Issues & Insights

As federal agencies ramp up their AI work, observers say the FAA is taking a “cautious” approach as it wrestles with safety questions.

The Biden administration on Tuesday released rules designed to speed up permits for clean energy while requiring federal agencies to more heavily weigh damaging effects on the climate and on low-income communities before approving projects like highways and oil wells.

There’s a new housing development in Tempe, Arizona, that’s getting a lot of attention for something it excludes. Culdesac offers more than 700 apartments — and zero parking spaces. Its developers say they’re striving to make Culdesac Tempe “the best place to live car-free in the U.S.” It’s a great goal, but is it a realistic one

On a three-lane test track along the Monongahela River, an 18-wheel tractor-trailer rounded a curve. No one was on board. The self-driving semi, outfitted with 25 laser, radar and camera sensors, is owned by Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation. Late this year, Aurora plans to start hauling freight on Interstate 45 between the Dallas and Houston areas with 20 driverless trucks.

Low-slung station wagons are all but extinct on American roads, and even sedans have become an endangered species. (Ford, producer of the iconic Model T a century ago, no longer sells any sedans in its home market.) Bulky SUVs and pickup trucks — which have themselves steadily added pounds and inches — now comprise more than four out of every five new cars sold in the US, up from just over half in 2013, even as national household size steadily declines.

As work begins on building the US’s first high-speed rail service – linking Los Angeles to Las Vegas – analysts say the project could serve as a blueprint for similar projects across the country.

Edinburgh’s longest cycle lane, opened recently, was a decade in the making. And if it can happen in this hilly, windswept northern city, well, it can happen pretty much anywhere.

The deal will not allow the city to lower the speed limits on roads with three or more lanes of traffic heading in one direction, a caveat that was designed to get city-based members of the Legislature on board with the deal. The City Council as well as Mayor Eric Adams would still need to sign off on the change.

In 2021, Congress passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal and made the largest Federal investment in public transit in the nation’s history. Between new investments and reauthorizations, the legislation committed $89.9 billion in public funding over a five-year period.

The Office of Livable Streets is working to accommodate the cycling boom — both the increase in people choosing to bike commute, but also the increase in e-bikes and e-cargo bikes used for delivery, including new safety standards for e-cargo bikes, charging stations and bike storage for e-bike delivery workers and projects in 2024 to widen bike lanes.