MBTA commuter rail by MassDOT licensed under Creative Commons.

Will riders get on board commuter trains again? The space given to cars is exposed. Hundreds of thousands of retail stores are not expected to survive the current pandemic.

What will happen to commuter trains after the pandemic?: With stay at home orders all over the country, commuter rail ridership plummeted during the pandemic. When the social distancing measures subside, and people venture back to their offices, will commuter trains be able to get back on track? This writer thinks so if cities take some bold steps. (David Zipper | Citylab)

The space ceded to cars now revealed: The current pandemic has exposed the vast amounts of space given over to the automobile each day at the expense of pedestrians and cyclists as many people stay home. Fearful of getting too close to another person, pedestrians keep their distance on what little space they have, while automobiles move more freely on the vast expanse given to them by years of carveouts and engineering. (Tom Vanderbilt | The Atlantic)

The number of retail stores lost could number in the hundreds of thousands: Wall Street analysts at UBS believe that by 2025 the Coronavirus will bring about the demise of 100,000 retail locations as people reduce spending and shift to online shopping. (Coral Murphy | USA Today)

Does our government want pedestrians to die, or not?: A GAO reported showed that nearly one in five people killed from a car crash in 2018 were pedestrians or cyclists. Yet the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has not implemented safety standards to protect the people outside of vehicles. (Aaron Gordon | Vice Motherboard)

The city as one big open-air cafe: Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, has decided to give plaza and street space in the old city to restaurants in order to allow them to keep business going while observing physical distancing and health regulations. The country’s strict regulations require two meters (6.5ft) space between tables, masks in public places, and a limit to the number of customers in a shop at any given time. (Jon Henley | Guardian)

Where are those emissions from?: Much of the world has reduced movement and activities because of the coronavirus and emissions have dropped. But global CO2 emissions are only expected to drop 5.5%, so where are all those emissions coming from? The short answer is that some energy has been transferred from work to home use and activities such as steel production have continued. (Shannon Osaka | Grist)

Quote of the Week

“Pollinators are the consultants of the natural world, supreme reproducers and they don’t charge for it. The plan to convert every street into a biocorridor and every neighborhood into an ecosystem required a relationship with them.”

Former Curridabat, Costa Rica Mayor Edgar Mora in The Guardian discussing why he gave pollinators citizenship.

This week on the podcast, the City of Oakland’s Warren Logan talks about thier pandemic response and thier open streets program.