Why It’s Hard to Quit Driving

Interstate 43/94 freeway as seen from the W. Lapham Blvd. bridge. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

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. Each 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.

Why it’s hard to quit driving: Commuters are creatures of habit and changing transportation modes away from driving is a hard nut to crack. There are a number of biases that come into play including sunk costs, underweighting long term benefits, and favoring the status quo. But researchers have also found that a major life change or event can create an opportunity to switch to new habits that may help people’s wallets and the planet. (David Zipper | Slate)

Real reason for the housing crisis: Over the last 60 years in Chicago, population has stayed flat but housing units have grown 32%. During this same time household sizes have dropped. This instance in Chicago is likely to be seen all over the country and points to a bigger discussion about the housing shortage. A growing population and smaller household sizes means more units are now needed to house less people than they did before. (Pete Saunders | Corner Side Yard)

Car headlights getting brighter: With the introduction of LEDs, lights have gotten brighter, but none have been as noticed as car headlights, which have increased ten times in brightness over the last decade. This change and increases in driving discomfort for many have brought an unusual band of opponents out to try and stop the blinding trend. (Nate Rogers | The Ringer)

Neighborhood dangers of formaldehyde: Not just used in mortuaries, formaldehyde is a chemical that is used in many applications that surround us such as furniture particle board and plastics binding. It’s also the hazardous material that leads to more cancer than any other air pollutant. Reporters looked into the actual risk of formaldehyde and found that the danger is much more pervasive the previously understood. (Sharon Lerner and Al Shaw | Pro Publica | Interactive Map)

Current Houston urbanist thinking needs change: The mostly Latino Northside neighborhood of Houston avoided much of the change and gentrification that came to other parts of the city, but the urban growth of enclaves in and outside of the city and annexation has left it perpetually resource constrained while enriching developers. This growth has created more negative impacts on communities like the Northside and should make urbanists and neighborhoods alike wary of what a city that works best for monied interests is actually gaining. (Sam Russek | Texas Observer)

Quote of the Week

When I left full-time work earlier this year to go freelance, I finally landed that totally flexible schedule with no annoying bosses or co-workers. I didn’t expect that working from home would initially mean a 5-pound weight gain, and that I’d take my kids to school not just to make sure they made it to class—but to chat with other parents. It turns out that the simple obligation of going to a workplace, shop, or school every day brought positive externalities that are vanishing from our lives.

–Diana Lind in Slate discussing how our lives shifting online can have negative impacts

This week on the Talking Headways podcast, Dani Simons, currently of Alstom but formerly Assistant to the Secretary and Director of Public Affairs at USDOT, joins to take a look back at how Biden Administration policies evolved from ideas to bills such as the IIJA and Inflation reduction act.

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