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davidzipper.bsky.social
Senior Fellow @ MIT Mobility Initiative and Contributing Writer @ Vox, focused on transport, cities and tech. Words in The Atlantic, CityLab, WaPo, etc. https://linktr.ee/davidzipper Newsletter, speaking, writing and advisory work: http://davidzipper.com
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Just finished one of the best bike rides of my life: Gdańsk to Sopot, along the Baltic. What a fantastic coastal cycle way.

With the S90 discontinued, Volvo is the latest carmaker to stop selling sedans in the USA. www.caranddriver.com/news/a644437...

Guerrilla crosswalks drive city officials crazy, but they're a remarkably effective street safety tactic. Sympathetic media coverage is all but guaranteed -- esp when local leaders overreact.

If I'm being cynical, I'd wonder if Uber is reinventing the bus so it can benefit if transit deteriorates in big US cities (i.e., service cuts caused by budget deficits).

UPDATE: TRB has posted its new, shrunken committee structure. Beyond ignoring equity, it has nothing related to climate change or pollution. I guess they're now unrelated to transportation? nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/oth...

Something I learned today at Volvo's car safety center in Gothenburg, Sweden: Volvo runs certain crash tests with dummies not wearing seatbelts -- specifically to reflect conditions in the US.

Unsurprising but important finding: Neighborhoods easily traversed by bike or on foot have lower car ownership and less PM2.5 pollution. doi.org/10.1016/j.jt...

For decades, the US was the gold standard for car safety regs. Not anymore -- that title now belongs to Europe. In Bloomberg, global auto reg exec @davidjward.bsky.social and I discussed why cars have grown safer around the world – but not in the US.

Big changes underway at @trb.org, which has canceled numerous research projects exploring how race, gender, and poverty affect transportation. Hopefully "back to basics" doesn't mean "pavement and asphalt."

Ambling through Gothenburg, Sweden, it’s refreshing to be in a place that prioritizes comfortable seating in public spaces. So many enticing benches and chairs! Quite a contrast with US cities these days.

Protected bike lanes have a near-magical ability to produce cyclists. This new study of 28 US cities finds that census block groups w/protected bike lanes expanded bike commuting almost 2x faster than those w/standard bike lanes & >4x faster than those w/o new lanes. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Design vehicles to fit cities. Don’t design cities to fit vehicles.

Instead of driving in central London for free, EV owners will get 25% off the city's congestion charge. That makes intuitive sense. Like all cars, EVs cause congestion and create tire pollution, but they don't emit harmful tailpipe emissions. EVs' negative externalities are lower than gas cars.

Vision Zero is the opposite of this

A few months ago, @wesmars.bsky.social half-jokingly proposed a study examining how NACTO conferences catalyze street upgrades in the cities that host them. Unrelatedly, @nacto.bsky.social's annual meeting in DC is 2 days away, and I'm currently admiring this brand new cycleway on Eckington Place.

Getting ready to travel to Gothenburg, Sweden (first visit) and Gdansk, Poland (first visit in 25 years) Actively seeking tips for museums, restaurants, and bike paths

New paper compares the values of time for passengers using ridehail and transit.  Findings: 🔹 In-vehicle trip time is more negative for transit than ridehail 🔹 The opposite is true for wait time (more negative for ridehail than transit) doi.org/10.1016/j.tb...

New paper: Availability of workplace charging influences EV adoption far more than public charging stations doi.org/10.1016/j.tb...

Good news: This week Texas officially legalized kei cars.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the deadliness of biking deters countless Americans -- esp women -- from cycling at all. doi.org/10.1016/j.ci...

More Americans died while biking than in any previous year -- ever. (Sources: @bikeleague.bsky.social & injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicl...)

Car YouTuber Matt Farah backs shrinking Pacific Coast Highway lanes from 12 to 10.6 ft: "I love this. The same number of cars can get through, but won’t be able to go so fast." Use the space for bike lanes, he says. www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a64646022/pacific-coast-highway-needs-change

It’s also because bloated American SUVs/pickups often flunk European safety rules that protect pedestrians.

My heart is still beating so fast. Thank you @pulitzerprizes.bsky.social Thank you @bloomberg.com and especially the CityLab team @kristoncapps.bsky.social @nicflatow.bsky.social and David Dudley Stories here! www.bloomberg.com/features/des...

​More evidence that car bloat is killing people: New metaanalysis examined 600k+ crashes over 35 years. Conclusion: Cyclists/pedestrians were 44% more likely to be killed if struck by an SUV/pickup than by a smaller car, and children were 82% more likely. injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/earl...

Wonderful essay from Alain Bertaud proposing Casablanca as the quintessential urban movie: "A Zoom meeting room could never take the place of the dealmaking that happened in Rick’s Café. We need the informality and randomness of being in person—and these are inherent aspects of successful cities."

"The Highway Trust Fund is broken. EV fees aren’t going to fix that." -- @ucsdave.bsky.social blog.ucs.org/dave-cooke/t...

Cartoon with caption by my buddy @jackhauen.bsky.social

Literally already part of getting a Commercial Driver License, required by law and tested by a CDL examiner.

From a recent study of mode share (cars v transit v walking/biking) across global cities. Urban residents throughout US, Canada, & Australia largely get around by car. But Europe is a mixed bag, w/cities dominated by cars (Rome) as well as bikes (Utrecht) or transit (Paris) doi.org/10.1016/j.en...

🚨 Job alert: UCLA ITS is hiring a founding Staff Director for a new parking policy center! Work with top scholars, shape reform, and carry on the legacy of Donald Shoup. 🅿️ Learn more & apply by May 17: www.its.ucla.edu/202...

DC would spend $181M to build 8,000 parking spots for suburbanites driving into the city. Pretty much the last thing I want to see my taxpayer dollars used for. 51st.news/r/bbcefc4a?m...

pittsburgh read this thread - whether you are a transit user or not I promise you benefit from our transit system! there's a rally at 130p tomorrow, downtown at the convention center to save PRT - try to come down if you can