up what could be one of the most consequential climate policy decisions of the year.

• Many transit agencies are unlikely to fully recover from the pandemic anytime soon, particularly since remote work appears here to stay, at least for white-collar workers who used to ride commuter rail to their downtown office. The long-term trend looks better, though, as long as young people keep flocking to cities. (Governing)
• Amtrak is an exception, with ridership up almost 6% between October and April, and smaller operating losses than projected. (Trains)
• Speeding kills 12,000 a people a year in the U.S., leading some states to mandate devices on repeat offenders’ cars that limit how fast they can go. (Jalopnik)
• After testing cargo e-bikes for deliveries in New York, Amazon is expanding their use to other cities. (NY Times)
• The Texas Supreme Court sent a lawsuit challenging Austin transit expansion Project Connect back to a lower court to rule on a jurisdictional issue. (KVUE)
• Texas transportation officials are negotiating potential routes for high-speed rail between Dallas and Fort Worth and Dallas and Houston (Fort Worth Report). The attorney general’s lawsuit is one reason why costs keep rising and Project Connect’s centerpiece, a downtown light rail line, keeps shrinking (Texas Tribune).
• Transit ridership in Atlanta almost doubled in March to 4 million, after MARTA changed how it collects ridership data (11 Alive). GoTriangle ridership in the Raleigh area was up by a third in April, which officials attributed to high gas prices (ABC 11).
• The chairman of Atlanta Journal-Constitution owner Cox Enterprises, who comes from generational wealth and has probably never ridden transit in his life, came out against Beltline light rail, even though it’s been part of the plan going back to the Beltline’s inception in the late 1990s.
• Seattle Bike Blog challenged a nonsensical op-ed in the Seattle Times that claimed bike lanes make drivers “fatigued” and blamed safety projects for sending drivers into road rage.
• It wasn’t a surprise that Oregon Democrats’ proposal for small hikes to the gas tax and payroll tax to fund transportation failed, but the fact that 83% of voters rejected it was a shock. What does that mean for November elections? (KGW 8)
• Downtown Phoenix has hundreds of broken parking meters. (AZ Family)
• San Diego residents took advantage of Amtrak to avoid crowded roads over Memorial Day weekend. (KSBY)
• Toronto’s frequent bus service, even in relatively low-density neighborhoods, made it the only North American transit system where ridership rose in the decades following World War II, showing that suburbanites will ride the bus if it’s convenient. (Infrastory)
• A European human rights court ruled that a food courier’s viral TikTok rant against bus-only lanes in Tbilisi, Georgia crossed the line between free speech and personal abuse. (Courthouse News Service)

Editor’s note: A version of this article originally appeared on Signal Doctrine and is republished with permission.

Stand in a surface parking lot in Phoenix on a July afternoon and you are standing on one of the hottest surfaces a human body can approach without being burned.

Phoenix has 12.2 million of these spaces.

That figure comes from a peer-reviewed inventory published in 2019 by researchers at Arizona State University, among them Mikhail Chester, who led the study, and David King, an associate professor of urban planning and a student of the late Donald Shoup, whose work on parking economics reshaped the field. They counted off-street residential spaces, off-street commercial spaces, on-street spaces — all of it.

The result: 4.3 parking spaces per registered vehicle. Roughly 3 spaces per person. Ten percent of all urbanized land in the metro devoted to storing cars. Since 1960, Phoenix has added roughly 200,000 new spaces per year.

NASA ECOSTRESS thermal image of Phoenix, June 2024. Parking lots and roads register between 120 and 160°F. Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The asphalt beneath your feet absorbs approximately 95 percent of the solar radiation hitting it. Its surface temperature is somewhere between 150 and 170 degrees Fahrenheit — the upper range hot enough to cause a second-degree burn in under 30 seconds. NASA’s thermal imaging of Phoenix on a June day in 2024, when the air temperature was 106, showed roads and parking lots glowing between 120 and 160 degrees across the metro. The cars sitting in those lots are ovens. The air rising off the pavement is a wall.

The number is hard to feel from inside a car, which is where most people in Phoenix experience the city. The parking lot is invisible infrastructure — noticed only when it is full, which it rarely is, because the system was designed around the assumption of peak demand and routinely runs at a fraction of capacity. Most spaces sit empty most of the time. Their vacancy is not experienced as waste. It is experienced as availability, which is to say, as comfort, which is to say, as the whole point.

But the lot does not stop existing while the car is away.

Recommended Phoenix Leaders Are Climate Hypocrites — And They’re Not Alone Joe Cortright December 4, 2020

Surface parking accounts for roughly 29 percent of all heat emitted from pavement and vehicles across the metro on a typical summer day. Chester, who led the original study, confirmed the estimate remains current. Asphalt radiates 46 percent more heat than natural landscape during the afternoon. It emits 37 percent more sensible heat than bare ground. And it does not cool quickly. Unlike vegetation or even bare soil, pavement stores the day’s heat and releases it slowly through the night — keeping nighttime temperatures elevated long after sunset.

This is not a new finding. It has been documented here for decades. What it means, measured over time, is a 9-degree rise in average nighttime temperatures in Phoenix over the past twenty years — a number that appears in city reports so often it has started to lose the quality of alarm.

Nine degrees. Every night. Added to a city that was already one of the hottest on earth.

Before 2000, Phoenix averaged roughly five summer nights that did not cool below 90 degrees. In 2024, that number was 37. On July 19th of that year, Sky Harbor Airport recorded an overnight low of 97 degrees. The models now suggest the city could experience a night, within this decade, that does not fall below 100.

