The Chicago Architectural Club and the Chicago Architecture Foundation recently announced the winners of the 2013 Burnham Prize Competition - NEXT STOP: Designing Chicago BRT Stations.

An exhibition of winning designs and all competition entries is currently on view at the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s Atrium gallery (224 S Michigan Ave) until June 28. — bustler.net

While high-speed rail remains an uncertain prospect in California, it is the centerpiece of four design concepts unveiled Wednesday for modernizing Union Station.

Architects commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to upgrade the 77-year-old transit hub in downtown Los Angeles showed preliminary plans that put a high-speed rail system atop, beneath or alongside existing subways without compromising the character of the historic landmark. — LA Daily News

Major construction is currently under way in Reading, England as part of the Reading Station Area Redevelopment. In this new construction update video, Mark Middleton, partner at Grimshaw Architects, is on site at Reading Station and explains how the redevelopment will double its capacity and relieve a major bottleneck in the rail network west of London. — bustler.net

Berlin's J. MAYER H. is currently designing a series of twenty rest areas along a new highway in the Caucasus Republic of Georgia, connecting Azerbaijan and Turkey. Two rest areas have already been completed, and a third one is currently under construction with completion scheduled for this year. Here are some photos of the two stations, Gori and Lochini. — bustler.net

Ben van Berkel of UNStudio, along with Jonathan Cohn of EE&K a Perkins Eastman company, presented their 'Vision Board' - a conceptual rendering in the year 2050, showing Los Angeles Union Station as a multi-modal transit hub with a mix of uses, new development and outdoor spaces. The intent of the Vision Board was to explore visionary possibilities for Union Station and surrounding areas. — bustler.net

In the international design competition for Yenikapı Transfer Point and Archaeo-Park Area in Istanbul, Turkey, three First Prizes have been announced this week. The jury selected the top project teams Eisenmann Architects/Aytaç Architects, Atelye 70/Francesco Cellini/Insula Architettura E Ingegneria, and Cafer Bozkurt Architects/Mecanoo Architects from nine shortlisted teams, including MVRDV and other international firms. — bustler.net

The YUL-MTL : Moving landscapes international ideas competition on the Autoroute 20 gateway corridor linking the Montreal-Trudeau Airport to downtown Montreal recently announced three equal winners. The competition [...] aimed to develop strategic visions for the development of the 17 km corridor mainly composed of transport infrastructures, residential and industrials areas and brownfields in dire need of revitalization. — bustler.net

The source of the disconnect between San Francisco's transit-first heart and its car-centric hand is an arcane engineering measure called "level of service," or LOS. In brief, LOS suggests that whenever the city wants to change some element of a street — say by adding a bike lane or even just painting a crosswalk — it should calculate the effect that change will have on car traffic. — Eric Jaffe

If it were possible to soar on the wings of angels, or even on those of the lowly pigeons that haunt the five boroughs, we would be able, perhaps, to appreciate the pristine geometric beauty of the George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal. Unfortunately, we remain earthbound, and at street level, the afore-mentioned terminal is one ugly monster of a building. But that is about to change with a nearly $200 million renovation. — therealdeal.com

...doesn't the general freakout over the shutdown suggest, in and of itself, its fundamental folly? It hurts to lose the 405 even for a weekend not because freeways are so valuable or because we love them so much but because we've painted ourselves in a corner in terms of mobility. We have left ourselves no escape hatches or viable alternatives. — LA Times