Going a single week without getting in a car shouldn’t be difficult. In countless car-dependent American cities, though, it’s all but unthinkable.

That’s part of why America Walks will launch the National Week Without Driving Challenge on Oct. 2 with the goal of helping everyone, but especially elected officials, understand the barriers faced by non-motorists, particularly if they have disabilities that make driving impossible.

Week Without Driving not only seeks to build support for policy changes that make active and shared modes the obvious choice, rather than dangerous and inconvenient. It’s also about simple math: Passenger cars currently make up over half of U.S. transportation sector emissions —which is itself the country’s largest source of pollution — and unless Americans start driving less, experts predict that we’ll fall short of our climate goals, even if we rapidly electrify our vehicle fleets.

We sat down with Sierra Club President Ramón Cruz to talk about why he’s supporting the challenge, and why he’s challenging political leaders and environmentalists to experience the world beyond the windshield. We spoke to him by phone (fittingly enough, while he was riding a train.)

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Streetsblog: Tell me why you’re supporting the week without driving campaign, and why you think other climate leaders and advocates should do the same. 

Ramón Cruz: There are a few layers there, but for one, this campaign is showing elected officials, decision-makers, and policymakers the willingness of a population to change [how they get around], as well as the importance of mode shift and public transportation.

And it’s also important to let people get a taste of what could be. I’m an active cyclist; I don’t have a car, and because I live in New York City, it’s easy to do that. And I’ve helped introduce many people to cycling, because some still people say, “‘”Well, it’s too dangerous to bike in New York.” But it’s actually not bad, especially with Vision Zero and drivers’ miles per hour being restricted. There’s much more infrastructure to bike safely now than there was 12 or 15 years ago.

These campaigns are good for people to see it first hand. You might not have instant, complete modal shift, but you might say, “Wait, that last kilometer [of my journey] is possible through active mobility. if I bike from home to the station, or if I take bike share, it could work.” That kind of campaign is important to help people envision themselves shifting [their habits.] 

Streetsblog: What would you say to people who are considering this campaign who don’t live in cities that make it easy not to drive?

Cruz: It’s certainly not easy everywhere, especially in places where you have all these highways that disrupt neighborhoods. … In other countries with different mentalities, individuals and private [actions] aren’t necessarily the central thing. It’s the collective. Then you usually have much better systems, because it’s not dependent on the users, but on society as a whole. Those collective choices are so important, and that’s why we need to vote, and elect leaders who prioritize [making better] collective choices.

[With that said], I think one purpose of this [campaign] is to see how, if you don’t have many [mobility] choices, can you think of some ways of improving your carbon footprint? … In the sustainability world, we have the avoid/shift/improve/paradigm. So, what are the trips that I can avoid? Let’s start with those one. Can I shift to another mode? Let’s do that. If can’t, can I switch to an electric vehicle? Can I change the tires? Can I be more diligent about checking the air on the tires? Not to pass judgement on anybody’s choices, but we all have opportunities — and responsibilities — to improve. 

Streetsblog: Since you brought them up, let’s talk about electric vehicles. Most of the advocates I cover certainly don’t want cars to run on gas, but they also worry that EVs are being treated as a climate panacea, when mode shift is truly not optional to decarbonize the transportation sector. They also worry about how EVs might replicate the problems of car dependency beyond just the tailpipe. How do you balance encouraging people to drive less with encouraging people to drive battery-electric when they must drive — and what advice do you have to other environmental leaders who are negotiating that tension?

Cruz: It shouldn’t be either/or. When you put all your efforts into EVs, you’re still not improving quality of life. Cleaner traffic is still traffic; it’s still horrible to spend two hours [in a car], even if you’re polluting less. It’s still not getting at the core of the problem: that we’re building these cities in ways that are not sustainable, and not sustaining our quality of life. At the same time, climate change is a real threat that is the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced, and market forces are an important way [to help confront it]. But that’s not a reason to think that one can’t do more to [prioritize] those “avoid” and “shift” solutions.

This is why we need a coalition or much more than environmental leaders. You need racial justice advocates; you need housing advocates; you need economic and social justice advocates; you need veterans and youth advocates — you need advocates for everyone who can benefit from mobility. Because ultimately, the goal is mobility, to help people reach their potential. And you need that big coalition advocating for much more than just planning and environmental [policy].

Streetsblog: Who do you hope will take the Week Without Driving challenge?

Ideally, the decision makers who have the power to redirect funding to all this. That’s where the challenge is. We don’t need to [preach to] the choir that this is important.

• The transition to electric vehicles is raising a lot of questions about what to do with our current gas stations, which aren’t suited for recharging that lasts 30 minutes (Slate). Truck stops, with amenities like dog parks and restaurants, are much better suited to make the switch (Jalopnik).
• Another problem with EV charging stations, especially in rural areas, is that they’re dependent on WiFi or cellphone service, which doesn’t work half the time. (Car and Driver)
• Demonstration projects can help ease the backlash against bike lanes. (Greater Greater Washington)
• Biking has become so popular in Paris that cyclists now are experiencing road rage against each other, instead of drivers. (Washington Post)
• Momentum is building for intercity rail in Colorado. (Governing)
• Pedestrian deaths are down in Houston, but with drivers killing 300 people a year, there’s room for improvement. (Click2Houston)
• Houston gave bikeshare BCycle a $500,000 lifeline to keep operating for another couple of months. (Houston Public Media)
• A Salt Lake City city councilman is working to raise awareness of dangerous freight-train crossings for pedestrians. (Story Map)
• Charlotte is embroiled in a $115 million legal dispute with a streetcar contractor. (WSOC)
• Bike and scooter ridership doubled after the creation of a Providence bike lane. (WJAR)
• Once upon a time, streetcars served both sides of Tampa Bay. (Tampa Magazines)
• Norway’s new bike/pedestrian tunnel will blow your mind. Not really, but it’s still pretty cool. (Bloomberg)

This week we’re joined by Bob Searns to talk about his book Beyond Greenways: The Next Step for City Trails and Walking Routes. We talk about grand ideas for walking trails that circle whole regions and more local routes that make up a new mode of green infrastructure in cities.

A partial transcript can be found under the audio player below. Click here for a full, unedited transcript.

Jeff Wood: I want to talk a little bit about the difference between United States and other countries when it comes to things like right to roam and how the acceptance of open land is taken here versus maybe other places.

Bob Searns: Yeah. You know, and that’s something that, that just inspired me. Robert McFarlane, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, he’s an author who wrote about Walking Ways. He’s actually a Scottish author and I read his book and was so inspired by it, The Old Ways was the name of the book, just the notion of being able to go out on the landscape. And there’s a number of nations, Scandinavia I think may have originated it, the notion that in Europe you’re freer to kind of go out on the land to pick berries, camp — the idea is that you just close the gate or you don’t disturb the livestock and that sort of thing.

Whereas in the US, North America, mostly in the US, I think there’s this sense that people don’t want intruders on their property. You know, you might get shot if you go on somebody’s property and camp or pick berries or whatever. And there’s been a number of articles — in fact recently there’s a story in the New York Times about this just a few weeks ago that, it’s been sort of taken for granted that this has been a limited access problem in the US but now there seems to be some reversals, for example in England where, you know, some of the powers that be are trying to close off these rights of way. And so there’s been a lot of protests, there’s been people going out and you know, illegally camping and illegally swimming.

It’s that idea of not having that freedom. And you know, when you begin to think about the right to roam too, you know, Colorado is kind of a place with a lot of open lands, but you can’t get to them anymore because there’s traffic jams when you try and get to the National Forest, you’ve lived here so you know the National Parks. And so that restriction is there too. And you just don’t park your car and just wander off on anybody’s property. You gotta get to these public open spaces and they’re crowded, they’re hard to get to, particularly with people with limited means if they can’t afford the money, you know, for gas or whatever. There’s also a concern that, I interviewed a number of people who are in minority groups and they just don’t feel welcome in many cases and actually afraid, you know, for their safety in some of the places where they don’t feel welcome.

So the right to roam is, I think, an increasingly important consideration. And you know, I don’t envision having the kind of laws like they have in Europe or the British laws that are now somewhat being eroded. I don’t think that’s ever gonna happen here because of the kind of private property values. So really what we’ve gotta do is establish places where people have those rights. It’s a compromise, but at least establish those places. Particularly if we think about Grand Loops, you know, at least maybe we develop these kind of, you know, greenbelt spaces around metro areas where people can just get out on the land and feel like they can walk from one place to another.

Jeff Wood: In the book that you also discuss how hard that is in terms of legal issues, easements, those types of things. I appreciate you laying out all the details and I think that’s one of the important benefits of the book. But I’m wondering about those ways of getting land to be used because it is more complicated than maybe having a national law that says you can go from Lewes to Eastbourne, you know, without worry.

Bob Searns: Yeah, land acquisition is a huge thing and, and in my career building greenways, we ran into that all the time. It could take five years to acquire a right of way, you know, it was just a struggle all the time. At least if we get those ideas out there, maybe some of that land can be set aside. Cities have done that. Phoenix and Las Vegas have actually built Grand Loops. Phoenix has one around their city and, and Las Vegas, there’s a number of other ones too. They’ve managed to make these connections. One of the things you do is, is to try to connect together existing open spaces like state parks and other things because you’ve got those sort of bulbous areas of green already that you can begin to link together.

