San Francisco

There are excellent candidates for freeway removal in many American cities, where roads built 50 or 60 years ago are nearing the end of their useful lives. Cities that take the plunge and get rid of their urban highways don't regret it.

Street redesigns from Oakland, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, San Francisco, Rochester and Chicago are competing for the title.

While federal transit funding stagnates, the nation's largest rail and bus systems have been delaying critical maintenance projects. Without sustained efforts to fix infrastructure and vehicles, the effects of deteriorating service in big American cities could ripple across the national economy, according to a new report from the Regional Plan Association [PDF].

In case you need a little pick-me-up this morning, here's some good news out of San Francisco. Voters resoundingly rejected Proposition L, a local ballot measure designed to halt the city's progress on improving streets for walking, biking, and transit. As of the most recent available count, with nearly all precincts reporting, 62 percent of San Francisco voters had said "No" to Prop L.

The middle class is getting priced out of liberal cities, while red-state urban areas remain affordable. Does that mean our cities should be less like tightly regulated San Francisco and more like permissive Houston? It's a common argument -- but it doesn't fit the facts.

Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook and a major contributor to San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, has spent $49,000 of his personal fortune to propel a ballot initiative that seeks to enshrine free parking as city policy, according to the SF Chronicle. Parker gave $100,000 to Lee's mayoral campaign in 2011.

Did you wear your helmet when you biked to work this morning? Whether you did or you didn't, it's up to you. So why are there so many people shrieking about it? On one side, the 85-percenters, overstating the protection helmets offer against head injuries. On the other side, the 3-footers, claiming that it's actually safer to go helmetless because drivers give you more space and a host of other reasons. Some recent hysteria around bike-share and head injuries fueled this fire. I'm not sure Jeff and I put that fire out with our discussion, but we at least tried to make some sense of it.

Michael Andersen blogs for The Green Lane Project, a PeopleForBikes program that helps U.S. cities build better bike lanes to create low-stress streets.

A peculiar thing tends to happen when we talk about streets and transportation: We don't talk about cars. Seriously -- listen to conversations, read news headlines, and you'll start to notice that even when cars are the main subject, people will, consciously or unconsciously, fail to explicitly mention them.