“The Legacy of Racism in Transit”, a new video from TransitCenter, focuses on the history of racial disparities faced by Black and brown residents in cities when planners and officials accommodated the white suburban commuter.

Transportation Justice Fellow Kiana Parker uses her experience with Seattle’s Burke-Gilman Trail in Seattle to illustrate the need to include people with disabilities in the planning process when you develop trails, sidewalks, and other public infrastructure.

Towns and cities with limited resources often rely on air-conditioned indoor public spaces like libraries to help people flee extreme heat or find relief during natural disasters. When these spaces shut down, the negative effects of climate change hit the most vulnerable communities the hardest.

Ridehailing has frequently gone toe-to-toe with transit agencies in vying for ridership. Via took the “let’s work with them” approach to form public-private partnerships and reanimate paratransit and on-demand services in small and large municipalities alike.

On that note, ridehailing prices around the US continue to soar as Lyft and Uber driver shortages hit many cities, and as the Wall Street Journal puts it, if you “want a bargain ride? Hail a taxi.”

Blink Mobility will be supercharging the BlueLA carsharing service in LA County with 300 new street-side EV charging stations at 60 area locations with up to 200 more EVs ready to roll around South LA, Boyle Heights, Pico-Union, and East Hollywood. Read all about the SUMC-supported BlueLA program on our site.

The bike boom in the US has led to metros embracing new cycling and active transportation trails and paths (such as New York’s shiny new Brooklyn Bridge bike lane) which is giving two-wheeled mobility a safer and more prominent spot in the typically car-centric street hierarchy.

Pandemic anxiety and non-traditional commuting patterns are keeping public transit ridership low in San Francisco, but people have embraced shared scooter, bike, and moped services to get around—so much so that people used micromobility more this summer than the pre-pandemic summer of 2019.

Bikesharing is back at the White House! The Biden Administration reinstated the Capital Bikeshare station on the White House campus (removed by Trump citing a security concern) and it even “has 11 bikes— four more than when it was removed four years ago.”

Berlin, Bergen, and Bogotá are cleaning up their public transit systems, from reviving electric tram lines ripped out when the Berlin Wall went up to electrifying buses and using battery-powered ferries in Bergen to the first metro in Bogotá. These changes are making the cities’ air cleaner, commutes easier, and reducing traffic jams.

A Baltimore study analyzed different city neighborhoods’ access to transit as well as social vulnerability, pollution, and health and found that public transit provides disparate levels of service along racial and ethnic lines. Guess who got the better half?

Seattleites are getting faster, more reliable shared travel with Sound Transit opening the Northgate light rail extension. This 4.3-mile extension adds 3 new stations and marks the start of the tripling of the light rail network from 22 miles to 62 miles over the next three years.

There’s a new partnership in the Midwest with Indianapolis Public Transportation Corporation (IndyGo) awarding a contract to RATP Dev USA to manage paratransit services effective October 1, 2021.

Governors from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin came together in a bipartisan effort to electrify the Midwest with the Regional Electric Vehicle Midwest Coalition (REV Midwest). Their pledge includes collaborating on an EV charging network and taking other steps to reduce carbon emissions, and create job opportunities.

At least in the UK, bus shelters are getting some love with the most advanced in the country coming to Cathedral Square in Worcester. We’re talking real-time passenger information, smart lighting, and integrated CCTV. And the shelters are made from graffiti-resistant recycled bottles. And they’re powered by two solar panels and a vertical wind turbine. And they’re 100% recyclable.

Driverless taxis are officially a reality, at least in California. Two of the leading AV companies in the U.S., Waymo and Cruise, have received permits to offer rides to passengers in their robotaxis, with Cruise approved to give rides in fully driverless vehicles and Waymo allowed to deploy AVs with human monitors behind the wheel.

A new study quantifies diesel truck pollution from corporate actions and calculates local health impacts, which include increases in childhood asthma rates and lower life expectancies. These details are essential to working with companies to cut emissions, especially as they make up half of the total amount from the transportation sector.

North Carolina has a new Task Force that’s focusing on a more efficient solution to cutting GHG’s from cars than the “the slow shift to electric vehicles”: driving less. The Task Force includes Southern Environmental Law Center Attorney Kym Hunter and a diverse group of advocates and government officials who will set vehicle miles traveled reduction targets for the state.

While pointing the blame for the climate crisis is dangerous and futile, a new analysis produced by Carbon Brief reveals which countries produced the largest amount of CO2 emissions since 1850—and the U.S. won (lost, really) by a landslide. China and Russia follow.