I am once again asking you to consider how AVs affect sprawl, congestion and emissions. This study of Boston found that AVs would increase total driving ~40% & reduce transit use by ~10%. (Many people would switch to AVs from transit and/or move away from the CBD.) papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

"These massive horsepower figures [are] an absolute engineering necessity, designed to mask the vehicle’s incredible overall weight. Automakers are using extreme electric thrust to hide the fact that drivers are essentially piloting rolling bank vaults."

Create a bike network plan and then *require* the city to install protected cycle lanes on any street within the plan that is being repaved.

Easy to dunk, but this view is common. Rather than mocking, I suggest explaining how a big SUV imposes costs on others walking, biking, or sitting in smaller cars. That's why a car bloat tax is good. People can buy any car they like, but they must cover costs borne by others as well as themselves.

Illinois joins a growing list of states where judges can require reckless drivers to install in-vehicle technology (Intelligent Speed Assistance) that prevents reckless speeding. Governor Pritzker signed the bill last week.

Julian Hoenig used to design Lamborghinis and the Apple Watch. Now he's designing golf carts. The Amble One is $25k, which seems pricey—until you realize that the average car in the US costs twice as much.

It’s surprising how many people who mention the climate crisis in their bio viscerally hate bikes (and bicyclists)

This Danville, VA city council candidate made a very dramatic video about sidewalks and public safety, and I love it and him. Worrying about a possible milkshake duck situation, I looked at his FB page, but he seems ok. Juneteenth celebrations, community outreach, Methodists. A solid old gent.

This is terrible. I understand why he is saying it, but it is honestly too exculpatory for the CPS and police. Even if it's official policy it makes no sense to go this far for what's apparently a completely anonymous complaint about a public figure

Good to see parking lot fatalities and injuries get attention. These are harms we know almost nothing about, and when I started looking into these a few years ago was surprised how little there was. Data are hard to find, if they exist, and often crashes are not reported at the site they occurred.

I get a considerable amount of shit for backing into parking spaces but I became a devotee after learning abt how many people are killed - & not ‘counted’ - by vehicles backing out For this reason at least one statewide (TX) org requires their field workers to back their pickups into parking spots

Renowned historian Gordon Wood was walking across a supermarket parking lot when a car driver struck and killed him. Federal officials claim that crashes in parking lots and driveways don't count as traffic fatalities. As a result, they're uncounted and often ignored. Me, in Bloomberg (gift link)

Nota bene: Touchscreens are actually a lot cheaper than the knobs and buttons they replaced. That's a big reason why Tesla adopted touchscreens, leading its competitors to follow suit (even though many car owners hate the screens, which are inherently distracting).

As @wesmars.bsky.social explains, US crash data is riddled with holes: 🔹 Police often misjudge injury severity 🔹 Deaths occurring more than a month after a crash don't count 🔹 Crashes in parking lots don't count 🔹 Crashes with <$1,000 in damage are ignored ...and many more Full ep out tomorrow

​"European cities are set to lose between 8.5% and 14% of their on-street parking ..." This is a smart way to get drivers to care about car bloat. Bigger vehicles use more curb space, reducing the parking spots available to everyone else.

Or maybe, just maybe, people don't want to go far for stuff

New paper finds that cul de sacs, winding streets, and other features of suburban "Garden Cities" are terrible for emissions, loneliness, etc. IOW: Sprawled suburbs are bad because of how they're designed, not just their sprawl. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Lots of chatter re: NYT's expose on car bloat. Want to do something locally to nudge people away from big, harmful models? Consider parking. Cities like Montreal and Paris charge SUV owners more to park on the street. In MTL (below) many car owners support it b/c big cars take up more curb space.

Note: The US has no safety regs that limit vehicle blind zones. Federal car rules only protect those inside a vehicle. Others are ignored.

For more about the risks of bigger A-pillars, here's a deep dive I wrote last year (gift link). Note that federal regulators have not done anything to limit A-pillar blind spots.

NYT investigates US car bloat: “About 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not have died if vehicles had remained approximately the same size over the past quarter-century. That represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.”

it’s not an actual autopilot and should not be called autopilot

It’s remarkable how many people quote Waymo’s self-conducted safety analyses as though they’re objective. Would you trust a student to design and grade their own tests? If not, why do you trust Waymo?

