Could Dynamic Pricing be Helpful for Cities?

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.

Deadliest intersections in America: A law firm analyzed 18 years of National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data on fatal traffic collisions at intersections and found 1 in 4 fatal car collisions happens at an intersection. 82% of those fatal collisions were at the intersection of an arterial road and 71% were in more rural areas. There were 894 intersections with three or more deadly collisions in that time period that resulted in 3,293 deaths. (Piasta Walker Hagenbush LLC | Stacker)

The smooth city: Architecture critic Kate Wagner reviews the book Smooth City: Against Urban Perfection, Towards Collective Alternatives and laments the sameness of places all around the world and the processes that create something that’s more than just gentrification. In the end she says, the book’s strength isn’t in proposed solutions but a criticism of how places have evolved to rid themselves of differences. (Kate Wagner | The Nation)

A new transportation equity tool: The California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA) has released an equity mapping tool to address the distribution of transportation funds in the state. The tool is similar to the CalEnviroScreen which has been also adapted for use by the EPA to find areas of burden in disadvantaged communities. This tool however is transportation focused showing crash rates, traffic volumes and income levels. (Melanie Curry | Streetsblog California)

The dynamically priced city: While there’s been a bit of push back on dynamic pricing such as done by corporations including Uber and most recently Wendy’s hamburgers, Diana Lind argues that there’s room for pricing in cities if it can bring value to people looking to reduce costs of living or benefit businesses looking to find their way in a post-pandemic world. (Diana Lind | New Urban Order)

London sees health benefits from ULEZ, LTNs: London’s ultra low emissions zone (ULEZ) has reduced nitrogen oxide pollution 49% between 2016 and 2023. The fall was greater than other areas around England and the Mayor points to this success as the benefit of the program as politics envelop the program. At the same time, a six year survey based on thousands of people living in three outer London boroughs found that low traffic neighborhoods (LTNs) have health impacts over 100 times compared to the infrastructure investment. (Peter Walker | Guardian ULEZ | Guardian LTN)

Quote of the Week

The outsize role of shelter inflation means that homeowners and renters whose leases haven’t changed are experiencing inflation very differently from those who were more exposed to rising housing costs. Indeed, rising housing costs are a double-edged sword, increasing the wealth of homeowners even as they punish many renters. Since the beginning of 2022, housing wealth has added over $2 trillion to homeowners’ balance sheets.

–Ben Harris, director of the economic studies program at Brookings in the Los Angeles Times discussing how inflation isn’t our biggest problem, housing is.

This week on the podcast, we’re joined by skateboard advocate Aaron Breetwor, brand manager for Comet Skateboards.

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