DrunkEngineer

Two studies dropped last week, which should give politicians like Ontario Premier Doug Ford something to think about, if he could think. One is very local: a traffic count in Toronto’s Bloor Street bike lane, which he intends to rip out because he claims it causes traffic congestion and slows his drive to the office.

On June 11, the Toronto Community Bikeways Coalition set up cameras on the second floor of Curbside Cycle and counted every vehicle that passed over an imaginary line in the road during peak travel times. While Doug Ford claims that only 1.2% of Torontonians commute by bike, the study showed that during the afternoon rush hours, bikes, including e-bikes and other micro mobility devices, represented over 50% of all vehicular traffic.

Without action in Harrisburg to provide new funding for transit, the SEPTA Board today voted to approve the Fiscal Year 2026 Operating Budget, which will cut service by 45% and raise fares 21.5% to fill a $213 million recurring budget deficit.

Under the budget approved by the SEPTA Board today, beginning with the fall schedule change on August 24, customers will first see the elimination of 32 bus routes and significant reductions in trips on all rail services, including the end of special services like Sports Express.

Then on September 1, a fare increase averaging 21.5% for all riders will go into effect. The new base fare for Bus and Metro trips will be $2.90 – tying New York’s MTA for the highest in the country. At the same time, SEPTA will also freeze all hiring, including bus operators. The Authority has worked hard to overcome a chronic shortage of operators that started during the pandemic.

On January 1, service cuts will deepen with the elimination of five Regional Rail lines, more bus routes, and the implementation of a 9 pm curfew on all remaining rail services.

“This budget will effectively dismantle SEPTA – leaving the City and region without the frequent, reliable transit service that has been an engine of economic growth, mobility, and opportunity,” said SEPTA General Manager Scott A. Sauer. “Once this dismantlement begins, it will be almost impossible to reverse, and the economic and social impacts will be immediate and long-lasting for all Pennsylvanians – whether they ride SEPTA or not.”

President Donald Trump’s spending cuts and border security package would inject roughly $150 billion into his mass deportation agenda over the next four years, funding everything from an extension of the United States’ southern border wall to detention centers to thousands of additional law enforcement staff.

The current annual budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the government’s primary department for immigration enforcement, is around $10 billion. If the Republican president’s big bill passes in Congress, the immense cash infusion could reshape America’s immigration system by expanding the law enforcement and detention network while increasing costs to legally immigrate to the U.S.

The bill, which top White House aide and immigration hawk Stephen Miller has called “the most essential piece of legislation currently under consideration in the entire Western World,” sets aside $45 billion to expand the network of immigrant detention facilities for adult migrants and families.

The standards in adult facilities, the bill notes, would be set at “the sole discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security.”

More than $12 billion was also requested for 18,000 new ICE and Border Patrol personnel.

THE IMPACT: ICE has said it wants to increase its current detention capacity from about 41,000 people to 100,000. It’s part of what ICE’s acting director, Todd Lyons, has suggested is a deportation system that could function “like Amazon, trying to get your product delivered in 24 hours.”

ICE currently has about 6,000 deportation officers, a number that’s been stagnant for years.

While expanding staff and detention centers would make it easier for the administration to increase deportations, even the tens of billions of dollars the bill requests may not be enough to meet Trump’s goals. Miller has said ICE should be making 3,000 arrests per day of people in the country illegally. That’s a vast increase over the roughly 650 arrested a day in the first five months of Trump’s second term.

More than a month after a devastating fire in the hourly parking garage at Jacksonville International Airport, the BMW X3 believed to have sparked that fire has been removed from the garage.

A spokesperson with the Jacksonville Aviation Authority confirmed that a photo shared with News4JAX showing a fire-damaged vehicle being lowered by crane onto a tow truck is the BMW in question.

About 1,200 cars were parked in the garage at the time the fire started.

