Around the Block

Toronto's busiest surface transit route could get a big upgrade as part of a year-long pilot project -- if it clears the Toronto City Council this summer, where suburban interests have a history of rejecting transit initiatives.

The current level of transit service in Memphis is bleak. So a week ago, 11 Shelby County public defenders took part in Bus Rider's Day, which Commercial Appeal columnist David Waters called "an exercise in empathy and, as it turned out, endurance" to understand the transportation challenges facing their clients.

One of the most effective ways to get elected officials to pay attention to traffic safety is to spell out the dangers in their own districts. A new effort from a coalition in Milwaukee does just that, crafting reports for each of the city's 15 aldermanic districts on the eve of the Wisconsin Bike Summit.

Open streets events, or ciclovias, give people a new way to explore their city's streets. Without cars on the streets, they're a natural opportunity for people who don't usually ride a bike to hop on two wheels -- and that's precisely why it's important to include bike-share systems in the mix, says Stefani Cox at the Better Bike Share Partnership.

Perhaps you saw video on social media this week showing hundreds of teenagers riding bikes, popping wheelies on a Philadelphia expressway. It was an unauthorized freeway takeover that ought to have brought a smile to even the sourest face.

Police and city planners in Sacramento have come under scrutiny in the weeks since police were caught on tape assaulting Nandi Cain, Jr., a black man, during a jaywalking stop. Cain, who was legally using an unmarked crosswalk, has since filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city. Now, reporters are looking into why there are so few marked crosswalks in one of Sacramento's poorest areas.

Whizzing above the city may sound appealing in a Jetsons sort of way, but Uber's thinking on this technology is completely untethered from its impact on the cities and towns below, where the people are.

A massive new study of commuters in the United Kingdom reveals that people who bike to work tend to live longer and are at lower risk of heart disease and cancer. While the study establishes correlation but doesn't prove causation, the size of the sample and the magnitude of the effects strongly suggest that biking to work can yield major health benefits.

Eight years in the making, the project was undone by suburban opposition. Now, transit advocates in Michigan's capital are figuring out what can be done to improve transit while their opponents take a victory lap.