Wednesday’s Headlines Fight Freeways

• Environmental groups are calling for a national moratorium on building new highway lanes, a change in tactics from fighting pollution primarily by fighting fossil fuel projects like pipelines. (Washington Post)
• Canada is actually taking such steps, with the environmental minister saying the government would no longer fund “large road projects.” (CBC)
• Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn writes about the urban/suburban split in attitudes toward parking and driving, and why suburbanites need to understand that cities don’t need highways to thrive.
• A little-known provision in the Trump-era tax law led to a proliferation of car washes and gas stations in Jacksonville and beyond. (Action News Jax)
• Salt Lake City’s walkable downtown is great for business — so great that it’s hard for new ones to find a space to open. (City Weekly)
• Las Vegas police say reckless drivers are running amok. Yet they blamed the victims in 12 of 13 pedestrian deaths this year. (3 News)
• Deadly hit-and-run crashes hit an all-time high in Philadelphia last year for the second year in a row. (NBC 10)
• Transit is booming in Cincinnati, which raises the question, what if the city had finished its subway system 100 years ago? (Enquirer)
• New Orleans’ Rampart streetcar, closed since a hotel collapsed in 2019, still hasn’t reopened even though officials said it would after Mardi Gras. (WWL)
• For the second year in a row, Washington state legislators are trying to pass a bill allowing more housing development around public transit. (The Urbanist)
• A Colorado bill would eliminate minimum parking requirements statewide. (Fox 31)
• Even as city officials pivot to roads to appease Republican North Carolina legislators, a group called Sustain Charlotte is pushing for more transit funding as the only way to reduce traffic. (Spectrum)
• Des Moines residents told the city council they want it to fund transit and avoid “drastic” service cuts. (Register)
• Akron included an historically high $1 million on sidewalk repairs in next year’s budget. (News 5 Cleveland)
• East Providence has started the process of creating a new bike and pedestrian plan. (ecoRI)

source https://usa.streetsblog.org/2024/02/21/wednesdays-headlines-fight-freeways