The parking lot did not cause this alone. Phoenix’s heat island is the product of everything the city has built: roads, rooftops, walls, the relentless substitution of absorptive surface for desert ground. But parking is one of the largest single components of that surface area, and it is the one whose thermal cost is most clearly optional. A city needs roads. It needs buildings. It does not need 4.3 spaces per vehicle.

Recommended Parking? Lots! Car Spaces Would Comprise 10% of Phoenix Angie Schmitt February 25, 2019

The city has been aware of this for a while and has begun, slowly, to respond. The Cool Pavement Program applied reflective coatings to more than 140 miles of city streets — out of more than 5,000 total. ASU studies found the treatment reduces surface temperatures by roughly 10 to 12 degrees at noon. The effect on nighttime air temperature barely registers. The thermal mass problem runs deep.

The more structurally significant change came in January 2024, when the Phoenix City Council voted 8–1 to reduce parking minimums citywide. In walkable urban zones along light rail corridors, the minimum dropped to 0.75 spaces per unit. For affordable housing near transit, it fell to zero. A 100-unit affordable apartment complex near light rail that once had to provide 113 spaces now has to provide none.

The reform passed over the objections of eight village planning committees. King, who has studied parking policy for over a decade, describes the opposition as “making a good faith, incorrect argument.” The deeper problem, he says, is that cities have required so much parking for so long that reducing the mandate feels like a concession rather than a correction.

“They haven’t yet taken that step to say, we’ve been wrong for the last century,” King told me. “Which I think is a critical thing that the cities have to do.”

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Phoenix has not eliminated parking minimums, and the citywide default remains well above zero. But the vote was meaningful. Just because a city stops requiring parking, King points out, does not mean no one will supply it. The market still responds to demand. What changes is that the supply is no longer mandated at levels the market never justified.

What is changing in the urban core is visible enough. Block 23, the mixed-use tower that opened in 2019 on the site of what had most recently been a surface parking lot, brought 332 apartments, 200,000 square feet of office space, and the first grocery store in the downtown area. Other lots are becoming hotels, housing, parks. The ground is slowly being reclaimed.

But the urban core is not most of Phoenix. Most of Phoenix is the arterial corridor: the strip mall anchored by a pharmacy and a nail salon and a mattress store, each surrounded by more asphalt than any reasonable traffic model requires.

The BedMart at 19th and Northern had thirty-two parking spaces and, in my experience, zero customers. The store closed. A coffee shop moved in and installed a drive-thru. The thirty-two spaces remain.

19th Avenue and Northern, April 2026. Photo: Signal Dispatch

Drive 19th Avenue at two in the afternoon in June and the whole corridor shimmers. The lots are empty. The heat is not. You can feel the pavement through your shoes in the twenty seconds between your car door and the entrance, and those twenty seconds are the entirety of your relationship with the public realm.

When I asked King what he sees driving Phoenix’s arterials that most people don’t, his answer was immediate: “Arterial walls rather than permeable spaces.” The buildings all turn away from the street. The front door faces the parking lot. The corner — which should be the highest-visibility, highest-accessibility point — is treated as an afterthought. Every curb cut for every parking lot is, in his words, “an insult to the pedestrian environment.”

King argues that exposure should be a key metric of planning in a city like Phoenix. Three or four minutes in the summer sun is tolerable. Ten or fifteen is not. The difference between those two experiences is often the distance a parking lot adds between the street and the door. The twenty seconds I described are not an accident of design. They are the design.

I grew up in that corridor. The parking lots never looked like a problem. They looked like the ordinary space between things.

Each of those lots was mandated into existence by a zoning code that assumed the car was the only unit of movement worth designing around. Removing that mandate does not immediately remove the pavement. Changing what gets built next takes longer than changing what the code requires.

Recommended This Heat Wave is a Car Dependency Problem Kea Wilson July 18, 2024

King calls the science behind parking requirements “100 percent pseudoscience.” No study determined that a pharmacy needs a certain number of spaces, or that a nail salon needs another. The numbers were invented, codified, and enforced for decades. And the mandated parking, once built, generated its own secondary costs: stormwater runoff required bioswales and retention ponds, which further shrank the buildable footprint, which pushed buildings further apart, which guaranteed more driving. The code created the problem and then created the infrastructure to manage the problem it created.

There is a word for what Phoenix has built, and it is not parking. The word is infrastructure — the infrastructure of a particular assumption about how life in a desert city should be organized. That assumption was: you arrive by car, you park, you enter, you leave, you drive. The space between things is transition, not place. The outdoors is not somewhere you are meant to be; it is somewhere you are briefly passing through on the way to somewhere cooled.

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The pavement encodes that assumption in both directions. It stores the day’s heat and holds it through the night. It repels the monsoon’s rain — five to eight inches a year, nearly all of it arriving in violent bursts — and channels it fast, hot, picking up motor oil and heavy metals and fertilizer, into a storm drain system that delivers it to rivers and washes without treatment. For every additional percentage point of impervious surface, annual flood magnitude increases by an average of 3.3 percent.

The city has spent tens of millions on drainage infrastructure to manage flooding events generated by its own hardscape. The surface that will not release heat will not absorb water either. The imperviousness is the same.

That assumption made the lot possible, and the lot made the assumption self-fulfilling. More parking meant more driving. More driving meant less walking. Less walking meant less pressure to build the kind of dense, shaded, connected environment where walking made sense.

The city that built 12.2 million parking spaces was also building the case for why it needed them. Chester describes what emerged as a system that nobody designed: “For a century we’ve codified and normalized decision making that builds out this system. Now we have it and are largely unaware of its scale and impacts.”

