Transportation

At the annual Curbivore conference in Los Angeles, city transit and tech leaders discussed how to keep moving forward in a new environment of shifting political priorities coming from Washington.

A transit network in Seattle has introduced technology to reduce “bus bunching” and space vehicles evenly on a route. And a suburban bus company in Chicago is taking steps to transition its fleet to zero-emission vehicles.

The state Department of Environmental Protection will grant “enforcement discretion” to automakers that are unable to meet zero-emission vehicles requirements in the Advanced Clean Trucks regulation for 2025 and 2026 models.

A partnership between Waymo and Uber launched last month brought the self-driving vehicles to the Texas capital. Data since shows Waymo accounting for 20 percent of all Uber trips in the city during the last week of March.

In a first, the California Department of Transportation is using two remote-controlled excavators to clear a landslide that closed a portion of Highway 1 in 2024. The equipment enables work in challenging areas.

The sheriff cited major errors in tickets and the inability of people to appeal their citations as reasons for cancelling the program, which flagged more than 407 paid violations per day, seven days a week.

The question of where speed cameras are allowed and where they aren't reveals a deeply divided nation. Government Technology mapped state laws and the locations of hundreds of speed camera programs across the country.

As bus drivers for Boston Public Schools got used to a new bus-tracking app, software allowed the district to collect and update real-time data on every bus route to make them more efficient.

The ride-share service and its mobile application, which are funded by a $2.1 million state grant, expanded in March 2024. Powered by transit software firm Via, the service has around 15 drivers.

Officials shuttered the system on the Maine Turnpike for half a day in March to avoid a potential cybersecurity incident. Accounts and their private data were never at risk of being compromised.

The travel hub has deployed 10 of the devices for 90 days in its McNamara terminal to assist passengers with mobility issues. The wheelchairs carry passengers to the gate, then return to base automatically.

Commissioners in the state’s most populous county are considering regulating electric bicycles and scooters, in a bid to crack down on “reckless behavior.” Another goal of the measure is defining the vehicles.

The bill, which would have allowed traffic enforcement cameras in areas prone to crashes, was heard in the Senate Committee on Growth and Infrastructure in March, but it failed to get out of the committee.

The states’ departments of transportation are teaming up to test the autonomous driving technique, which uses technology to let the driver of the first truck control the speed and direction of the second.

With Lime scooters returning to the city’s streets this week, local officials are rolling out new infrastructure designed to limit the scattering of scooters and e-bikes downtown.

State officials made an improvement late last week to the design of the mainframe behind Office of Motor Vehicles sites. In the three days following, the system experienced no outages.

County commissioners approved a contract giving the Highway Department access to artificial intelligence that will help the local government do a quicker, more efficient assessment of roadway conditions.

Public safety agencies are using drones to provide up-to-the-minute overhead coverage for officers on the ground. Police in Dunwoody, Ga., have used them to track suspects and find incident locations.