The other thing is using road right of ways, you know, it’s not always great being mixed up with cars, but again, as I mentioned with the human-powered ATV, you can walk along the edge of a road and if it’s low traffic, a country lane or what have you, or a designated space in the right of way, you know it’s relatively safe and maybe you can enhance those spaces, but you know, that’s the other option is there is that flexibility. But your point’s well taken. It’s a long term struggle. It can take two generations to build a greenway. That’s one of the reasons I wanna get this message out now and cite some of the examples of cities that have done it so we can start to do that kind of thing.

To create a transportation system that is truly accessible to all, federal transportation leaders must do more to reckon with the harms caused by the racist impact of its past and present policies, advocates told DOT leaders last week.

During the inaugural meeting of the Advisory Committee on Transportation Equity — a 24-person advisory group established by federal transportation officials in May 2022 — Secretary Pete Buttigieg challenged his fellow officials to listen deeply to advocates’ concerns and own the legacy of the department’s mistakes, even if they didn’t personally make them. 

“No one alive today is necessarily responsible for the origins of the [transportation] inequities that we inherited,” he said. “But everybody who was alive today and in a position of responsibility, is accountable for what we do about it. That’s why we’re here.” 

The members of the ACTE were selected from an application pool of over 240 applicants spanning the planning, policy, academia, and transportation sectors, with a goal of providing independent advice and recommendations on issues related to civil rights and transportation equity, according to the committee charter.

Unraveling the policies and practices of the past, though, may not be easy. As demonstrated in research from groups like Smart Growth America, low-income and BIPOC neighborhoods are still experiencing the physical and financial impacts of highways that were slashed through their neighborhoods more than half a century ago, displacing whole communities and stripping them of millions of dollars worth of intergenerational wealth.  

Destiny (Thomas) De Guzman — founder and Chief Executive Officer of Thrivance Group, a firm that works with transportation and land use leaders to help bring justice into public policy, planning, and community development spaces —  said that leaders to revisit these historical harms in order to reimagine what repairing them might look like. And she says they also need to look back even further, to the genocide of Indigenous people across the US and the horrors of chattel slavery.

“We need to consider what these interventions look like from a reparative standpoint,” De Guzman said. “Not reparative as in ‘just repairing what’s broken,’ but reparations, and what that looks like from a land use and transportation planning perspective. … [The government needs to] directly place some of those resources back into the hands of descendants of those atrocities.”

The members of the committee stressed that transportation inequities are still deeply felt across the country today, in ways big and small. According to DOT’s Equity Plan report, the average commute for bus riders is 47 minutes while it’s only 26 minutes for drivers. The country’s lowest-income households also spend about 37 percent of their income on transportation, compared to just 19 percent for middle class income families.

To help correct those disparities, the ACTE will work in tandem with DOT’s 2022 Equity Action Plan and Strategic Plan, which collectively lay out how the department will provide transportation access for all — while also centering underserved and marginalized communities who often either don’t receive resources, or are negatively impacted by past and present transportation decisions. 

That plan focuses on four key areas, which the department hopes to infuse into all the transportation decisions the DOT makes:

• Wealth creation for underserved businesses to help them secure more DOT contracts; 
• Building power to ensure communities have a voice during transportation decisions, and enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act legislation before grants are awarded;
• Interventions to provide assistance throughout the planning, development and grantmaking process, to make sure underserved communities have access to and benefit from transportation investments, and;
• Expanding access to opportunity through the creation of a cost burden measure that allows DOT to identify, address, and mitigate barriers to transportation.

ACTE members have until June 2023 to provide Buttigieg and DOT with their recommendations.The committee is expected to meet several times over the coming months to craft this report.

For advocates like Jack Nierenberg — Vice President of Passengers United, a grassroots transportation advocacy in the New York tri-state area — those actions can’t come soon enough. Before he attended the ACTE meeting, he was a little skeptical of the committee,  which he worried would be all talk and no action. But he soon changed his mind.

“I’m really glad that a spotlight is really being put on this issue, because for way too long, equity just happens to be thrown in in the process,” Nierenberg said. “It’s not at the forefront of any transit decision at this point.”

The diversity and expertise of the committee members was impressive, but for Nierenberg what really stood out was the committee’s independence.

“I am hopeful that given the level of independence that this committee is supposed to be having, that they’re actually going to be fulfilling that and doing what they need to be doing, regardless of whether it’s for or against a particular project or initiative by the federal government or any agency,” Nierenberg said. “The fact that they can really focus on [equity] and not get caught up in the biases of any particular government agency, or anyone — I think that speaks volumes.”

Editor’s note: The members of the Advisory Committee on Transportation Equity include many mobility justice leaders whose work has been covered or featured by Streetsblog USA. Check some of it out below.

Anthony Foxx, Professor of Practice, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and former U.S. DOT Secretary

Stephanie Gidigbi-Jenkins:Partner, North Star Strategies; Vice President, Communities First Infrastructure Alliance

Charles T. Brown, Founder, Equitable Cities

Flora Castillo, President, Pivot Strategies

Veronica O. Davis, Deputy Director, Houston Public Works; Director, Transportation and Drainage Operations, City of Houston

Destiny (Thomas) De Guzman, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Thrivance Group 

Priya Sarathy Jones, Deputy Executive Director, Fines and Fees Justice Center

Diana Mendes, Corporate President for Infrastructure and Mobility Equity, HNTB

Roger Millar, Secretary, Washington State Department of Transportation

America’s pandemic-era bike boom hit a troubling plateau last year — and unless communities invest more into getting people riding, those numbers may not go up again anytime soon, a new study finds.

According to the mobility data analytics firm Streetlight — which may be the only group quantifying the impact of Covid-era cycling phenomenon on a national basis, since many city Departments of Transportation don’t bother to count people on two wheels — bike trips in the U.S. surged 37 percent between 2019, pre-Covid, and 2022, when it had upended virtually everything about American life. And in top-ranked New York City, trips nearly doubled over that period, with cities like San Diego (which increased 71 percent), Bakersfield, Calif. (70.8 percent) and Las Vegas (69.6 percent) not far behind.

Much of those additional journeys, though, were taken in the first two years of the pandemic — and in 65 out of 100 largest metros, bike trip volumes actually declined slightly in 2022 when compared to the year prior. And while the authors of the report speculated that cities’ removal of quarantine-era quick-build bike infrastructure may have played a role in the decline, they weren’t totally sure what else caused it.

“I do think there are some flashing signals around the flatline in 2022,” said Emily Adler, director of content for Streetlight. “This growth won’t continue forever without being facilitated by more infrastructure investment, [and particularly] safety infrastructure.”

The silver lining of that urgent warning, of course, is that many Americans are still biking a lot more than they did before the pandemic began — even in cities that didn’t make robust investments in the mode.

“Just the universality of growth and the size of the gross number nationally [was really surprising],” added Adler. “And when you start looking at the really big metros, [to see] just how huge the boom was — that was really surprising, too . I would have maybe expected to see more contraction [in bike trips] earlier than 2022. Instead, I think overall, it really seems like biking took off and people stuck with it.”

Adler is careful to note, though, that the study doesn’t identify how many of those new bike trips replaced erstwhile car trips, and which simply pulled frightened riders off of buses and trains where they feared contracting a deadly airborne virus. It also didn’t quantify how many of those trips were intended purely for exercise or to blow off steam on recreational rides, without reducing the aggregate number of miles city dwellers traveled in private vehicles — and it couldn’t possibly quantify how fear of traffic violence shaped individual cities’ ridership trends as crashes skyrocketed.

At the local level, additional analysis of these sorts of questions might help explain why some cities’ bike booms are now being blunted – and why others never blew up at all. In one particularly surprising revelation from the Streetlight report, the bike-friendly community surrounding Portland, Ore. has actually experienced a seven percent decrease in bike trip volumes since 2019; meanwhile, cycling Mecca Madison tumbled from its number eight spot on the rankings of annual average daily bike trips per capita, all the way down to number 25.

No matter what forces are driving individual cities’ divergent cycling trends, the Streetlight data suggests that on the whole, Americans’ newfound love for cycling wasn’t just a flash in the pan. Without the robust investments in safety necessarily to support that rising tide, though, trip numbers are already beginning to wane — and it’s happening at the exact moment when the twin challenges of climate change and the national traffic violence epidemic demand that we do everything we can to get more folks out of their cars and into the saddle.

“I hate to use the term the new normal, but there is a new normal setting in,” warned Adler.

On the night of June 12, 2019, filmmaker Colin Campbell was driving along the long stretch of Highway 62 between LA and Joshua Tree with his wife, writer and director Gail Lerner, and their two teenage kids in the back. Three days before, the family had spontaneously put an offer on a vacation home in the deserts of southern California — a landscape they’d come to love during their many vacations there — and they were heading back to take in another look. 