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This is not a design flaw. It is a design choice that Phoenix made for seventy years and is only now beginning to question. The cost was always there. It was just measured in degrees rather than dollars, and Phoenix does not have a habit of reading thermometers critically. “There’s a lot of people who don’t like to accept the truth when it implicates them in the system,” King told me. “If parking is the problem, then I have to drive less. Maybe I’m the bad guy.”

Phoenix is not the only American city that made this choice. It is the one where the cost of the choice is most directly physical and most directly measurable — in degrees, in burn rates, in the temperature of a surface that a fallen person cannot get up from.

ASU’s Urban Climate Research Center has estimated that a half-degree reduction in average air temperature across the metro could save Phoenix $15 million per year in avoided air conditioning costs. The math of the lot, run in the other direction, is considerably less comfortable.

The city is beginning to learn what it built.

The 9 degrees are already here.

The cars go home.

The lots do not.

A century ago, businessmen, automobile clubs, and politicians came together to form the U.S. 66 Highway Association. Unlike the congestion-obsessed highway-builders of today, they wanted traffic, which they saw as synonymous with a burgeoning, mass-motoring public who would spend money in their towns. They even advertised Route 66 as “Main Street of America.”

Known as an “all-year-all-weather-road” and the “Mother Road,” Route 66 was 200 miles shorter than any other transcontinental railway or highway at the time, making it the speediest route between Chicago and Los Angeles, the Association bragged. It was also touted as an economic engine, generating new jobs for men to lay asphalt across the country. More importantly, though, it was an opportunity to mythologize an enduring new idea: America’s “open road.”

But as with all myths, many people are left out of frame.

“It wasn’t really the fun, happy place we think of when we look back at the ‘good ole days,'” wrote Barry Duncan in his pictorial book Route 66: A Trail of Tears, which compiles the work of car crash photographer and Carthage, Mo. mayor William Carl Taylor. “Many were maimed or killed during the existence of Route 66.”

Photo: William Carl Taylor via Route 66 A Trail of Tears

The title of Duncan’s book may be an insensitive reference to the forced displacement of American Indian tribes from the South and Southeast, but there’s no doubt that Route 66 has a long and violent history of its own. The author served in the Carthage, MO police force between 1977 and 2009, and claims to have witnessed over 2,000 wrecks personally, in addition to curating Taylor’s grisly collection in his book.

And that collection speaks to those tragedies stark terms. Fender benders stand next to piles of unrecognizable rubble. Cabs are literally flattened. Dozens stand around overturned vehicles. A service station entrance is smashed. Civilians help carry stretchers to ambulances. Police officers stare at cars from a distance and write on notepads. A girl cries.

One crash that particularly haunted Duncan involved a family called the Ruminers. In 1957, they were traveling Route 66 from Washington State to their relatives’ home in Mississippi for Christmas. On their way, they were crushed in a Ford sedan by an oncoming truck. The 28-year-old parents and their six-year-old twins were killed, leaving one child to survive with a fractured pelvis and foot. 

In the media circus for Route 66’s centennial celebration this year, though, these kinds of stories remain mostly hidden – and the road’s once well-known nickname, “Bloody 66,” is almost nowhere to be found.

Photo: Christian Frommelt. On display at the National Museum of Transportation

At the Missouri History Museum’s Route 66 festival, for instance, ten pristine vintage cars line the front drive. A rockabilly tune fills the main lobby. Neon signs make a dark room glow. Placards trace the origins of “the concrete ribbon to adventure,” its local landmarks, and the challenges it posed to Black, queer, and Jewish travelers. You learn about the first McDonald’s west of the Mississippi, the birth of the Phillips 66 gasoline brand, and motor cottages.

But you don’t learn nearly as much about Route 66’s bodycount. In 1941, for instance, a single short stretch of the Mother Road near the Army training installation of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri claimed the lives of 54 people in just nine months, including 19 American soldiers.

The National Museum of Transportation in suburban St. Louis, too, highlights local landmarks associated with the highway while largely ignoring its bloodshed. On display is a replica of the silver steamer S.S. Admiral, which travelers may have seen bridging the Mississippi. Drive-in theaters are featured, as “they symbolized freedom of the open highway, mid-century American design, community gathering spaces, and the romance of the open road.”

In another building, an exterior wall of the Coral Court Motel, impressively reconstructed, stands in a corner. Ten cars, one for each decade, face viewers as they might have once in a dealer’s window.

Photo: William Carl Taylor via Route 66 A Trail of Tears

To some, the story of Highway 66 is the story of a lost America. Route 66 represents a simpler, slower time before the Interstate, nostalgia for cross-country motoring in proximity with tree canopy, town squares, rivers, and diners. It represents postwar prosperity and adventure too; as Missouri History Museum Curator Sharon Smith says, “It is about finding hope in the west for the early years and excitement of Midwesterners traveling to the coast of California.”

The images Duncan published, though, present a shadow narrative. Greyhound buses and youngsters with bikes, generally left out of Route 66’s frame, enter it. The Studebaker is dented. The ambulance looms underneath the Phillips 66 sign. The girl is crying.

Americans aren’t supposed to die on Main Street. But many did – and still do.

The year Highway 66 opened 23,400 US residents died in motor vehicle crashes, more than 20 deaths per 100,000 residents, according to the National Safety Council. In 1953, fatalities ballooned to 37,956, or 24 deaths per 100,000 in the U.S.

Photo: Christian Frommelt. On display at the National Museum of Transportation

So what responsibility do the stewards of public memory have to account for the scale of automobile violence on America’s most iconic highway? And how does that responsibility shift when motorists are still killing nearly 37,000 people per year on US roads today — and when the automakers and oil companies who continue to fuel that killing still have their advertisements reproduced in centennial retrospectives?

