The EPA is no longer going to consider how many potential lives a pollution regulation would save -- just the costs to industry. This is directly counter to EPA's mission. And it will kill Americans.
Great (depressing) scoop from @maxinejoselow.bsky.social.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/c...
Why is advancing ambitious climate legislation hard even in “deep blue” states?
Here’s a systematic study of 6 years of lobbying data and 8 years of testimony in a state that sees itself as a climate leader, but is struggling with implementation of its bold targets.
Guess who are obstructing?
What! I've never seen the early seasons! Can I borrow it sometime?
If you could snap your fingers and remove 10% of the vehicles causing traffic and clogging up the streets, would you do it? That power exists, and it's called congestion pricing.
It sounds like you're describing Murder She Wrote. Or my go-to for a cozy, humorous, doesn't turn into a busman's holiday, 3-in-1-episode mystery: the GBBO.
Yet another evidence review argues very strongly that simply providing alternatives to driving doesn't reduce driving
This isn't surprising, if only thanks to habit. If I unthinkingly jump in my car for every trip (as many do), new buses won't change that
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Today on Volts: sustainable transportation policy is under comprehensive attack by the federal government, but states can soften the blow. Specifically, governors have a little-understood authority to transfer existing federal funds to EV charging, bike lanes, & transit. But time is running out!
tired: leaders throw folks under the bus
wired: leaders invite folks on the bus in a dedicated lane
Seattle No Kings from the monorail
This book finally got published today - free for download here cssn.org/news-researc...
A monumental effort documenting climate obstruction across sectors, countries & governance levels, by 110 @cssn.org scholars
I was chuffed to contribute to one of the chapters (thread)
Happy centennial!
It’s worth noting that originally this body, the first national traffic engineering institute, was funded 100% by one automobile manufacturer: Studebaker. It was named the Erskine Bureau after the company’s president. In 1935 the Automobile Manufacturers Association took it over.
Evacuation modes by subgroups: This bar chart figure shows how various population groups traveled to safety during the wildfire evacuation. While getting rides from others was most frequent among evacuees, public transit or walking/biking were more commonly used by transportation-disadvantaged groups, including low-income, Black, and carless residents
The Jan 2025 LA fires showed how urban wildfires endanger transit riders and ppl w/o cars.
📊 Among transit riders surveyed:
- 28% relied on rides from others
- 21% used transit to evacuate
- Black respondents were most likely to evacuate via transit (42%)
www.its.ucla.edu/publication/...
Our multi-campus research team shared preliminary results from our work about the evacuation experiences of transit riders with LA county transportation and emergency management professionals yesterday! Can’t wait to release these findings publicly later this summer
Same street, two years apart. Rue Charles Moureu.
There are no distractions. It's all bad. Systematically stripping trans people of their rights, guys in balaclavas shoving any brown person with a tattoo into a ummarked vans, ending healthcare for millions. It's all in service of fascism and technofeudalism. It's all one thing. That's the point.
Study on London 20 mph limits shows:
- collisions ⬇️ 35%
- casualties ⬇️ 36%
- fatal/serious injuries ⬇️ 34%
- child casualties ⬇️ 46%
- child deaths ⬇️ 75%
- walkers, cyclists, motorcyclists killed/seriously injured ⬇️ 28%
etsc.eu/20mph-limits...
A springtime trip to Buenos Aires was where I first encountered jacarandas, which is absolutely part of why I love LA’s so much
blooming jacaranda trees in the UCLA sculpture garden
Figure 2
a photo from an airplane with a corridor of jacaranda street trees blooming purple
So much is terrible these days but it's also jacaranda season in Los Angeles, which is beautiful from the ground and absolutely stunning from air.
"Women are PIs on 58% of the canceled grants, although they are PIs on only 34% of all active NSF grants.
Similarly, Blacks are PIs on 17% of the terminated grants, although they make only 4% of the total pool. Hispanic PIs and those with disabilities were twice as likely to lose a grant."
An Engine, Not a Vessel: Place, Politics, and Health in the United States Philip Roccohttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-5971-7039 Abstract Social scientists often treat places as containers for social and economic phenomena that shape health outcomes. Yet this analytic practice conceals more than it reveals. Local governments in the United States should be understood as engines of both health promotion and stratification. As the contributions to this symposium suggest, governments not only occupy a formal place in the U.S. public health system, their decisions on everything from housing to transportation infrastructure can also have profound impacts on health outcomes. Local political economies likewise renegotiate the parameters of acceptable health interventions, public understandings of health disparities, and the status of population health as a public good. By illustrating these linkages, the authors here suggest important future lines of research on both the promise and limits of local health governance, as well as how the allocation of local political power shapes health disparities.
As federal data infrastructure is gutted, we'll lose a window into the vast local health disparities. But those disparities will remain because place is an engine of health provision and stratification, not just an analytic vessel. New essay from me in UAR:
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
🚨 Job alert: UCLA ITS is hiring a founding Staff Director for a new parking policy center! Work with top scholars, shape reform, and carry on the legacy of Donald Shoup.
🅿️ Learn more & apply by May 17: www.its.ucla.edu/202...
A colleague at Stanford’s business school used The Stanford Daily to argue—poorly—against DEI. The piece was riddled with historical errors and left one searching for fact, so I broke my public writing hiatus to respond.
I hope you’ll read and share the piece.
stanforddaily.com/2025/04/22/w...
Yes, the famously private freeway system and the famously private airport systems
Re-upping this, given news from the UK today, because it investigates what is and who decides the definition of "biological sex," which is anything but straightforward.
This seems like a good time to remind people that the Stanford Prison Experiment was based on fraudulent data. The "guards" were cruel to the prisoners because Zimbardo told them what he wanted to find with his research, and because they *wanted* to help him prove his point.
Phenomenal on every account. I learned to drive in my family's almost identical '91 240 wagon -- my dad still has it!
Ah bummer -- sorry, Dave