The headlights of the oncoming car looked like mere pinpoints when Colin began turning into the gas station. But that vehicle was traveling at ninety miles an hour, driven by a drunk and high driver who never even hit the brakes before she T-boned the Campbells. Colin and Gail were severely injured; the couple’s children, Hart, 14, and Ruby, 17, died instantly.

After their children’s death, the Campbells struggled to find the support they needed to survive their pain. They had built a strong community, especially through their temple, where Hart had recently celebrated his bar mitzvah. But few of their friends seemed to know how to speak to them about their loss. Instead, over and over, they heard the same phrase repeated: “There are no words.” 

 Since then, Campbell has made it his mission to find the words that grievers need to hear — and the words that the friends and family who want to meaningfully support those in grief need to say. In his new play, “Grief: A One Man Sh*tshow” — which he’ll be performing live at the People’s Forum in New York City and streaming free online October 4^th — Campbell initially sought to channel his rage from his children’s senseless deaths into an exploration of all the darkest thoughts about grieving that no one wants to acknowledge. During the writing process, though, he says the show softened and took on a more redemptive arc; it ends with the audience repeating Hart and Ruby’s names, creating a sonic structure strong enough to hold the weight of their loss.

The play was completed and about to begin previews when the pandemic shut theaters down and the first performance had to be canceled. During the isolation of the pandemic, though, he found that he still had the urge to explore grief through writing, and to reach out to others who needed help.

He began to write his book, “Finding the Words: Working Through Profound Loss With Hope and Purpose”  to help guide readers through the emotional states of grieving, both for the grievers and their community, who can be so afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing that they inadvertently abandon their loved ones in their grief. Neither his book nor his play are exclusively about losing a loved one to traffic violence, but both offer a glimpse into that all-too-common experience — and powerful advice for those who have endured it, or know someone who has.

The interview below has been edited for clarity and length. 

Jack Teague: What do you want the world to know about Hart and Ruby?

Colin Campbell: I think that last drive captures their characters. Ruby was working on a comic—she was this amazing budding artist at age seventeen, and she was making this amazing digital comic that was exploring her suicidality and OCD that she was just coming out of. She finished the last touch on the car ride, which was her note to the reader. It said, “If this comic hits too close to home and you’re feeling the same kind of feelings, please seek help. Please call a suicide hotline. I’m in a much better place now than when I was.” She drew a little face, and shortly after she finished the last page of her comic, she was killed. 

At the same time, Hart was in the backseat texting Ruby, asking for dating advice about whether he should get back together with an ex-girlfriend who was now flirting with him. This sweet little brother sister exchange was the last thing that they did. It just gives you a feeling for their character and their love for each other.

JT: Tell me more about what you want readers to take away from your book.

CC: Our culture doesn’t teach us to support those in grief. Out of fear, or ignorance, or discomfort, friends and family decide that those most in need want to be left alone. So many people that we’ve met in grief groups have given up on many of their friends and family because they were abandoned. [They] hold so much anger towards those who used to be closest to them. It seemed so sad to me.

One of my focuses in my book is to provide tools for the grievers, specifically to help them find their own words so that they’re able to express their needs to their community. There’s such a strange cultural force that tells us not to ask for what we need.

And yet, I think people who love somebody who is in grief want that instruction. They want [someone] to tell them, ‘What do I say to these people? How do I behave around them?’ The griever is the one who knows how they want to be supported. A big focus of my book is helping the griever find their own words, so that they can share their needs. 

JT: What did you most want to hear from your community after your loss?

CC: I love hearing stories about Ruby and Hart. Or how much grief and loss they feel, because then I’m not grieving alone. We’re all missing them. Isn’t that beautiful, to share that loss, rather than my being all alone and feeling like the world has forgotten them?

JT: The play was written early in your grief, and focuses a lot of space on what you call those “dark and ugly places.” Why did you decide to go there? 

CC: In the play, I go to ugly places where I start comparing loss and comparing different ways that kids can die and I get in the weeds. I do go on this journey, and I become more aware of the profundity of other people’s grief —  that I’m not so special, and that there are deeper levels of grief than I’d ever thought of. [But] it goes to a place of grace at the end.

I’ve been told afterwards by audience members that those dark, ugly thoughts were really helpful to them because they’d had them too. I’ve since come to value those dark thoughts more than I initially did. Audiences value hearing someone go through that mental journey and come out on the other side. It’s a cathartic process.

There’s also this shared magic quality of live theater. The audience is together, and I make space for their grief, and they just sit stock still, in silence. It’s powerful, and that only happens in live theater when we’re all in a room in a collective experience.

JT: Are you comfortable talking about the case against the driver? Is it ongoing?

CC: She was arrested three years ago, and the police spent a year building an airtight case with crash analysis, cameras, brake analyses, the crash site. Then she was formally charged with two counts of second-degree murder. The defense attorney has been granted as much time as they want to prepare the case, so it’s ongoing. Either way, she’s in jail, so that doesn’t bother me.

I’ve seen other parents who lost children to drunk drivers agonize over all of the court hearings, and delays, and continuances, and there’s a lot of suffering in that. Our strategy, conscious or not, has been not to think about it too much.

JT: What do you think would be justice for Hart and Ruby? 

CC: That’s a hard question for me. Gail and I worked with kids fifteen to seventeen years old in juvenile hall who were charged with murder, or armed robbery, so they had very long prison sentences. We had a lot of compassion for these kids, and didn’t feel like the prison industrial complex was a great place to put them. But now we’re on the other side, and we’re the victims of someone’s crime.

The thought of her being behind bars instead of out on the roads is comforting. However, if she were to devote her life to fighting drunk driving, that would feel like justice to me.

Tickets for the live performance of “Grief: A One Man Sh*tshow” on October 4^th at the People’s Forum in New York City are available now. A virtual livestream will be available to watch for free; use the same link to register. This event is sponsored by Evermore and Families for Safe Streets. 

 “Finding the Words: Working Through Profound Loss With Hope and Purpose”  is available wherever books are sold. 

• Cops kill hundreds of people every year during police pursuits, and some are shockingly sanguine about it. Perhaps that’s because, although the life of a loved one is priceless, payouts are generally only in the six figures. (Streetsblog USA)
• “Cool pavement” that reflects the sun’s rays can actually make pedestrians feel even hotter. (City Lab)
• European insurance companies are starting to study air quality as part of the basis for projecting future safety net costs. (The Guardian)
• Looking back on 2020’s Project Connect transit referendum, Austin leaders called it a defining moment for the city. (KXAN)
• L.A. Metro ridership was up 13% in August compared to a year ago, the ninth consecutive month of growth. (Metro Magazine)
• Long-term funded will be needed to keep bike-sharing in Houston after BCycle’s demise. (Houston Public Media)
• Everything you ever wanted to know about accounting at Denver’s transit agency, but were afraid to ask. (Colorado Public Radio)
• In one of the most bike-friendly cities in the U.S. — Cambridge, Massachusetts — cyclists are preparing for hard-fought city elections. (Day)
• Iowa City and Cedar Rapids are considering a bus rapid transit line connecting the two cities. (CBS 2)
• Young people in the Bay Area have created a campaign to combat gender-based harassment on transit. (Transit Center)
• Apparently Deion Sanders is above the law, based on the outrage about the Colorado football coach getting a ticket for his illegally parked Lamborghini. (Outkick)

A Hawaii public transportation agency has become a powerful lifeline for a devastated community in both the midst and the aftermath of historic wildfires — and now, they’re spotlighting a fundraiser to give back even more.

The wind-whipped wildfires of Aug. 8 would soon engulf much of the Lahaina Town region of the island of Maui, killing at least 97 people. But the death toll from one of the most deadly blazes in over a century of U.S. history might have been far higher, though, had Maui Bus not sprang into action.

When downed power lines blocked its normal routes and the cellular networks the agency uses to communicate with its drivers went down, Marc Takamori, director of the Maui County Department of Transportation, said officials quickly called on police to mobilize bus fleets to transport stranded residents and visitors to a nearby evacuation center. When that evacuation center was itself threatened by the growing fire, Maui buses moved survivors to another one, and later, to the airports, ultimately transporting more than 42,000 people off the island in the days that followed.

The heroism of Maui Bus staff is just the latest example the critical role that transit can play when catastrophe strikes — particularly for people who don’t own cars. But that doesn’t mean every U.S. transit agency has the resources they need to accomplish similar rescues.

According to a 2008 report from the National Academy of Sciences, “few urban areas have planned for a major disaster and evacuation … or have focused on the role of transit and other public transportation providers in such an incident.” And later research suggests they still aren’t doing it; in 2018, Florida Atlantic University researcher John Renne wrote that “society can no longer afford to ignore evacuation planning for carless and vulnerable populations.” Renne detailed how that unacceptable status quo is poised to grow more urgent as our population ages and gives up driving, as fewer people can afford to own a car, and as climate-related disasters accelerate.

In Maui, some of those who attempted to evacuate by private vehicle found themselves trapped in standstill traffic as the fires approached and roads were rendered impassable by downed power lines; some died inside their cars, while others were forced to leave them to burn and climb over a seawall and into the ocean to save themselves.