It’s true that the Missouri History Museum’s exhibit offers at least one anecdote of an “accident,” and Smith assures that the perils of the road were addressed in a fuller exhibit in 2016. But overall, these stories are footnotes amidst what otherwise seems like a glowing tribute to automobility.

But you don’t have to look far to find evidence of Route 66’s dark side — or the many human lives it’s claimed. One Sedalia news article reports that First Lieutenant George Orchard of Richmond, VA died in a head-on collision on Highway 66 in 1941; he was the 21st soldier to be killed by cars within a year in the vicinity of Fort Leonard Wood, which the highway serves. 

Photo: William Carl Taylor via Route 66 A Trail of Tears

Widening the frame of Route 66 matters, too, because of how deadly legacy highways remain to this day.

For instance, on Gravois Avenue in St. Louis — which includes a portion of Historic 66 — 22 people were killed and 1,000 injured in car crashes between 2020 and 2024 alone. Meanwhile, the US Department of Transportation has rescinded a memorandum outlining how to improve legacy highways through Complete Streets, a toolkit that can keep humans safe in and outside of cars.

As DOT Secretary Sean Duffy calls for a “Golden Era” of transportation that coalesces around the “Freedom to Drive,” public memory plays an even greater role in confronting the deadly costs of “freedom” on the open road. We owe it to the dead not to forget.

Photo: William Carl Taylor via Route 66 A Trail of Tears Photo: William Carl Taylor via Route 66 A Trail of Tears

• In the short term, U.S. fossil fuel companies are the biggest winners from President Trump’s war on Iran, thanks to higher and higher fuel prices. In the long run, though, more countries will pursue energy independence with help from China, spelling the end for American hegemony, much like the coal-driven British empire a century ago. (The Guardian)
• Mother Jones shows once again why suspending the federal gas tax wouldn’t help drivers much, but would blow a huge hole in transportation funding.
• The president of Amtrak, Roger Harris, is stepping down at the end of July. (Trains)
• How did 15-minute cities become the latest right-wing conspiracy theory? (Car Free America)
• As far as raw totals, California has the most pedestrian deaths in the country, mostly because of L.A. (Los Angeles Magazine)
• Drivers hit an astonishing 21 pedestrians on Knoxville’s North Broadway last year, but the city is planning changes. (News Sentinel)
• Transit ridership in Pittsburgh rose 50 percent for the NFL Draft, totaling more than 400,000 riders over three days. (Axios)
• Orlando is raising parking rates, which of course is freaking out business owners who don’t consider that if parking is too cheap, their customers won’t be able to find a space. (Click Orlando)
• A lot of disinformation is also going around about the Colfax Avenue bus rapid transit line in Denver and its supposedly “devastating” impact on businesses. (Westword)
• Dallas is considering expanding streetcar lines, but some council members have concerns about the cost. (KERA)
• Legal and political challenges continue to slow down Austin’s Project Connect transit plan, and meanwhile costs continue to rise. (Texas Tribune)
• The Texas DOT will not let Austin keep a Black Lives Matter mural or a rainbow crosswalk, not even a crosswalk honoring the University of Texas. (KUT)
• Portland’s $1 billion climate change fund — which has funded converting parking lots into community gardens, among other things — could serve as an example to the rest of the country. (Oregon Public Broadcasting)
• The Central City District in Philadelphia installed modular curbs to protect bike lanes on 13th Street. (Voice)
• Construction on Salt Lake City’s S-line streetcar extension will start this summer. (ABC 4)
• The Kansas City streetcar’s Riverfront extension will make it easier for soccer fans to get to Current games. (Star)
• The District of Columbia is a great place to go running. (Greater Greater Washington)

The shutdown of Spirit Airlines didn’t just ground flights. It exposed a deeper weakness in America’s transportation system: tens of millions of people rely on affordable travel, and we still don’t provide enough of it.

For students, workers, and families, low-cost travel isn’t a luxury. It is what keeps them connected to education, jobs, loved ones, and opportunity. When a carrier built around affordability disappears, the impact lands hardest on those with the fewest alternatives.

The lesson from the Spirit demise isn’t that affordable travel is fragile. It’s that we have not built a system designed to reliably support it.

Affordable travel is still too often treated as a compromise, rather than a core part of broader mobility.

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Maintaining affordability requires intentional design. Transportation modes must work together to increase competition and expand access. That means treating air travel, intercity buses, trains, and local transit as parts of a single mobility network rather than separate systems operating in parallel. When these intermodal connections are seamless for travelers, they expand options and protect freedom of choice. When they do not, the system effectively shrinks.

The gaps are most visible in how uneven and fragmented those connections are across the country. Outside major hubs, travelers often rely on whichever mode exists — not necessarily the one that best fits their needs. Some regions have limited air service. Others lack rail. And in too many places, moving between modes adds friction, cost, or uncertainty that discourages travel altogether.

This comes at a time when transportation costs are rising across the board, making low-cost options more essential, not less.

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Ground transportation is one of the most scalable ways to close that gap. Intercity buses already connect communities airlines have left behind, linking small towns to major cities year-round at prices that remain accessible even as airfares rise. But their impact is limited when they operate in isolation.

Improving affordability is not just about the availability of service. It’s about whether people are able to easily access it.

We need multimodal hubs where buses, trains, airports, and local transit connect in simple, intuitive ways. We need collaboration to create more stations that are safe, modern, and conveniently located. And we need transportation planning that treats intercity buses and other ground options as essential infrastructure and part of the transportation ecosystem, not an afterthought.

