A recent Momentum Mag article provides an in-depth analysis of bicycle equity. In predominantly white, upper-income regions of many cities, residents enjoy car-free plazas and protected bike; in the very same cities’ poorer regions where the majority of residents are people of color, many streets don’t even have sidewalks or crosswalks, let alone a bike lane. This imbalance has devastating social consequences. A safe, strong, biking and walking community can produce significant social gains: reducing health disparities, significantly lowering household transportation expenses, creating jobs and providing access to employment, lowering air and noise pollution, reducing mental health problems, and reducing violence by improving social cohesion. When people are excluded from being stakeholders in policy-making and infrastructure planning, they end up with less access to safe cycling, and are in turn denied its social gains. https://bit.ly/2gTFBsQ

The US DOT Fast Lane blog reports NHTSA’s new sound requirement for all newly-manufactured hybrid and electric vehicles (http://bit.ly/2gHuNiY) will help pedestrians, especially those who are blind or who have low vision, detect the presence, direction and location of these vehicles when these vehicles are traveling at low speeds. US DOT estimates the sound requirement will prevent 2,400 pedestrian injuries each year once all hybrids in the fleet are properly equipped. http://bit.ly/2frxEO1

US DOT released its 2016 Recreational Trails Program Annual Report on the use and benefits of Federal Recreational Trails Program (RTP) funds across the United States. See: https://bit.ly/2Jx782I  Also, the RTP Database (http://bit.ly/TO0nP3) provides an online record of RTP project data for over 21,350 projects. Users can search the database by state, county, Congressional District, trail name, project name, permissible use category, and year awarded, and print reports from the search results.

The Alliance for Biking and Walking has collected and analyzed data on bicycling and walking in all 50 states, the 52 largest U.S. cities, and a select number of mid-sized cities to create its biennial Bicycling and Walking in the United States: 2016 Benchmarking Report (http://bit.ly/1nvZzgu). The 2016 Report combines original research with over 20 government data sources to compile data on bicycling and walking levels and demographics, safety, funding, policies, infrastructure, education, public health indicators, and economic impacts.

Boston and Washington D.C., tied at the top of the 2016 Benchmarking Report for the share of commuters who bike or walk to work in the 50 most populous U.S. cities— 16.7 percent of both cities’ commuters bike or walk to work. That’s a 2 percent increase in D.C. since the 2014 report, with Boston’s rates unchanged in the same time period.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) in early September released the National Transit Map data, a geospatial database containing the information from 270 transit agencies that provides open, machine-readable data about their stops, routes, and schedules. This new U.S. DOT initiative will help pinpoint “transit deserts”—areas that lack sufficient services.

The national, openly available map of fixed-guideway and fixed-route transit service in America will allow the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to demonstrate the importance and role of transit in American society and to identify and address gaps in access to public transportation. It will also support research, planning and analysis on the benefits of transit, such as the economic impacts of transit on a community’s economic development, or on reducing poverty in low-income neighborhoods.