New Zealand's transport minister knows that congestion pricing's popularity always rises: "[Once] benefits start to flow in terms of smoother journey times, reduced traffic at peak times, smog goes down, safety improves, people go 'this is fantastic,' and immediately public opinion turns around."

Reviewing Mamdani's past comments about transportation and getting pretty excited www.reddit.com/r/Micromobil...

"This article should end here. Alas." From "'Self-Driving' Means Self-Driving," a new law review article by Bryant Walker Smith. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Get 'em while they're young

New NBER research finds that in NYC alone, Uber and Lyft collect $300M annually by making it hard to comparison shop before booking a ride. www.nber.org/papers/w34441

@bmj.com, a renowned health journal, slams car bloat: "Cars are becoming steadily larger, [and] with this comes potential harms to health...Action is needed locally, nationally, and internationally to curb sales of new SUVs and to reduce their presence in urban areas." www.bmj.com/content/391/...

Tariffs are bad, but I'd have more sympathy for US transit agencies if they weren't inflating the costs of new buses by customizing absolutely everything (and fighting against efforts to lower costs by standardizing designs).

Would also put failure to prioritize Northeast Corridor investments; implement any sort of national design guidelines/benchmarks for transit and commuter rail on this list; and dumping the electrification report on the way out the door instead of making it an actual priority.

Sorry, but a lack of support for autonomous vehicles is not among Sec Pete's biggest missed opportunities at USDOT. For instance: 🔹 Failure to stop Tesla from lying about Autopilot, FSD, etc 🔹 Failure to curb car bloat 🔹 Continuing to spend fed $$ on highway expansions that won't fix congestion

NEW: The End of the Line: the centrepiece of Saudi Arabia’s Neom gigaproject - a 500m tall, 170km long wall-like building intended ultimately to house 9 million people - can’t get out of the ground, say more than 20 former Neom architects, engineers and senior executives. ig.ft.com/saudi-neom-l...

“Unlike the car, the e-cargo bike afforded a unique sensitivity to the natural world and local environment [that] enabled parents to train their children in local geography and responsible mobility.” www.tandfonline.com/eprint/RW2MT...

“The higher the exposure to PM2.5, the greater the extent of Alzheimer’s disease."

I respectfully disagree with Yonah here. Reducing driving is a more important transportation goal than increasing transit ridership (for emissions, street space reallocation, etc). Studies consistently show that eliminating fares doesn’t affect car use.

Is Barcelona the most bike-friendly city on the Mediterranean? Nowhere else I’ve been comes even close.

Portland's ruling class has a bizarre theory that the way to revitalize troubled locations is to remove seating, bathrooms, and open spaces, then add boulders and hideous fencing. You see it at Central Library, Firefighter Memorial, etc. Meanwhile in Europe...

I just arrived in Barcelona. One of the first things I noticed (and love): So many public places to sit down! Such a contrast with the hostile architecture that's widespread in US cities.

Just left a meeting at Prague’s city hall, where this plaza out front was a parking lot until a few years ago.

This chart is popular, but it’s misleading. Many, many more children walk on Halloween compared to other dates. In fact, a child walking on Oct 31 is likely *safer* than they would be doing so on any other day.

Data is sparse, but I'd bet school crossing guards are much more likely to die at work than police officers. They're at least as deserving of hazard pay.

The iconic front page, published 50 years ago today. I found a copy on eBay 15 years ago. It now hangs above my desk.

A listener asks: "How can a young [transportation] engineer speak out about unsafe or outdated practices without risking their career?" Cohost @wesmars.bsky.social -- a licensed engineer -- responds.

@davidzipper.bsky.social on the societal backlash against cars: "There's definitely more of an anti-car narrative than there was 10, 20, 50 years ago ... Even when you think about what happened after Ralph Nader wrote Unsafe At Any Speed in the 60s, the push was for safer cars, not fewer cars."

If Elon Musk wasn't so politically polarizing, "[American ]Tesla sales between October 2022 and April 2025 would have been 67-83% higher." www.nber.org/papers/w34413

Trump wants to force East Asia and Europe to buy Detroit's goliaths like the F-150. Not gonna happen. Convincing explainer from @mikesmitka.bsky.social: smitka.substack.com/p/pickups-fo...

Excellent explanation of the holes in Mamdani's "fast and free" pledge for NYC buses: "It certainly helps to speed up the process of boarding riders. But that’s not the thing that helps the most [to quicken trips]. And there are other ways to get those same savings while still collecting fares."

