Bike advocates will be pleased with the talk coming from the direction of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.
"There’s a difference between bike-safety warnings that focus on blaming victims and warnings that recommend actual systemic improvements. The launch of a Mayors’ Challenge for Safer People, Safer Streets by U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx is the good kind of warning," according to a post by Michael Anderson for Streetsblog USA.
The article goes on to list and detail four ways the new initiative succeeds in supporting bike advocacy efforts:
- The feds want cities to measure successful bike trips, not just bad ones.
- When biking is done right, it becomes part of aging-friendly cities.
- U.S. DOT continues to push the bike-friendly NACTO guides.
- The FHWA is creating a workbook about how to build on-road bicycle networks through routine resurfacing programs.
Although the report is full of recommendations of this sort of multi-modalism thinking, U.S. DOT will not be attaching any funding to these recommendations.
FULL STORY: Four Nice Touches in U.S. DOT’s New “Mayors’ Challenge” for Bike Safety

Florida Considers Legalizing ADUs
Current state law allows — but doesn’t require — cities to permit accessory dwelling units in single-family residential neighborhoods.

Manufactured Crisis: Losing the Nation’s Largest Source of Unsubsidized Affordable Housing
Manufactured housing communities have long been an affordable housing option for millions of people living in the U.S., but that affordability is disappearing rapidly. How did we get here?

HUD Announces Plan to Build Housing on Public Lands
The agency will identify federally owned parcels appropriate for housing development and streamline the regulatory process to lease or transfer land to housing authorities and nonprofit developers.

The New Parisian Hearse is a Bicycle
Sleek, silent, and sustainable, a green trip to the graveyard has hit the streets of the French capital.

How Smart Street Lights Can Help Cities Achieve Sustainability Goals
Switching to energy-efficient LEDs and using tech to program when and how street lighting operates can save cities millions in electricity expenses and bring down carbon emissions.

NOAA: Southwest ‘Megadrought’ to Persist
Roughly 40 percent of the 48 lower U.S. states are currently in some state of ‘abnormally dry conditions.’
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