Oakland
In a distant and expensive future, there are two new ways to get across the San Francisco Bay without a car. One will have a much better view.
The Mercury News
The city of Pittsburgh and the Port Authority of Allegheny County are working together on a proposal to build dedicated bus lanes between Downtown Pittsburgh and the suburb of Oakland. A federal partner is still necessary.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Oakland property prices have gone way up, but vacant land can be found all over the city. Hayley Raetz argues getting development on this land should be a policy priority.
Terner Center for Housing Innovation
It started in Seattle with the Amazon Tax to pay for transportation and housing needs exacerbated by the city's largest employers. Last month, a Google Tax was placed on the November ballot in Silicon Valley. A landlord tax in Oakland could be next.
Bloomberg News
Seattle's ban took effect Sunday, while San Franciso's proposed legislation, if successful, would begin July 1, 2019. Other cities have plastic straw restrictions, but Seattle's is the first outright ban. Compostable alternatives are permitted.
Huffington Post
The courts are no place to be deciding on the contribution of fossil fuels to climate change, ruled a Northern California federal district court judge in a "stinging defeat" to San Francisco and Oakland that wanted Big Oil to pay mitigation costs.
The New York Times
Shipping coal from Utah to export to Asia through a new cargo facility in Oakland, California took a significant step forward on May 15 with a strongly worded ruling condemning the adequacy of the city of Oakland's environmental analysis.
KQED: California Report
Five decades after the Fair Housing Act, racial inequality is still rampant in American cities. Trulia and the National Fair Housing Alliance collaborated on this report on four of them.
Curbed Atlanta
Oakland created a fund of $4 million dollars to aid small businesses affected by the construction of a new BRT line on International Blvd. So far, none of that money has been spent, though some of the funding was supposed to be spent by 2017.
KALW
It's the "holy grail" of urban planning, say researchers.
The Mercury News
Examples from California and Texas exemplify two extremes in thinking about parking.
Socket Site
According to a new study by UC Berkeley and Columbia University, local land use processes, specifically the approval process, rather than the California Environmental Quality Act, is the main impediment to housing production in California.
Los Angeles Times
The 12th Street station in Oakland, California will provide an initial test of a rail transit safety technology known as screen doors. Screen doors are rare in the United States, but not in other parts of the world.
Streetsblog SF
Expect more cities and transit agencies around the country to wrestle with funding quandaries if the Trump Administration gets its way with existing capital investment grants.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
In Oakland, California and Torreon, New Mexico, Julian Brave NoiseCat reports that "[f]or Indigenous people, the crisis of the home is intergenerational."
High Country News
"Four piers from the old eastern span of the Bay Bridge will live on as a public boardwalk and vista point in Oakland and on Yerba Buena Island," reports Erin Baldassari.
The Mercury News
The university wanted to limit a section of Bigelow Boulevard to pedestrians, but the city pushed for a compromise: better crosswalks and traffic calming features. Now the challenge is finding the funds.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Two county transit agencies, seven cities, and three regional transit agencies are joining forces to plan improvements to the growing San Pablo corridor in the East Bay Area.
The Mercury News
The mayor of Oakland is challenging homeowners to offer their extra rooms and in-law units to the homeless, with a target to create a modest 100 new permanent supportive housing units.
East Bay Times
Oakland pilot program to buy up vacant lots and properties, whose owners have defaulted on their property taxes, to transform them into low- and medium-income housing.
CBS
