Transportation

The Biggest Universal Basic Mobility Experiment In The US

January 17, 2024 Maylin Tu, Next City. Create! Basic Income, Los Angeles, Low Income, Mobility Wallet, Transportation

In May, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and LA Metro launched the biggest Universal Basic Mobility experiment ever attempted in the U.S., giving 1,000 South Los Angeles residents a “mobility wallet” — a debit card with $150 per month to spend on transportation. The catch? Funds can be used to take the bus, ride the train, rent a shared e-scooter, take micro-transit, rent a car-share, take an Uber or Lyft, or even purchase an e-bike — but they can’t be spent on the cost of owning or operating a car. The year-long pilot, ending in April, has the dual goals of increasing mobility for low-income residents and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Boeing Whistleblower Warns Against Corporation’s ‘Safety Exemptions’

January 10, 2024 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. Educate! airplanes, Boeing, Safety, Transportation, whistleblower

Following another incident involving a Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, a known Boeing whistleblower is sounding the alarm over the multinational corporation’s requests for “safety exemptions.” The Associated Press reported that “a fuselage panel blew out on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 seven minutes after takeoff from Portland, Oregon.” “The rapid loss of cabin pressure pulled the clothes off a child and caused oxygen masks to drop from the ceiling, but miraculously none of the 171 passengers and six members were injured. Pilots made a safe emergency landing,” AP added.

Here’s How Evanston’s Streets Have Become Safer For Cyclists

January 6, 2024 Alex Nitkin, Next City. Create! Bikes, Illinois, Infrastructure, Safety, Transportation

There’s a wide spectrum of cyclists who take to the streets each week with the Evanston Bicycle Club. Newer, lower-speed riders mostly stay inside Evanston and surrounding suburbs, taking advantage of barrier-protected bike lanes and quieter residential streets. Cyclists with a bit more energy and experience go for longer rides up to Wilmette or Glencoe. But only the more advanced groups venture into the city of Chicago, said Al Cubbage, who last month ended a two-year stint as president of the club, which organizes multiple rides per week. Taking Clark Street down through Rogers Park means “taking your life into your own hands,” said Cubbage, a retiree who considers himself an intermediate rider.

Nationalize Greyhound

January 2, 2024 Ben Burgis, Jacobin. Create! Affordability, Greyhound, Nationalization, Public ownership, Transportation

When I was growing up, I could walk from my parents’ place to the Greyhound station in East Lansing, Michigan. There was another one ten minutes’ drive from there in downtown Lansing. At either station, I could buy an inexpensive ticket on the spot and wait inside until my bus came to take me to, for example, visit my sister in Oberlin, Ohio. Neither East Lansing nor Oberlin are anything you could possibly call a “hub,” but it didn’t matter. The Greyhound went everywhere. That’s becoming less and less true. As of the last time I was in Michigan before my parents moved, the East Lansing station was long gone. The Lansing one was still there — at least for the moment.

The Transit Equity Movement Wins Biggest Zero Fare Victory Yet

December 10, 2023 Liam Crisan, Inequality.org. Create! Albuquerque, New Mexico, Racial Justice, Transit Equity, Transportation, Victory

Albuquerque, New Mexico - It’s happening: The city of Albuquerque is permanently eliminating public bus fares, becoming the largest U.S. city to embrace this critical step toward racial and economic equity. A coalition headed by Together for Brothers — a community organizing and power-building group led by and for young men of color — made the victory possible. In an interview with Inequality.org, the group’s Co-Founder and Executive Director, Christopher Ramirez, explained that it all started in 2017 when Together for Brothers applied for a Health Impact Assessment grant. “When we were applying for the grant, we had a couple sessions with the young men of color we were working with,” Ramirez said.

Paris Plans An Urban Forest For A Busy Roundabout

December 8, 2023 Paige Bennett, EcoWatch. Create! Bikes, Environment, France, Global heating, Paris, Transportation, Urban Design

Paris will plant an “urban forest” at Place de Catalogne, a busy roundabout with close proximity to the Gare Montparnasse railway station. The city will add nearly 500 trees to the roundabout. The new urban forest project will help with cooling to combat the urban heat island effect as well as contribute to an overall plan for improving air quality and reducing emissions that contribute to global warming. “The temperatures one could feel in this little forest will be 4 degrees lower compared to what we could have outside it and so, it will be very pleasant,” Mayor Anne Hidalgo said, as reported by Reuters.

The Climate Justice Shot Heard ‘Round The World

November 28, 2023 Chuck Collins, Inequality.org. Resist! Airplane, climate crisis, Transportation, Wealthy Class

In 1775, the first battles of the American Revolution began in Massachusetts at Lexington and Concord with what is now known as the “shot heard ’round the world.” Three miles away, at an airport known as Hanscom Field, climate activists are launching what might be the newest shot to ring across a warming planet: No new private jet infrastructure. Located 14 miles outside Boston, Hanscom is New England’s largest private jet port. Private jets are the epitome of private excess at public and planetary expense. They pollute between 10 and 20 times more per passenger than commercial flights.

Want Safer Streets For Everyone? Narrow The Lanes

November 28, 2023 Maylin Tu, Next City. Create! Bicycles, Pedestrians, Transportation, Urban Design

Turns out, wider lanes don’t make for safer streets. In a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, a team of researchers found that the opposite is actually true: Narrowing lanes at certain speeds could save lives. The study came from a simple observation, says lead researcher Shima Hamidi, a transportation planner and Hopkins assistant professor of American health. She noticed that the traffic lanes in U.S. cities were much wider than their counterparts in other countries. Without existing data, traffic engineers assumed that wider lanes — which left more room for driver error — would be safer.

