Last month, Waymo (Alphabet) and Uber announced a new multi-year partnership that will bring Waymo’s autonomous vehicles to Uber in the Phoenix area later this year. Already, Waymo operates across 180 square miles of the city, making it the largest fully autonomous service area in… Read More
All posts filed under “mobility”
Density is good, but let me explain
I tweeted this out last week: Not surprisingly, the responses were divided. Some responded saying that beauty is more important than density, and a lot of people were quick to point out that there’s good density and there’s bad density. And because I can appreciate… Read More
Why so few people drive in Tokyo
Daniel Knowles, who is a correspondent for the Economist, recently authored a book called Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It. I haven’t read it, yet, but I did just read this excerpt about Tokyo, and it was jam-packed with… Read More
Two-way, all-day regional rail
Neat B and I had a very good friend’s 40th birthday dinner in the Junction this evening. So naturally, we walked over to the UP Express station from our offices in the Financial District and took the train one stop to Bloor Street. When we… Read More
New York City is piloting about a dozen motion sensor cameras
This won’t come as a surprise to many of you. But I recently attended a community meeting where someone was advocating for adding new lanes to a particular road. Their argument was that traffic congestion is forcing too many cars to sit needlessly idle and… Read More
Buildings are carbon icebergs
Kelly Alvarez Doran shared this article with me on Twitter earlier today. It talks about some of the work that his design studios are doing at the University of Toronto around embodied carbon. More specifically though, his studios are being tasked with figuring out how… Read More
What would you do if you were Mayor?
Let’s assume that you’re Mayor of your city and that, for whatever reason, you have no need to pander to voters. You’re a benevolent dictator. You can do whatever you think is best overall for the city and it will just happen. What would you… Read More
California has a plan for 2 million new homes
On July 1 of this year, a new California bill, called the “Affordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act of 2022”, will go into effect. And the goal of this legislation is to significantly increase the supply of new homes in the state by allowing… Read More
A national walk to work day alternative
I just learned that the US has a “National Walk to Work Day.” And it happens to be today, Friday, April 7, 2023. It was started in 2004 by the federal government and the American Podiatric Medical Association — because, you know, walking is good… Read More
A small subset of Parisians really don’t like shared electric scooters
So Sunday came and went and Parisians voted overwhelmingly to ban shared electric scooters in the capital. Of those who voted, 89.03% were against them. And this, to be honest, is not all that surprising. Also not surprising is the low voter turnout (7.46% of… Read More