Recommended Trump Is Holding Affordable Transportation Projects Hostage, and Congress Could Call His Bluff Kea Wilson May 7, 2026

The economic stakes are real. Transportation costs have risen sharply, and many households no longer have room to absorb higher prices.

For millions of Americans, the choice is not between a cheaper seat and a more comfortable one; it is between traveling and not traveling at all. When lower-cost options disappear, participation in work, education, and family life becomes harder to sustain.

A resilient mobility system does not depend on any single mode. It depends on multiple affordable options that reinforce one another. That is how access to opportunity becomes less dependent on income or geography.

The shutdown of Spirit Airlines is a reminder that affordability is not a niche concern. It is central to how Americans move through their lives, and it underscores the need for a transportation system built as a connected intermodal network rather than a set of isolated parts. Affordable travel is not a fallback. It is what makes broad mobility possible.

This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined by Dabney Sanders, the project manager of the Downtown Greenway in Greensboro, North Carolina. We chat about opening the greenway’s final section after 25 years of work, the remarkable art installations along the route, and lessons for other cities that want to build greenways.

There are three ways of following the conversation: The audio player embedded below; a full transcript generated by artificial intelligence; and further down this page, a partial, human-edited transcript.

Jeff Wood: How hard was it to make sure that the whole greenway was connected? Obviously, some of it is in a trail section where it’s off on its own, but then other parts seem to be next to the road, and then others seem to be part of the sidewalk.

Dabney Sanders: We had two opportunities in Greensboro that made us think this was possible to do in a way that maybe some cities wouldn’t be able to do. If you had to purchase all of the right-of-way for this, in your center city, the cost would be prohibitive. But in our case, we had a six-lane divided highway, Morrow Boulevard, which did not carry a lot of traffic on it.

We knew we could take at least a full lane of traffic out of that to convert, so we did not have to do right-of-way purchasing for that because the city owned it. That’s on our east side. On the west side, we had a railroad corridor that had one commercial user, and we had the sense that maybe we could convince that user not to use it any longer, and we could do a rail-to-trail conversion on that line.

We were successful with that. We did have to pay for that. We were naive in the beginning, thinking that the railroad might just abandon it. That’s not how it works.

Wood: They never give it up for free.

Sanders: Exactly. I will say that we did not have to do as much right-of-way acquisition as you might imagine. It was more kind of little bits and pieces that we might need here and there. There were a few properties. One of the properties had been a gas station and a convenience store — and we just knew, being right there in the corner where it was, that we wanted that property, and we were lucky enough to be able to purchase it.

We had a lot of cooperation, even from some private property owners. On the northern section, we had a very tight right-of-way, and we had a property owner who really believed in the project. And when we approached them about needing additional right-of-way from their property, they actually donated the right-of-way instead of asking for that compensation because they knew what this project could do for our community, and they also knew that ultimately this project would increase their own property values.

I feel very fortunate that we were able to acquire most of the right-of-way that we needed in a way that, outside of the railroad negotiations, wasn’t particularly painful.

Wood: Was there anybody that pushed back on it? Was there anybody that was like, “I don’t know about this, having a trail that goes through my property or near my property” or anything along those lines?

Sanders: The final section, the western branch, was the first section in which the greenway is directly adjacent to residential backyards. And we did have a lot of meetings with those residents to talk about the vision and discuss their concerns. Of course, this had been an abandoned railroad corridor, so what we were talking about doing was an incredible improvement to what had been there.

But people did have concerns. Are we gonna have people walking up into our backyards? That sort of thing. And we did work with those residents. We offered to build a fence along all of those backyards, and we offered to put gates in those fences at our expense that the property owners would control so that they would have access, because people were very excited about the greenway happening.

They just wanted to make sure that they had some protections of their property. And of the 16 or so residents, all but one of them requested that gate, and we took that as a real sign of people appreciating the project.

As President Trump’s Department of Transportation encourages American motorists to get in their cars and drive away from their communities to celebrate the nation’s birthday, one advocate is calling on would-be holiday drivers to stay put and deepen their connections to their neighbors — by closing their street to cars and throwing a party.

Nonprofit Block Party USA recently launched its “American Summer” campaign to inspire communities across the country to organize at least 250 block parties between Memorial Day and Labor Day, with an emphasis on the Fourth of July.

Timed to honor the 250th anniversary of America’s founding in 1776, this push could catalyze not only interpersonal connections, but an overdue conversation about our country’s divisions — and the role that neighborhoods can play in bringing us back together.

“With America 250 coming, there’s so much polarization, and people are really suffering,” said Vanessa Elias, the group’s founder. “It is affecting our mental health; we’re feeling divided and disappointed. And when we look at our history, we have become so independent and individualistic that we’ve lost this sense of community.”

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A self-described “mental health activist, parent coach, and block party expert,” Elias launched the campaign out of a deep belief that in-person interaction among neighbors is an essential ingredient for a healthy life, healthy kids and even a healthy democracy.

She founded her organization after one of her local legislators spoke out about the experience of being harassed by a constituent online, only to have a far more positive experience with the same constituent in person.

“That was just a light bulb moment for me,” Elias says. “We need block parties; we need face-to-face connection with random people in our immediate proximity.”

Recommended Car Harms Monday: Cars Make Us More Lonely Mike Lydon June 9, 2025

In human-centered communities, of course, block parties can be a naturally occurring phenomenon.

When we design our roads to treat motorists as simply members of a broader transportation ecosystem — rather than those roads’ exclusive users — we open up space for spontaneous barbecues and pop-up porch concerts, whether or not anyone has organized a formal gathering. This choice also encourages more casual social interactions between neighbors, which studies show are statistically more likely to happen in walkable neighborhoods, too.