Nearly 50 cars were damaged, and hundreds of them had to be left there initially until drivers were contacted and told they could safely retrieve their vehicles.

JAA officials estimated earlier this month that it could cost at least $38 million to repair the damage and those repairs could take at least 18 months. The third floor, where the fire started on May 16, and the fourth floor of the southern portion of the garage were the most damaged, with part of the area collapsing.

Caltrans has proposed a $500 million project to widen a wine country highway that the agency said could be underwater in 25 years.

Members of the California Transportation Commission will decide at a public meeting beginning Thursday whether to award Caltrans and local agencies a $73 million grant that would cover some of the cost to widen Highway 37 — a roadway linking Vallejo to Sears Point across the Napa Sonoma Marsh, much of which is only one lane in each direction.

In the long term, Caltrans has a plan to replace the current road with an elevated causeway that would move vehicles above the wetlands below. That project would cost more than $10 billion and is not funded.

To deal with Highway 37’s bottleneck in the meantime, the agency has proposed a $500 million “interim project” to widen the existing roadway. The state agency estimated that construction on the first half — a $250 million eastbound lane — would finish in 2029. The plan, Caltrans said, “does not address sea level rise.”

The interim project would ultimately add one tolled lane in each direction as Highway 37 arcs across the northern shore of the San Pablo Bay and plays host to some of the worst traffic jams in the state. The low-lying stretch of highway is vulnerable to sea level rise. Caltrans and the California Ocean Protection Council have said that without intervention, “portions” of the highway “will be completely inundated by 2050.” By that point, two feet of sea level rise is expected.

Bucharest is set to expand its cycling infrastructure with the development of more than 550 kilometers of bike lanes by 2035, according to the new Velo Masterplan unveiled by interim general mayor Stelian Bujduveanu.

The strategic document, now finalized after months of consultations and public debates, outlines the creation of a citywide cycling network aimed at connecting homes with workplaces, schools, public institutions, and commercial areas. It includes 150 km of primary bike routes and 415 km of secondary routes.

A Brooklyn judge has halted the city's plans to tear up three blocks of a protected bike lane — and ordered city lawyers to return later this summer to persuade her that they weren't acting "arbitrarily, capriciously, and illegally" in ordering the hasty removal.

Two weeks ago, Adams held a town hall in Williamsburg where numerous members of the neighborhood’s Hasidic community criticized the bike lane. They cited a viral video where a person riding an e-bike crashed into a young child who dashed into the bike lane from a double parked car.

An online petition against the redesigned bike lane titled “DOT: Please Stop the Murder of our Children” has more than 3,000 signatures.

The grieving parents of a 7-year-old child who died hours after being hit by a car were charged with involuntary manslaughter after allowing him and his brother, 10, to walk home unaccompanied by an adult from a nearby grocery store.

The artificial intelligence, internally dubbed CDRH-GPT, is intended to help staffers at the agency’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, a division responsible for ensuring the safety of devices implanted in the body, as well as essential tools like X-rays and CT scanners.

The division was among those affected by the sweeping mass layoffs at the Department for Health and Human Services earlier this year. While many of the device reviewers were spared, the agency eliminated much of the backend support that enables them to issue approval decisions on time.

The work of reviewers includes sifting through large amounts of data from animal studies and clinical trials. Depending on the applicant, it can take months or even over a year — which an AI tool could feasibly help shorten. 

Experts, however, are concerned that the FDA’s push toward AI could outpace what the technology is actually ready for. 

Since taking over the agency on April 1, Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary has pushed to integrate artificial intelligence across the FDA’s divisions. How this move into AI could affect the safety and effectiveness of drugs or medical devices hasn’t been determined.

"It has been dubbed Britain's 'most woke' roundabout because drivers must give priority to pedestrians, then cyclists, and then other cars and lorries before continuing on themselves. Locals have pointed out the priority for cyclists and pedestrians is unnecessary as only cars and lorries regularly use the Boundary Way route."