San Francisco Begins Daylighting Intersections

San Francisco

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.

Stopping street takeovers: To prevent street takeovers and sideshows, Ohio cities such as Cleveland are copying a disruption method from Kansas City by scooping out and indenting intersections. The carved indentions puncture tires of vehicles doing donuts or burnouts in the road but don’t impact vehicles driving straight or turning. Trying to stop these behaviors, Cleveland has even created a takeover task force. (Logan Carter | Jalopnik)

San Francisco daylights intersections: San Francisco will begin issuing fines for vehicles parked within 20 feet of a crosswalk after the Governor signed a law in 2023 that required greater visibility for pedestrians at intersections. This “daylighting” is meant to improve safety and will impact 14,000 of the city’s over 275,000 on street parking spaces. Merchants and drivers are unsurprisingly already complaining about the change. (George Kelly and Alex Mullaney | SF Standard)

Mexico all in on housing: Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has launched a program focused on building more housing that is affordable and equitable. The program will partner with national housing institutions to build 1 million homes and will break with previous administrations that prioritized profit over public good. There will also be a zero interest mortgage scheme which will allow more people in the country to gain a pathway to homeownership. (Jesus Mesa  | Newsweek)

Evolving gas stations: More than 80% of electric vehicle drivers charge their batteries at home, but for those that don’t, the experience of finding a charger can be frustrating. Additionally, it’s not just a quick fill up anymore but a longer wait for the energy transfer. So gas stations are likely to evolve and companies are seeing an opportunity to make money through premium amenities and commercial real estate. (Patrick Sisson | Fast Company)

Failures of Urban Governance: Professor David Schleicher argues that urbanites are growing increasingly frustrated with city governance and that a new administration will not help them cure their ills. Instead, with less resources available, they’ll have to do it themselves, pushing for reforms that enable growth and necessary basic services. If cities can make these changes, they may be able to create solutions that match residents political values. (David Schleicher | Vital City)

Quote of the Week

People sang together and cheered for each other while climbing uphill together. I could feel the passion of the young people. And it was much more than a bike ride.

–Liu Lulu discussing the Kaifeng dumpling ride in China which swelled to 100,000 people.

This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined by Gillian Gillett of CalITP and Dan Baker, of the Connecticut Department of Transportation to discuss how agencies can create simpler payment and travel experiences for transit riders

Want more links to read? Visit The Overhead Wire and signup.