Wrote about the NAVI shutdown in Jacksonville, how advocates think it both is and isn't to blame for the transit agency's fiscal crisis, and why we have to re-focus on the boring but critical work of getting people where we they need to go.

Okay, chat: how do you feel about an "autonomous bike," that can steer itself to its rider from wherever it's parked + help bike share outfits rebalance fleets?

I think in safe streets advocacy, we have a knee-jerk tendency to say that people speed for just one reason —  because they can. But we actually make it impossible for cars to break limits, we have to sweat the psychology of individual drivers. Which, it turns out, is *all over the map.*

Here's what I wrote about it back when it was first teased last year. Still just as colossally dumb as it was back then; still hilarious how this might inadvertently steer investment to blue states if they don't get very creative with the formula/exclude the "marriage" part.

Oh great, this bullshit is back

That said, weigh in if you disagree!! It's a design guide, not a thorough research paper, and there's a lot to debate and explore about how this plays out in reality.

And that doesn't mean watering down the ambitions of the livable streets movement. It means giving us a fighting shot at actually achieving them at scale, because we're organizing in relationship to the actual power dynamics and transportation realities that exist in our world.

Basically: I think it's really easy be adversarial and say "we tried designing for drivers for 100 years, now it's time to refocus on people." I think it's a lot harder to reckon with the reality that *most people are drivers* and find ways to unwind blanket autocentricity that actually work.

Fascinated by this report, which argues a ton of things that sound questionable out context. E.g. walkability folks need to pay more attention to the needs of drivers, the "complete streets" model is failing us, we need to make parking easier. But in context ... I found myself agreeing a lot?!

Excited to see this idea get an IRL deployment; *not* excited to see how many drivers were totally unmoved even when the city went out of its way to explain that road design changes needed to happen because a teenager died; still curious long term, to see how this strategy changes the conversation.

Ha! Filing this skeet for the next time I request an image budget (which gets turned down every year, hence why I have to use stuff in the public domain even if it's not from the country I cover 😅)

Seeing a lot of folks get tangled up trying to understand how on earth we were able to "extend" our federal infrastructure law for a few months, but somehow sneak big new cuts to transit and rail into the same bill we've had for the last five years. Here's an explainer + what comes next.

Lotta thoughts on this but mostly: this is sort of like doing a buyback program for AK47s, paying people who bring in their broken nerf guns, doing nothing re: upstream gun control, and being surprised when shootings don't stop.

So this is nuts; Orange County did an "e-bike buyback" event where they paid people up to $1,000 for illegal e-motos...and smaller amounts for legal, unmodified e-bikes that are super unlikely to hurt anyone. At multiple points, the cops refuse to pay for "bikes" that can go up to 40mph.

Wrote about why transportation reformers kind of suck at helping the public imagine getting around any another way, why it's essential that we learn, and how to be ambitious when we do it.

Spoiler: you may have doubts! But I had fun talking to the founder of Organic Transit about light electric vehicles and the role of bike design in encouraging mode shift. (Also: it is fun to imagine a world where I can bike with my very large dog.)

My big takeaway from this: at the end of the day big data centers and big urban highways are both just infrastructure designed to encourage the use of fossil fuels, no matter how their supposed "community benefits" are sold to us. and the movements resisting each one should absolutely join forces.

There are a lot of reasons to oppose hyperscale datacenters for the impacts this slice of the AI industry has on society. But I hadn't seen anyone unpack their impacts on land use, transportation, and the fabric of our communities. Loved talking to Saul Levin of @thehumpod.bsky.social about it.

Fair point! The report authors didn't get into it but I'd love to see an op-ed exploring this POV if you (or someone else reading this) has more thoughts...