Elias says her block party proposal can adapt to more car-dependent places, with gatherings in rural driveways or meetups in parks. But in an ideal world, she thinks everyone who wants to should be able to step right outside their door and into a true community, rather than getting in a car to go find it.

“Part of the work that I do, is to help people understand how they don’t need a perfect cul-de-sac where they can close the road … That said, I would prefer it be rooted in place, and rooted in the area that people are living,” she added. “Rather than finding a pretty park eight miles from where everybody lives, [the ideal block party would] bring people together as close as possible to where they’re living — and I think some communities make it really easy for that to happen.”

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Elias acknowledged that only 6.8 percent of the U.S. population live in walkable neighborhoods, which means ideal block party sites can be hard to find.

And even within those neighborhoods, some will still find it difficult to secure permits to close streets to cars, or to rally neighbors who barely say hello to one another on the way to check the mail. She stressed that, in an era of social media isolation and deep political division, the built environment is far from the only reason why we don’t always connect.

Despite those steep odds, though, Elias argued the humble block party can be a critical first “drop” that ripples out across a whole community, building social connections that grow and deepen over time — particularly for people who are too young to drive. She emphasized that block parties encourage “free play” for children, which “can make children happier, better problem-solvers, and more energized to pursue learning and develop deep interests.”

No matter why communities gather, though, Elias said the best way to celebrate our country this summer may not be traveling to visit our national treasures, but to make treasured memories in our own neighborhoods — and maybe, to forge the coalitions we need to make livable streets and social cohesion the neighborhood norm.

“Whether you’re six or 106, it’s something that is accessible to you — to meet other people, where you belong,” she added.

Visit BlockPartyUSA.org for more tools and resources to throw a block party in your community.

• The House version of a new infrastructure funding bill, dubbed BUILD America 250, is getting mixed-to-negative reviews (Streetsblog USA).
  • The Eno Center for Transportation has a detailed breakdown of the bill’s language.
  • The Natural Resources Defense Council doesn’t like a new $130 fee on electric vehicles or the elimination of funding for chargers.
  • Democratic senators are also opposed to the EV fee. (E&E News)
  • The bill maintains the car-dominated status quo by raising funding for highways and cutting funding for rail and transit, compared to the Biden administration’s bipartisan infrastructure act, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. (The Equation)
  • The Rail Passengers Association notes that it provides more funding for transit than such bills usually do, but zeroes out funding specifically for rail.
  • In addition, the bill would require congressional approval for any Amtrak restructuring. (Trains)
  • It also requires the federal government to write regulations for driverless commercial trucks. (Freight Waves)
• The EPA announced plans to delay the Biden administration’s stronger vehicle emissions standards, and possibly reconsider them entirely. (Inside Climate News)
• The Austin Transit Partnership has started pre-construction work on the city’s first light rail line. (KXAN)
• Oregon voters rejected a proposal to raise the state gas tax, probably because the price of gas is so high already. (Associated Press)
• New Jersey will not require insurance for lower-speed e-bikes that don’t have a throttle, just the ones that function more like motorcycles. (NJ.com)
• SEPTA will boost service on several Philadelphia transit lines for the World Cup. (Philly Voice)
• A new branch of Montreal’s REM train is bringing transit to an underserved area. (CBC)
• A candidate for Seoul mayor has plans to build seven new rail lines by 2037. (Moovit)
• Transport for London hired three contractors to modernize the city’s tram network. (Safer Highways)

Last summer, I  traveled to Berlin for a study abroad program. I intended to learn about the city’s communication efforts to continue cultural memory. Little did I know I was about to get a crash course in public transit, a lesson that didn’t fully set in until I got back home. Upon my return to California, I was initially overjoyed to be out and about, but that was until I realized that to go anywhere in my city, I would need to take my car. By contrast, the tram in Germany, not even a minute away from my hostel, could take me to a nearby coffee shop, a park, and a nearby grocery store.

My car now seemed more like an obstacle than an asset. The studies are clear: public transit benefits a city’s economy, creates community space, and cuts down on millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide. In addition, it offers a mode of transit that is broadly accessible, regardless of socioeconomic status and able-bodiedness, creating an equitable solution to a manufactured issue. We need an attitude shift in America, one that goes against the individualism perpetuated in our society, and understands that protecting the environment is an investment in people and not a financial strain. United States residents need to realize that a car is as much a burden as a convenience. 

A common argument against public transit is that it is expensive to install and maintain. This apprehension towards rail in California is compounded by the fact that our high-speed rail project is nowhere close to completion and has cost way more than previously promised. However, though high-speed rail may not have fulfilled its initial promise, this does not mean public transit is a lost cause in California. In the Bay, especially, the benefit of railroads has been a good case study for the rest of the state and country. And we do not necessarily need to build new rails, but can often just restore and improve old ones. 

Certainly, we don’t need driverless vehicles pushed onto us by billionaires and their corporations; we can’t just “tech” our way out of global warming. In building a renewable future, we need to look towards the past. UC Berkeley News found that the now-electrified Caltrain has already cut 89 percent of carcinogenic black carbon, as well as producing less noise than its diesel counterparts. Next time the Super Bowl brings a great halftime show to San Jose, even fewer people will choose to drive.  

Another real concern that drives people away from public transit is safety and cleanliness. Why expose yourself to the perceived risks of public transit when your sedan has a steel safety bubble? However, investing in public transit decreases this perception. Taking the S-Bahn in Berlin, I felt entirely safe; it was regularly cleaned and always full. Shared commitment and responsibility have the ability to transform our attitude of public transit as a less luxurious option, to a shared community place. If driving in a car severely increases the chances of getting hurt or killed in a crash, and pollution increases our chances of getting killed too, how is the car a more convenient or safe option?

