B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition

The last federal transportation law gave states more than enough money to fix every crumbling highway and bridge in America — but a disturbing share of departments of Transportation sunk that windfall into expanding highways instead, a new report found. And unless Congress learns from its mistakes and finally requires transportation officials to “fix it first,” we will continue to set billions of taxpayer dollars on fire.

A stunning 16.3 percent of U.S. roads that were eligible for federal money were still rated in “poor” condition in 2024, according to a recent Transportation for America analysis — despite Congress providing state DOTs with $56.8 billion in largely unrestricted transportation funds that year alone, and nearly $1.5 trillion over the 30 years prior.

Experts say it would take $43.2 billion per year to maintain all of the country’s existing roads in “acceptable” condition, or roughly 23 percent less than Congress authorized annually under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

And the authors of the report say the waste may be even worse than it seems.

Because increasingly lax reporting standards conceal broken roads from public view, and DOTs routinely mis-categorize expensive expansion projects as simple “maintenance” or lump them into a mysterious “other” category, Transportation for America suspects the national highway network is actually even more drastically overbuilt than it appears on paper.

That means that even a steep increase federal dollars may not be enough to repair our rapidly expanding transportation network — at least without using that money to shift people onto modes other than driving and take pressure off our battered asphalt.

“We’re still adding to the system faster than we’re able to take care of it,” said Mehr Mukhtar, the group’s senior policy associate. “We’re still seeing inconsistencies and a lack of transparency in reporting standards. And all of this just leads us to the conclusion that until we see a meaningful shift in our priorities, and in how we’re tying our spending to our outcomes, the backlog of roads in poor conditions is going to persist — and likely it’s going to worsen.”

Mukhtar traces much of America’s pothole crisis to a long-standing tradition of giving states broad latitude over how they spend their federal “formula” dollars, or grants doled out to DOTs based on a pre-determined government calculation.

In the absence of federal rules to rein them in, many states pick ribbon-cuttings for new and “improved” — i.e., widened — highways over the unsexy work of repaving the lanes they already have, even if those lanes are falling apart.

A whopping 24 states chose to spend less than $2.35 on maintenance for every dollar they spent on expansion — a ratio that Transportation for America says is alarming — despite the fact that those states have a higher share of roads in poor condition than the national average.

Worse, experts say those expansions won’t come close to accomplishing the goals they’re theoretically supposed to achieve. Decades of research has shown that widening roads does nothing to fix traffic jams over the long term, encourages drivers to fill newly added lanes, and saddles communities with compounding long-term maintenance obligations that they can’t keep up with.

It’s a little like adding a ballroom to a house when the roof is so leaky that rain is pouring in — except that ballroom is somehow accelerating a traffic violence crisis that claims nearly 40,000 lives a year, super-charging climate change, and amplifying income inequality by reducing access to jobs, rather than, say, hosting waltzes.

“That’s fiscally irresponsible, and it’s a burden on taxpayer dollars,” Mukhtar added.

Of course, not all states are neglecting their maintenance backlog in favor of climate arson — and some of them are even offsetting the worst offenders.

Communities like North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Vermont won applause from the report’s authors for strong repair-to-expansion ratios, which helped bring their average road conditions above the national average — though, to be fair, many of those states have a high share of depopulated rural roads that need less-frequent maintenance than highly trafficked urban arterials. Still, Mukhtar credited those communities with lowering America’s total share of roads and bridges in poor condition by three percentage points between 2018 and 2024.

But she warned that extremely modest progress won’t be enough to outrun America’s looming maintenance obligations. The report says every new lane-mile of highway built will cost future taxpayers $47,300 per year to maintain in good condition — roughly the cost of a year’s out-of-state tuition at a decent public university — and America built 119,257 of them in the six years the researchers analyzed.

Worse, even some of the “good” states are still delaying maintenance until its bridges are on the brink of collapse, driving maintenance costs well above the average. Mukhtar pointed to Michigan, whose maintenance spending, which looks impressive on paper, actually masks the fact that the Wolverine State tends to postpone repaving until roads are so bad that they need to be totally rebuilt.

“With the costs of construction ballooning and inflation rising, even those same dollars don’t get stretched as far now as they would have decades ago, if [states] started prioritizing repair earlier,” she said.

With the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act due to expire on Sept. 30, Mukhtar said Congress has a rare opportunity to restore sanity to the transportation system and finally require states to “fix it first,” rather than adding endless new ballrooms to a falling-down house.

That might look like setting “tangible goals, such as reducing the backlog by half,” requiring federal agencies to collect better data on the actual condition of roads, and establishing enforceable mandates that state DOTs be more transparent about how taxpayer dollars are spent.

And until they actually do, no voter should believe a politician who pledges to “fix America’s crumbling roads and bridges” — because nearly $57 billion a year later, they still haven’t done so.

“Whenever a transportation bill is passed, we hear the same thing come out of Congress time and time again: the same rhetoric about fixing crumbling roads and bridges, and why we need to increase funding,” said Mukhtar. “But I think what we need to see this time around are enforceable requirements, which actually compel states to spend that money on fixing it first.”

• The Guardian asked experts how to fix traffic-choked cities, especially in light of high gas prices. The answers: Expand and improve transit, create more space for pedestrians and cyclists, focus on providing alternatives for commuters traveling into the city core from car-centric suburbs, and address the reasons why people choose to drive, such as service hours and safety concerns.
• Uber is shifting tactics away from fighting with local governments and labor unions as it seeks to roll out robotaxis, according to Axios. Meanwhile, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating Uber partner Avride after at least 16 documented autonomous vehicle crashes (Tech Crunch).
• Urban trees counter half the heat island effect from climate change in cities, but less so in poorer neighborhoods, according to a new study. (Associated Press)
• Seattle’s Sound Transit adopted a two-decade plan to close a $34 billion budget gap in future capital projects. (KOMO)
• The first Vision Zero report from Indianapolis indicates that traffic deaths fell to 85 last year from a high of 120 in 2021, but a number of major roads remain dangerous. (WTHR)
• Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell, whose major accomplishment has been passing the “Choose How You Move” transit expansion referendum, will run for re-election. (News Channel 6)
• San Antonio is considering dropping speed limits on neighborhood streets from 30 miles per hour to 25, but in places where it’s already been done, it hasn’t had an effect on driver behavior. (Report)
• Amtrak is adding cars to its Missouri River Runner route to accommodate additional riders traveling to the World Cup in Kansas City. (Mass Transit)
• Construction on Baltimore’s long-awaited Purple Line is complete, but service won’t begin until late 2027 at the earliest. (Maryland Matters)
• An Omaha traffic reporter is still out of work after having been hit by two different drivers in separate crashes; one as a pedestrian, one while she was behind the wheel. (KETV)
• Cincinnati’s Red Bike bikeshare had a record number of users in 2026. (CityBeat)
• Kansas City opened a new bike and pedestrian bridge on Grand Boulevard. (Fox 4)
• Lime introduced a new type of bikeshare bike in Seattle that looks like a scooter with pedals. (Seattle Bike Blog)
• Pending the governor’s signature, South Carolina recently became the first East Coast state to adopt the “Idaho stop,” allowing cyclists to proceed through a yield sign or red light when it’s safe to do so. (Palmetto Walk Bike)
• A lot of people like to ride the D: The new Metro line in Los Angeles opened last weekend to great fanfare. (Streetsblog LA)

A new study reveals the remarkable power of seaweed to clean—and in some cases entirely eradicate—fish waste from aquaculture. 

In the new work based out of the University of Miami, Florida, researchers tested out the abilities of several seaweed species to clean water polluted with fish effluent. Starting with multiple tanks, each containing one of four seaweed species, including a type of red seaweed, and a sea lettuce, the researchers evenly pumped through effluent-filled water into each one from a tank stocked with yellowtail snapper, a common aquaculture species in the region. 