“In terms of mass evacuations, if everybody hops in their own vehicle and starts to drive off, it’s going to be mass chaos just because of the gridlock,” added Takamori. “Mass transportation is essential for people who don’t have a car, or who don’t drive a car. That’s usually those are younger folks and older folks — those gap groups that we’re trying to ensure we provide [for].”

In the days and weeks after the evacuations, the importance of transit to the Maui community became even more pronounced. Maui Bus has since set up circulator shuttles to connect the shelters and hotels, where many survivors are still living, to resources throughout the island, including meetings with caseworkers at FEMA and the Red Cross, medical and mental health appointments, and access to family services and resource centers working to locate loved ones who remain missing. The agency has brought volunteers to food distribution centers and extended its hours to get voters to a council meeting about how best to rebuild. It even brought some survivors to see President Biden speak during his visit to the island.

In the meantime, transit officials have also been working hard to restore regular service to a community that’s been profoundly changed. Flexible paratransit services were able to relaunch fairly quickly, but fixed-route services have proved more challenging, not least because one of Maui Bus’ primary transfer hubs was located in the center of Lahaina Town in front of a movie theater that burned to the ground, Takamori said. The agency was able to combine two of its former routes to give west Maui residents some access to the center of the island, but the trip now takes two hours each way, and it’s not ideal.

Of course, Takamori recognizes that shared transportation options are far from the only thing the people of his community lost in the fire. Many are grieving family members, friends, destroyed homes, and centuries of irreplaceable culture. That’s why Maui Bus is currently working to raise money for the general fund of Maui United Way; the agency’s software provider, GMV Technologies, has already committed $25,000 to the effort, and is encouraging the transit community to match them.  

“Maui’s so small, so most people will know someone who’s been effected, who’s lost a home or a loved one,” Takamori added. “It’s still very emotional when you drive through the area. … Just trying to get to the point of even knowing what it’s going to look when we’re able to rebuild — it’s just going to take a really long time. I think a lot of families are going to be displaced for years.”

Takamori stressed that Maui bus isn’t the only transportation provider in the region that deserves credit for its part in its evacuation and recovery efforts, citing private shuttle outfits, school bus operators, and many neighbors who have stepped up during the crisis. He recognizes, though, that public transportation plays a particularly critical role in the lives of many Hawai’i locals — and not just during the climate-related disasters that mass transit itself can help prevent.

“For people that utilize the public transportation system, it’s a lifeline for them,” he adds. “For us to ensure that we can continue our services in one way or another is very important. We want to ensure people can live here, and that they can get where they need to go, no matter what.”

• Thanks to the 2021 infrastructure law, Amtrak is tripling capital spending to $6 billion a year by 2025, with the goal of doubling ridership by 2040. (Smart Cities Dive)
• The CEO of self-driving carmaker Cruise wants to ban human drivers from city centers (Tech Crunch). But are computer-driven cars that can be bewildered by traffic cones really any safer?
• The UK’s Conservative government is backtracking on plans to ban sales of new carbon-emitting vehicles by 2030, and automakers that have already committed to the EV transition aren’t happy about it. (Jalopnik)
• Arch Daily has global examples of how parking garages can be repurposed as public spaces.
• Will remote work kill off the Bay Area Rapid Transit system? (The Guardian)
• As D.C. workers increasingly start commuting again, they’re doing so disproportionately by car, although Metro ridership is slowly rebounding. (Washington Post)
• L.A.’s unfinished Marina Freeway could be converted to greenspace. (Los Angeles Times)
• California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill requiring human backup drivers in autonomous heavy-duty trucks. (The Verge)
• A Houston study found that simply planting trees near bus stops keeps them cooler than building shelters. (Texas Standard)
• Seattle’s new electric bike-lane sweeper is the start of an effort to electrify the entire city fleet. (Seattle Times)
• A zig-zag sidewalk in Salt Lake City is intended to be safer for pedestrians but is baffling residents. (Fox 13)
• Atlanta’s car-free Streets Alive festival is back after a four-year hiatus. (Axios)

The federal government should subsidize employers to provide more benefits to workers who opt for sustainable commuting modes, said two members of Congress who recently proposed legislation to bolster transportation demand management strategies.

The two members — Reps. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.) and Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.) — said that Congress should be finding ways to reduce the number of cars on the road by providing incentives for employers to create more affordable transportation alternatives for workers. 

“When employers are struggling to attract and retain talent, our roads are becoming more congested and public transit ridership is down, it’s time to empower employers to offer better transit benefits,” said Auchincloss, who serves on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Congress also needs to enact more legislation supporting transportation demand management, and U.S. DOT officials need to find ways to fund more TDM projects through existing federal programs, added David McMaster, board president for the Association for Commuter Transportation, an organization promoting more sustainable transportation modes.

Thanks to pollution reductions in energy production and industry, transportation is the largest contributor of greenhouses gases by economic sectors, now accounting for 28 percent of GHGs, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Agencies across the federal government recently released “The U.S. National Blueprint for Transportation,” which called for a multi-pronged, multi-agency approach to reaching the country’s net-zero GHG emissions goal by 2050.

Transportation Demand Management is a series of ways to reduce travel demand, and in doing so, reduce emissions. Such strategies can show up in workplaces in the form of subsidies for public transit, carpooling, bikeshare or in high prices for employee car parking. 

TDM strategies can have a huge impact on reducing congestion if implemented. A recent study of nine major cities found that strategies such as replacing parking subsidies with a daily $5 non-single-occupancy vehicle benefit could reduce vehicle miles traveled during the daily commute by as much as 36 percent.

Auchincloss said the systemic impacts of breaking up the congestion on the road has lasting benefits for workers over time, including reduced emissions, public health benefits and simply saved time.

“We ask people who are riding a bus to sit in the same traffic as people who are in a car by themselves. That’s not fair,” Auchincloss said. “When we reduce congestion on the roads, when we prioritize mass transit, what we are doing is we are telling working class people your time is valuable as someone who can afford a car ride.”

García said reaching the U.S.’s decarbonization goals will take a holistic approach.

“We also must continue to advocate for projects that are conveniently located to affordable housing, to save passageways, green spaces and jobs, reducing congestion and carbon emissions, increasing bike and pedestrian safety, and redoubling our commitment to Vision Zero,” García said.

TDM may change the way workers commute, but these benefits still aren’t commonplace among the workforce. 

Fewer than 20 percent of employees at private sector companies with 500 or more employees have access to subsidized commuting benefits, according to a US Department of Labor report. And the smaller the company, the fewer subsidies are offered. It’s unclear however from the report how commuter benefits are broken down.

Association for Commuter Transportation Executive Director Davis Straus said he recognizes the uphill battle that transportation advocates face in getting companies to offer more benefits that get their workers out of cars.

“It’s always been challenging making that business case,” Straus said about selling the advantages of commuter benefits. “But I think it comes through the data showing how mode shifts can happen through more small investments and programs.

Straus said that TDM works best when the top brass at a given company realizes that TDM is “key to their business success, and being able to attract and retain employees.”

Some companyies are getting the message.

Genentech, the South San Francisco biotechnology corporation, makes reducing congestion and mitigating the impacts fo climate change a central part of the company’s mission and growth, according to Andy Jefferson, the company’s senior director of transportation. The company encourages both public transit and active commuting for employees by refunding all public transit fare costs and offering a monetary incentive to those who walk, jog, or ride a bike to work.

“Genentech’s extensive network of bus routes, public transit connections, and car/vanpools allows us to significantly reduce single-occupancy vehicles and carbon emissions throughout the Bay Area and continue on our path to zero emissions,” Jefferson said via email, adding that nearly nearly 40 percent of the company’s 10,000-strong South San Francisco workforce uses some alternative form of transportation to get to work.

“Our robust service also allows us to broaden our talent pool by making our South San Francisco campus more accessible,” Jefferson said.

• It’s been a busy past few days for Pete Buttigieg. President Biden enlisted him to talk sense into House Republicans about shutting down the government (New York Times); he had to explain the difference between climate change and seasons to a congressman (Advocate); and criticized Donald Trumps for comments about wounded veterans (USA Today). Today the transportation secretary will be in Nebraska to highlight investments in rail safety. (KETV)
• While American transit advocates often laud Europe for its rail network, even across the pond governments short-shrift trains in favor of spending money on roads. (The Guardian)
• Micromobility is vital for low-income people who use it for essential trips like grocery shopping and going to work. (Streetsblog USA)
• A study of one Midwestern city found that, after it removed parking mandates for the downtown and university districts, developers built less than half as much parking there as they did in the rest of the city. (Journal of the American Planning Association)
• Privately owned passenger rail company Brightline started running trains between Miami and Orlando on Friday (Washington Post), but tragedy also struck as a Brightline train killed a pedestrian — the 98th such death since 2019 (Palm Beach Post).
• Omaha broke ground on its $440 million streetcar project. (World-Herald)
• Based on Denver’s successful program, the D.C. city council approved vouchers of up to $2,000 for primarily low-income residents to buy e-bikes. (WaPo)
• Houston could have two bikeshares if the city council approves Mayor Sylvester Turner’s proposal to keep BCycle afloat and the Harris County transit authority creates its own separate bikeshare system. (Axios)
• The Austin Transit Partnership approved a $190 million budget focusing mainly on light rail construction and preserving affordable housing. (KXAN)
• Gwinnett County commissioners in suburban Atlanta approved a $17 billion transit expansion plan, but voters will still have to approve a sales tax hike to pay for it. (WSB)
• A proposed Seattle law would require the city DOT to built or repair sidewalks whenever it undertakes a major road project. (The Urbanist)
• While other cities are decriminalizing jaywalking, one Charlotte suburb has just started handing out $30 tickets. (WCCB)
• Kansas City spent 25,000 taxpayer dollars on a Barbie-themed streetcar that isn’t even an ad for the movie. Whether it served the intended purpose of boosting ridership is unclear. (KCUR)

If you’re a sustainable transportation or antiracism advocate in the United States, you’re probably heard the number $11,000 a lot over the last couple weeks.

