As of Monday, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal, officially the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, is now law. The legislation includes funding opportunities to address racial equity and environmental impacts for historically marginalized people, but it’s up to the states to determine exactly how and where the money will be spent.

On the topic of highway building, the Los Angeles Times highlights free way expansions in five states, including  California, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas, and how nearly two-thirds of these projects were done in majority Black and Latino areas that led to demolished homes and upended neighborhood livability.

Listen to Audrey Wennink (Metropolitan Planning Council), Olatunji Oboi Reed (Equiticity), and Rochelle Jackson (The North Lawndale Community Coordinating Council) chat about the regional barriers to transportation access in Chicago’s Black and brown neighborhoods and what actions are needed to create better transit connections on WBEZ’s daily talk show, Reset.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the wait time fees charged to Uber riders discriminate against people with disabilities, who may need more time accessing the vehicle. Uber responded in part by changing policy to automatically waive fees for riders who certify they have a disability.

With so many hoops to jump through (cost being the largest) and few incentives for EVs, ridehail drivers are using combustible engines to drive 3 times as many miles per day than private car owners. How do you get them to switch? One word: incentives.

Speaking of EV incentives, the fast-charging network EVgo is letting Uber drivers of all levels access EVgo’s discounted member rates without any monthly fees. The two companies signed an MOU to accelerate rideshare electrification in 2019.

In the not-so-distant future, getting around on Getaround will be entirely fossil-fuel-free as the carshare company released a sustainability commitment pledging to make every car in the fleet green or electric by 2040.

…but we all know that electric vehicles alone are not enough to avoid the worst impacts of climate change!

Momentous micromobility news is coming out of Europe with Berlin-based, e-scooter operator Tier acquiring the German bikesharing platform Nextbike. This acquisition expands Tier to a multi-modal micromobility company operating in over 400 cities with 250,000 vehicles (that’s a lot of ways to get around sustainably).

Micromobility merger news continues with MoGo bikeshare in Detroit integrating with scooter-company Bird to provide more micromobility options at MoGo stations and on the Bird app.

Watch out cars, e-bikes are here to replace all those 5-miles-or-less trips, as long as infrastructure allows and subsidies are put in place, according to an op-ed from Streetsblog. The authors argue e-bikes have the potential to expand the inclusivity of cycling by overcoming the trip distance, topography, time, and rider effort (and we agree).

“Did you know that the largest portion of journeys replaced by scooter trips (46%–78% depending on urban form) would have taken place in cars? Public transportation is swapped at a much lower rate (only 0.5%–10%). (Populus Groundtruth survey.)

The SUMC-led TCRP report Transit and Micromobility is one of the first in-depth explorations of what transit agencies need to know about bikesharing and scooter-sharing. You can see how these modes interact with public transportation in different environments, and how agencies can use micromobility to equitably benefit communities.”

Regardless of how you feel about the outcome of the elections around the US that took place two weeks ago, public transportation came out on top! Local transit measures in Ohio, Maine, Michigan, Arizona, and Virginia all passed during the busy election week, solidifying that people want better transit options.

There’s a growing movement to enact fare-free (or at least heavily-reduced fare) bus and train systems for cities around the US to address transit equity for riders in lower-income areas. But critics ask, how will cash-strapped transit agencies make up the loss in revenue while keeping service reliable?

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development launched a report at COP26 highlighting 9 key business and policy actions needed to accelerate the deployment of efficient EV fleets and sustainable charging infrastructure—kind of critical to support the estimated 350 million EVs on the road in 2030.

The Chicago Transit Authority turned to real-time data analysis to get ridership back after the initial onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic and recently received the IoT Deployment of the Year Award for their pilot project. You can read about (or listen) to what they did on SlateTech.

Remember when Via acquired Remix? The company is now using Remix’s collaborative mapping and transit-planning tools to help cities plan how on-demand rides and fixed-route transit can work together.

US infrastructure is in a sad state, and this will only get worse under the effects of climate change. While the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act lags in the climate change prevention category, it does allot $50 billion for climate resilience, so the country will be better prepared to address drought, heat, floods and wildfires.

Public engagement and participation aren’t what they used to be in pre-pandemic days, but firms Connect the Dots Insights, Sam Schwartz, and Nelson/Nygaard believe the transportation industry can and should engage the public by promoting inclusivity, new power dynamics, and hybrid approaches in communication.

Announced at COP26, a new study revealed that people across the world will need to shift 40% of the miles they travel from car to biking, walking, and public transit by 2030 (on top of radical electrification) to avoid the 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming limit set by nations. This goes to show mobility and walkable/bikeable communities are imperative to our environmental sustainability.

More from COP26, a group of 33 countries and 11 automakers have pledged that all cars sold worldwide will be zero emissions by 2040 (2035 for “leading markets”), a major commitment to vehicle electrification on a global level. Who was missing from this group, you ask? Just three of the largest auto markets in the world: Japan, China, and the US.