The fish were kept in tanks at commercial production densities, to mimic the polluting effects of a fish farm. All the seaweed species received the same levels of effluent flow to compare their responses. These were also tested against control tanks that contained the seaweeds but weren’t exposed to waste from the fish tank. Researchers took regular readings of water oxygen, CO2, phosphate and ammonia levels in the water, and also tested the seaweeds for levels of protein, fat, minerals, and metals 

This steady analysis revealed that the seaweed had varying—but often striking—abilities to cleanse the water of fish waste. The most significant finding is that one species called Agardh’s red weed, a dense, frilly seaweed with a burgundy hue, reduced levels of polluting ammonia from the fish-contaminated water to below detectable levels, seemingly absorbing all this waste and using it to power its own growth. 

 

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Additionally, tests of the water before and after it had run through the seaweed tanks showed that sea lettuce in particular was very good at absorbing carbon from the water, taking up more carbon than any other seaweed species and leaving the water significantly cleared of dissolved CO2. It also generated more oxygen than any other species. Two other seaweed species also significantly decreased the dissolved CO2 content of the effluent-infused water. 

Meanwhile, a species known as sea grapes contained the highest amounts of protein when researchers did sample testing on the effluent-fed algae, pointing to its potential nutritional value, and suggesting it could make sense to produce seaweed commercially alongside fish aquaculture. In nearly all the seaweed species, the researchers also found that samples were enriched with the analyzed nutrients after exposure to the fish-fed water.

Ultimately, the study shows how mimicking natural seascapes, by bringing together fish and seaweed, could produce double-benefits: significantly curbing pollution in the world’s fastest-growing food production sector, while providing an additional source of human nutrient and farmer revenues.

In the short-term, they hope their investigation will convince farmers to at least give seaweeds a go, and to make smarter choices about which species they select when they do.

Lasco et. al. “Evaluation of native macroalgae species of the Southeast U.S. and Caribbean for use in integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA).” Aquaculture International. 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine. AI-generated

What does a protected bike lane have in common with a hot glue gun, a lawn mower and a refrigerator?

That’s not the set-up to a bad joke — it’s a powerful lesson in safe systems.

For this week’s Friday Video, we check in on one of our favorite TikTokers Jon Jon Wesolowski — aka “The Happy Urbanist” — who just posted an explainer on “forcing functions,” or design features that force better behavior and prevent bad things from happening.

And whether that’s an automatic kill switch on a household appliance or a barrier that separates a driver from cyclist, these features should be a no-brainer — if we can stop playing the blame game and start getting to the root causes of why people get hurt.

Check it out:

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Injury rates for e-bike and scooter users are plummeting in Europe even as the use of those devices has exploded since 2021, according to a new study that debunks the myth that roadways are getting less safe as a result of the micromobility boom.

Between 2024 and 2025, total bike and scooter mileage of the four mobility companies in the report grew by 14 percent, while the risk of injury declined by a little more than 1 percent. Bike safety seems even greater: e-bike trips increased by 72 percent in the same period yet injuries per million trips fell by around 18 percent compared to 2024.

The data was analyzed by Micro-Mobility for Europe, an industry group comprising the European operations of Bolt, Dott, Lime and Voi. The 2025 data is based on more than 353 million shared e-scooter trips and 136 million shared e-bike rides in the 27 European Union member states, plus Norway, Switzerland, the UK and Israel.

The companies collaborated to form Micro-Mobility for Europe to push back on the notion that e-bikes and scooters are a threat to safety. Its mission calls for joint effort to “develop a framework that ensures micro-mobility solutions flourish in cities in full respect of all road users and to revolutionize urban transportation toward a shared, electric, and carbon-free future.”

One expert said the preliminary findings show that micromobility only gets safer as the devices reach broader use.

“This indicates that with technological advancements, responsible operation, and better urban infrastructure, safety can be boosted even as micromobility network expands,” said George Yannis, a professor at National Technical University of Athens, which is working with the coalition to further study safety outcomes. “Continued monitoring and increased availability of micromobility data as well as evidence-based policies by both the [companies] and [local officials] will be essential to sustain this positive trend and further support Europe’s Vision Zero ambition of reducing road fatalities.”

And in the long term, risks continue to trend downward even as use continues to grow. Between 2021 and 2025, the injury risk per million km for shared e-scooters decreased by around 20 percent. And for bikes, overall injuries per million kilometers fell by almost 6 percent between 2024 and 2025, even as the number of trips increased by around 72 percent in 2025, evidence that the sector is getting safer as it scales.

The short report attributes the decrease in injury risk to an increase in safety features, like speed caps, on devices, geofencing in busy pedestrian areas, and regular maintenance of bikes and scooters.

“A 24-percent reduction in the risk of shared e-scooter injuries per million trips since 2021 shows that safer vehicle technology, rider education, sensibilisation [sic] measures by operators and continued investments in infrastructure are delivering measurable results,” said Micro-Mobility for Europe Co-Chair Marc Naether, who is also head of public policy at Bolt.

• During President Trump’s first term, the administration dragged its feet on distributing transit funds approved by Congress. The problem has gotten worse in his second term the U.S. DOT has not funded a transit project in more than a year, using new strategies to stonewall projects as the U.S. falls further and further behind the rest of the world. (Transportation for America)
• Not including children, at least 30 percent of Americans are non-drivers, according to a study out of Washington state. By far their biggest barrier to travel is a lack of fixed-route transit service. (Cities)
• An Atlanta City Council member wants to put a bike lane on the crowded Beltline to reduce conflicts between cyclists and scooters on one hand, and walkers and joggers on the other. (Atlanta News First)
• Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill making it illegal to block a bike lane. (Denver Gazette)
• The Pittsburgh Department of Mobility and Infrastructure is asking residents to fill out a survey about street safety. (Pittsburgh Magazine)
• Detroit is spending $8 million to repair 5,400 sidewalks. (Free Press)
• Cincinnati bikeshare Red Bike is now integrated into the city’s transit app. (CityBeat)
• Amtrak canceled a controversial third vent to save money on a West Baltimore rail tunnel. (Banner)
• Charlotte is planning on expanding its regional light rail system, but doesn’t have enough skilled construction workers to build all the projects. (Observer)
• Northwest Arkansas is planning its regional growth around the 40-mile Razorback Greenway. (CNU Public Square)
• The Kansas City streetcar turned 10 years old on Wednesday. (Axios)
• Observer names seven scenic Amtrak trips that are worth taking the time.

Metro’s new D Line subway extension will open tomorrow. The transit riding public can get on “the D” starting at 12:30 p.m. on Friday, May 8. The entire Metro rail/bus/bike-share system is free from Friday through Sunday. Read more about tomorrow’s opening celebrations.

The $3.5 billion four-mile D Line Extension Section 1 will travel from Wilshire/Western in L.A.’s Koreatown all the way to La Cienega/Wilshire in the city of Beverly Hills. The project includes three new stations: Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax, and Wilshire/La Cienega.

The 4-mile D Line extension (mapped in purple) runs below Wilshire Boulevard with stations at La Cienega, Fairfax, and La Brea Map of Metro B and D Line heavy rail subway – from Metro timetable. The B and D Lines form a Y; they share tracks in downtown and MacArthur Park, and split up at Wilshire/Vermont in Koreatown

When Metro broke ground on what was then called the “Westside Purple Line” at a ceremony at the L.A. County Art Museum, section 1 was expected to be completed in 2023. Among several obstacles causing delays, Metro encountered and overcame challenging tunneling conditions.

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Streetsblog has been covering the progress of the D Line for more than a decade. Below are a couple of D Line facts that you may or may not already know.

It will be fast

In L.A. County, most rail trips are not faster than driving. Metro buses and light and heavy rail move fairly fast. Every day, transit gets a million Angelenos where they need to be. There are exceptions, but when comparing trip times today, driving is almost always faster than transit.

Detail of Metro D Line timetable – click to enlarge

There are great reasons to take Metro transit – driving stress, parking, gas prices, health, environment – but comparative travel time typically is not where Metro comes out ahead.

The D Line is different.

Metro has already posted the new timetable for the D Line and it’s so fast it seems almost unimaginable for Angelenos.

Riding the D Line from the L.A. County Museum of Art (LACMA) to City Hall will take just 15 minutes. The nine-mile trip from one end of the D to the other – from La Cienega to Union Station – will take just 23 minutes.

At less congested times of day, those same trips might run 30-40 minutes in a car. At rush hour, you’d probably want to budget an hour to be safe.

There are lots of factors that influence overall trip time for various modes – e.g. congestion, parking, reliability, transit frequency, first/last mile walk/bike facilities, etc.

The D Line is remarkably fast; for many trips, fast enough to compete favorably with driving.

It will improve the lives of transit riders

If you read comments sections, you will find some people complaining that there’s no point in providing a subway to Beverly Hills, because rich people live there and rich people won’t ride transit. The residents of Beverly Hills, which long ago (meaning until ~2018) bitterly fought the D Line, likely do ride transit less often than folks living in less tony areas.

True as that may be, Beverly Hills is also destination. For workers who often struggle with expensive and/or time-consuming commutes. For visitors who want to have the full experience of Los Angeles. And for other Angelenos who might otherwise not be able to access a community that has made a point of making itself less accessible – including by opposing effective transit, and by targeting of Black and Latino drivers and pedestrians.

A lot of people who are not wealthy enough to live in Beverly Hills work there: domestic workers, restaurant workers, janitors, teachers, etc.

Even if wealthy folks in Beverly Hills ride infrequently, plenty of working class folks already take transit to commute to their Beverly Hills jobs. Even if the D Line never attracts a new rider, when it cuts a 40-60 minute bus commute down to 20-30 minutes, it will give workers more time to spend with their loved ones. It will get transit riders more places more punctually and more reliably. It will improve transit rider access to more places – more jobs and other destinations.

It’s in the right place

Wilshire Boulevard is one of the best places to improve Southern California transit – because of its existing concentration of population and jobs. Author/scholar Ethan Elkind notes (including in D Line coverage at the L.A. Times today) that Wilshire is the most densely populated corridor west of the Mississippi River.

Transit agencies often get political pressure to invest in high quality transit that serves less dense parts of the region. No Metro rail line is empty, but some Metro rail has been built in relatively low population density areas, where it struggles to attract large numbers of riders. Transit riders are already plentiful on Wilshire, which sees 30,000+ weekday daily boardings on Metro 20 and 720 buses.

The D Line is Metro is greatly improving service exactly where it is most needed.

Even more D Line Subway in the near future

This week’s opening is the first of three new D Line segments, all under construction and expected to be open by 2028.

Metro map of three-section nine-mile Metro D Line extension project

Very soon, the D Line will extend about 14 miles – from Westwood to Union Station. Take a peek at the next section’s new stations nearing completion.

Read more more about the D at Metro’s The Source, LAist, L.A. Times, and the Beverly Press.

SBLA will be putting the D Line to the test later this month. On May 19, Streetsblog will host a commuter race: the D Line Dash. The event pits three racers – a transit rider, a cyclist, and a driver – getting from Beverly Hills to Downtown Los Angeles.

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Tune in to Streetsblog, especially SBLA social media, to follow the great race! Contact Streetsblog if you’re interested in sponsoring and/or volunteering.

This post is sponsored by Find The Right Bike.

While Find The Right Bike paid the freelancer’s fee for this article, I was confident this was a topic that would interest Streetsblog Chicago readers. I appreciate the support, as well as FTRB’s new weekly ad on this site. We’ve still got about $17K to raise to meet our 2026 budget goal. If you haven’t already, please consider making a tax-deductible donation here. Thanks! – John Greenfield, editor

In 2024, Viktor Köves began a project of interviewing and photographing Chicagoans of all walks of life with their bicycles. His goal: demystify city riding for everyday needs and get more people on bikes. The Instagram and YouTube channel for Chicagoans Who Bike is filled with personal stories of families, children and elders from all corners of the city about why they ride and what they enjoy about it.

Now Köves has a new website to further nudge Chicagoans onto two wheels. Findtheright.bike uses a very short survey to recommend a style of bike according to the user’s needs, from e-cargo bikes to good old fashioned commuter bikes. The site includes brief guides on basic gear and maintenance, and links to product reviews. Find the Right Bike also makes a compelling case for the cost savings of bike versus car, all in Köves’ affable, encouraging tone. We spoke with Köves about the new tool and how things are going so far.

Screenshot from FTRB.

Sharon Hoyer: What gave you the idea for Find the Right Bike?

Viktor Köves: I’d been working on Chicagoans Who Bike for a while and I’m about to close out that project. I want to stop when I hit 100 interviews and I’m at about 92. I wanted to do more educational content about how to bike in the city. I keep hearing people say, “There’s no bike for me because I have kids or I need to haul things.” A lot of people don’t know what options they have. I wanted to distill the knowledge I have and the knowledge of the bike community into something really simple.

The other thing was integrating some financial data. One of the values of the site is showing people just how expensive cars are. I have two e-bikes – one that was about $4,000 and one that was about $6,000. When I tell people that they say, “That’s so expensive!” But I don’t own a car. One is my minivan; I haven’t needed to take a car-share for cargo since I bought that bike. If you’re interested in riding but know nothing, you can jump in my site and find something pretty reasonable. And before I show you models of bikes, I show price breakdown. 

I kept sharing the site with the bike community for feedback. I added the gear guide: Okay, you’re getting a bike but you don’t know about locks and helmets so I share links to the best resources for those. I added the basics on maintenance. The other thing was storage. Every time I talk about cargo bikes, people say it’s going to get stolen immediately. That’s not true, there are strategies to prevent that. I worked a lot with Bunch Bikes [electric cargo cycles], which has many articles about theft prevention.

Screenshot from FTRB.

The central idea is giving people a way of seeing that a bike can fit into their life and that it’s not a big expense, but a big money saver.

A lot of sites get into frame sizes. I don’t care. What are your life needs? And go from there.

SH: The tone of the site is that this is not for gear heads, that biking is really approachable. You don’t have to measure or research anything before you take a quiz about what bike is best for you and how to get started. How did you structure the quiz?

VK: I have a lot of bikes, so I have a decision-making process for which bike I take outside. It’s a privileged position; I have a lot of experience with it. And I’ve had a lot of conversations with other people where they walk me through their needs. What problem are you trying to solve? If it’s just you riding into the wind, that’s a very different problem than moving you plus another adult. It’s a totally different class of bike. It’s my experience owning these different bikes and knowing what they’re good for, and consulting with other people. 

The other aspect was storage – some people might need a cargo bike but have to carry it upstairs. We offer a lightweight alternative but offer a storage guide for keeping it outside.

SH: You avoid endorsing any particular brand. Was that tricky in any way?

VK: Commuter e-bikes are easy, there’s so many at different price points. The one I struggled with was e-trikes because there are a bunch of cheap alternatives with mixed reviews. My goal is to build trust but not saying a specific bike to buy, but to say, “go try these, here’s some third-party reviews.” Leaning on existing resources and reviews. I give you a class of bike, but it’s not meant to be definitive. I don’t provide a purchase link. 

SH: How much traffic has the site received and what has the response been so far?

VK: The feedback has been fantastic. The most reassuring thing I’ve heard is people who already have e-bikes pulling it up and saying I recommended the type of bike they have, so it’s working well. We’ve had about 850 users over the last month and a half. I’m working on some cross-promotion with bike shops to be listed on the site. One of the cool things is that its unaffiliated so I can do partnerships like this. My goal is to play nice with everyone so everyone can promote this tool.

SH: What do you feel is key for convincing more Chicagoans to try out riding a bike or replacing more of their car trips with biking?

Screenshot from FTRB.

VK: Honestly, I think hands on stuff is the most powerful. Last year in the 40th Ward [on the Far North Side, represented by Ald. Andre Vasquez] we hosted an e-bikepalooza that was really successful. It was in partnership with my project Chicagoans Who Bike. We had J.C. Lind [Bike Co.] doing Urban Arrows. When people try out a nice e-bike and see what it can do, it opens their mind a bit. 

I think storytelling is key too. Other people just like you are doing just fine with their bike. And maybe they still have a car for weekend getaways, but they’re saying, “It’s way easier to drop off my kids at school in this Bunch Bike or Urban Arrow than sit in the car line.” If you are dropping your kids off at school in an SUV, and you see four or five of the cool parents roll by on an Urban Arrow and drop their kids off and leave before you can drop your kids off, you’re going to think about it. There’s adoption, there’s infrastructure, and there’s tools like this, that make it easy and approachable. 