That was the number cited by Seattle Police Officer Daniel Auderer, who was unknowingly caught on tape following the killing of engineering graduate student Jaahnavi Kandula by Officer Kevin Dave, who was reportedly driving his police cruiser 74 miles in a 25-mile-per-hour zone.

“It’s a regular person,” Auderer says of Kandula, before erupting in laughter. “Yeah, just write a check. $11,000. … She had limited value.”

Auderer’s comments from January touched off a wave of backlash when they were released by the department two weeks ago (a backlash not tempered by Auderer’s statement that he “was imitating what a lawyer tasked with negotiating the case would be saying and being sarcastic to express that they shouldn’t be coming up with crazy arguments to minimize the payment”).

Many members of the Southeast Asian community — Kandula was from India — decried the explanation as racist, chanting, “Who has unlimited value? Jaahnavi Kandula; say her name” at the site of her death. Some advocates pointed out that the deaths of BIPOC pedestrians are the result of larger structural issues that extend far behind Seattle; a 2013 CDC study found that despite the fact that Asians and Pacific Islanders experience some of the lowest rates of pedestrian deaths overall, AAPI women actually experience higher death rates than women of any other race, particularly among seniors — a discrepancy that has still been largely understudied.

Others pointed to the case as evidence that the Washington legislature needed to revisit its policies regulating dangerous police pursuits, which it relaxed in May despite mounting national evidence that cruisers traveling at high speeds in pedestrian areas may endanger more people than the practice protects. A DOJ report released last Tuesday found that police-involved crashes are on the rise across America, peaking at 455 in 2020 and prompting watchdogs to recommend that agencies adopt dozens of restrictions on when officers are allowed to reach deadly speeds. (It is not clear whether those stats include crashes that occur when a police officer is not in direct pursuit of a suspect, like Officer Dave who was en route to a reported overdose when he struck Kandula, 23.)

Still others called into question Auderer’s own alleged track record of violence on the job – which included 29 complaints of bias, unprofessional conduct and use of force — and the larger conversation about police brutality in the United States. Auderer is currently the vice president of the Seattle Police Officer’s Guild; the person on the other end of the phone call was later identified as its president.

For some, though, one of the most outrageous things about Auderer’s comments was simply that horrifyingly low number — $11,000 — and the very attempt to assign a dollar value to the life of a human being. And for thousands of families who lose loved ones to traffic violence every year, that brutal calculus comes out far closer to zero.

“My child wasn’t worth anything,” said Amy Cohen, executive director of Families for Safe Streets, whose 12 year-old son, Sammy Cohen-Eckstein, was killed by a driver in 2013. “People who are unemployed or homeless or otherwise deemed ‘unworthy’ typically aren’t worth anything. The civil process is really biased towards people who, ironically, probably need [financial compensation] the least.”

When drivers pay for killing pedestrians — and when they don’t

In her work with Families for Safe Streets, an organization that fights for systemic solutions to traffic violence as well as better supports for victims and their survivors, Cohen has helped many families navigate the labyrinthine legal system that awaits Americans after a serious car crash. She says none of them has secured a settlement that could possibly compensate for the loss of a loved one who was priceless to them — and many don’t even get enough to meet their immediate financial needs.

“People read about the giant settlements, and they think everyone is getting that,” Cohen says. “But the vast majority of people get very little. And that’s in addition to the horrible emotional toll [they endure]. Many people can’t work, or they’re not as productive after. … A lot of people lose their jobs after a serious loss or injury. It has a horrible cascading effect.”

Those “cascading effects,” though, aren’t always eligible for financial compensation — and even when they are, that money can be astonishingly hard to collect.

If a pedestrian is killed in a crash, the size of her survivors’ settlement number is usually shaped by how much (or how little) insurance was carried by the driver who killed her, as well as his personal wealth and the court’s ability to access it. It’s shaped by the size of her medical bills and the length of time she spent suffering in the hospital before she died, while the survivors of victims who died instantaneously often have little recourse to sue, even to pay for funeral costs. And it’s almost always shaped by how much the pedestrian herself earned in her lifetime, and whether she was using those wages to support dependents or simply herself — and if it’s the latter, her other loved ones often aren’t eligible for anything at all, even if their lives have been shattered.

“Some states have limitations on the collection of non-economic damages — that’s the hole in your heart for not having the love and support of this person in your life,” said Peter Wilborn, a Florida-based attorney and founder of the national Bike Law Network. “I lost my brother in a bike crash, and our mother didn’t listen to music for five years afterwards. That’s a heartbreaking thing, but it’s probably not a case for not economic damages.” 

When the driver who killed a pedestrian is a police officer, Wilborn added that many states place strict caps on how much a victim can recover from government institutions, though he added that Washington’s cap is “nowhere near $11,000.” And while “aggravating circumstances” like whether the driver was speeding three times the local limit can change the size of a settlement that a jury awards, law enforcement officials like Kevin Dave may not be judged as harshly as a civilian driver – especially if the pedestrian is deemed at fault. Much of Auderer’s hot-mic call was spent debating witness accounts of whether Kandula was in a crosswalk at the time of her death.

“The majority of our death cases aren’t cops,” added Wilborn. “They’re criminal drivers: drivers on meth, hit-and-run drivers, drivers intentionally trying to buzz a cyclist, sometimes all of the above. Aggravating circumstances can change our assessment of human value enormously. But regardless of what the valuation is, you have to ask —  is anything collectible?”

Wilborn said that he’s pursued many cases where he knew drivers or their insurance companies wouldn’t pay, because it’s symbolically important to families to know that their loved ones’ lives had value. He warns, though, that not many attorneys are willing to do that.

“I’ve represented thousands of cyclists and whether they get justice or not is almost entirely dependent on the tenacity of their council … If you don’t have a good spokesperson, or there’s there’s not any money in the case, very few personal injury lawyers will do what zealous representation requires,” he added. “The value we assign to a life isn’t just determined by the courts; it isn’t just determined by the insurance companies. It’s determined by whether the attorneys give a shit, period.” 

Falling through the cracks

For the families of people who die suddenly by traffic violence, those questions of collectibility often have far more devastating ramifications than most people realize. Cohen said she’s worked with families who have lost jobs, businesses, and even become homeless in the wake of a serious collision, even when they were able to successfully mount a civil suit — and many weren’t.

“I can’t tell you how many calls our social work team gets from people who lost their homes, who can’t work, who really fall through the cracks after a crash, whether they’re lost a family member or they were the one who was injured,” she added.

Even families that aren’t completely financially devastated by a crash still often struggle in the absence of a meaningful settlement. Bobbi Koval learned that firsthand when her son Jack, 22, was killed by an off-duty police officer who struck him in a Manhattan crosswalk in 2016. The driver was not charged, despite the fact that witnesses say he had sped around several other motorists who had stopped to let Koval cross. The family spent years trying to clear Jack’s name after inaccurate media reports essentially blamed him for his own death, not to mention untangling the countless loose ends left by his sudden loss.

“We had out-of-pocket expenses people don’t think about,” said Koval. “I mean, he was living in New York City when died, and his share of the rent was significant; we had to pay that. Luckily we could afford to pay to bring his body pack here. But what if we couldn’t?”

At the time of his death, Koval was a recent graduate of Emory University and a new hire at an a boutique Wall Street firm making $85,000 a year, with the possibility of significant bonuses. But because he wasn’t supporting any dependents at the time of his death — much like Kandula, who had a single mother she hoped to support someday, but who was instead left to repay her daughter’s student loans — none of the potential income lost when Jack was killed was collectible in court, despite the fact that he was an only child who likely would have supported his parents’ retirement someday. He also left behind five devastated cousins who thought of him much like sibling, and struggled with losing their bright, inquisitive loved one to a violent death.

“Primary breadwinners aren’t the only people who have a financial value,” Koval added. “It’s about the family that’s grieving, and families have needs. [A settlement] could have meant therapy for my niece for the rest of her life; it could have meant medication to cope with trauma. … It’s not about getting a check so you can live comfortably. It’s a repayment.” 

