A nearly $40 million infusion of state funding for public transit and transit-oriented housing is good news for our community, says Lookout politics columnist Mike Rotkin. It will kick-start needed climate-friendly improvements, including a push to make our buses carbon-neutral and establish a “bus on shoulder” lane for Highway 1. Transit is the biggest cause of greenhouse gasses locally, so getting more people to ride buses and bikes is key. But we can’t be the national leader we want to be on par with cities like Boulder and Portland without even more money, he says. He suggests a small sales-tax increase to get us there.
A grassroots advocacy group in Pittsburgh recently managed to drive a large stake through the heart of a proposal for a transportation corridor that would rely on autonomous shuttles.
But killing one ill-conceived micromobility project doesn’t mean that micromobility is a bad idea. On the contrary, the growth of on-demand minibus service and electric-powered personal transport shows that it has a promising future ahead of it. New York City is taking another step into that future with the arrival of the city’s first e-scooter sharing network in a section of the Bronx.
Meanwhile, on the macromobility front, one of the commuter rail services that got sidelined by COVID-19, New Mexico’s Rail Runner, will resume service between New Mexico’s largest city, its suburbs and its state capital this month, and San Diego reached an environmental milestone last month when it retired the last of its diesel buses.
January 11, 2021
The big stories of 2020 were not just about a pandemic, a reckoning on racial justice, an economic calamity and the ever-imminent rise of climate change impacts. If a crisis is the ultimate test of leadership, last year provided ample narratives about leaders stepping up.
These 20 C-suite executives have steered their companies forward through much disruption, providing inspiration for the possibilities of advancing sustainability, social responsibility and circular business models sometimes all at once. Often working from home themselves, they empathized with employees and other stakeholders, some refusing to issue layoffs. They sparked uncomfortable conversations about diversity and discrimination, some pledging many millions of dollars to address lingering inequities internally and in society at large. Many celebrated with their CSOs on meeting ambitious corporate targets for 2020, while setting audacious new goals for 2025, 2030 and 2050.