As fuel prices rise, the clear inconveniences of cars may become more apparent. The day when people can once again take a train from Saratoga or Santa Cruz to San Francisco would be the day that I would sell my car. As global temperatures rise, we should look to Germany and draw on past solutions to address modern issues.

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Kyle Kayhan is a sociology and communication studies student at San Jose State University

The first draft of America’s next major federal transportation law threatens big cuts to transit and a mixed bag for active modes — and some advocates say it doesn’t even have significant guardrails to prevent President Trump from trampling on the handful of positive provisions it does have.

Late on Sunday, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee released its version of the bill that will replace the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that expires on Sept. 30, sounding the starting bell on the marathon reauthorization process that many expect to stretch even past that loose deadline.

The $580-billion Building Unrivaled Infrastructure and Long-Term Development for America’s 250th Act — or BUILD America 250 for short — clocked in at 1,005 pages, a slim offering compared to its predecessor’s $1.2-trillion haul.

Many of those cuts came from formula transit programs, which the Union of Concerned Scientists noted would take a 20-percent ($43 billion) hit across the bill’s five years. Highway funding, meanwhile, would increase 8 percent ($28 billion) over the same period — a move which Kevin X. Shen compared to ” a highway contractor’s wishlist.”

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As dire as that sounds, some advocates noted it’s better than the Trump administration’s proposal for the bill, which recommended zeroing out the mass transit account completely.

The damage to active transportation programs, meanwhile, was also less bad than some feared after committee Chairman Sam Graves (R–Mo.) warned in November that the bill was “not going to be spending money on … bike paths or walking paths.”

Still, some say that absent a more radical overhaul, even BUILD 250’s few bright spots could be too easily snuffed out — and the already-devastating impacts of mass car dependency could get even worse.

“We thank the committee for their work, but before any planned markup, we challenge them to dream bigger than re-upping an approach that has failed to move the needle on what matters to Americans,” Steve Davis of Transportation for America said in a statement. “[We need to be] giving them freedom from high gas prices by investing in transit and more efficient, affordable vehicles, taking decisive action to end the preventable crisis of traffic fatalities, and responding to the overwhelming popular support for prioritizing repair and maintenance ahead of costly road expansions.

“As written, this proposal fails to deliver on its promise of a transportation system that safely, affordably, and reliably connects Americans to where they need to go — and for that reason, we cannot support it,”  Davis continued.

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Davis’s organization is among the dozens that signed onto a letter earlier this month urging Congress not to negotiate the next infrastructure bill until the Trump administration had fulfilled its legal obligations to execute the last one – something the White House has categorically not yet done, as billions in grants remain frozen.

He also says BUILD 250 doesn’t contain enough guardrails against the same thing happening all over again.

“Consider the dissonance of celebrating any positive changes in the program for building or expanding transit service at the same time that the Trump administration has failed to advance a single new transit project since taking office,” Davis wrote. “The House T&I Committee has failed to recognize that this administration is not implementing the current law as intended and seems poised to ignore whatever they pass.”

Even if they should take the bill with a veritable boulder of salt, though, advocates say it’s still critical for transportation reformers to engage with the reauthorization process and fight for their priorities as horse-trading over BUILD America 250 begins — and as their counterparts in the Senate gear up to write counterpart bills of their own.

Here are a few of the initial highlights catching their attention.

The good news … with asterisks

Active transportation advocates applauded House negotiators for not eliminating the Transportation Alternatives Program, the nation’s largest dedicated source of formula funding for biking, walking, and trail infrastructure, which has frequently fallen under threat. The bill even promises more funding to TAP, as it’s colloquially known, growing the total to about $1.66 billion a year by the end of the five-year bill.

That positive news, though, was undercut by a provision making it easier for states to “flex” money out of TAP to other programs — including those that fund highways.

“[This] could return us to the bad old days of the [twenty]-teens, when we were losing lots of Transportation Alternatives [dollars] to transfers by states … That could really put a put a hole in the program,” said Kevin Mills of the Rails to Trails Conservancy.

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Of course, forward-thinking states probably won’t flex their sustainable transportation dollars over to drivers — and BUILD America 250 gives them new opportunities to flex motorist-focused money back to people outside cars, too.

Happily, the bill contains some of the key provisions from the Sarah Debbink Langenkamp Active Transportation Act, which makes it easier for states and local governments to fund bicycling and walking out of their Highway Safety Improvement Program dollars, rather than having to pony up for onerous local matching requirements.

The formula Recreational Trails Program was also included in the bill, though its funding remained stubbornly low at $84 million a year — despite the fact that motorized trail users like ATVs pay $281 million a year into the federal gas tax, and non-motorized trail users save their fellow taxpayers considerable money by picking a sustainable mode.

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BUILD America 250 also continues many of the discretionary grant programs that advocates feared would be cut, including Safe Streets and Roads for All — though the level of funding has been slashed from $982 million in 2025 to an average of $750 million per year over the course of the new bill.

The BUILD Grant will continue as well, allowing communities to compete for $1.5 billion a year for locally impactful transportation projects. Not to be confused with the BUILD America 250 Act — or that program’s two previous names, RAISE and TIGER, because Congress is hellbent on making life harder for transportation journalists — that money could be a massive boon to local transit, biking, and walking efforts … or yet another highway-widening program, depending on who’s in the White House to pick the winners.

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While the new bill does eliminate many of the most-loved discretionary programs from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, it also creates at least one new one: the Surface Transportation Accelerator Grant, or STAG.

