We Could Fix Our Roads, Instead We Expand and Expand

Diverging diamond design for Stadium Interchange. Image from I-94 Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement.

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.

First scissor stairs law in Washington State: Washington State has passed the first scissor stair reform in the country. These types of staircase designs allow for two separate stairways creating dual exits on the same floor which can reduce footprint and aid the construction of buildings on smaller lots. The hope is that allowing the stair type will lead to more possible housing types and construction of new units. (Markus Johnson | The Sightline Institute)

Dawn of electrotech: The global shocks of the Iran War are leading many countries to consider more stable energy supplies as oil, fertilizer, helium, and cooking gas supplies run low. Previous oil shocks impacted countries with recessions and rationing but this time there is a superior alternative energy source to oil and gas; electricity. China’s investment and exports in solar panels, electric vehicles, and battery cells are giving countries an alternative to oil dependence. (Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay | Phenomenal World)

Rethinking accessibility measures: Yuquan “Wendy” Zhou‘s PHD dissertation at USC has put together a different way of thinking about access. Her work moves away from static accessibility maps and towards a “people-based” look at how someone can access the destinations they need based on their location during the day and the hours a destination is open. It’s another important way of reasserting the importance of time based planning and changing how we think about access to destinations. (Christian Hetrick | USC Price)

Enough funding for fixing roads: Federal transportation funding is available for state highway departments to fix every crumbling road in the United States. However a new report suggests that much of the money continues to be spent on expansion to the point that we may not be able to maintain the system we’ve built over time. Instead of formula money, states need more accountability that would make them rethink how they spend precious transportation funds. (Kea Wilson | Streetsblog USA)

A Chinese approach to TOD above the tracks: Train maintenance and storage depot lands are one of the most overlooked property types in cities. To get the most out of the land, China has developed a technical system for developing whole neighborhoods over their depots. From an urbanism standpoint, the goal is to provide space for people while also masking the mechanics of what is happening underneath disappear. (Anderson Chider Hsieh | Planetizen)

Quote of the Week

These industry groups are well practiced and well-funded to lobby hard. The eight organizations analyzed in the paper collectively employed over two hundred lobbyists, spending over $100 million on lobbying and political donations.

–Kevin X. Shen in Union of Concerned Scientists discussing the amount of lobbying the road building industry does to keep people driving.

This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined by Stephanie Dockery to discuss the Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge. Stephanie discusses how a bus art can get a cult following, how artists are creating attention in their cities with temporary art, and what happens after the projects disappear.

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