How The Railroad Industry Intimidates Employees To Put Speed Before Safety

November 18, 2023 Topher Sanders, Jessica Lussenhop, Dan Schwartz, Danelle Morton and Gabriel Sandoval, Pro Publica. Educate! Railroads, Transportation, Worker Rights and Jobs, Workplace Safety

Bradley Haynes and his colleagues were the last chance Union Pacific had to stop an unsafe train from leaving one of its railyards. Skilled in spotting hidden dangers, the inspectors in Kansas City, Missouri, wrote up so-called “bad orders” to pull defective cars out of assembled trains and send them for repairs. But on Sept. 18, 2019, the area’s director of maintenance, Andrew Letcher, scolded them for hampering the yard’s ability to move trains on time. “We’re a transportation company, right? We get paid to move freight. We don’t get paid to work on cars,” he said. “The first thing that I’m getting questioned about right now, every day, is why we’re over 200 bad orders."

The Fight To Stop The Sale Of The Only Municipally-Owned Railroad

November 2, 2023 Kari Lydersen, In These Times. Resist! Cincinnati, Norfolk Southern, Privatization, Railroads, Transportation

When Norfolk Southern first proposed to buy Cincinnati’s publicly-owned 336-mile stretch of railroad for nearly one billion dollars in July 2021, it probably seemed like an easy and lucrative deal for both the corporation and city officials — a deal that got even sweeter as the price was eventually upped to $1.6 billion. Under the offer, the company would gain total control of a crucial link in the rail network stretching between Chicago and Atlanta. And the city would get a big chunk of cash for infrastructure and other spending. But as Cincinnati residents prepare to vote on a Nov. 7 referendum necessary to complete the deal, as required by the state constitution, it’s becoming clear that the railroad behemoth and city leaders may not get their way.

Our Planning Process Is Broken; Street Experiments Can Help

October 29, 2023 Jedwin Mok, Next City. Create! Participatory Democracy, Street Experiments, Transportation, Urban Planning

Everyone knows how it goes: A street redesign is proposed to calm traffic. Municipal planners and engineers study the project for years, producing reports detailing its importance for sustainability, congestion reduction and traffic safety. Despite this, the project faces massive backlash at community engagement events, with residents complaining about lost parking and increased congestion. In the end, local politicians cancel the redesign, citing a “lack of social acceptability.” This story is all too common in cities across the U.S. and Canada, and it’s not because of “car culture” or “a lack of advocacy.”

Can Car-Dependent Suburbs Become Walkable Communities?

October 19, 2023 Bart Hawkins Kreps, Resilience. Create! Cars, Environment, Suburbs, Transportation, Walkable Cities

In recent decades the urban planning profession has been strongly influenced by the movement to create safe, attractive, walkable districts, Cleveland says. Traffic engineering departments, on the other hand, tend to prioritize the swift and unimpeded movement of vehicles. Both groups are involved in suburban retrofits, and sometimes the result is a project that spends much public money to encourage walkability, and just as much or more money widening car lanes on more roadways, thereby discouraging walkability. A paradigm like car-dependency tends to be self-reinforcing. If nearly all the residents in a district travel by car, then shopping centers have their doors opening to large parking areas, instead of opening directly to a sidewalk where the rare pedestrian might pass by.

India Is Fighting Heatwaves With Solar Cycle Tracks

October 18, 2023 Tamilarasi Krishnan, Resilience. Create! Bicycles, climate crisis, Energy, Green Transition, India, Solar, Transportation

This innovative new solar cycle track in Hyderabad City offers one way in which less polluting and healthier transport might contribute towards a rapid transition, despite the growing physical challenge of living with climate change-driven heat. Extreme heat is already a problem in India and deadly heatwaves are set to grow increasingly severe as global tempertures rise. According to Telegana state authorities, this is the first long-distance solar panel covered cycle track in India. Laid alongside a major highway in Hyderabad city, it has a solar roof with an installed capacity of 16 MW – enough to provide power to thousands of homes.

Car Culture: Everything You Need To Know

October 1, 2023 Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch. Create! Cars, climate crisis, culture, Environment, pollution, Transportation

When you Google, “America’s love affair with…” the first word the algorithm fills in is “the automobile.” The third is “cars.” (The second is, surprise, surprise, guns.) In the U.S. — and increasingly in other parts of the world too — cars and driving have a significant impact on our daily lives. They determine the use of our streets, shape the design of our cities and suburbs, define coming of age for many young people, and affect the quality of the air we breathe. From anthropomorphized vehicles like Herbie: The Love Bug and the cars of Cars, to road trip epics like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Thelma & Louise to bangers like “Fast Car” and “Route 66,” automotive travel has had an outsized impact on our imaginations.

Groups In Queen City Fight To Stop Privatization Of Railroad

September 18, 2023 Railroad Workers United, Popular Resistance. Resist! Norfolk Southern, Privatization, Railroads, Transportation

Railroad Workers United is working with local organizations to keep the nation's only municipally owned interstate mainline freight railroad in public hands. The Cincinnati Southern was chartered and built by the City of Cincinnati in the 19th century and has been run successfully for well over a century, historically being leased to a designated operator. Now, today's operator Norfolk Southern wants to take over the infrastructure outright. Citizens across the Queen City are organizing to maintain ownership and control of their railroad. Railroad workers stand with them in their struggle! As the November 7th vote nears, more and more citizens are questioning the wisdom of turning over the city's mainline freight artery between Cincinnati and Chattanooga to corporate outlaw Norfolk Southern.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources