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.
Race the L8: Transit advocates in Seattle showed up in droves to race-walk the Metro Route 8 bus, one of the busiest and consistently late in the system. The race segment they chose is scheduled to take seven minutes by bus and 13 minutes walking, but on-time performance drops to 30% due to traffic from cars. The race resulted in the crowd beating the bus in 15 minutes along with another bus that was bunched five minutes behind. (Michael Smith | Seattle Transit Blog)
Death toll on Brightline tracks: More than 180 people have died in recent years after collisions with Brightline passenger trains in Florida. A detailed interactive piece by the Miami Herald looks at the death toll on the rail line and how the transportation company has failed to improve safety along the tracks, turning instead to victim blaming. Local regulators and the feds have silenced train horns and slowed procurement of fencing and signage related to mental health crises. (Brittany Wallman et al. | Miami Herald)
Flood zones ignored: Federal regulators granted appeals to get 30 Camp Mystic buildings along the Guadalupe River in Texas out of the 100-year flood plain on FEMA maps. In 2011, the camp was in a special designated flood area that would have required higher levels of flood insurance and more regulations for future projects. The recent flooding that killed 27 campers and councilors was likely larger than a 100-year flood, but many of the buildings at the camp were at obvious risk. (Ryan Foley, Christopher Keller, Sean Murphy, Jim Mustian | Associated Press)
China’s 8D magical city: Chongqing, China, is built on many hillsides, and its buildings and drastic street-level elevation changes reflect that geography. That’s why people have been flocking to what some call China’s 8D magical city, which has many centers connected by transit built to be self-sustaining due to longer commutes. At 32 million people, the city is at the center of the largest metro region in China. That’s slightly more people than Texas and was the country’s capital during World War II. (Aw Cheng Wei | Straits Times)
Stone buildings, 21st century-style: A new startup, Monumental Labs, is creating intricate stone carvings using robots and precision programming. The owner hopes that improved technology and a new facility will lead to a low-cost way to again build buildings out of structural stone and create more stone details. In addition to showcasing more traditional architecture, stone lasts longer and has less embodied carbon than concrete. (Nate Berg | Fast Company)
This week on the Talking Headways podcast, Chris Berdik talks about his book, “Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take it Back.” We discuss how our brains process sound and how to create positive urban soundscapes.
Quote of the Week
“It might be hard for someone who has never used public transportation to understand — going halfsies on the jet to Sun Valley doesn’t count — but despite Uber’s best efforts to replicate and privatize the exact same services while spending billions to undermine more effective taxpayer-funded solutions, Uber will never be public transportation.”
— Alissa Walker in Torched on how the Los Angeles Olympics claims to be “transit first” while taking sponsorships from car companies.