The Overhead Wire’s weekly collection of national links compiles news about urban issues around the country and the world. This week: parking spots versus useful space in Toronto, the glacial progression of self-driving car tech, and more on Texas’ highway battles.
There’s been a lot of talk about the potential upcoming disruption of self-driving-cars, including their effect on private vehicle ownership and travel. One of the most optimistic is the 2017 article “Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030.” Authors James Arbib and Tony Seba make some bodacious claims regarding Transportation as a Service (TaaS) — the idea that soon we’ll all […]
We constantly hear that driverless cars are just around the corner. We’re told they will revolutionize transportation and enable us to continue using our car-based transport and land-use system. If they’re made by Tesla, they’ll be powered by magic, solar-powered, super efficient batteries and we’ll all be able to keep living our hyper-mobile, hyper-consumptive lifestyles […]
After a brief hiatus, Here to There is back with two new episodes. In episode 7, we take on the complex issue of social cohesion and the ways in which mobility and transportation impact the ability of individuals or groups to thrive as members of society. In the first half of the episode, we join […]
Every day at The Direct Transfer 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 DC region. […]
It’s been a very hot week here in Minnesota, but not too hot for our writers with posts encouraging taking action on issues, looking at Pokestops in the Twin Cities, and some thoughts on getting around by following the rules of the road (and some common sense). We welcome new writers and new perspectives to […]
An event predicted by many finally occurred: the first fatal crash in an electric self-driving car, on May 7 in Florida. That crash was followed soon by two more non-fatal crashes, one in Pennsylvania on July 1 and another in Montana early Sunday morning. Tesla’s stock fell and the media is having a field day predicting the death of […]
I am hereby naming this column “The Crank.” That’s because I’m cranky, I like bicycles, and a crank is the part of a bicycle that makes it move. With this in mind, I’d like to offer the following cartoon shout-outs. This one goes out to the Mall of America and “American Boulevard” in Bloomington: In […]