Cities Say No to the Drive-Thru

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.

The Midwestern city crisis: While news media focuses a bright spotlight on coastal cities dealing with the pandemic and changing worker preferences, they have been giving less attention on other places around the country. In the Midwest, cities such as Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Indianapolis are having a hard time attracting workers and visitors according to research from the University of Toronto, which used cell phone data to see activity before and after the worst years of the pandemic. (Eliza Relman | Business Insider)

Cities banning drive thrus: Over 700,000 restaurants around the United States have drive thru windows that make takeaway meals and drinks easier to access by car. But many cities are starting to ban them, as they cater to drivers and don’t support active transportation or good urban design that leads people to other businesses. Additionally, the lines of cars create more opportunities for injury to vulnerable road users and collisions with other vehicles. (Nathaniel Meyersohn | CNN)

AI makes the housing crisis worse: Landlords using artificial intelligence to screen tenants are making more mistakes and increasing discrimination. Artificial intelligence programs scour the web for information, but with so many errors online including outdated and incorrect information, the results are often completely wrong. Four tenant screening companies are currently facing 90 federal civil rights and consumer lawsuits, and the results are likely to set up coming battles over AI regulation. (Rebecca Burns | The Lever)

Here come the electric buses: The US Department of Transportation has released $1.7B for bus acquisition with 50% of the money going to zero emissions vehicles. The funding is expected to result in the procurement of 1,700 buses and pay for upgrades to bus maintenance facilities to accommodate electric buses. While it seems like a lot of new buses, there are currently 60,000 buses on US roads today. (Andrew Hawkins | The Verge)

Building based on a past climate: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration (NOAA) uses decades old records to predict future rainfall in the forecasting system many agencies use to build infrastructure projects. While NOAA agrees with research that says these predictions are out of date, the next update funded by the infrastructure bill won’t come until 2027, many years after much of the money from the infrastructure bill is spent. (Thomas Frank | E&E News)

Quote of the Week

ODOT is clearly walking away from phase two of I-205. They have no idea how they’re going to pay for it [and the Rose Quarter project]. It shows that what the critics have been saying about these projects has been absolutely right.

-No More Freeways co-founder Joe Cortright in the Portland Mercury on Oregons decision to pause two highway projects in Portland.

This week on the podcast, author Ben Wilson joins the show to talk about his new book Urban Jungle.

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