the city's council voted unanimously to create a program to "develop autonomous vehicles as public transportation."

The council's vision is for self-driving vehicles to provide "on-demand, point-to-point transportation," with citizens "requesting a ride using their smartphone." The shuttles wouldn't replace public transportation, but augment it [...]

Phase one of the city council's program includes reaching out to companies like Tesla and Google to explore "potential partnerships." — theverge.com

The seven American cities that made the shortlist in the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Smart City Challenge are now deciding their strategies for winning the $40m prize fund...Transportation is the focus, so judges will be interested in self-driving and 'connected' cars, as well as 'smart streets' fitted with sensors. The aim will be to cut accidents, reduce pollution and increase commuter convenience. — Global Construction Review

When City Manager Oliver Chi looks across Station Square next to the new Gold Line stop in Monrovia, he doesn't see a dilapidated train depot. He sees a bustling restaurant.

Where an empty lot now sits, he sees a five-story apartment complex. That old lumber house? A bustling food hall.

Los Angeles County's growing light-rail network plunges deeper than it ever has into suburbia this week with the opening of the Gold Line extension linking Pasadena to Azusa. — LA Times

For almost a decade, transit ridership has declined across Southern California despite enormous and costly efforts by top transportation officials to entice people out of their cars and onto buses and trains.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the region's largest carrier, lost more than 10% of its boardings from 2006 to 2015, a decline that appears to be accelerating. — LA Times

Sure, the news was all but confirmed, but today the Port Authority made it official: The transit org announced that the World Trade Center Transportation Hub—anchored by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava's Oculus—will officially open in "the first week of March," per a press release. [...]

What that actually means for commuters: There will finally be a link between the World Trade Center PATH station and 11 NYC subway lines, along with the East River ferries. — ny.curbed.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

The dream of a Brooklyn-Queens light rail is quickly moving into the realm of reality. A non-profit advocacy group called Friends of the Brooklyn Queens Connector has officially formed to address the need for a more robust transportation system that could connect underserved, and now booming, areas of Brooklyn and Queens. They’ve just released a detailed proposal revealing the route and the potential design the modern streetcars could take on. — 6sqft.com

[...] one year after announcing the concept of its game-changing MULTI elevator technology, ThyssenKrupp unveils a fully-functional 1:3 scale model at its Innovation Center in Gijn, Spain. The MULTI system uses linear motors instead of ropes, enabling horizontal movement and transforming conventional elevator transportation into vertical metro systems. — bloomberg.com

The plateauing and decline in U.S. vehicle miles traveled per capita that occurred between [2005-2014] was described by some hopeful commentators as a dramatic shift that was indicative of the preferences of a new workforce...Marginal changes in the way a new generation behaves...cannot overcome the realities of a country where more than three-fourths of jobs are located more than three miles from downtowns and where only one-fourth of homes are in places that their residents refer to as urban. — The Transport Public

In western Europe, the bus stop is the most humble of building types, a meanly utilitarian structure that adds little or nothing to the roadside. But in the old Soviet empire, from the shores of the Black Sea to the Kazakh steppe, the norm is “wild going on savage”, as Jonathan Meades writes in a beautiful new photobook featuring 159 bus stops, each illuminating “the Soviet empire’s taste for the utterly fantastical”. — theguardian.com

For decades, Americans have been losing their ability, even their right, to walk. [...] there are vast blankets and folds of the country where the ability to walk – to open a door and step outside and go somewhere or nowhere without getting behind the wheel of a car – is a struggle, a fight. A risk.

[...] we encourage car travel and discourage moving on foot. More than discourage it, we criminalise it where deemed necessary. — aeon.co