✊🏙 Uber facing more competition 🥊 Walkable cities saving lives 🏥 Court challenge for Paris anti-car plans 🇫🇷

A growing number of studies show that ride hailing is having profoundly negative effects on cities, and the next stage of competition could make urban transportation even worse. Regional competitors are gaining ground, and a new wave of autonomous services are preparing for launch.

The previous article looked at Waymo and GM‘s plans to launch ride-hailing services using driverless vehicles. Nissan wants to do the same in Japan, but the service will initially be geofenced to a small area.

Sony is also jumping into the ride-hailing game, partnering with six Tokyo taxi companies on a service to take on Uber, which has low market share.

A new Streetsfilm video looks at how cities are transforming streets to make them more welcoming to pedestrians, which brings many additional benefits, including fewer traffic deaths and shifting attitudes toward cars.

As suburban areas around the US are evolving to become more urban, there’s a growing debate about when and where change works and what it should look like. GGWash’s contributors gave their views in a discussion.

By banning cars from a busy thoroughfare along the river Seine, Paris created a fantastic public space in the middle of the city — but that’s now in jeopardy. A court has ruled that the Mayor doesn’t have the authority to restrict vehicles from the road, but the City is appealing the decision. If upheld, it would be a terrible step backward for Anne Hidalgo‘s agenda.

On a site that has essentially been a wasteland in the northeastern suburbs for the past century, but there’s a push to plant a new urban forest that would be five times the size of New York City‘s Central Park.

Seattle is notable among major US metro areas for its increases to transit ridership. In order to further improve the transit system, the city looks to be following Toronto in giving priority to streetcars to improve reliability and ridership. (See issue 21 for more on Seattle and issue 20 for Toronto.)

Seattle‘s mayor, recognizing that the cost of living is rising, wants to give all high school students free transit passes.

As part of its plans to significantly expand the Metro system, government officials held a groundbreaking ceremony on phase 2 of the Purple Line extension to Century City. The government is also speeding up its ambitious transit plans to have more ready by the time LA hosts the 2028 Summer Olympics. (See issue 2 for more on LA’s transit expansion plans.)

Unfortunately, it was also announced that the Blue Line to Long Beach will be closed in two four-month periods in 2019 for upgrading that will cut ten minutes off the current travel time.

After a week of writing about the topic and engaging with others in the field, transportation consultant Jarrett Walker gives his thoughts on microtransit, the app-based flexible-route service that some believe will play an important role in the future of transportation. Walker isn’t so sure.