Essentially a counterpart to BUILD, the new effort will let states compete for $2.4 billion a year to build multimodal infrastructure, with the caveat that a quarter of the funding is set aside for rural areas, a quarter for urban areas, and half for projects “local and regional” significance.

However, Rails to Trails dinged the program for ambiguous eligibility requirements that made it unclear whether rural areas, specifically, can make the most of the STAG party and win money for active transportation projects — despite the fact that rural areas are among the most prolific applicants for federal bike/walk dollars.

Both formula and discretionary bridge programs, meanwhile, won more than $50 billion funding collectively, but it was also unclear whether adding bike and pedestrian infrastructure to these mega-projects would be an eligible use of the funds.

Considering all the other proposed cuts to programs aimed at making life easier for people outside cars, those ambiguities could prove a big deal.

The unequivocally bad news

Advocates have already found significant cuts to active and shared transportation priorities — with more possibly to come.

In what Mills of Rails to Trails called a “slap,” the BUILD America 250 Act totally repeals the Active Transportation Infrastructure Investment Program, whose preservation was among his organization’s biggest priorities.

“[Congress is] going out of their way to just entirely eliminate it, when that’s the only program that uniquely invests in filling the gaps in our active transportation networks,” he added. “When you build a road system, when you build a rail system, you’ve got to think in terms of connectivity. [But] when it comes to safe walking and biking routes, and they’re like ‘No; we don’t even want it to be mentioned.’ That’s a big concern.”

The Carbon Reduction Program, Neighborhood Access and Equity Grant Program, and Healthy Streets Program would all be repealed completely, too, slashing key funding sources for non-automotive modes.

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Some advocates, meanwhile, slammed the introduction of a new electric vehicle registration fee, which experts say would do little to close the gap in the winnowing Highway Trust Fund even after the annual fee increases from $130 to $150 over five years. (Hybrids would get slapped with a $35 per year fee, too, which would eventually scale to $50.) And once again, with highway funding set to increase and transit set to decrease, that gap will only get larger, despite big talk in Washington about cutting government waste and implementing the “user pays” principle.

Worse, experts say a new EV fee would decrease electric vehicle uptake, especially when taken together with sharp cuts to the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program proposed under the bill. That would leave the most car-dependent communities in the country with virtually no alternatives to get around besides burning ever-more-expensive gas.

“Congress should be boosting investments in projects that cut costs, cut emissions, create jobs, and build a transportation system that works for all Americans,” said Shruti Vaidyanathan, director of federal and state transportation advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense Council.”This bill largely ignores the need to build cleaner, more affordable transportation options.”

And across the bill, many good programs will face significant funding insecurity, thanks to the elimination of many “advanced appropriations” across Build America 250 — with transit taking the brunt of the burden.

That means that even if this bill gets passed exactly as written, future congresses could decline to provide many transit programs the money that this congress promised them, while most highway dollars will remain insulated from political horse-trading. And that’s before any future White House follows the Trump playbook of clawing back, rescinding, illegally impounding, and slow-walking programs they just don’t like.

The road ahead

With a mark-up scheduled for Thursday and months of drawn-out negotiations to come in both chambers of Congress, the House’s mega-bill is only a first draft.

Still, advocates say it’s troubling that the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is starting the conversation by setting the bar so low – and urging their representatives to fight for better.

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“We are in an affordability crisis with transportation policies that tie us to the fuel pump,” said Mike McGinn, executive director of America Walks. “When given the chance to do something about it, we get a bipartisan proposal to increase highway expansion, cut transit, and eliminate programs designed to make neighborhoods more walkable.”

“Any federal candidate running on affordability should be ashamed to vote for this bill for that reason alone, not to mention the continued damage to health, safety and the environment,” McGinn continued. “Personally, I’m looking for the members of congress willing to stand up to the powerful lobbying interests and fight for a more forward looking approach than this.”

• Transit agencies still haven’t fully recovered from the pandemic. In 2024 ridership was just 78% of 2019 levels, and only six of 31 commuter rail systems had matched their pre-COVID numbers. (Eno Center for Transportation)
• Building more transit-oriented development is one way out of the death spiral. (Transportation for America)
• High gas prices are bringing people back to public transit — at least, the ones in places with good enough transit that not driving is an option. (Grist)
• Unlike a lot of cities overseas, it’s tough to kick the car habit in the U.S. (Common Edge)
• The Trump administration is putting parking for White House staff on a pedestrianized portion of Pennsylvania Avenue. (CNN)
• Speakers at a recent conference on high-speed rail emphasized that building a national network will require a national vision. (Railway Age)
• Charging fees on delivery robots could help cities pay for sidewalk repairs. (Next City)
• Amazon’s new e-cargo bikes, now being deployed in Washington, D.C., are almost the size of a van. (Electrek)
• A driver in Oakland who drove onto a sidewalk killed three people and injured three more (ABC 30). And in New York City, a suspected drunk driver set off a cascade of crashes that wound up killing two men sitting in front of a barber shop (NY Post).
• Kansas City’s streetcar is not just an economic development tool; it fills an actual transportation need, carrying a third of the city’s transit riders (Governing). Its latest extension opened on Monday (KCUR).
• Cleveland is converting vacant industrial land along a freight rail line into a mixed-use community and greenway. (Cleveland Magazine)
• The D.C. Metro’s CEO is trying to flatter President Trump into funding the Gold Line. (Axios)
• Milwaukee’s Bublr Bikes is expanding. (TMJ 4)
• Richmond temporarily stopped issuing tickets for parking in bike lanes due to driver backlash. (Axios)
• Portland, Maine selected a firm to develop a new long-range transportation plan. (Maine Wire)
• The World Naked Bike Ride may be coming to a city near you this summer. (Momentum)