Today, Koval, Cohen and their fellow advocates at Families for Safe Streets are fighting for legislation in New York State that would make it easier for families to secure those repayments — and hopefully, avoid some of the other indignities to which the legal system subjects them. The Grieving Families Act would allow survivors to sue for grief and anguish following the loss of a loved one, and extend the time they have to file suit to three and a half years; it passed unanimously through both chambers of the legislature, but Gov. Kathy Hochul has yet to sign it. The Crash Victims Bill of Rights Act could also help extend more financial protections to families by requiring the state “produce a report for the Legislature to determine the adequacy of current compensation and services for crash victims”, while also giving them the simple right to make a victim’s impact statement in court and secure police reports quickly after crashes.

Cohen hopes both bills will pass, and someday, become a model for other states — because right now, there’s “nothing else like them” in other American communities.

“It’s about providing support and a voice to crime victims, and it should be extended to crash victims whether or not the driver is charged,” Cohen added. “[It’s about getting them access to] a whole array of supports to help people as a payer of last resort — particularly low income people who are most devastated by this crisis.”

An admission of guilt

In their interviews with Streetsblog, both Koval and Cohen stressed that fear of financial penalties alone won’t end the national traffic violence epidemic, and that they’re still fighting for safe infrastructure, safe speed limits, and other structural solutions. In concert with other prevention measures like infrastructure, though, that fear might serve as some deterrent — particularly for city leaders who would write off a pedestrian’s life for a few thousand dollars.

“Every number and every death is so much more than just a statistic,” said Cohen. “It devastates families and communities. [What Officer Auderer said] was an incredibly heartless and painful comment, especially to those of us who know the suffering firsthand.” 

For Koval, securing a settlement from the officer who killed her son was less about the money and more about protecting Jack’s legacy. After a grueling seven-year legal battle, they just reached an agreement with the driver this year: he will pay $100 a month every month for 10 years to benefit an overnight camp that helped shape Jack into the person he was.

“It’s an admission of guilt that he killed our son,” she added. “That’s all we really wanted. … It isn’t about a certain amount of money. It’s about holding that person accountable, and making them look in the mirror.”

• Tire rubber contains more than 400 natural and synthetic compounds, many of them known carcinogens, and researchers are just beginning to understand the ways they damage human health and the environment. (Yale Environment 360)
• The kids are alright: A McGill University student writes that walkable cities are a necessity, not another front in the culture war. (The Tribune)
• Is the EV charging problem overstated? According to one study, two-thirds of households have parking located within 20 feet of an electrical outlet. (Smart Cities Dive)
• California’s efforts to regulate e-bikes ignore the real threat — speeding drivers. (CalBikes)
• Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner is floating a $500,000 lifeline for nonprofit bikeshare BCycle, which is about to go out of business. (Chronicle)
• A Seattle city council member has introduced a bill to address the city’s shocking lack of sidewalk construction and maintenance. (Seattle Times)
• Rural residents are clamoring to take advantage of Colorado’s e-bike subsidy. (Rocky Mountains PBS)
• Washington, D.C. is pushing back indefinitely enforcement against drivers who block bus-only lanes. (WTOP)
• D.C. is launching its own e-bike rebate program. (Washington Post)
• It’s unbelievable that this wasn’t the law in the first place, but Arlington, Virginia, is considering legislation requiring drivers to come to a full stop for pedestrians. (ARLnow)
• Austin is formally applying for federal funding to cover half the cost of a light rail system through downtown. (Monitor)
• Pittsburgh’s POGOH bikeshare is launching new options for people of all abilities. (Pittsburgh Magazine)
• Et tu, Little Tikes Cozy Coupe? (Jalopnik)

The post Friday’s Headlines Are Tired Out appeared first on Streetsblog USA.

Editor’s note: a version of this article originally appeared on Next STL and is republished with permission.

America is getting older, and American drivers are getting way older. This sea change in the demographics of those operating motor vehicles is incredibly important — and, I would argue, under-considered in the urbanist world. 

Older adults driving in complex environments — think complicated traffic patterns, lane changes, turns, and congestion — have a much higher crash risk than the average driver. Older adults are also far more likely to die when involved in an automotive crash due to preexisting comorbidities. The risks associated with driving affect not only these older drivers, but everyone around them.

I study Alzheimer’s Disease at Washington University in St. Louis. One of our ongoing projects is a naturalistic driving study called DRIVES, led by Ganesh Babulal. Participants in the DRIVES study are enrolled in research at the Knight Alzheimer Disease Research Center (ADRC) and consent to having a small data logger very similar to the Progressive Insurance Snapshot Program placed in their car. Through their participation at the Knight ADRC we collect blood, cerebrospinal fluid, MRI/PET images of their brains and perform cognitive testing. Through their participation in the DRIVES study, we also get information sampled every 30 seconds of their lat/lon coordinates and driving speed.

Alzheimer’s Disease is a slowly progressing neurodegenerative disorder. Although (sadly) many of us are familiar with the “clinical manifestations” of this disease – forgetfulness, difficulty with navigation, and progressive decline in cognitive functioning — this disease actually begins 15 to 20 years prior to when those observable symptoms begin to manifest. By then, things called “amyloid plaques” are already developing in the brain. The presence of these plaques can be detected with appropriate PET radiotracers, isolated from cerebrospinal fluid, and – as of relatively recently – with blood.

Prior research has established that cognitively normal drivers with amyloid plaques in the brain exhibit many changes in driving behavior, including less-aggressive driving behavior, smaller driving space, less seatbelt use, late responses to changes in the driving environment, more driving errors on road tests, and reduced driving speeds. Driving behaviors are so characteristically modified by the presence of amyloid plaques that one of my colleagues was even able to predict whether or not someone had amyloid in the brain solely from their driving data. 

Driving is an incredibly complex task. You have to deal with constantly changing stimuli, adjust to dynamic conditions, engage in navigation and planning, and just generally try not to kill anyone around you. For people with amyloid plaques gunking up their brain, this is particularly hard. The average older adult actually stops driving roughly seven years prior to death, and while hanging up the keys may seem like a positive for road safety, this results in lower social participation and increased isolation and depression.

So what is our plan for older drivers? If older adults are not getting out of their cars — which, given current land use policies, they kind of can’t — shouldn’t we be curious about what the effect of complete streets will be on the aging driver?

So that’s what we set out to do. As a natural experiment, we looked for instances where road diets had been implemented in the St. Louis region at some point during the DRIVES study (2015 – present), focusing on road segments where a relatively large number of research participants had driven.

What we found was kind of amazing.

Overall, implementing road diets resulted in slower speeds on each of the three streets. We also observed a pattern consistent with the literature: prior to road diet treatment, drivers with amyloid plaques in the brain drove more slowly than drivers without.

What was surprising, though, was that implementing a road diet caused the healthy, amyloid-free drivers to slow down but there was no additional slowing of the drivers with amyloid plaques — because they were already traveling slowly to begin with This differential effect was unexpected, but may help explain why road diets are so frequently associated with major decreases in car crashes: the design of the road forces all drivers to a consistent speed.

Put another way: After a road diet, all motorists seem to drive at a rate that feels comfortable to a mildly-impaired older adult.

This finding set up the conclusion of our paper: [Road diets] could empower older adults to continue driving while maintaining the safety of other road users both inside and outside of vehicles. Given the current state of the United States’ auto-dependency, lane repurposing could translate into much higher quality of life for older adults without sacrificing the safety of the individuals around them. We recommend that policymakers consider lane reduction solutions to facilitate older adults’ ability to age in place.

As a person who predominantly travels by bike, I am a big fan of road diet elements like parking protected bike lanes, and I would love to see more of those throughout my city. I felt that way before I studied them, but after considering the problems associated with an aging populace through an academic lens, I am an even bigger fan.

Read the full study, Differential Impacts of Road Diets on Driving Behavior among Older Adults with and without Preclinical Alzheimer’s Pathology, in Transportation Research Part F.

The post Study: What Road Diets Mean For Older Drivers appeared first on Streetsblog USA.

This week we’re joined by Phoenix community builder Tim Sprague. We chat about supporting local culture through development projects and the importance of sustainable development and transportation.

An edited except our conversation can be found under the audio player below. Click here for a full, unedited transcript.

Jeff Wood:: Let’s talk about Phoenix a little bit. I want to know a little bit more about what Phoenix means to yo, and how you reflect the city of Phoenix in your development projects.

Tim Sprague: Well, I moved out here in the early eighties. At that time downtown Phoenix was truly a suburban city. The downtown area, the urban area, had really been abandoned. The large department stores had all moved out. Everything had gone to the suburbs. I was hurting, I mean, no question about it.

The first, I like to call it the big rock that was put in the jar, if you will, was the arena where the [NBA’s] Phoenix Suns play. And then the next big rock was the baseball stadium for the Arizona Diamondbacks. At that point the convention center was starting to be redone and things had started, but you had all the great big rocks, but none of the smaller stuff, you know — the grains of sand that come in around that in the jar and really provide the activity, provide the environment, provide the culture that lures people there.

