Corrigan Salerno

California Legalizes Life Near Public Transit — Human Transit OK, the headline is a little exaggerated, but California’s Senate Bill 79, authored by Senator Scott Wiener and just signed by Governor Newsom, is a game-changer.  It prohibits most cities from forbid...

California legalizes life near public transit! Governor Newsom has signed SB 79. My thoughts: humantransit.org/2025/10/cali...

Uh, I am going to have to be convinced on these

Letting People Move - Climate and Community Institute Transportation policy represents a key tool to address both the cost of living and climate crises. In the United States, the shortcomings of today’s transportation system …

What’s the best way to spend $1 billion for transportation?

Our latest report shows the positive impacts of every $1 billion shifted from highways to transit and identifies key policy levers to shift transportation investments away from highway spending.

climateandcommunity.org/research/let...

The Teens Are Taking Waymos Now Alphabet’s self-driving car company launches what it hopes will be lucrative individual teen accounts—and maybe a whole lot of social change in the process.

I'm sorry but this whole thing makes me feel insane. Let's just be real: we stole basic independence from generations of kids and teenagers by intentionally making our cities deadly + impossible to travel outside a car, and now corporations are selling a worse version of it back to them at a price.

It also swipes or moved around ARPA-I, NEVI FY26 Rescissions, Reconnecting Communities Pilot, Fed state partnership for intercity rail grants, Reduction of truck emissions at port facilities… what else?

I imagine that there’s a chicken and egg component to project selection and what gets built, but that also helps determine how gas is taxed in the first place.

I would be very interested in how the built environment factors in an analysis like this. Gas is expensive (relative) in sprawling California, but they drive much more compared to place in the US with options and cheaper gas (thinking of the DC region).

In a truly tectonic Overton Window shift, the California Assembly just voted 63-0 to advance #AB609, a major new bill by Buffy Wicks to create a statutory exemption from CEQA for environmentally friendly infill housing.

Fantastic news for both housing and the environment!

Yes, you should be asking why Portland is getting a $2 billion freeway expansion when it hasn’t expanded its light rail system in years, when federal assistance is drying up, when climate change is worsening, & when 60% of Oregon counties are facing budget cuts www.opb.org/article/2025...

Is U.S. Transportation Policy Ready For The 'Silver Tsunami'? — Streetsblog USA America's car-dependent communities aren't prepared for the rising proportion of seniors who can't safely drive.

Like every other late 30-something I know, I'm thinking a lot lately about how the transportation system will shape my parents' lives as they age (which to some extent is already happening). Learned a lot from this conversation with @gregshill.com, including some surprises.

desperately searching, hoping, wishing for this one to have been real

Kurt Vonnegut tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope: "Oh, she says, well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And see some great looking babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And I'll ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is — we're here on Earth to fart around And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And it's like we're not supposed to dance at all anymore."

Kurt Vonnegut man

Cherry blossom festival plus an “interspecies celebration” (?) at the Kennedy center lol

Air quality is so visibly bad with these fireworks. Seeing smoke wafted all the way to the ground level in Woodley Park. It literally smells like the little party poppers outside.

Gen Z has the disadvantage of existing in the same Wild West of internet disinfo but without as much interactions with the “real world” since the internet is so pervasive now, thanks to phones, the decline of physical hobbies and third spaces, etc. Gen Z is just less attached to baseline reality.

Did you factor the difference between place of performance data and the recipient location in USASpending metadata?

Org HQs receiving funds (in my case state DOTs) are often located in cities more politically left leaning and bias funding toward Harris counties when the work is performed elsewhere

Screenshot of email from Office of the Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy to Heads of Secretarial Offices and Operating Administrations.

Screenshot of email from Office of the Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy to Heads of Secretarial Offices and Operating Administrations.

USDOT Secretary's office sent an email to DOT agencies instructing them to review competitively awarded—but not yet fully obligated—projects under Biden that include:
—Green infra
—Bike infra
—EV infra
—Project purpose to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

DOT wants to revise project scopes or cancel.

vox dei

After ceding power of the purse, GOP lawmakers beg Trump team for funds Republican senators find themselves in an unusual position these days: begging Trump officials to release funds they themselves appropriated.

GOP Senators are “begging Trump officials to release funds they themselves appropriated” & that admin is illegally impounding.

Sen Tuberville wants bridge $

Sen Capito wants electric school bus $

Sen Murkowski wants EPA staff

Sen Britt wants NIH $

Sen Moran wants farm subsidies

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

Not to jinx anything that might happen this week yet, but big shifts in policy at organizations require staff to implement changes.

Otherwise, expect delays...

@xpinkylemonx.bsky.social

Stop USDOT's Funding Freeze Over $20 billion in project funding is at risk. USDOT’s new memos set a timeline for the elimination of all agency policies, funding agreements, and programs by February 18, 2025. Make your representa...

Here's another:

smartgrowthamerica.salsalabs.org/usdot-fundin...

...but don't stop there. Call your reps on the phone. Let your local media know exactly what could be at stake for your area. Make noise about this before it's too late.

In an hour! I'll be joining @gnd_network @4TransitJustice @americawalks @LN4S @cplusci from 7:30-8 PM ET to discuss the $20 billion+ funding freeze crisis and what you can do to ensure communities get the money they're owed.

Tune in!
act.greennewdealnetwork.org/signup/unfre...

corrigans 🤝 active transportation

Disbursements at risk from USDOT Transportation for America's analysis of funding at risk based on policy outlined in the USDOT's newly introduced

EV charging is just the start. DOT should now have a list of equity and climate programs/projects to cancel. Billions could be cut across the country, destroying economic development and job creation progress.

How bad is it in your district?
www.datawrapper.de/_/j1bf5/

Counterpoint: he absolutely did not surrender.

Which is not to say you are powerless, or that he is unstoppable! But it *is* to say that we need to adapt our tactics when the administration ignores the rules. It's time for direct action, for local action, and a whole lot of organizing.

From the “Woke Rescission” (yes really) memo:

Tomorrow: DOT compiles every funding agreement and program they dislike

Feb 18: DOT cancels, by all legal means (guess who decides what’s legal?), everything related “in any way” to climate, DEI, and environmental justice.

Totally normal, as a simple matter of divine forgiveness, to put a white supremacist antisemitic kid in charge of the U.S. Treasury payments system

It was the start of a beautiful rivalry/friendship.

If it makes you feel better about the theft, I shout out your podcast every time people ask if I’ve ever met another Corrigan!