Issues & Insights

The Amtrak Borealis, a new rail line connecting Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul, has only been operating for about a month, but already thousands of passengers have taken the trip. That ridership has exceeded Amtrak’s expectations—and hints at the growing desire among Americans to travel by train.

In 2022, Colorado became the first state with a retail delivery fee of 29 cents on all vehicle deliveries to consumers within the state. The fee provides funding for highways, bridges, tunnels, electric vehicle charging stations and projects to reduce air pollution and to electrify vehicle fleets and transit systems. It has brought in more than $160 million.

Travelers dropping off or picking up their cars at JFK’s Parking Lot 9 — an enormous long-term parking lot connected to the AirTrain's Lefferts Boulevard and Howard Beach stations — will be able to hop on the two eight-passenger shuttles at any of the same more than 12 stops serviced by human-driven ones.

Since Europe is far ahead in e-bike adoption, its experience offers lessons about how North America could catalyze uptake — as well as advanced warning about headaches that can arise when such vehicles become ubiquitous.

The state created an $89 annual fee on registered EVs, with revenue that would go to help finance new charging stations at workplaces and multifamily apartment buildings.

After hitting a 40-year high in 2022, pedestrian deaths decreased in 2023, according to a report published Wednesday by the Governors Highway Safety Association. The report shows a 5.4% fall in the annual number of pedestrian deaths, the first decrease since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

The world’s largest experiment in driverless cars is underway on the busy streets of Wuhan, a city in central China with 11 million people, 4.5 million cars, eight-lane expressways and towering bridges over the muddy waters of the Yangtze River. A fleet of 500 taxis navigated by computers, often with no safety drivers in them for backup, buzz around.

Amtrak expects ridership to top pre-COVID 2019 levels this year for the first time and reach a record high even though it has less capacity. Ridership was 20% higher in the first seven months of Amtrak's budget year that began Oct. 1, and ticket revenue was up 10% versus the same period in 2023.

When I-25 was constructed through Denver, highway engineers moved a river. It was the 1950s and nothing was going to get in the way of building a national highway system. Colorado’s governor and other dignitaries, including the chief engineer of the state highway department, acknowledged the moment by posing for a photo standing on bulldozer tracks, next to the trench that would become I-25.

Left turns are a big problem everywhere. They have a lot of what traffic engineers call "conflict points," with pedestrians as well as other cars. The diverging diamond design eliminates some of those conflicts, lowering the risk of side impact or T-bone crashes, which tend to be especially deadly.