I don’t think my website will get people to buy a bike, but my goal is to get them in the funnel of trying out a bike and seeing how freeing it can be.

SH: Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

Screenshot from FTRB.

VK: One thing is I talk about car-free living FAQs. The most common thing I hear is, “What if I need to move a couch?” Yeah. You can rent cars. I think it’s so important to use the financial lens. Look, if you use a car to haul a couch once a week, then a bike is probably not going to be sufficient for your needs. But once a year? Price that out. How much does a rental cost you? The other thing is when I talk about car ownership, people just look at the sticker prices, but that’s not the full price of a car. On my site, I use $25,000 as the initial purchase price for a used car. The five-year cost of car ownership is twice that. The bikes are more expensive upfront and then almost free to run. We forget about insurance and fuel. I talk about retirement savings a lot for my work, so I’m pretty financially literate. It was key to me to mention the investment – is your retirement funded? If you have the money for a new car that’s great for you, but put it in a 401k for ten years, my sense is you’ll have about $1.1M. I think that’s the question we should be asking people.

Visit Find the Right Bike here.

Read Streetsblog’s previous story on Chicagoans Who Bike here.

On November 12, SBC launched our 2026 fund drive to raise $50K through ad sales and donations. That will complete this year’s budget, at a time when it’s tough to find grant money. Big thanks to all the readers who have chipped in so far to help keep this site rolling to the end of 2026! Currently, we’re at $32,696 with $17,304 to go, ideally by the end of May.

If you value our livable streets reporting and advocacy, please consider making a tax-deductible gift here. If you can afford a contribution of $100 or more, think of that as a subscription. That will help keep the site paywall-free for people on tighter budgets, as well as decision-makers. Thanks for your support!

– John Greenfield, editor

This week on Talking Headways, we’re joined by Stephanie Dockery of Bloomberg Philanthropies to discuss the foundation’s third Public Art Challenge. Dockery considers how bus art gains cult followings, how artists use temporary installations to attract attention in their respective cities, and what happens after those projects disappear.

Listeners have three ways of following the conversation: The audio player embedded below; a full (albeit AI-generated) transcript; and further down the page, a partial, human-edited transcript.

Jeff Wood: Thinking about the Hawaii bus, one thing that was interesting to me is that a lot of agencies are having trouble with their funding, and a lot of times for the buses, they’ll try to do wraps, and the wraps are advertising.

And I find it really great that instead of just putting advertising on your bus, you could actually put an art installation on your bus. There’s some frustrations with covering the windows, which I know a lot of transit advocates have. But the Hawaii bus was actually done very tastefully in terms of not covering up all the windows.

Stephanie Dockery: Yes, we follow all parameters with bus shelters and buses on not covering the windows, not covering the sides of the glass panels in the case of our Houston project. With our project in Philadelphia, which is a poetry project that’s responding to gun violence, Healing Verse Germantown, they are working not only with the Department of Transportation, but with the advertising agency and putting art in the panel of the bus shelters where advertising typically goes.

So now we have murals in a space where there’s typically advertising. So to your point —yes, we should absolutely be using art, and it was so smart of the teams to identify that as an opportunity for them.

Wood: I just find it very refreshing just because everything seems to be commoditized these days. A lot of folks are trying to advertise, and, and for good reason, obviously. The transit agencies need money. But at the same time, maybe that’s why the buses have maybe a little bit more of a following — because it isn’t the typical bus covering that you usually see.

I’m wondering how much of the art we should expect people to understand right away versus how much should be explained. I’m curious about how people come to it or how they experience it when they see it.

Dockery: That’s a great question. People absolutely happen upon the work. People go to the work on purpose. We are doing so much work with all of the teams to help promote [the art], whether it’s on their website, on our guide. We have created maps for all of the cities so they can share those with their constituencies, so they can actually see all of the sites. We have signage at all of the sites that explicitly talks about what the project is, what the installation is.

We have to be really deliberate and not expect or assume that people know what the work is, and that’s kind of the great thing about public art, especially if it’s in a vacant lot in a place where you’re not expecting to see anything, let alone something beautiful. And people get arrested by the installations and question why they’re there and, you know, start questioning why we don’t have more, which is a great question.

Wood: Excellent question.

Dockery: We do a lot of communications both on the press side and the onsite marketing, and then with social media to help let people know that the work is there because it’s for a pretty finite period. Some work is a performance, so that’s quite fleeting. Some work is up for a year.

So we’re just really communicating those timelines, what the work is, who the artists are, and expressing that this is a collaborative team. People should know that this is great work that their cities have done for them. So the cities are behind us and have brought together these nonprofits and artists. We also have an app called Bloomberg Connects, which is a free digital guide available to cultural organizations.

And on our Public Art Challenge guide, we have all of the cities listed and have built out their projects, both images and descriptions. So that’s a place where the projects can live in posterity since they are temporary in nature.

If you can’t afford to live, what does democracy actually offer you?

It’s a question sitting just beneath the surface of many political debates right now. For people struggling to get by, the idea of protecting democracy can feel abstract at best, disconnected at worst. And even in more progressive spaces where democracy is treated as urgent, it’s often framed as a parallel concern — something to defend alongside economic issues, rather than through them. As Raj Patel puts it, people are increasingly being asked to accept a kind of tradeoff: focus on affordability now, and worry about democracy later. If the system hasn’t delivered for working people, it’s not hard to see why some might question whether it’s worth defending at all.

At the Bioneers Conference 2026, labor organizer Saru Jayaraman, policy expert Angela Glover Blackwell, and journalist Raj Patel took that tension head-on — and flipped it.

This Isn’t What Democracy Is Supposed to Do

For decades, Angela Glover Blackwell has worked across issues such as housing, transportation, and environmental justice, but over time, she came to see a deeper pattern behind them all. “It is the failure to understand, to lean into, and to make real the promise of democracy that has kept us from solving these problems.” For Blackwell, democracy is not just a process of voting or representation — it has a stronger purpose. “It is co-governance for human flourishing,” she says. “That’s all it is.”

That definition reframes the entire conversation. If democracy exists to support human flourishing, then it cannot be separated from the conditions in which people live. As she puts it, “You can’t have human flourishing if the people aren’t putting in their two cents…if they’re not telling you what they need.” And yet, the version most people experience falls far short. “The reason that democracy has been so feeble,” she argues, “is because it has always tried…to function for a few, not for the all.”

That gap — between what democracy promises and what it delivers — doesn’t just shape outcomes. It shapes expectations. As Patel observes, participation often becomes “an exercise in which we are being trained to expect less.”

What It Feels Like When Democracy Fails

While Blackwell frames the broader vision, Jayaraman grounds it in day-to-day realities. “We’ve been fighting on affordability for decades,” she says, “and the response we’ve gotten…from people with power is: That’s cute. That’s sweet. But we are here to save democracy.” In her work organizing restaurant workers, she has seen how economic pressure reshapes who gets to participate — and how. “Democracy doesn’t work when the majority of people are unable or terrified to come speak up, and then a minority of people are paid to come speak for their bosses.”

She describes a dynamic in which workers are often pressured by employers to attend meetings and oppose wage increases, and in some cases show up to testify in legislative hearings as well. Meanwhile, those who actually need higher wages often can’t risk being visible. “They’re working three jobs and terrified…of showing up with their name and their face.”

In that context, calls to “protect democracy” can feel hollow. Even within the Democratic Party—where support for wage increases is often assumed—Jayaraman argues that meaningful progress is frequently blocked or diluted. “My experience of democracy,” she says, “is Democrats blocking wage increases…because we have not created the consequences for those Democrats.”

The Mistake We Keep Making About Affordability

What the panel makes clear is that affordability and democracy are not separate issues; they are the same fight. Blackwell is direct: “The affordability problem is that we, as a nation, have not invested in human flourishing.” Focusing only on prices — on eggs, gas, rent — misses the deeper issue. “If we think we can separate the absence of a vibrant democracy from the suffering that is happening in this country,” she says, “we don’t understand what democracy was for.”