"In a small city northwest of Detroit, golf carts are replacing cars as the vehicle of choice." More of this, please.

Just had an espresso pod explode on my shirt two minutes before giving a keynote. Silver lining: I felt wider awake than I would after a triple shot.

Automakers are catching on: Everyone hates car touchscreens. “When buyers were told [Ferrari] is moving away from finicky touch-sensitive controls on the steering wheel and going back to buttons there was ‘big, big applause.’”

Halloween advice from @davidzipper.bsky.social & @wesmars.bsky.social: "Don't be afraid of someone poisoning your kids; be afraid of a car driver hitting them." Full episode: lookbothwayspod.podbean.com/e/episode-8-...

This @davidzipper.bsky.social article has a number of bangers, including the fact that EUROPEAN nations build freeways significantly cheaper than the US. That's literally the one transportation thing Americans think they're good at, and they're getting smoked. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

It really is true: Cities aren't loud; cars aren't loud. And EVs won't fix the problem. @wesmars.bsky.social: "Once you get about 20-30 mph, most of the noise comes from the tire-roadway interaction." From the new episode: lookbothwayspod.podbean.com/e/episode-8-...

​Episode 8 is up! On the agenda: 🔹 The scariness of walking on Halloween 🔹 Advice to a young traffic engineer 🔹 Traffic noise & human health 🔹 A trio of new anti-car books Watch on YouTube, or listen on any podcast platform. lookbothwayspod.podbean.com/e/episode-8-...

US highway spending is a mess. Yale prof @zliscow.bsky.social & colleagues found that South Carolina’s DOT spends $375,500 repaving a mile of highway – more than twice as much as North Carolina. In @bloomberg.com, I spoke with Liscow about the wild inefficiencies of state DOTs.

Know about induced demand? You're one up on the chief economist of the UK's innovation agency.

Are robotaxis the key to ending crashes? I don't think so: "I'm scratching my head when I see people in the road safety community glom on to robotaxis as a panacea." "Even if [robotaxis are safer], in what world is this the highest ROI to reduce crashes [when] we don't have bike lanes, ISA, etc?"

The ghost of William Whyte hates this trend. You should, too.

US downtowns are covered with car parking. According to this new study, off-street parking takes up: 🔹 20.5% of downtown Dallas 🔹 22.3% of downtown Los Angeles 🔹 31.7% of downtown Tulsa

In Milwaukee, police will now be able to impound any vehicle driven recklessly. City Alderman: “It’s a two-ton weapon. We should look at this the same way we look at firearms. Let’s get as many of them off the street as possible.”

"Catalytic converters that cost $1,200 or $1,500 are about to cost over $2,500 thanks to tariffs."

For years, auto companies have told Americans not to worry about the surge in pedestrian/cyclist crash deaths because new car tech will make the problem disappear. Not gonna happen. (I wrote this a couple years ago.)

New AAA study finds that pedestrian detection systems are only 60% effective at night (which is when most pedestrians are struck). Lesson: Car tech will not "solve" the crisis in US pedestrian safety. Addressing car bloat, deadly street design, etc is also necessary.

Ireland is adopting a default 30 kmh (19 mph) speed limit in urban areas.

I’m heading to Barcelona to give a keynote on Nov 4 at Tomorrow.Mobility, organized by @eiturbanmobility.eu. My topic: How cities can prepare themselves for a deluge of self-driving cars. LMK if you’ll be there – or if you have tips to explore Barcelona’s famous superblocks.

Interesting job alert: Program Director for the new Abundance Academic Network, hosted by the Social Science Research Council. Social science PhD required. Comp is $120k-$130k/year. job-boards.greenhouse.io/socialscienc...

Notch another win for automatic traffic enforcement. After San Francisco began using cameras to ticket vehicles, speeding dropped 72% across 15 sites (20,000 fewer speeding drivers).

First congestion pricing, then Gateway, and now the 34th St Busway. Trump's USDOT cannot stop meddling with NYC's long-planned transportation upgrades.

Always a pleasure to speak with David, who asks some of the best questions of anyone out there. This was a fun and deep conversation. Give it a read to learn more about the book, the podcast, and our movement!

​Why has anti-car activism grown, and what should advocates do next? In Bloomberg CityLab, I spoke with @brooklynspoke.bsky.social & @sgoodyear.bsky.social, hosts of the War on Cars podcast and coauthors of a new book, Life After Cars. 🧵

Fast buses would be terrific for NYC. Free buses would not.