Every day, The Overhead Wire collects national and international news about cities and sends the links to their email list. At the end of the week they post some of the most popular stories to Greater Greater Washington, a group blog similar to Streets.mn that focuses on urban issues in the D.C. region.
Nation’s first shared-streets law: A first-in-the-nation law passed by Washington State gives cities the legal authority to create shared streets. Defined by the law as granting full pedestrian priority with a speed limit of only 10 miles per hour, shared streets will be legal to implement in Washington beginning July 27. These types of streets are more common in Europe, where they are known as a “woonerf” (in Dutch) or “home street,” and are typically narrow, with no curbs and containing more hardscaping, bollards and even tables and chairs, features that are hard to find in Seattle or other American cities. (Mark Ostrow | The Urbanist)
Highway trust fund ran out of money a long time ago: The Highway Trust Fund, a federal program for funding transportation projects around the country, is likely to become insolvent by 2028. But the fund, which was meant to shift the funding burden to users via the gas tax (instead of the general taxpayer), has actually been dead since 2008, when Congress began siphoning money from the general fund to fill the deficit caused by an increasingly insufficient gas tax. Now that the Highway Trust Fund is in serious trouble, it’s probably way past time to reconsider our options: take more money from taxpayers, increase the gas tax or make cuts to the failing program. (Steve Davis | Transportation for America)
Building an apartment with friends: A group of friends thinking about leaving the city of Seattle for the suburbs decided to join together to build an apartment building with all the amenities they were missing. They purchased enough land to build a five-story building with their homes and 24 other units, as well as the lot next door to build a public playground for neighborhood kids. The building also includes ground-floor retail and a gym open to the whole community, not just residents (Adele Peters | Fast Company)
The United States built social housing: It may seem hard to believe, but during a two-year period at the end of World War I, the United States government built social housing in 80 different projects for almost 100,000 people. And it wasn’t just temporary spaces: Congress appropriated $100 million (about $2.3 billion today) to construct whole neighborhoods with commercial spaces, schools, parks and modern infrastructure. After the war, the government sold the homes at reasonable rates to the tenants as a path to stable homeownership, homes that still stand today. (Eran Ben-Joseph | The Conversation)
Rail service planned for Denver-Fort Collins: A new passenger rail line from Denver to Fort Collins, Colorado, could begin service by 2029 with the support of state officials. The line would be a joint service between the Front Range Passenger Rail District and Denver’s Regional Transportation District (RTD) and would initially run three times daily. The $83 million annual price tag would be partially fulfilled by a new tax on rental cars and oil and gas production in Colorado. Officials hope that the new service will complement existing plans to expand regional rail in the Denver area, including a planned route through part of the Rocky Mountains dubbed the Mountain Rail. (Chase Woodruff | Colorado Newsline)
Are cities making progress on walkable neighborhoods?: New developments in cities can impact travel behaviors for the next 100 years. That fact has led policymakers to consider creating neighborhoods more friendly to active transportation and short trips. A new Terner Center report and data tool look at how cities are performing at reducing people’s need for travel. Results are mixed, as the share of new homes in walkable neighborhoods still differs widely by city. (Zack Subin, Quinn Underriner | Terner Center for Housing Innovation)
This week on the Talking Headways podcast we’re joined by Leah Rothstein to chat about a new book she co-wrote with her father, Richard, entitled “Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under The Color of Law.” The new book serves as a follow-up to Richard’s best-selling 2017 book, “The Color of Law.”
Quote of the Week
“It wasn’t always like this. I moved to this city as a wide-eyed 20 year old, ready to take on the world with energetic abandon. Now, I’m no longer 20 years old. Something really has changed with this city.”
— Devin Wallace in his McSweeney’s article entitled The Problem with My City Is That it’s a City.