New cost estimates have revealed that the funding gap on Washington and Oregon's joint megaproject to widen I-5 between the two states has grown to anywhere from $5 billion to $13 billion. The project as we know it is likely doomed. www.theurbanist.org/2026/01/12/t...

lol this project is dead. Again. What a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars planning this thing. Same mistakes as the CRC. Just gobsmacking hubris and incompetent leadership.

For the past two years, the Interstate Bridge Project has known its costs were going up. It has repeatedly hidden & delayed releasing new cost estimates. Now we know why: Max cost has risen from $7.5 to $17.7 billion. As we wrote last month: cityobservatory.org/17-7-billion...

The IBR will cost as much as $17.7 billion, more than double the previous max. cost of $7.5 billion, according to documents unearthed by City Observatory. cityobservatory.org/17-7-billion...

Cost of Interstate Bridge more than doubles to $13.6 billion, and could go as high as $17.7 billion, according to new estimates. IBR officials have delayed and hidden these new estimates for the past two years. www.wweek.com/news/state/2...

The exact same results can be found within built-out submarkets ggwash.org/view/68373/a... & allowing more/smaller houses has reduced housing costs directly in several core cities ggwash.org/view/99928/w...

Yep. And to the extent that unfunded "inclusionary" zoning mandates—a popular policy among cities not on this list—makes increasing overall supply less feasible, they effectively result in far fewer affordable units existing in the real world. bsky.app/profile/jsba...

“It’s pretty devastating. It’s not like there’s not some money out there. We’re just spending it on cars.” - NMF co-founder @chrissmith.us in @wweek.com, on @trimet.org’s cuts, and the failure of Oregon th prioritize existing bus service over freeway expansion www.wweek.com/news/2026/01...

The pricing means that taking a Citi Bike will become, for a lot of people, the transportation choice of last resort, such as when there's a subway meltdown or it's 20 minutes before the next bus arrives. That's not at all what the city should want. It should be a seamless part of people's choices.

Kids are literally being ran over by cars and killed over this N=8 regression. It's RFK and "More Guns, Less Crime" combined for Democratic governed cities.

I see there’s a post about microplastics going around with a photo of drinking straws, so here is my semi-regular reminder that the 3 biggest sources of microplastics are tires (45%), synthetic clothing particles (35%) and paint (~10%). Lay article attached:

The view from traffic-congested Boston:

this is incredible stuff. most state DOTs would spend tens of billions on highway expansions to try and see numbers like this (that wouldn’t even pan out anyway thanks to induced demand lol)

The most opposed part of the controversial $10.6 billion NJ Turnpike extension widening project will be dropped, Gov. Murphy announced.

IBR: Still hiding--and lying about--coming billions in cost overruns https://cityobservatory.org/ibr-still-hiding-and-lying-about-coming-billions-in-cost-overruns/

You love to see it

ODOT's systemic financial crisis https://cityobservatory.org/odots-systemic-financial-crisis/

For over seven years, ODOT has refused to even study whether it'd be cheaper, easier, better to cap I-5 *without* doubling the width of the freeway (and all the traffic, air pollution and carbon emissions that brings) into the backyard of Harriet Tubman Middle School + the Albina neighborhood

Important, exciting research — air pollution dropped 22% in NYC's congestion relief zone within the first 6 months of #CongestionPricing (with reductions in the surrounding neighborhoods, too) Cleaner air, better transit, great data — all thanks to #CongestionPricing!

Our new study provides rare causal evidence about NYC’s speed camera program. We find large reductions in collisions (30%) and injuries (16%) near intersections with cameras. www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... @astagoff.bsky.social ky.social @brendenbeck.bsky.social nbeck.bsky.social 🧪

When cameras are installed, they issue many violations in the first month, followed by a steep decline in the second month. This suggests that the cameras effectively deter speeding by changing underlying driver behavior rather than relying on sustained revenue extraction.

California Air Resources Board: "To achieve climate goals, we need less driving" Transportation Researchers: "To reduce driving, we need fewer lane miles" Caltrans: "We need billions of dollars to keep widening highways." California Legislature: "You got it." usa.streetsblog.org/2025/12/02/o...

Oregon's climate fail https://cityobservatory.org/oregons-climate-fail/

This is AI: braddelong.substack.com/p/wetware-ha... Using a roiling boil of 3000-dimensional linear algebra to output the word-sequences I hope will please the human, w/o having any idea what the words mean, 'cos I have zero world model & understand neither events nor time nor duration as concepts.

Ex-official explained this in a way that will stick with me forever: Within fire departments, the EMTs are overworked and underpaid and don’t have time to advocate for policy. The fire chiefs, on the other hand, have a lot more time on their hands. So fire response, not medical, dictates policy.

