National Links: The one with the trucker shortage

The frequent turnover of truck drivers is being overlooked. In the past 30 years, 200,000 people in communities of color were displaced by US highways. Environmentalists experience burnout, too.

Is there really a truck driver shortage? Alana Samuels argues there isn’t a nationwide trucker shortage. In California alone, there are 640,000 people with commercial driver’s licenses but only 140,00 driving jobs. The issue, she says, is turnover, with 9 out of 10 drivers leaving companies within the first year. (Alana Semuels | Time Magazine)

Highways are still displacing people of color: The Los Angeles Times found that over 200,000 people in communities of color have been displaced due to highway plans since 1991. In some instances, families have been impacted twice as their new homes were taken for expansion projects. (Liam Dillon and Ben Poston | Los Angeles Times)

Mental health is important for overwhelmed environmentalists: With the repeated traumas of damaged ecosystems and slow progress, environmental activists must project their mental health before stress leads to despair and hopelessness. (Alex Smith | NPR)

Glowing materials could someday light our cities: Certain materials have the ability to trap photons during the day and release them at night, creating a luminous surface. Researchers at the University of Perugia in Italy are researching the potential for luminous pavement, saying that glow-in-the-dark surfaces can reduce heat island effects and the need for street lights while also increasing public safety. (Kurt Kleiner | Knowable Magazine)

The ways in which automobility shapes our lives: New research in the journal Mobilities explores how automobility impacts the way people think about car violence. For instance, some people have a mindset that the benefits of having cars outweigh the toll of vehicle crashes. Others falsely believe that more cars with technological fixes can lead to fewer crashes. (Kea Wilson | Streetsblog USA)

Quote of the Week

“Yet to achieve transportation equity, the bulk of funding —— and even projects funded through these new grant programs —- will require significant change in how state departments of transportation, transit agencies, metropolitan planning organizations and localities prioritize funding requests, design projects, and involve community especially those who are most impacted and that have been historically underrepresented.”

Mariia Zimmerman at the MZ Strategies Blog discussing the potential but not certainty of equity in spending from the new infrastructure bill.

This week on the podcast, Kelcie Ralph, Nick Klein, and Calvin Thigpen, talk about their recent paper “Political Partisanship and Transportation Reform” written with Anne Brown in the Journal of the American Planning Association.