Why are States Passing Laws to Reduce Driving?

Interstate 43 freeway along the west side of downtown Milwaukee. 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.

More states passing VMT mitigation measures: A new report from Brookings looks at four states that have taken measures to reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in order to reduce the myriad impacts of driving. The authors believe this year’s elections where new governors and local officials will come into office could be a turning point for transportation policies such as these and the number of states passing VMT mitigation measures could expand beyond the initial group. (Riley Sandhop, Ben Swedberg, Adie Tomer | Brookings)

Why does inflation feel worse than reported?: To many low and middle income people, inflation feels far worse than the data show. Aris Benakli and Sophie Bandarkar believe that’s in part because inflation is measured in a way that leaves out the consumers that are likely to be impacted the most by cost increases while circularly impacting their rising costs. Specifically, lower income households feel the impact because the “basket of goods” used to set the measure is more impacted by the spending of wealthy people. (Aris Benakli and Sophie Bandarkar | Slate)

Weekend transit service impacting weekday ridership: Mark Brown argues that bad weekend transit schedules are reducing ridership during the week as more people will drive when they don’t have access to destinations seven days a week. Transit systems often make the choice to reduce headways because there’s lower ridership on weekends, but that also could lead people to stop taking transit all together or possibly even buy another car, diminishing potential ridership even more. (Mark Brown | Car Free America)

How cities lost the economic development plot: More big businesses are dominating urban economies as the medium and small business that create new jobs have been edged out. But even as less businesses are created, cities are continuing to focus on economic development strategies that benefit a limited number of big businesses through tax breaks and economic incentives. A better solution would be investing again in the ecosystem of small and medium size businesses that contribute to longer term regional gains. (Daniel Wortel London and Lisa Chamberlain | Common Edge)

Isolation by roads tied to schizophrenia: New research from Brown and Columbia Universities found that isolation due to road infrastructure and traffic patterns increased the likelihood of mental health diagnosis such as schizophrenia. Using zip code level data the researchers were able to tie hospital visits for mental health and community isolation measured through a Community Severance Index that measures lack of pedestrian infrastructure and road barriers. (Corrie Pikul | Brown University)

Quote of the Week

Any time anyone has a collision with a deer or moose and an insurance claim is filed, a data point is collected, but nobody files an insurance claim when they hit a frog.

–Greg LeClair, a municipal planning biologist for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, in Grist discussing the importance of Maine Big Night which seeks to save amphibians from getting run over by cars during their annual migration.

This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined by Tom Flood, Grant Ennis, and Brent Toderian to discuss their new communications project, The Urban Truth Collective.  We discuss pushing back on falsehoods and conspiracies through positive messaging around cities.