RIP to Tony Gómez-Ibáñez, a brilliant transportation scholar and a consummate gentleman.

In Montreal, new Bus Rapid Transit lines have apparently enhanced nearby residents' quality of life and mitigated their concerns about affordability. doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...

"Waymo identified at least 13 instances of its robotaxis driving into highway sections that were closed for construction." BTW, "4,000 robotaxis" is Waymo's entire fleet.

I've worried cities would rush to allocate scarce curb space for EVs. Good to see that isn't happening. "Local officials are cautious about locking in scarce curbspace for EVs and universally prioritized curb uses such as bicycle and bus lanes, street trees, and parklets." doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...

Two questions: 1) Are rich or poor people more likely to drive (and thus pay a congestion pricing toll) instead of taking transit? 2) Based on your answer to (1), who benefits more when congestion pricing revenue is spent improving transit service, as is the norm?

Polling for congestion pricing is always bad before a city implements it. Then it rapidly improves once residents experience faster traffic, quieter streets, and better transit service. As a European city official once told me, " “You have to make people happy against their will."

New newsletter coming soon! I explore whether the robotaxi hullabaloo is obscuring other ways that autonomy will transform how we travel. Sign up for free: www.davidzipper.com/newsletter

The parent here should work at NHTSA. The agency hasn't adopted any regulations addressing distracting infotainment systems. Not a single one.

Reminder: Waymo has already refused to stop blocking bike lanes because doing so would be “too high a bar.”

Hate this? Blame the government. It's an ugly ad, but Ford is simply marketing and designing products it thinks it can sell. It's the responsibility of the *government* to ensure those products don't endanger the public. By ignoring car bloat, NHTSA is failing its most basic mission.

Episode is up!

World Cup fans are about to get firsthand experience in American sprawl and car-centrism. They're unlikely to be impressed. From the latest episode, out tomorrow.

New research finds that NYC's congestion pricing program has reduced collisions. "The introduction of the Congestion Relief Zone is associated with fewer overall crashes." doi.org/10.1093/aje/...

Hogwash. ~10k of the 13k families in Peachtree City, GA own a golf cart that maxes out at ~15 mph. (New ones cost $10k+.) And Peachtree City is a suburb, not a retirement community or college town. Americans will absolutely buy small, fun vehicles if they have safe places to use them.

"The future of transport should not only be electric. It should be lighter, healthier, more affordable and less car dependent."

There is literally no reason for cars to be able to 130 mph on a public road. None. But automakers choose to sell them, and the feds (i.e., NHTSA) sit on their hands.

One simple trick to ruin an American sports stadium: Surround it with car parking From the new episode, out next week

Glad to see my writing on self-driving safety cited in Senate Democrats' new Guiding Principles for surface transportation reauthorization: "Road users should not be guinea pigs for AV companies to assess their self-driving technology under weaker safety standards." punchbowl.news/surface-tran...

A tire compound called 6PPD has decimated salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest. New research suggests that it also endangers human health. The compound could "contribute to an elevated risk of inflammation-driven diseases near roads."

Congrats to @michaelcpollack.bsky.social, whose sidewalk manifesto published this week. I'm excited to read it!

USDOT should demo a protected bike lane www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

This is patently false. A large # of human-driven cars (or any cars) absolutely creates congestion. Also, it’s too early to know whether AVs are safer or more dangerous. It amazes me when people think they’re transportation experts simply because they drive a car and have opinions about it.

This is great and Bonsignore should be applauded. Fire departments are often among the biggest impediments to safe streets. But they don’t have to be.

Autonomous vehicles are soon going to comprise a large number of all vehicles on the roadway, which is why we need to work out a congestion pricing scheme very soon.

New research examines Waymo's California robotaxi trips btw Aug 2023 and Dec 2025. Conclusion: 46% of miles driven involved no one inside the car. That's 40 million miles of deadheading, with Waymo vehicles using road space w/o transporting a human. doi.org/10.32866/001...

Reams of data show that this argument is baseless

This provision in the draft Surface Transportation bill is a recipe for potholes. Pavement damage increases at the fourth power of weight per axle. Implication: A truck weighing 91k lb inflicts 67% more pavement damage than one weighing 80k lb. www.politico.com/newsletters/...