Could Remote Work Increase the Costs of Government?

Every day at The Overhead Wire we sort through over 1,500 news items about cities and share the best ones with our email list. At the end of the week, we take some of the most popular stories and share them with Urban Milwaukee readers. They are national (or international) links, sometimes entertaining and sometimes absurd, but hopefully useful.

What Lyft’s possible end could mean for Citibike: Since 2018 the ride hailing company Lyft has invested heavily in bike share systems and operations. They run the eight largest bike share networks in the country and also own the an equipment provider for bike share everywhere. But Lyft hasn’t recovered the same way as its rival Uber and Alissa Walker wonders what would happen to bike share around the country if Lyft went under, taking much of the bike share operations and equipment supply with it. (Alissa Walker | Curbed)

The city of the future: less cars, more money: Savings blogger Mr. Money Mustache calculates that if we got rid of car use, the United States could save $770 trillion over the next five decades. Not only that, we would have more space for housing and amenities that people enjoy. An example of a potential change is being completed in Tempe AZ, where a company called Culdesac is building car free neighborhoods that could start a journey towards car free living. (Peter Adeney | Mr. Money Mustache)

Helping homeowners retire at home: Older residents would rather not move out of the home they’ve lived in towards the end of their lives and will be looking for ways to make aging in place possible. Many aging adults are now considering accessory dwelling units (ADUs) that can be used multiple different ways. They can have family move into the main house as they move to the ADU, they can have caretakers live in the ADU, or use the unit as supplemental income for expenses. (Meera Pal | Realtor.com)

Remote work could increase costs of government: Remote work is taking off as some employees and employers prefer the arrangement and the reduced costs. But for the public sector including government work, remote work is a benefit that only a select few will be able to enjoy. Daniel DiSalvo and Michael Hartney argue because of the value to employees of part time work from home, it could cost governments more to require full in person work when union contracts are renegotiated. (Daniel DiSalvo and Michael Hartney | Governing)

The first all-electric city: In the winter of 2018 Ithaca New York passed its own version of the Green New Deal and started moving to decarbonize all 6,000 city buildings, which make up 40% of the city’s emissions. This city has also partnered with private sector companies to provide $100m for non-government building retrofits. Because of the economy of scale, they expect 30% cost savings overall and hope to meet the city’s goal of being net zero by 2030. (Brian Kahn | Rolling Stone)

Quote of the Week

I’m trying to tell people there’s a bigger issue here about civil rights. For people crossing the road, [change] only seems to happen when enough people pay for it in blood. … We built this environment, and often, people like me end up with disabilities because of our how we built this environment. But we have the power to change it.

–Steven Hardy-Braz in Streetsblog USA discussing his fight for ADA access.

This week on the podcast we chat with David Hensher of the University of Sydney about the failures of the “Mobility as a Service” concept, which proposed to reduce emissions but uniting disparate transportation modes under a single service.

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