National links: Greyhound terminals close, leaving riders on the street

Greyhound opts for curbside pickup and dropoff as it closes bus terminals across the US. Paris looks for solutions to mitigate urban heat and the impacts of climate change. How hurricanes are displacing working- and middle-class homeowners in Florida.

Intercity bus terminals closing nationwide: Greyhound’s once ubiquitous intercity bus terminals are disappearing in favor of curbside pickup and dropoff. But as intercity bus service continues, so does the need for safe areas for riders to wait and board. Creating a new pickup-dropoff space on the street can be difficult, especially when they interfere with existing transit infrastructure and local politics make it hard to adapt. (Jared Brey | Governing)

Paris can “roast, flee, or act”: During a 2003 summer heat wave in France, 15,000 people died, many of whom were stuck in top-floor, Parisian apartments under heat-trapping zinc roofs. Now, officials in Paris are looking for ways to cool the city to avoid more painful heat wave impacts as the climate changes. Retrofitted rooftop gardens, urban forestry programs, and redesigned streets for active transportation and cooler surfaces are all on the table. (Jeff Goodell | Yale e360)

Hurricanes displace Florida’s working and middle class: After Hurricane Ian damaged coastal communities in Florida last fall, many of the working and middle-class retirees and homeowners that lived there couldn’t afford to fix and maintain their homes so they sold their land and left. Now, these communities are changing as only the ultra-wealthy are able to build homes up to standard and afford the soaring insurance rates. (Zack Colman | Politico)

City livability rankings tell a biased story: The capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka, has a population of 23 million people that ebbs and flows from rural to urban spaces for work and daily life. The migrations tell a story of a place that’s different than the one told by international magazines through annual livability rankings. Rickshaw garages spread about the city tell this story of flexible accommodation and work and how the line between urban and rural is increasingly blurred. (Shreyashi Dasgupta and Annemiek Prins | The Conversation)

Amsterdam’s red-light controversy: Amsterdam is trying to reduce overcrowding in the central red-light district. One plan involves moving much of the famous red-light district to the suburbs. But like many discussions these days, it brings into focus conflicts about what gives a place its character and who deserves to be heard when big decisions are made. (Charlotte McDonald-Gibson | Time Magazine)

Quote of the Week

“In the dogged persistence of Chicago’s crosstown trucking—and, indeed, in the history of 47th Street Yard itself—lies a story of American railroading’s ambivalence. Neither a fully integrated network nor a series of independent, competing companies, the industry’s history has been shaped by its leaders’ changing approaches to cooperation within their fragmented reality.”

Uday Schultz on his blog Home Signal discusses how disconnected freight in Chicago leads to big national climate and transportation problems.

This week on the podcast, we’re joined by Hussein Mahfouz of Transport for Cairo and Adham Kalila of Streetlight Data to talk about their new report created for NUMO, “All Possible Commutes: How Micromobility and Realistic Car Travel Times Impact Accessibility Analysis.”