A top global transportation organization is laying out the essential metrics that all communities should track if they want to understand how sustainable they really are — and giving advocates a tool to see how well their neighborhoods stack up right now. The Institute for Transportation Development and Policy recently unveiled a powerful new interactive “atlas” which allows anyone to see, at a glance, what percentage of area residents live near protected bike lanes, rapid transit, car-free places, and more, and how those numbers compare to cities around the world. In some regions, t ..read more

Big news out of Montreal: Starting on July 1, drivers of larger, heavier cars will pay more for residential parking permits in one busy corner of town. In the Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie, permit prices will depend on the engine size and vehicle weight, with cheaper prices for electric, hydrogen and plug-in hybrid cars vs. all other engines. Owners of the more-efficient cars will pay just $115 (Canadian) so long as their cars weigh less than 3,000 pounds. Owners of any car lower than 2,500 pounds will also pay that rate. [googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m18!1m12!1m3!1d44701.1955 ..read more

The Biden administration has caved to GOP pressure and will no longer push states to repair existing highways before building new ones, a move that angered livable cities advocates and rewarded the political pressure of conservative lawmakers. On Feb. 24, Federal Highway Administration Administrator Shailen Bhatt announced in a memo that the White House had pulled back from its earlier 2021 memo that advised states to use the new flood of federal infrastructure money to improve the safety and condition of existing roads before building new lanes that serve single-occupancy cars. Bhatt’s revise ..read more

Note: GJEL Accident Attorneys regularly sponsors coverage on Streetsblog San Francisco and Streetsblog California. Unless noted in the story, GJEL Accident Attorneys is not consulted for the content or editorial direction of the sponsored content. As rankings go, this sounds good. The Bay Area cities of San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward scored the highest in the U.S. on achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals [PDF]. These are goals that the 193 member nations of the U.N. agreed to aim to achieve by 2030. They include seventeen distinct goals, from eliminatin ..read more

Ellen Greenberg, new Deputy Director for Sustainability at Caltrans Many months after its Deputy Director for Sustainability, Steven Cliff, went back to work for the Air Resources Board, Caltrans has hired a replacement for this key post. New hire Ellen Greenberg comes with impeccable credentials, having worked as a planner in both public sector and private sector jobs. She worked most recently at Arup, a design, planning, and engineering firm, where she worked on jobs in the Bay Area, throughout the state, and internationally. She worked as director of policy and research at the Congress for ..read more