Friday’s Headlines Share and Share Alike

• Shared bike and scooter rides rose 16% last year to 157 million rides, according to the National Association of City and State Transportation Officials. But bikeshares are threatened by instability in the private sector and need public investment to thrive. (Smart Cities Dive, Mass Transit, Streetsblog)
• The rapid spike in e-bike and e-scooter use is causing more injuries (The Hill). Researchers are calling on cities to build better bike infrastructure after a University of California-San Francisco study found that injuries are skyrocketing. (New York Post)
• An oft-cited reason to oppose road diets is that they slow down emergency vehicles, but research shows that isn’t true, and not even most ambulance drivers believe it. (State Smart Transportation Initiative)
• House Democrats criticized the GOP for supporting a bill that would cut funding for transit security by two-thirds. (The Hill)
• Lyft agreed to implement new safety measures as part of a lawsuit accusing the company of not doing enough to prevent drivers from assaulting passengers. (Reuters)
• Colorado legislators will try again next year to reform the Regional Transportation District’s structure. (Colorado Public Radio)
• Ridership has been slow to recover on Baltimore light rail, but those who do use rely on it as an affordable way to get to their jobs. (Sun)
• An anti-tax activist is challenging Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s transportation plan in court. (Axios)
• The stubbornly high rate of traffic deaths in Philadelphia is galvanizing support for Vision Zero. (Billy Penn)
• San Francisco’s backlog of sidewalk repairs is costing the city millions of dollars in trip-and-fall lawsuit payments. (Standard)
• The general manager of Metro Transit rode all of the Twin Cities’ 60 routes to hear riders’ concerns. (Star Tribune)
• Austin’s CapMetro rolled out a new all-electric bikeshare fleet. (KXAN)
• King County, Washington, is considering adding speed limiters to county-owned vehicles in the Seattle area. (Government Technology)
• Bids are in for Honolulu’s light rail line. (Civil Beat)
• Paris built 34 miles of new bike lanes for the Olympics, and every venue is accessible by bike (City Lab, Streetsblog)

source https://usa.streetsblog.org/2024/07/26/fridays-headlines-share-and-share-alike