California

Here's a show-and-tell of my impressions of the walk/bike/transit stuff I experienced, including a few things I'd be glad to see implemented in Chicago.

Treating stop signs like yield signs is nearly universal among bike riders, and Idaho stop laws have been shown to reduce bike injuries. Rep. Janet Yang Roh explained why her bill didn't pass – this time.

San Jose's Better Bike Plan offers a framework that Chicago would do well to emulate in order to create a bike plan that's more representative of current and would-be cyclists.

California just outlawed the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035. Illinois should go way further than that with a comprehensive plan to reduce transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.

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.

Under Trump and the Republican Congress, transit agencies can't be certain the funding they're expecting will materialize. Via TransitCenter, here's a look at how cities have coped with the sudden and dramatic loss of resources.

There's an unexpected upside to the introduction of Uber into more and more U.S. cities, according to a study published earlier this year: the service helps reduce drunk driving fatalities.

In California, whether you’re building an office tower or a new transit line, you’re going to run up against the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The law determines how much environmental analysis you need to do for new projects. But sadly, in practice it’s better at propagating car-oriented development than improving the quality of the environment.

Uber is celebrating. DC passed an Uber-legalization law that Uber thinks cities the world over should follow. The problem is, most cities have much more tightly regulated taxi industries than DC, with a far higher cost of entry. In those cases, letting Uber get away with providing taxi services while complying with none of the rules is unfair. The taxi companies have been screaming about this for a while now. Uber's response is something like, "Catch me if you can, old geezer." DC's contribution to that conversation strengthens Uber's position.