Issues & Insights

Jamil Modaffari grew up in Penn Yan, New York, a small, rural village of around 5,000 people. His mom didn’t have a driver’s license or access to a car, and public transportation was nonexistent. Their lives changed suddenly when Modaffari’s mother broke her back. Her injury and inability to walk to work forced her to leave her job.

It’s the other 800-pound gorilla in the room: Who will pay for the infrastructure that cities need to help residents choose greener modes of transportation like biking or riding an e-scooter?

A report on state government- and utility-driven initiatives affecting electric vehicles (including hybrids) shows the majority of such efforts continue to focus on rebates and incentives for consumers and commercial fleet operators to acquire them. However, regulations and actions to modify electricity rates relating to EVs and develop charging infrastructure are also moving forward.

A new peer-reviewed study refutes claim that road diets increase emergency response times, based on a review of EMS response times in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

There was zero electric bike traffic on the park’s scenic carriage roads five years ago, but e-bikes now make up roughly half of all bicycle traffic on the restricted gravel paths.

Many cities have yet to match rider enthusiasm with the financial investment, political will and physical infrastructure that it takes to keep bike and scooter share going.

There are many jobs at the port, some of which require a college degree, others that don’t. But young people have to know these careers exist in order to apply to do them. This tour is part of an effort in the Port of Baltimore to instruct educators about these jobs. That way, when their students are looking for work, they’ll think of the port.

EV charger deserts continued to vanish in the second quarter, as a motley array of networks switched on 704 new, public fast-charging stations, an increase of 9% in three months. There are now nearly 9,000 public, fast-charging sites in the US.

The proposal includes digging a 16-mile tunnel beneath the Long Island Sound between Port Jefferson and Milford, Connecticut. The concept — which is the brainchild of a group called the Northeast High Speed Rail Coalition — would reduce the Amtrak trip between Manhattan and Boston from four hours to just 100 minutes.

Pedestrian deaths declined modestly after reaching a 40-year high in 2022. Cities all over the country are trying to bring the numbers down further. And they’re getting an influx of billions in federal infrastructure funding, much of it through a program called Safe Streets and Roads for All.