Jayaraman pushes the same point from another angle, noting that even progressive conversations about affordability often avoid the most obvious lever. “Why are none of even the most progressive people talking about…raising wages?” she asks. “Life will never be affordable unless people have enough money in their pockets.” And beyond economics, she emphasizes what low wages actually do: “When they are paid as little as $2 or $3 or even $15… it devalues who they are. Every worker has value and skill…And everybody…wants to feel like they are contributing to meaning.”

Across both perspectives, the argument converges: Affordability is not just about costs. It’s about dignity, participation, and whether people have the capacity to engage in public life at all. That raises a deeper question: What do we actually mean when we say something is “affordable”? As Patel points out, “There’s a difference between cheap and affordable.” Cheap, he argues, is often “a way of displacing one cost onto someone else…usually the working class and the rest of the web of life.”

What a Real Democracy Would Require

If current systems fall short, what would it actually look like to get this right? Jayaraman’s answer is simple and concrete: “In a real democracy, workers would be able to have one job instead of three. They could show up…They could overpower any lies…And they would be listened to.” That vision ties material conditions directly to political power. Without time, stability, and security, participation becomes limited to those who can afford it.

Blackwell echoes this, emphasizing that democracy must be judged by how it works for those most impacted. “Democracy only functions when it can function for those who have been most marginalized in society,” she says. “That is the mark of a great democracy.” She points to a familiar example: curb cuts in sidewalks, originally designed for people with disabilities but now used by everyone. “When we solve problems with nuance and specificity…thinking about those who have been rendered most vulnerable…the benefits cascade out to everybody.” Building a democracy that works for the most vulnerable, in other words, isn’t a niche goal. It’s the foundation of one that works at all.

Raising Expectations Is the Strategy

So what does it take to move from theory to action? For Jayaraman, it starts with refusing to accept the limits of what feels politically possible. “For so long our side has settled,” she says. “We negotiate against ourselves before we even get in the room. We need to say…what we actually need. Nobody wants less than what they need.”

That’s the logic behind the Living Wage for All campaign she describes, which pushes for significantly higher minimum wages across cities and states. But the strategy is not just about policy — it’s about participation. “If we can give people some hope…they will show up, they will participate,” she says. “Maybe it will get them to one job, and then they can engage on all the issues we want them to engage on.”

Blackwell points to a broader shift that has to happen alongside it. “What we need is transformative solidarity.” Not a transactional version — “you sign my petition, I’ll show up for your march” — but something deeper. “Your issue is my issue,” she says, “because I can’t have the world that I want to live in if all of these things are not addressed.”

Participation Depends on Capacity

Throughout the conversation, there is a clear push to expand what counts as democratic participation. “I get so tired of democracy being either vote or run for office,” Jayaraman says. She points to how, in many places throughout the world, democratic participation extends well beyond voting alone. Ballot initiatives, organizing, public debate — these are all part of democratic life. But they depend on something more fundamental: people having the capacity to engage.

And that brings the conversation full circle. “The glimpse of what happened during the pandemic is the answer,” Jayaraman says — not as a model to replicate, but as a moment that revealed what becomes possible when people have more time, stability, and leverage. During that period, even amid widespread disruption and loss, millions of workers left their jobs, wages rose in some sectors, and many people had more space to organize and engage. “It gives us a glimpse of what could happen if Americans could have one job.”

The post What’s Standing in the Way of Civic Participation — and How to Change It appeared first on Bioneers.

Every year, the forestry and timber industries produce vast quantities of tree bark as a byproduct. Most of this material is burned, discarded, or left to decompose. At the same time, there is an urgent need to develop scalable and affordable technologies to capture carbon dioxide.

“Our research brings these two issues together through a simple but impactful idea, transforming waste into a resource,” says Suresh Bhargava, director of the Centre for Advanced Materials and Industrial Chemistry at RMIT University.

Bhargava and his colleagues have converted the bark of the eucalyptus tree into a porous carbon material that can help clean water, filter air and capture carbon dioxide. They reported their simple two-step method in a paper published in the journal Biomass and Bioenergy.

Porous carbon materials, which contain a sophisticated network of pores, are already used in filtration and gas treatment systems. Their pores capture contaminants or targeted molecules as water or air pass through. But, says Bhargava, “conventional methods for producing porous carbon materials are often energy-intensive, requiring high temperatures and multiple processing steps, which limits scalability.”

The RMIT team developed a simple and scalable synthesis approach to make their carbon filter from eucalyptus bark. They first make a carbon-rich material called a hydrochar by heating wet bark at low temperature under pressure. Then they physically mixed the hydrochar with zinc chloride.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:Chemists have made the best carbon capture material yet

 

This results in a highly porous carbon material with a surface area of approximately 2,210 square meters per gram of the material. The porous material captures around 7 millimoles per gram of CO₂, placing it among competitive carbon capture materials, Bhargava says.

“The choice of eucalyptus bark is both practical and scientifically grounded,” he adds. Eucalyptus bark is a widely available, low-cost resource. Australia is home to more than 900 species of eucalyptus and related trees, and eucalyptus is also cultivated widely around the world.

The bark contains lignin and cellulose that lead to the formation of stable carbon frameworks with well-developed porosity. Compared to other biomass sources, it produces materials with higher surface area and better CO₂ adsorption performance.

The abundance of the raw materials and the simplicity of the synthesis process makes this approach inherently scalable. The researchers are now trying to evaluate long-term durability, regeneration, and performance under real operating conditions. And they are seeking industry collaborations to explore commercialization opportunities.

“While further work is needed to evaluate long-term durability and large-scale deployment,” says Bhargava, “this study provides a clear pathway toward more sustainable and economically viable carbon capture technologies.”

Source: Pallavi Saini et al. Sustainable valorisation of eucalyptus bark waste into microporous carbon materials for efficient CO2 capture. Biomass and Bioenergy, 2026.

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

• The U.S. lags so far behind other global cities on transit that it would cost $4.6 trillion to catch up. For example, Houston is about the same size as Paris, but Paris has 10 times the number of buses and light rail cars per capita. New York City has the best transit system in the U.S., but it’s not as good as Tehran’s. Instead of improving transit, we just build more roads and parking as cities sprawl. (The Guardian)
• Often overlooked in the furor over urban highways is the way traffic engineers turned downtown streets into one-way speedways to get car commuters home faster. Cities are now reverting to two-way streets that are safer for pedestrians and benefit small retailers. (Governing)
• No neighborhood is truly walkable without a good old-fashioned corner store. (The Third Place)
• Speeding in San Francisco dropped by 80 percent after the city installed enforcement cameras. (Examiner)
• After several years of an impasse over transit funding in Pennsylvania, some state lawmakers are looking to public-private partnerships to help sustain transit agencies. (Pittsburgh City Paper)
• Oregon Public Broadcasting interviewed Portland-based transit consultant Jarrett Walker about the state of transit in Rip City.
• The Portland Bureau of Transportation is replacing its 3,000-strong fleet of shared bikes with “zippier” models. (Axios)
• A Seattle driver was arrested on DUI charges after allegedly trying to run down a child riding a bike on the sidewalk. (MyNorthwest)
• Sound Transit voted to finish the West Seattle and Ballard light rail extensions despite a $35 billion shortfall for capital projects (My Ballard). But Mayor Katie Wilson refused to answer questions about those projects’ future (KOMO).
• St. Louis residents have the opportunity to weigh in on proposed routes for a $400 million bus rapid transit line. (KSDK)
• In Savannah, Chatham Area Transit faces an $8 million budget deficit, and is asking the county commission to raise property taxes. (WSAV)
• Fayetteville, Arkansas, is seeking public input on two complete streets projects funded by the Biden administration. (KNWA)
• Three-quarters of European cities that lowered speed limits to about 20 miles per hour saw reductions in traffic deaths and injuries. (Cities Today)
• Toronto rideshare drivers spend half their time deadheading, or riding around without a passenger. (Globe and Mail; paywall)
• Brandon Donnelly describes Toronto’s plans for a 16-block pedestrians-only street.

The Trump administration is deepening the national affordability crisis by withholding badly-needed funds for affordable transportation options — and advocates say Congress should refuse to negotiate the bill that will dictate America’s transportation future until the White House stops holding our transportation present hostage.

Washington lawmakers are reportedly abuzz over a recent letter lead by the National Campaign for Transit Justice, which called on Congress “to exercise its oversight responsibility” over the implementation of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — and demanded that the Trump administration release an estimated $2.8 billion in competitive grants for affordable transportation options before the bill expires on Sept. 30.

Trump’s executive orders and press releases from Secretary Sean Duffy’s USDOT have both repeatedly maligned grants for transit, walking and biking as little more than “woke” Biden-era larks or symptoms of the “Green New Scam.” In reality, these grants are a critical tool for easing the staggering burden of America’s household transportation costs, which consume 17 percent of the average paycheck, largely because mass car ownership is so inherently unaffordable.

Recommended Trump’s Funding Freeze Has Derailed Transit, Undermining Growth and Economic Opportunity For All Americans Kea Wilson March 11, 2026

And those funding freezes are only the tip of the iceberg.

The letter’s authors pointed out that after Trump reclaimed the Oval Office, his Office of Management and Budget withheld another $4.9 billion for multimodal transportation authorized under the Capital Investments Grant Program. And that’s in addition to millions more in affordable transportation dollars that Congress rescinded last fall, after the White House essentially ran out the clock on the process of finalizing a raft of Biden-era grants.

Collectively, all of these stalled, rescinded, and clawed-back funds were supposed to throw a lifeline to struggling U.S. families, many of whom are forced to own cars they can’t afford for lack of any other viable options, the authors argued. And they say that unless Congressional lawmakers can finally force the White House to disburse the money, they shouldn’t even think of passing a new federal transportation bill to replace the one that Trump has so flagrantly refused to implement.

“[We’re in a] crisis for working families across the US,” said Giancarlo Valdetaro, the Campaign’s senior transit organizer. “With the increase in gas prices recently, it is more expensive than ever to get around by driving. And at the same time, transit is still an underfunded mode of transportation.”

“We need [Congress] to be more aggressive and firm about releasing funds that they decided should be distributed to communities across the country through the IIJA, which the Trump administration is currently refusing to distribute,” Valdetaro continued. “[And they also need to be] proactively putting guardrails in the next surface transportation reauthorization to ensure that we don’t get these delays and outright cancelations of projects in the future.”

Recommended The ‘Affordability Crisis’ Conversation Can’t Leave Out the Cost of Cars Kea Wilson January 7, 2026

Of course, there are some guardrails to prevent a hostile White House from denying communities the federal transportation dollars they’re owed — even if the Trump administration has tried just about every trick in the book to leap over them, even when doing so has landed them on the losing side of litigation.

“There are provisions in existing law that are meant to prevent waste and abuse — and ironically enough, they’re being abused by this administration to warp Congress’s intent, [and] to keep money from going to certain projects,” he added. “[We need] changes to keep an administration from capriciously and maliciously using their own priorities to keep money from going out the door, to places they don’t want it to go to.”

In addition to better guardrails to ensure that discretionary grants actually get out the door, the authors of the letter say transit also needs more money that isn’t subject to the whims of whoever’s in the White House — in the form of more funds guaranteed directly to transit agencies by federal formulas.

Formula money for transit operations is particularly important, like the $20 million a year that would flow to agencies under the Stronger Communities through Better Transit Act introduced by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), which received a shout-out in the letter.

“Consistent support from the federal government for transit agencies has been missing for decades, and it’s part of why so many people don’t get the transit that they deserve in their communities,” said Valdetaro. “It’s all part of the same conversation.”

Recommended Could This Bill Finally Give Transit Agencies the Operations Funding They Need? Kea Wilson February 1, 2024

With a laundry list of virtually every major transportation advocacy group signed on, Valdetaro is hopeful the letter will compel lawmakers to co-sponsor Johnson’s bill and raise their voices about unfreezing IIJA funds — not to mention insulating the next federal transportation bill from executive interference.

And whether or not Congress heeds that call, he’s hopeful that America’s affordable transportation revolution can still get back on track — even if it seems like the Trump administration will always find new ways to quash it.

“The federal government has not been pulling its weight [to support transit] for decades, and yet we see [communities] putting forward these projects year after year,” he said. “No matter what happens with any single grant decision, or the specifics of what gets into the [next federal transportation] bill, people still need to be able to cross the street safely. People still need to be able to get to work and the doctor’s office and the grocery store.”

“One grant decision from an administration that will be over January 20, 2029 is not going to change that,” Valdetaro added. “And it’s not going to discourage people from fighting for the transportation and transit systems they deserve.”

Jordan: I live in Los Angeles, so I see autonomous vehicles every day. I ride in them. I also watch them stop in active travel lanes, idle in red zones, and sit at the curb in metered spaces for which they don’t pay, at which they can’t be ticketed, and that don’t appear in any city system as occupied. The car is physically present, but administratively it is largely invisible, unlike most other vehicles today where cities have at a minimum mechanisms for them to pay for curb use and receive citations for non-compliance.

Gabe: I live in D.C. and AV legislation for commercial service is just being introduced. We currently have robo-taxis testing on the streets, and myriad delivery and ride-hail services are visible throughout the city. The gap between what’s on the street and what cities can actually see, price, or enforce is the defining curb management problem of the next decade. And almost no one is treating it with the urgency it deserves.

Cities are underestimating VMTs

Enforcement is about to get much harder. By BloombergNEF’s count, highly automated vehicles are already operating in 103 cities globally, intermingling with around 310 million people daily. A peer-reviewed study published this year in Travel Behaviour and Society found that automated vehicles in US cities are associated with a roughly 6-percent increase in vehicle miles traveled — driven in part by AVs traveling empty between trips, searching for parking, or returning home after dropping off passengers. That’s not a forecast. That’s a measured effect at today’s deployment levels.

The economics push the curve up sharply from here. Fire the driver — historically the highest single cost in a for-hire trip — and per-mile prices fall. Demand at lower prices rises. Fleets scale to meet it. This is Econ 101, and it’s why we think most municipal planners are working off an expected volume of robotaxis on the street that will look far too low by 2030.

The usual playbook won’t work

Cities learned a hard lesson with shared scooters and bikes: get permitting, data sharing, and curb rules in place before the inventory shows up, or spend years chasing it. With AVs, the equivalent move is largely off the table. State pre-emption in California and elsewhere puts AV regulation with the state not with cities. Most local governments cannot cap AV fleet sizes the way they cap scooter permits. They cannot mandate the granular operational data for AV’s that they extract from micromobility operators today.

And even when they can request it, they’ll be negotiating with Waymo, Zoox, Tesla, Nuro, Uber, Motional, and many others — each with different software, routing logic, parking behaviors, and APIs.

You’re not going to manage a multi-vendor robotic fleet by writing a memo to each company. The data asymmetry is too wide and the political leverage too narrow. Not to mention that every time a new “driver” is downloaded, the entire tech stack can be altered, and the vehicles may behave differently than minutes before.

What’s worse, the enforcement model itself is currently unworkable for AVs in many jurisdictions. Under California law, robotaxis are immune from moving violations because tickets must be issued to a human driver, though that changes in July 2026 when law enforcement will be able to issue “notices of autonomous vehicle non-compliance” to the companies themselves. D.C. plans the same. Even then, parking citations remain the primary enforcement lever, and they’re issued by humans walking up to vehicles with paper. That doesn’t scale to the fleet sizes coming.

The opportunity hiding inside the problem

Here’s where we want to push back on the doom framing, because there is a real opportunity in this — and it’s the opportunity Donald Shoup made the case for in The High Cost of Free Parking and Henry Grabar extended in Paved Paradise: cities have been largely giving away the right-of-way for almost a century, mostly to private passenger vehicles, mostly for political reasons, and mostly at enormous discount to the actual value. Curb space is some of the most valuable real estate a city owns, and it’s been priced as if it were nearly worthless.

AVs are forcing the conversation that should have happened decades ago. A robo-taxi sitting in a metered space all morning is functionally no different from a private car doing the same thing — it’s just more visible, more obviously commercial, and harder to politically defend. That visibility is leverage. It’s the wedge that lets cities finally price and manage curb access at something closer to its real economic value, and use the revenue to fund transit, road redesigns for safety, and the maintenance backlog that’s been deferred for decades. 

The best news? The robo-taxi companies want to pay for the time and space they use, but lack a mechanism. And if they pay, then everyone should, driver or no driver. You can only capture that opportunity if you have the infrastructure to actually do the pricing and enforcement. But time is of the essence. We learned that once America had “freeways,” it was nearly impossible to charge for their usage.

Cities most automate the curb (AI for AI)

If cities can’t realistically regulate AVs vehicle-by-vehicle or company-by-company, the strategic move is to manage the right-of-way itself, unilaterally, with a standard set of business rules that apply equally to every actor at the curb — human, commercial fleet, or autonomous. Essentially, a car is a car is a car. AI is not just for the private sector; the government needs to scale up its use quickly to handle the influx of new technologies and services that will automate a litany of tasks and mobility options and need a way to pay for usage.

That means three things:

Common rules, not per-operator negotiations. The city defines the business rules — at what price, where and when can companies operate, and for how long. Every vehicle in the right-of-way operates with the same rules. AV companies don’t get a special carve-out, and they don’t get to negotiate the data exchange on a fleet-by-fleet basis.

Automated curb payment. Every vehicle that occupies a curb space — whether it’s a Waymo dropping off a passenger, an Amazon van loading a package, or a private car parking for lunch — should be billed for the time it occupies that publicly owned space, automatically. No app required. No meter required. No officer is required to confirm the transaction. The infrastructure recognizes the vehicle and the duration, and posts the charge.

Automated curb enforcement. The same infrastructure that prices legal use should detect and cite illegal use — double parking, blocking a bike lane, overstaying a loading zone, parking in a no-stopping zone. Enforcement at the speed of the violation, not the speed of a parking officer’s walking route. We should be at nearly 100 percent compliance for proper use of the curb, and AV’s can be programmed to meet this standard if the right costs and feedback loop are baked into the system.

Pole-based cameras with computer vision is, in our view, the only technology that scales to do this across an entire city. It’s vehicle-agnostic, it works on existing infrastructure, it produces an evidentiary record sufficient for citation, and it doesn’t depend on each fleet voluntarily handing over telematics. It’s also the same approach a growing list of cities — Miami, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Portland, Los Angeles, Sacramento International Airport — are already using to manage commercial activity from Amazon, DoorDash, and Uber and Lyft via Smart Loading Zones. The use case is identical. AVs just make the need impossible to ignore.

Airports are a testing ground

If cities are the long-term battleground, airports are where the conflict is most acute right now. By some industry estimates, airport trips can generate up to 60 percent of taxi profit from approximately 15 percent of trip volume — meaning the curb in front of a terminal is one of the most economically intense roadways in the country, and AV fleets are entering it with the same playbook they’re running in cities. Cities that may be subject to state regulation for robo-taxis and Ubers, in many cases, do control the airport from the mayor’s office, like Los Angeles, and therefore have a real opportunity to think holistically about curbside management.

At the same time, the airport business model is being squeezed from the other side. Parking revenue — which has historically funded a large share of airport operations — has been in decline as travelers shift from self-parking to drop-off and ride-hail. Add AV trips on top of that, and the revenue line keeps falling while curb volume keeps climbing. That’s not a sustainable equation without a new way to monetize and manage the curb.

This is exactly the gap automated curb management is built to close. At Sacramento International Airport, Terminal A handles more than 175,000 vehicles a month at the curb. After deploying computer-vision-based monitoring automated enforcement, the airport went from 40 percent of vehicles dwelling at the curb longer than policy allows to only 11 percent — a substantial behavior change without adding enforcement headcount.

The same dynamic that makes airports the highest-value testing ground today makes them the most exposed to AV growth tomorrow. 

The window is closing quickly

The vehicles are scaling now. The miles are being driven now. The behaviors that San Francisco transit operators are documenting — stalled robo-taxis blocking public streets, problems that can take as long as an hour to resolve, requiring transit dispatchers to call Waymo’s call center or even police to clear the vehicle — are early symptoms of a much larger operational reality coming to every major city in the country.

Cities that build automated curb management infrastructure in the next two to three years will have priced, rule-based control over their right of way before the AV inventory peaks. Cities that wait will be doing it reactively, under pressure, with less leverage and less revenue. Additionally, if costs are lower for robotaxis than traditional Ubers and Lyfts, then the delta is important to be able to price, to assure that the best tool is used for the best trip (walk, transit, bike), and right-of-way pricing will be the mechanism most cities will have left to influence this. Think of it as congestion pricing-lite.

The right-of-way is the city’s. The decision about whether to actively manage it is, too — for now.

Introduction by bryant terry, artist, chef, publisher and author.

The right to food and the right to land are fundamental to human freedom, dignity, and self-determination, but locally and globally, land and food have been leveraged as tools of oppression. Fortunately, they can also be portals for liberation. Renowned groundbreaking Black Kreyol farmer and food justice activist, Leah Penniman, founder of Soul Fire Farm and author of Farming While Black, offers us living proof that when Land is reunited with her people, mutual thriving can flourish in the form of solutions to climate chaos and food apartheid. Even in this era of intense state repression, community self-determination and solidarity can be foundational to building a powerful movement for land and food sovereignty.

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Leah Penniman will be teaching a Bioneers Learning course in December 2026: Children of the Land: Soul Fire Farm’s Approach to Raising and Mentoring Young People. Learn more and register.

Leah Penniman, a Black Kreyol farmer, author, mother, and food justice activist who has been tending the soil and organizing for an anti-racist food system for 25 years, currently serves as founding Co-Executive Director of Farm Operations at Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York, a Black & Brown-led project that works toward food and land justice. She is the author of: Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land (2018) and Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations with Black Environmentalists (2023).

EXPLORE MORE The Food Web Newsletter

Dive into the Food Web with Bioneers and learn more about how a transformed food system can be a source of community wealth, creative culture, and individual health, as well as a way to fulfill our sacred calling as humans for environmental stewardship.

‘The Seed Was Their Most Precious Legacy’: Why Black Land Matters

Leah Penniman tells how the ancestral grandmothers in the Dahomey region of West Africa braided seeds of okra, molokhia, and Levant cotton into their hair before being forced to board transatlantic slave ships. As expert agriculturalists, the seeds and the ecosystemic and cultural knowledge they represented were their most precious legacy

The post Leah Penniman – Free the People! Free the Land! appeared first on Bioneers.

Introduction by Cara Romero, Executive Director, Bioneers and Director, Indigeneity Program.

In many North and Central American Indigenous peoples’ oral traditions the “Trickster Coyote” is a crucially important mythic ancestor, and the stories surrounding him illuminate vital truths. Julian Brave NoiseCat, activist, journalist, champion powwow dancer, co-director of the award-winning film Sugarcane, author of We Survived the Night, and multi-hyphenate storyteller and artist from the Secwépemc and St’at’imc nations, dramatically makes the ancient but ever potent “Coyote Story” archetype, one of the most significant oral traditions in human history, come to vivid life to shed light on our current situation and possible paths forward in these trying times.

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Julian Brave NoiseCat (member, Canim Lake Band Tsq’escen, and descendant, Lil’Wat Nation of Mount Currie), formerly a political strategist, policy analyst and cultural organizer who played a major role, in, among other achievements, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Alcatraz Occupation and getting Deb Haaland appointed Interior Secretary (the first Native American cabinet secretary in U.S. history), is a writer, journalist, and the first Indigenous North American filmmaker ever nominated for an Academy Award (for his co-direction of Sugarcane). NoiseCat’s journalism has appeared in dozens of leading national publications and has been recognized with many awards. His first book, We Survived the Night, was a national bestseller in Canada and an indie bestseller in the U.S., and Julian is also a champion powwow dancer who played hockey for three of the oldest teams in the game: Columbia University, the Oxford University Blues and the Alkali Lake Braves.

EXPLORE MORE “Remembering Who We Are and Our Relations” with Julian Brave NoiseCat

In this episode of the Indigeneity Conversations podcast series, Julian Brave NoiseCat explores the importance of connection and relationship, to family, to history, to place and to culture, threading his own story throughout a larger narrative about the deep trauma Indigenous people have experienced through colonization and the resilience and power that is emerging as individuals, tribes and nations work to reclaim their own stories and landscapes.

Indigenous Rising: From Alcatraz to Standing Rock

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. From the historic Indigenous occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969 to the fossil fuel fights throughout Canada and the U.S. today, Indigenous resistance illuminates an activism founded in a spiritual connection with the web of life and the human community. This podcast features Julian NoiseCat, Dr. LaNada War Jack and Clayton Thomas-Müller.

The post Julian Brave NoiseCat – The Epic Misadventures of the Trickster Coyote appeared first on Bioneers.

Kyle Trefny was 18 years old in 2020 when skies in the San Francisco Bay Area and much of the Pacific Coast turned orange with wildfire smoke. He shares how that moment led him to become a wildland firefighter and to join other youth in creating FireGeneration Collaborative (FireGen), dedicated to imagining and building a future beyond intense wildfires and their devastating health impacts, a future of healthy communities and livelihoods that recenters Indigenous leadership in land management. Kyle reflects upon the power of questions, of friendship, of breaking negative cycles, of art, of mentors and elders, and of taking leaps of faith in life.

This Young Leaders talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Kyle Trefny is an organizer, artist, wildland firefighter, and co-founder of FireGeneration Collaborative (FireGen), which started out with a GoFundMe campaign and a petition and became a dynamic, influential youth-led organization that has helped bring about the historic involvement of firefighters and Indigenous fire management practitioners in governance processes and engaged hundreds of young people in fire research. A faculty research assistant at the University of Oregon’s Ecosystem Workforce Program, Kyle is also active in movements for Indigenous sovereignty, queer rights, and climate justice and was a recipient of a 2025 Brower Youth Award.

Learn more about FireGen.

EXPLORE MORE Putting the Land First: A Candid Conversation on Climate, Conservation, and California’s Future

Three changemakers working at the intersection of policy, land, and climate share their perspectives on what it takes to scale nature-based solutions. Together, they explore the progress being made, the roadblocks still ahead, and why putting land first is essential to securing a just, livable future.

Nature’s Phoenix: Fire As Medicine

In this podcast episode with fire ecologists Chad Hanson and Frank Kanawha Lake, we learn how contemporary Western fire science is integrating what Indigenous Peoples discovered over thousands of years of observation, and trial and error: fire is key to optimizing forest vitality and biodiversity.

The post Kyle Trefny – When Orange Skies Clear appeared first on Bioneers.

Introduction by Anna Lappé, Executive Director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food.

As we today once again face the aggression of authoritarian oligarchy, there is a great deal we can learn from how food workers confronted fascism a century ago. Socialist and anarchist movements around the world gave birth to innovative solidarity strategies that permitted them to survive a fascist onslaught, care for their communities, and put food on the table in times of disease and war. Raj Patel, one of the world’s leading experts on sustainable food systems and a tireless advocate for food justice, shares what his research about these inspiring movements tells us about how we too can draw on the best human impulses to build economic systems built on solidarity and mutual aid.

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Raj Patel, an award-winning author, film-maker and academic, is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin who has worked for the World Bank and WTO but also protested against them around the world and testified about the causes of the global food crisis to the US, UK and EU governments. A member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems and of the council of Progressive International, he has written extensively for a range of scholarly journals in economics, philosophy, politics and public health and also contributes frequently to a range of other publications, including The Guardian, Financial Times, New York Times, and Scientific American. He is the author of: Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and The Value of Nothing, and co-author of: A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things and (with Rupa Marya) of: Inflamed: Deep Medicine and The Anatomy of Injustice. His first film, co-directed with Zak Piper, is the award-winning documentary The Ants & The Grasshopper. He also co-hosted the food politics podcast The Secret Ingredient.

EXPLORE MORE The Food Web Newsletter

Dive into the Food Web with Bioneers and learn more about how a transformed food system can be a source of community wealth, creative culture, and individual health, as well as a way to fulfill our sacred calling as humans for environmental stewardship.

Young Leaders Champion Food Sovereignty and Economic Equity in BIPOC Communities

Explore how young leaders are driving food sovereignty and economic equity in BIPOC communities, transforming lives and inspiring change.

The post Raj Patel – Food Solidarity vs Fascism appeared first on Bioneers.

Introduction by Manuel Pastor, Director of the Equity Research Institute at USC.

With federal incursions tearing through communities from coast to coast and huge new detention centers coming online, it is understandable that many of us could feel overwhelmed and powerless in the light of such frightening, massive shows of force, but, as we’ve seen, some communities are courageously rising up to defend their neighbors. According to the nationally-recognized community organizer, bestselling author, Director of the Shared Future initiative, and co-founder of the national network of immigrant youth, United We Dream, Cristina Jiménez Moreta, this is a tipping point moment, and we need to draw from examples of historic change that started in the margins of society before conquering the mainstream to inspire us to join together and build a new consensus in our nation that celebrates immigrants’ enormous contributions and supports their rights.

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference. Read a transcript of this talk here.

Cristina Jiménez Moreta, who came to the U.S. from Ecuador in 1998 and grew up undocumented in Queens, New York, is an award-winning community organizer, bestselling author, and leading social justice activist. Co-founder and former Executive Director of  United We Dream (UWD), the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the country, she has led multiple national and local campaigns for immigrant justice, including playing a leadership role in the campaign to win and implement the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA). A distinguished lecturer at the City University of New York, Jiménez was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and named one of Time 100’s most influential people. She is the author of a bestselling debut memoir Dreaming of Home (2025).

EXPLORE MORE Bioneers Interview with Cristina Jiménez Moreta

Cristina Jiménez Moreta discusses her life and work with Anneke Campbell.

The post Cristina Jiménez Moreta – Mass Deportations: A Tipping Point Moment for All of Us appeared first on Bioneers.

Introduction by Kenny Ausubel, Bioneers Co-Founder and CEO.

Brett KenCairn, founding Director of the Center for Regenerative Solutions, an early leader in community-based living systems regeneration, challenges the conventional understandings of the causes and solutions of climate change and its fixation on carbon and technology. He illustrates through both recent science and our own direct experience that it is the degradation of the living world that is at the center of both how we have destabilized the climate, and how we can solve not only the climate crisis, but also reverse biodiversity loss and regenerate healthy human communities. He shows that we are living on a planet operating at half its photosynthetic capability—illustrating both the dire reality of our current situation but also the foundation of hope. 

Pointing to numerous examples of human communities reversing large scale landscape degradation—including the reversal of the Dust Bowl in the U.S. in the 1930s, the restoration of the Rhode Island-sized Loess Plateau in China in the 1990s, and examples of similar activities taking place around the world now—Brett points to our ability to build a global movement, community-by-community, to harness nature’s power to regenerate landscapes at a scale.  Through coordinated community-based action, these efforts can stabilize climate, generate hundreds of millions of jobs, generate trillions of dollars in economic opportunity, reverse biodiversity loss, and reboot the biosphere’s productive capabilities.

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference. Read a transcript of this talk here.

Brett KenCairn, founding Director of the Center for Regenerative Solutions and Senior Division Manager for Nature-based Climate Solutions for the City of Boulder’s Climate Initiatives Department, has throughout his career supported community-based initiatives across the western U.S., particularly in rural, Native American, and other marginalized communities. He also co-founded several organizations, including: the Rogue River Institute for Ecology and Economy; Indigenous Community Enterprises; Veterans Green Jobs; and Community Energy Systems.

EXPLORE MORE Urban Forests: A Nature-Based Solution to Climate Breakdown and Inequality

In this podcast episode with Brett KenCairn and Samira Malone, learn how urban forestry is a nature-based solution that simultaneously addresses the parallel crises of climate change and wealth inequality.

The Restorative Revolution: How Indigenous Leadership and Allyship Catalyzed the Biggest River Restoration in US History

In this podcast episode, Yurok fisherman and tribal leader Sammy Gensaw and environmental scientist-turned-activist Craig Tucker share the epic story of how Indigenous leadership and non-Indian allyship made the impossible inevitable: the biggest-ever dam removal and salmon restoration in history.

The post Brett KenCairn – Nature-based Climate Solutions—Centering Life to Heal the Planet appeared first on Bioneers.