So a group of us around downtown, when we put our stake in the ground to do the RFP for the Portland Place Condo project, there was a group of us that were really into good music, really into art, and wanted to try to create a downtown. And, literally, over the last 15 years plus it’s happened. It’s worked. And it’s because of really a neighborhood, the Roosevelt Action Association that I told you about, of those folks being devoted to the park that was in their neighborhood. The park was dedicated in 1992 with a lot of grandiose things that were supposed to be there.

The city and the state ran out of money — they did put the green in, it’s nice, but that’s it. We’ve renovated the park. I was head of the Hance Park Conservancy to help get that done. We’re in the process of that renovation project.

The other thing downtown is that, is there is that these are the local folk, these are the restaurants that are the local people that have come in. They’re not chains. The arts district is right at the corner of Central and Roosevelt, which is right where our projects are located. It’s thrived. The Arts District light rail stop is one of the most traveled ones on the circuit. And downtown has just evolved. It give you a sense of how much change has taken place within the miles circuit of our park and where our projects are located.

At the end of 2014, there were 5,900 people that lived within that mile radius. Four years later, it’s a little over 12,000 folk. And if you take that 2018 number projected out today, we’re probably about 23,000 or 24,000 people within that same radius now. That kind of activity’s taking place very quickly.

The post Talking Headways Podcast: Local Culture and Development appeared first on Streetsblog USA.

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

It’s back-to-school time for kids across America, and some families are puzzling over the first practical exercise: How to get them there.

A walking school bus could be the solution. It gets several kids to walk to school together (with at least one adult escort), and all it takes is a little organization, a route people can follow, and showing up.

Read on, but note: There will be a quiz.

I walked the line

Any caregiver for a kid in institutionalized education is familiar with the challenge of getting them where they’re going safely, on time, every single day, well before your own day’s assignments come into play. I’ve been doing this with mine since they were a year old. As a non-morning-person, I can only speculate this is part of how society tacitly yet mercilessly resists population growth.

In fall of 2018, I had a problem. I covered mornings with our kids because my spouse left for work by 6:30 am every day. Our son was given a place at our in-bounds public elementary school, but one of the factors holding us back from taking it was the logistics. One child needed to be delivered to RFK Stadium/Kingman Park, and the other had to get to the Golden Triangle downtown, leaving me with the dreaded Divergent Dropoff scenario that no parent welcomes.

Short of driving all over town every morning while rueing my life choices, how was I going to get everyone where they needed to go, and get to work at a decent hour?

The walking school bus of Constitution Avenue came to my rescue. Local parents formed the bus in order to get their kids to the same co-located elementary and middle schools. Every morning at 8:05, the designated escort would be at the first house on the route and start walking, picking up each kid as their parents cheerily popped them out of their front doors. We used a What’s App group to stay in contact about departures, arrivals, and any kids who wouldn’t be “on the bus” that day.

Participating in this system was great for our family, and it helped make it feasible for us to send our kid to school instead of another year of expensive daycare. Aside from the practical benefits of only needing to transport one’s kid a couple times a week instead of five, families who took part enjoyed wider benefits too.

“The bus was particularly helpful for us, because more than just transport and lessening the parenting burden, it was about community,” says Stephanie Winans, a parent on our bus who had recently moved to DC. “We got to know our neighbors so much better, and our children started school with a sense of confidence that comes from being part of the community.”

Walk This Way

So how does one go about forming a walking school bus? The walking school bus website suggests starting small with a few families, a route, and a schedule. It’s easiest to begin by talking to families who live in a concentrated geographic area who need to get to the same school or co-located schools. From there, you can recruit other families who are interested in their kids taking part.

I spoke to a coordinator for our walking school bus, Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Amber Gove (6A04), to find out how the magic happens. She supplied some tips:

• Host a playdate to recruit families (extra credit if they’re on or near a sensible route to get to school), and discuss ground rules and expectations. Putting out a call on a school or neighborhood list serve can be a good way to recruit people.
• Build a Google Sheet with parent and child contact information, and a regular bus “driver” schedule that everyone can edit.
• Start a WhatsApp Group with all “bus driver”/caregiver cell phone numbers, and manage all communications through that channel. Set expectations about communication, like indicating if a kid won’t be joining the bus that day. What’s App is a good option because some phones won’t facilitate large group texts.
• “Bus drivers” must commit to their day and get a replacement if they can’t make it.
• Pick one route, and stick to it. Kids get better (and less prone to wander) as they get familiar with a single route. This also helps the occasional latecomer.
• Ground rules can include things like kids holding hands while crossing the street and roughly how the adults should position themselves. For us, a leader, caboose, and someone in the middle to carefully monitor street crossings worked well.

Walk, Don’t Drive

The temptation to drive kids to school can be strong for caregivers with access to a car. But driving around schools creates all sorts of problems. The chaos of morning dropoff periods mean that children, who can be distracted, small, or both, are at risk from cars driven by people thinking about their own kids or schedules. From a terrible first week in 2018-2019 (the last pre-pandemic school year), in which drivers hit four children and caregivers near DC schools, data from 2022 shows a fifth of drivers are still speeding in our school zones with disastrous effects.

Immediate safety aside, a long line of cars can jam up the roads, and idling vehicles also pollute the air those same kids breathe. Our bus coordinator calculated that our bus of 10 families avoided putting 2.2 metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere that year by eschewing driving. It’s far better, of course, to walk, bike, or take public transport if you can. A walking school bus is one way of making the pedestrian option more feasible.

While we press our elected officials harder to design safer streets through structural programs like Safe Routes to School, walking school buses can provide protection in numbers, while kids get the benefits of starting or ending the day with a healthy walk.

A good supplement to gym class

Most of us could use (a lot) more exercise, and for kids, it’s especially important as their bodies grow and develop. At least 60 minutes of active play per day is recommended for children aged six and older by the American Academy of Pediatrics. But where I live in DC, public school guidelines only mandate 20 minutes of recess per day. Something doesn’t add up.

Sure, kids could hypothetically be getting physical activity at other times of day. But the time available for exercise outside the school day is limited, especially for kids whose caregivers work and who may spend time in aftercare once the final bell has rung. A walking school bus builds outdoor activity into the beginning or end of every day.

Weather may be less of a barrier than you think: Through all of that school year, the group only shifted to carpool one morning in January (it was 17 degrees and snowing hard). Otherwise the kids were reasonably pliant.

Today’s lesson: Sharing is caring

Caregivers rotate responsibility for escorting the walking school bus, making scheduling and punctuality (ahem, harder for some of us than others) important. Our bus had around ten families involved at different points of the year and up to 14 kids ranging from age three to 12.

We agreed we needed three adults to manage the journey safely each day, so we eventually settled on a pattern in which each family would cover the same couple slots each week, more or less. In time, we all came to appreciate the broader benefits of our kids building a wider network of caring adults in their neighborhoods, surely one of the most important devices in the urban parent’s toolkit.

“I think it really reinforces an extended sense of community and [a] village approach to parenting,” says Gove. “We’ve got a long list of back-up parents and caregivers we can rely on—which makes parenting in this busy age so much more manageable. We could all use a little more village in our lives.”

Pop Quiz!

The start of the school year, or perhaps in honor of Walk to School Day on October 4, could be a great time to start a walking school bus in your community.

Let’s review how they can be beneficial. Can a walking school bus:

a. Give kids (and adults) an opportunity to get healthier through daily exercise;

b. Share dropoff responsibility among caregivers from different families, and help build a sense of community;

c. Provide a practical alternative to driving, thereby reducing carbon emissions and the number of cars involved in the unpredictable school dropoff/pickup environment;

d. Be super fun; or

e. All of the above?

If you said “E,” give yourself a gold star! You’re ready to graduate to a walking school bus of your own.

The post How and Why to Start a Walking School Bus appeared first on Streetsblog USA.

• Everywhere across the country, people are commuting less but taking more frequent, shorter trips since the pandemic, according to new Brookings Institute research. But the changes in the way people are traveling vary wildly from city to city.
• Kids should be walking, biking or taking the bus to school instead of getting dropped off by their parents. (The Atlantic)
• Bird has acquired Spin’s parent company, making Bird the largest bikeshare and e-scooter operator in North America.
• Investors are suing Morgan Stanley for $750 million, alleging they were defrauded in a transaction involving private rail company Brightline. (Reuters)
• CalBikes provides arguments for supporting e-bikes even if you don’t ride one.
• Dallas is trying to reintroduce shared e-scooters but is still running into issues like people riding them on the sidewalk. (D Magazine)
• Transit-oriented development is great, but not enough to meet D.C.’s demand for housing. (Greater Greater Washington)
• Ridership on Tempe’s streetcar more than doubled expectations in its first year of operation. (Axios)
• Omaha’s streetcar is on track to open in the spring of 2027. (KETV)
• Why is the state legislature trying to silence Hawaii Authority for Rapid Transportation board members? (Hawaii Reporter)
• Connecticut is considering banning right turns on red, scenarios where drivers commonly hit cyclists and pedestrians. (WTNH)
• A planned mile-long trail around Denver remains in limbo. (Denverite)
• Seattle’s new waterfront bike trail will be narrower and curvier than originally proposed. (The Urbanist)
• These new bike tires are made of a shape-shifting metal invented by NASA. (The Verge)

The post Thursday’s Headlines Have a New Pattern appeared first on Streetsblog USA.