Anyways they should try tolling this thing and seeing how many people actually use it. Everyone constantly is like “truck this, truck that” when a super majority of users are cars.

Interesting new working paper that studies chains of movers after the construction of a new apartment building in Honolulu. Paper finds that the project resulted in the opening up other, lower cost, housing on the island, benefiting the housing market overall.

...in Seattle and in Washington. Using traffic models that assume current car volume is a political choice. At the very least in this workgroup we should be presented with projects of how we could induce less car volume in the heart of our city by reducing available highway merge lanes.

Why are we starting with the assumption that we should plan for traffic volumes that are the same as current volumes? Traffic responds to induced demand. If it's easier, faster and cheaper to drive, more people will drive. The opposite is also true. If we want more people to ride transit, we...

Why are we assuming that we want to maintain car volumes? To meet our climate, public health and road safety goals as a city, there is no reason any on or off ramp in #Seattle should require multiple lanes. #Rainier If you want to be angry, watch (starts at 1:05): youtu.be/Lr-C4k0EEf4?...

This is a city on Robo-Taxis. (Don't let it happen to yours.)

Engineers think it’s a liquid but traffic is a gas. Give it space and it’ll fill it up. Take it away and it disperses

DC is enforcing a “crackdown” on streeteries—outdoor seating for cafes—charging the cafes huge amounts of money to keep the facilities in place, and forcing them to use seating that doesn’t work in the winter. It’s a huge self-own, likely to end up hurting businesses, reducing street vibrancy.

Train Wreck: Will transit sink the Interstate Bridge Project? https://cityobservatory.org/train-wreck-will-transit-sink-the-interstate-bridge-project/

You gotta pay more for houses with walkability because we don't build nearly enough of them... Walkability shouldn't be a "perk" It should be the default

"In fact, building codes in the United States draw a number of hard and expensive lines between low- and high-density forms of development that are not found abroad." See: www.pew.org/en/research-...

Ridership on Paris region transit systems is now generally at or higher than pre-pandemic levels. Bike use is much higher than pre-pandemic. At the same time, car traffic in Paris and on its ring highway is substantially lower than it was pre-pandemic. www.institutparisregion.fr/mobilite-et-...

$5 billion for Baltimore's Key bridge? Hold my beer, says @oregondot.bsky.social, the Interstate Bridge Project is gonna get to $10 billion. Key Bridge rebuild could top out at $5.2B, memo shows - POLITICO share.google/FL1Swk17AF3r...

The Post’s criticism of the mayor-elect’s plans for government-run grocery stores amused me, because the Pike Place Market is government-run, the best place in town for groceries for over 100 years, and a major tourist attraction

LAX traffic planners still haven't figured out "induced demand," critics say: www.latimes.com/california/s...

Now do cars. Headline: DC is slowing down scooters and e-bikes to make roads safer. search.app/8jeNG

The 217 widening project is finished. Let's see how congestion looks tonight. 👀 @nomorefreewayspdx.com www.kgw.com/article/traf...

Happy exploding whale day to all those who celebrate! 55 years ago today, OregonDOT dynamited a whale carcass to achieve lasting infamy. Today @oregondot.bsky.social celebrates by blowing up budgets with billions in cost overruns on its highway projects. cityobservatory.org/reign_of_err...

In 2018, then-Mayor Ada Colau called Barcelona’s new 30% inclusionary housing requirement for projects over 600m^2 a “paradigm shift,” making housing “a right and not a commodity.” It was supposed to produce 330 affordable units a year. The reality: just 31 affordable apartments in all these years.

Horrified to learn of another serious traffic crash on 82nd Avenue. Policymakers are about to make major decisions about how to reshape this critical main street. I'm committed to working with my colleagues to ensure 82nd is safer for everyone biking, walking and driving. https://loom.ly/jOdxsQQ

Sarah Risser, @familiesforsafestreets.org leader & recent BikeLoud Board member, will focus attention on the 20 people killed on SE 82nd in the past decade. World Day of Remembrance 11/16/25 #WDoR2025 www.google.com/maps/d/viewe...

Not to go all Robert Gordon but the potential benefits as a % of GDP are also much smaller. Going from no internet to internet is a much bigger bang for your buck than going from internet to AI

The US federal government's spending on housing—directly through the budget, or through tax expenditures—amounts to more than $400 billion a year. Only about 1/4 of that goes to low-income renters. The majority is spent on subsidizing higher-income homeowners. www.urban.org/research/pub...

The “residential” building code exists in the first place for very bad reasons. Don’t ever forget that. Lawrence Veiller, addressing the NAHB in 1913: