Plus a look back at the London Olympics, Texas’ environmental overpasses, and more.
Every day at The Overhead Wire, we collect news about cities and send the links to our email list. At the end of the week we take some of the most popular stories and post them to Greater Greater Washington, a group blog similar to Streets.mn that focuses on urban issues in the D.C. region. They are national links, sometimes entertaining and sometimes absurd, but hopefully useful.
The most dangerous road in America: Walking along US-19 in Pasco County, Florida, you’d notice the danger. Cars speeding faster than the posted limits, few crosswalks, and commercial retail built exclusively for cars. Researchers found that this road was the nation’s most dangerous for pedestrians, with 7 hot spots out of 60 total in the whole of the United States. Between 2017 and 2022, 48 pedestrians have been killed by drivers on this road. (Marin Cogan | Vox)
The Olympics’ London, 10 years on: Before the London Olympics 550 acres of industrial land were cleaned up and made into an urban node with employment, shopping, housing, and sports stadia. 10 years on, the district is still thriving and is seen as a generally positive legacy of an expensive Olympics in which the host country invested 9 billion pounds ($10.9B USD). (Rowan Moore | The Guardian)
Nick Offerman on bikes and bullies: Writing for Outside Magazine, Parks and Recreation star Nick Offerman discusses the reasons why he rides his bike or gets in a canoe; not to display manliness, but to escape the stressors of the world in which we live. After many bike rides to work in which he encountered bullies in cars, he wonders if they are created that way from culture and whether they hold a deep insecurity, wrought by fear and pain. (Nick Offerman | Outside Online)
Young adults aren’t moving far from home: A new study of migration patterns of Millennials finds that 90% of the age cohort at age 26 moved no further away than 500 miles from the place they grew up. Black and Hispanic youth did not move as far and higher income individuals were more likely to move further away. (Mike Schneider | Associated Press)
Texas skirting environmental laws in highway construction: Highway expansion opponents in Austin have found that TXDOT is probably skirting environmental regulations by breaking up highway projects into segments such that they don’t have to do more extensive environmental reviews for the actual larger project. A lot of projects have been given FONSIs (finding of no significant impact), even if they are likely to tear down neighborhoods or impact watersheds. (Megan Kimble | Grist)
Quote of the Week
“Employers may not see the direct transportation costs, but the transportation network for workers is absolutely connected to the business. It will touch the bottom line through lack of dependable workers. Workers unable to show up is not good.”
Adie Tomer in Crain’s Cleveland Business, on how “job sprawl” is impacting employers unable to find workers.
This week on the podcast, Jonathon Stalls, author of “Walk: Slow Down, Wake Up, and Connect at 1-3 Miles Per Hour,” talks about his work on social media with Pedestrian Dignity and his walk across the United States in 2010.