Angie Schmitt

Michigan state senators voted last week to approve a gas tax hike expected to net more than $1 billion annually to fix the state's notoriously potholed roads, reports the Free Press. The measure, if it passes the House intact, could also be good news for Detroit's woefully inadequate transit system.

Dallas is in the process of rolling out a "bike-share" system. According to the Dallas Morning News, the city installed the first two stations in a local park this week. The project got a boost from a $125,000 grant, and the plan is to expand the system piece by piece.

There's no shortage of good reasons to drive less, but maybe the most compelling personal incentive is that it can save you a ton of money.

A group of Portland leaders are headed to New York City this week for the Vision Zero for Cities Symposium. As Tanya reported earlier this week, the city is formulating its own Vision Zero strategy, seeking to entirely eliminate traffic fatalities.

For years, St. Louis and adjacent University City have been planning a 2.2-mile streetcar that would connect the thriving Delmar Loop business district to the museums in nearby Forest Park. In 2010, the plan won a competitive $22 million federal "Urban Circulator" grant. That funding, along with a 1 percent sales tax increase approved by area property owners, made the $43 million plan looked like a sure thing.

Subsidies for driving in America are so numerous and layered, it can be hard to sort them out. We have general funds paying for roads, tax breaks for big oil companies, free parking nearly everywhere.

What would it take to make Louisville a bike-friendly city?

Second-ring suburbs are at a crossroads, says Nathaniel Hood at Streets.mn. These aren't streetcar suburbs, but those that came after, where every home had a garage, the product of an era when driving was considered a symbol of American prosperity.

Street safety advocates in Washington, DC, have been pushing for an important legal reform that would help pedestrians and bicyclists injured in car collisions. The DC Council will today consider a bill to reform the definition of "contributory negligence," which currently makes it almost impossible for victims to recover their medical costs after a collision. As Tanya reported yesterday, DC is one of just a handful of places in America where pedestrians and cyclists are denied this type of compensation under the law.

Yesterday's elections returned some of the nation's most anti-urban, anti-transit governors to power in races where they were supposed to be vulnerable. Pro-transit candidates were unexpectedly routed in some states, though a few did manage to hang on.