Issues & Insights

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.

The climate benefits of shared e-scooters depend upon how companies deploy and manage them, and what steps are taken to keep riders safe.

In his new book, David Alff employs a historical perspective to explain how trains became essential, if frustrating, fixtures of the bustling metropolises from the Mid-Atlantic to New England. He delves into the political decision-making and compromises that made the corridor what it now is and considers how transformative planned upgrades could be.

Since taking office in January, the mayor ordered the removal of medians that served as pedestrian islands along one major thoroughfare. He halted construction and planning on other bike- and pedestrian-friendly improvements throughout the city.

Drive-throughs have been around a long time,” Charles Marohn, a former traffic engineer and well-known critic of America’s car-dependent urban planning, told me. Today, he said, “they’re becoming bigger and more obnoxious.”That trend conflicts with a key objective that US cities are increasingly prioritizing: creating a safer, cleaner, walkable, livable urban environment that’s less dependent on cars.

We’re at an inflection point in electric-car optimism. Over the past few years, as electric vehicle sales increased substantially and car companies announced an onslaught of new battery-powered models, it seemed that electric cars were a near-term inevitability. But for all the heady promise, E.V. enthusiasm seems to be cooling.