Every day, The Overhead Wire collects news about cities and sends the links to their email list. At the end of the week they 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 and international links, sometimes entertaining or absurd but often useful.
Right on red endangers pedestrians: Research from the Mineta Transportation Institute in San Jose, California, says that allowing right turns at red traffic lights creates danger for pedestrians. Drivers who turn right on red often roll through lights and don’t come to a complete stop while looking the other way — that is, to their left. Cities should have the ability to limit “right on red” to reduce collisions, the report’s authors suggest. (Dan Zukowski | Smart Cities Dive)
Plans for Amtrak: A new Federal Railroad Administration study looks at 15 potential new long-distance routes for Amtrak that would serve 39 million more Americans. The report, which relied on over 50,000 comments from local advocates and officials, was delivered to Congress recently as a requirement of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). States and the federal government would fund the program, but it’s unclear how the Trump administration may view it. (Kristin Toussaint | Fast Company)
In sprawl we trust: Sociologist and historian Lewis Mumford, who died in 1990 at age 94, used sprawl to describe the endless growth of low-density places, including the suburbs that exploded in the United States after World War II. Today, Allison Lirish Dean argues, the debate is dominated by two more libertarian-leaning factions — market urbanists and suburbanists — whom she believes miss Mumford’s ultimate point that urban planning should focus on people, not capital. (Allison Lirish Dean | Current Affairs)
Capital gains creating housing issues?: A 1997 capital gains tax set limits on the total exclusion from capital gains on value appreciation that owners had to pay when they sold their home. But the total exclusion of $500,000 for a married couple and $250,000 for an individual could lead many people — including retirees and other older adults — to stay in their homes, given that housing values have surged and interest rates remain high. (Glen Luke Flanagan | Fortune Magazine) (Since Fortune has a paywall, this link is to the same piece at Yahoo! Finance)
Solving America’s trash problem: The United States produces more trash than most countries, and dealing with the problem usually includes two bad options: burn it or bury it. As the City of Miami considers whether to replace an incinerator that caught fire in 2023, a zero-waste plan is stymied by state rules, and Mayor Francis Suarez is getting pushback from residents in the areas that sprawled around the previous incinerator site. Shipping it out of the area seems the only alternative. (Nicolás Rivero | Washington Post)
Bonus item: With some planning, Doctors in Hyderabad, India, were able to transfer a heart from one hospital to another 13km away in just 13 minutes using the city’s subway. (Metro Report International)
This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined by Austin Gibble, currently of Stantec but formerly of the City of Indianapolis and IndyGo, to talk about BRT (bus rapid transit) and the Indianapolis Cultural Trail.
Quote of the Week
“Libraries & Well-Being is an innovative study that shows how library usage positively contributes to externally validated measures of well-being. Our research found that patrons experience refuge, joy, connection, purpose and expansion through their library use.”
— Daphna Blatt, the New York Public Library’s senior director of strategy and public impact, in Book Riot discussing the benefits of visiting libraries.
Photo at top by Marco Biondi on Unsplash