Im developing a new guide called the ‘Manual on Uniform Traffic Engineer Excuses’ or #MUTEE,” tweeted Boise-based planner Don Kostelec in a moment of genius.

“You get to name the chapters. Go!”

The responses were swift, and hilarious, and like so much humor carried painful truths. — cal.streetsblog.org

Tallinn, known for its digital government and successful tech startups, is often referred to as Europe’s innovation capital. Now celebrating five years of free public transport for all citizens, the government is planning to make Estonia the first free public transport nation. — Pop​-Up City

The Los Angeles region once again topped the list of areas with the worst traffic congestion for the sixth year in a row, according to a report by INRIX, a company that specializes in car services and transportation analytics.

Drivers in and around Los Angeles spent 102 hours battling traffic congestion during peak hours in 2017, INRIX's said. By contrast, New York City motorists spent 91 hours battling peak-hour congestion. New York was No. 3 on the INRIX list. No. 2 was Moscow. — Los Angeles Times

As L.A. pats itself on the back for its freshly angular skyline, a new architectural trend — enabled by another city ordinance — threatens to turn the beating heart of modern Los Angeles into a cold, lifeless and unwalkable place. — The Los Angeles Times

In Carmel, driving around in circles isn’t a symptom of being lost; it’s a way of life. Despite its small size, the Indiana city has more roundabouts than any other burg in the U.S. [...]

The thing most people don’t know is how much money is saved by converting traffic signals into roundabouts. Our city engineer’s office has found that on average, roundabouts in Carmel have cost $250,000 less to build than signalized intersections and they are much less expensive to maintain [...]. — citylab.com

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has a pretty good sense of humor, but sometimes we can't tell when he's just joking or mulling his next big idea. 

For example, on Saturday Musk took to Twitter to say out loud what every traffic-plagued Los Angeles resident is silently screaming inside: The city is a gridlocked hellscape.  

"Traffic is driving me nuts," wrote Musk.

But he didn't stop there. He also raised the idea of boring through obstacles to alleviate traffic woes. — mashable.com

But it is traffic that has sealed Dhaka’s reputation among academics and development specialists as the great symbol of 21st-century urban dysfunction, the world’s most broken city. It has made Dhaka a surreal place, a town that is both frenetic and paralyzed, and has altered the rhythms of daily life for its 17.5 million-plus residents. — NYT - T Magazine

Pedestrianism among advocates and urban planners in the new, young century has been on the ascent in global cities far and wide, with many pushing for more restrictions on cars in the interests of bipeds and cyclists.

That was part of thinking behind the Shared Streets initiative, a five-hour long event over the weekend. It saw the city demarcate some 60 blocks of Manhattan’s oldest neighbourhood as part of an urban geographical experiment... — the Guardian

"The idea that you can replace the 10 trips with one autonomous car and travel less distance, that’s the biggest misconception," says Fagnant. "You can get rid of vehicles, but not vehicle miles traveled. Without ridesharing, there's an 8 to 10 percent increase in vehicle miles traveled based on simulations we've run in Austin. You’re not replacing trips [..] the vehicle has to bounce between locations, and relocate to where it’s needed. Those in-between miles will create a lot of extra travel." — curbed.com

Google said on Monday it bears "some responsibility" after one of its self-driving cars struck a municipal bus in a minor crash earlier this month.

The crash may be the first case of one of its autonomous cars hitting another vehicle and the fault of the self-driving car. [...]

Google said in the filing the autonomous vehicle was traveling at less than 2 miles per hour, while the bus was moving at about 15 miles per hour. — reuters.com

Since 2000, the world’s second-largest megacity, Jakarta, has seen its population swell by a staggering 34 percent. Though the city proper is home to just 10 million, the urban zone is home to 30 million [...]

“Jakarta is the largest urban metropolitan area in the world without a metro,” he [Deden Rukmana] says. “And a metro is the most crucial element of transportation for a megacity. There’s no way it can exist otherwise.” — Inverse

Now in his third year as mayor, the 44-year-old [Eric Garcetti] wants Los Angeles to be “the first postmodern city,” as he tells me, speaking in his art-filled office one morning in October. Throughout the past year, he has made a series of proposals that would fundamentally alter the city by deposing the automobile, which has reigned over Los Angeles for a half-century like a cocksure Third World despot...

Call him the Che Guevara of Southern California infrastructure. — Newsweek

For the first two weeks of the year, private cars with even-numbered license plates are allowed on the roads only on even-numbered dates, and those with odd-numbered plates on odd dates. The restrictions have noticeably reduced traffic in a city with 9 million cars, more than double that of a decade ago.

In 2014, the World Health Organization found New Delhi’s air to be the dirtiest of 1,600 cities it studied. Scientists blame the high levels of pollutants [...] for thousands of deaths a year. — latimes.com