• It’s a testament to America’s car-centric infrastructure that asking people to hang up their car keys for a week sounds like asking a lot, but that’s exactly what one disability rights group wants people to do so they can see how hard it is to get around without being able to drive. (City Lab)
• Two MIT researchers regret their research predicting — wrongly, it turned out — that Uber and Lyft would reduce congestion, and they don’t want anyone to make the same mistake with driverless cars. (San Francisco Chronicle)
• Lessons learned from cities’ efforts to allocate increasingly scarce curb space. (Smart Cities Dive)
• A judge striking down the Minneapolis 2040 plan has led to fears that all over the country environmental laws can be weaponized against land-use reform. (Streetsblog USA)
• Charlotte and surrounding cities and counties are considering forming a regional transit authority. (WFAE)
• Contrary to previous reports, suburban Gwinnett County is putting a transit tax on the ballot but is not considering joining the Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority system. (AP)
• The Colorado DOT is ditching the 85th percentile rule that encourages fast driving, and is re-evaluating speed limits on many roads. (Colorado Public Radio)
• Cincinnati is extending a ban on new downtown surface parking lots. (City Beat)
• Sacramento is prioritizing people and housing over cars. (Comstock’s Magazine)
• Detroit bikeshare MoGo says its e-bikes are ridden three times as much as pedal-only bikes. (Axios)
• Portland’s transportation director wants to remove a protected bike lane from Broadway downtown that’s in a high-crash corridor and took 14 years to build. (Bike Portland)
• Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante is defying angry motorists by closing a busy highway to cars and turning it over to cyclists and pedestrians. (New York Times)
• Several German cities are offering people free passes for public transit — if they give up their driver’s license. (Euronews)

The post Wednesday’s Headlines Go Carless appeared first on Streetsblog USA.

Low-income people are using shared micromobility a lot like they use public transit, a new study finds — and researchers think cities should thoroughly embrace (and subsidize) the mode as part of the larger ecosystem of buses and trains.

Researchers at Monash University, using survey data from micromobility giant Lime users across all income levels in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand, dug deeper into how low-income people uniquely use the company’s vehicles.

Participants in the Lime Access program, which grants discounts of around “70 or 80 percent” to riders who qualify, were significantly more likely to list essential reasons like “shopping” for groceries (35 percent) and “commuting” (31 percent) than non-Access riders, 11 and 21 percent of whom rode to complete errands or go to work, respectively.

The discount recipients were also highly unlikely to go use bikes and scooters for non-essential reasons like social outings (12 percent), “joy-riding” (9 percent) or exploring (2 percent), quashing the stereotype that all micromobility trips are spontaneously generated. And a whopping 44 percent of their trips connected to a traditional transit ride, compared to just 23 percent of people who paid full price.

Perhaps the most surprising findings, though, were riders’ qualitative responses about what micromobility meant to them, and how their lives were made better by having access to affordable ways to get around without a car. Calvin Thigpen — director of policy research for Lime and co-author of the report — says he was particularly moved by the number of riders with invisible disabilities who said Lime Access helped them get where they needed to go, even when local transit schedules didn’t meet their needs.

“Something that really shone through in some of these quotes … was how much people really needed this program, and really came to rely on it,” said Thigpen. “It’s easy for people to think of Lime and other shared scooter options like they’re just toys that people just use for fun. And that’s just really not the case. People are using this to get around for pivotal trips; they are heavy, often daily users.”

About 62 percent of cities with micromobility programs today require operators to meet at least one equity requirement in order to run fleets, and discount programs like Lime Access have become an increasingly popular way for them to do it; on the south and west sides of Chicago alone, Lime has offered roughly million discounted rides so far this year, and saved participants a staggering $1.1 million.

And according to the new analysis, all that money is buying something valuable: better daily mobility for the people who are least likely to own private cars.

Those inspiring benefits, though, come at a cost that micromobility companies’ razor-thin margins can’t always afford. Houston’s B-Cycle and Minneapolis’s Nice Ride are just a few of the prominent bikeshare outfits to shut down in the wake of recent financial difficulties, and the researchers say the entire micromobility industry is grappling with “potentially existential risks to [their] ongoing operations” while working to expand access to the riders who rely on them most.

The roughly $7 million that Lime handed out in equity-focused discounts in 2022 didn’t stop the company from achieving its first full profitable year. But Thigpen said the company could do a lot more for low-income Americans if cities simply recognized the impact shared micromobility has on their lives — and treated it as an important component of the transit universe.

“I think that’s something that would be very valuable,” Thigpen added. “It’s something that transit agencies already do when they contract out to private bus operators, or even private train operators. This would not be some novel thing; it will just be a new mode, being integrated into transit. … At the end of the day that’s really our goal, right? Our mission is to achieve a future of transportation that’s shared, affordable, and sustainable; I think [making micromobility] a bigger part of transit is a really, really valuable approach.”

What the transitification of micromobility might look like

Enhancing public support for scooter and bikeshare, Thigpen stressed, can take many forms. Cities like Denver have completely waived program fees for micromobility operators in exchange for them meeting robust equity benchmarks and building parking corrals to keep scooters off sidewalks, while others, like Washington, D.C., offers them scaled refunds on that fee based on how what percentage of miles low-income riders travel compared to the overall rider pool.

He also suggests that the growing list of U.S. cities offering residents rebates to buy their own e-bikes could expand their programs to offer e-bikeshare memberships to low-income riders — particularly for people who have no secure, convenient place to store an e-cycle of their own, don’t want to lug a heavy e-scooter up a set of apartment stairs, or can’t afford the expense of fixing an e-vehicle when it breaks.

“It seems like every city and state is getting on board with e-bike rebates these days,” Thigpen added. “And I think it’s worth asking the question: Are they meeting the needs of everyone, and is there a space for shared programs [to participate]? Could [offering shared e-mobility memberships] meet the needs of lower income riders, disabled riders, people who live in places where they can’t securely lock up a vehicle? That’s my speculation, but it’s definitely worth further study.”

Thigpen acknowledged that cost is far from the only barrier to micromobilty that low-income riders face, and that Lime and cities can do more to help.

Most Access riders (54 percent) reported frustration with not being able to find a vehicle when they needed it, suggesting that cities may need to relax fleet caps, and that operators may need to do a better job of reshuffling bikes and scooters into the neighborhoods where people need them most. More than a third of them (36 percent) said that they couldn’t always take micromobility to the places they needed to go, thanks to slow- and no-ride zones that automatically throttle vehicle speeds when they passed invisible digital borders called “geofences.”

And 75 percent of Lime riders had never even heard of Access, including some who qualified for the program, but hadn’t signed up. Others struggled to sign up — something the company says it’s addressing with targeted awareness campaigns through companies like Propel and a newly streamlined, “near-instantaneous” application process. (The researchers didn’t ask about whether fear of traffic violence or lack of bike lanes were significant barriers for Access riders, but other analysis has found that’s definitely a factor for would-be micromobility users on the whole.)

However cities move forward, Thigpen stressed that it’s critical that they continue to study how micromobility can work for residents who are poor, living with mobility challenges, or simply sick and tired of waiting for buses that never come.

“Lime is are essentially another transit option,” he added. “We’re not a bus; we are not a train. But people use us in the same fashion that you would a bus or a train.”

The post Study: How Low-Income People Really Use Micromobility appeared first on Streetsblog USA.

• Current Affairs critiques the popular urban planning website Strong Towns’ anti-car philosophy as libertarianism dressed up in progressive garb.
• Although it’s not great for big cities, microtransit can be a solution for small towns that lack the density or population to support fixed-route buses. (ABC News)
• Nashville Mayor-elect Freddie O’Connell got his start in transportation advocacy, then politics, after his car broke down and he started riding the bus. (Axios)
• The Los Angeles suburb of Pico Rivera is pitching a 26-mile bus rapid transit line to connect a massive downtown development to regional rail. (Urbanize LA)
• The L.A. Metro is expanding priority bus lanes in West Hollywood. (CBS News)
• Sound Transit’s Tacoma streetcar opened for business last weekend. (Seattle Times)
• Memphis is the fourth-deadliest city for walking in the U.S., with 37 pedestrian deaths so far this year. (ABC 24)
• A College of Charleston professor says the school has dropped its opposition to a bike lane near campus. (Post and Courier)
• The South Florida city of Hollywood has plans for bike lanes and multi-use paths along two major streets. (Miami Herald)
• Boulder has completed its first fully protected intersection. (Beat)
• Arlington, Texas, is considering repealing a 2005 ban on motorized scooters. (KERA)
• Capital Bikeshare usage hit an all-time high in Alexandria last July. (ALX)
• Cincinnati’s streetcar also continues to break ridership records as it enters its eighth year. (Local 12)
• A Colorado cop who let a handcuffed suspect get hit by a train was sentenced to probation and community service. (Denver Post)
• Drivers have figured out a San Francisco center bike lane about as well as you’d expect. (Momentum Mag)

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