Twenty five advocacy organizations that have joined forces to fight for state funding of public transportation are holding a “Bay Area Funeral March & Rally for Public Transit” tomorrow/Saturday. “Transit advocates will gather in Oakland and San Francisco to mourn the impending death of public transit – and our regional economy – if Governor Newsom and the state legislature fail to provide adequate funding for transit in the proposed FY24 state budget,” wrote a representative for the coalition in a statement. From the release: Advocates will gather at 11:00 a.m. in Oakland, at 19th Stree ..read more

This week, the Chicago Transit Authority announced that the final stage of the Red and Purple Modernization Phase One Project will begin this summer. Specifically, the transit agency is wrapping up the reconstruction of the Lawrence, Argyle, Berwyn, and Bryn Mawr stations to upgraded, wheelchair accessible facilities, and the CTA will start reconstructing southbound Red and  Purple tracks. Community meetings about the project will happen on June 21 and 22 – see the bottom of this post for details. “By starting the last major phase of this modernization, CTA is moving closer to providing ..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. Long-delayed construction of a raised, protected bike lane is finally underway on a stretch of Fruitvale Avenue that connects BART with the neighborhood of Jingletown. From a city release: Fruitvale Avenue between E12th Street and Alameda Ave is critical gap in the City of Oakland’s bikeway network. This stretch of roadway connects commuters and ..read more

A poison pill buried within the new debt ceiling deal would “gut” key elements of the nation’s bedrock environmental law in exchange for preventing a national default and could make it easier for highway-building agencies to expedite road projects that harm vulnerable communities for generations, advocates warn. After tense negotiations with GOP lawmakers, a sprawling bill that would authorize the treasury to raise the debt limit in time to prevent a catastrophic June 5 default. Known in Washington as the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, it includes a set of provisions that opponents say ha ..read more

Now, that’s not very diplomatic. Cyclists are barred from bringing their two-wheelers onto the vaunted United Nations campus, while drivers, who are notorious for skirting parking tickets, are waved right through its security gates — a strange double standard for an organization that promotes environmentally friendly transportation to fight climate change, fed-up UN employees tell Streetsblog. “There are slogans about greening, sustainability, and sustainable development and they banned single-use plastic from the compound and whatnot, but this really very conservative and unresponsive attitu ..read more

Last week, Cook County released its first ever Bike Plan, charting a path for safer and more plentiful bicycle infrastructure across the county. The plan calls for hundreds of miles of new low-stress bike paths: 90 miles of new off-street paved trails, 150 miles of new side paths and 230 miles of new low-stress on-street routes, including quiet residential streets and protected lanes. According to the plan, this upgrade would place 96 percent of Cook County residents less than a mile from a low-stress bike route.  Image: Cook County DoTH The Cook County Bike Plan was inspired by the coun ..read more

This week, we’re joined by Tufts professor Justin Hollander to talk about his new book The First City on Mars: An Urban Planner’s Guide to Settling the Red Planet. We talk about the importance of urban planners in thinking about cities and transportation on Mars, what we can learn from Antarctica and the International Space Station, and what a Mars metro region might look like. See below for a written excerpt from our conversation. A full, unedited transcript can be found here. ? Jeff Wood: How much do you think planning on Earth can be translated to planning on Mars? Justin Hollander: Yeah ..read more

The City of Boston will reconfigure Centre Street in West Roxbury from a 4-lane configuration to a safer 3-lane cross section with protected bike lanes later this fall. “This is a neighborhood business corridor, and we want it to feel like one that people can get across and use every day rather than it primarily being a place for cars to zoom through and people need to jump out of the way,” said Boston Mayor Michelle Wu to an audience of approximately 200 people at West Roxbury’s Ohrenberger Community Center Wednesday evening. It’s fairly unusual for the Mayor of Boston to attend a community ..read more

An aggressive new federal safety rule would eventually require automakers to install on new cars technology that can detect pedestrians and stop crashes before they happen — but there remain several key flaws in the proposal, advocates and experts said. On Wednesday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed a new motor vehicle safety standard that would require automakers to install automatic emergency braking systems on all new passenger cars, trucks and SUVs within three years, and set tougher standards for how well those systems must function, particularly when confronte ..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. My brief sabbatical to Europe concluded this month with a trip to the Netherlands, mecca for any urbanist-and-safe-streets-advocate. It was hardly my first trip there. But as I got off the train in Utrecht a few weeks ago, having just finished my week at an international bicycling conference in Leipzig, Germany, I was struck again by the ..read more