It's been a very stressful week, and late last night, needing a break from the news, I found myself watching this video produced in January by the Portland (Oregon) Bureau of Transportation to show off a new downtown bus lane:
Your mileage may vary, but for me, something about watching those buses fly through traffic helped temper the intense anxiety I've been feeling the past week. Bus lanes can't stop police brutality, but if we can transform city streets to make them work better for everyone, then we can also transform other systems that institutionalize racism and violence against people of color.
So, please join me in taking some deep breaths and watching some city buses leapfrog past single-occupant vehicles:
Flower Street, downtown Los Angeles:
A bird's eye view of a dedicated bus lane in action. We're moving nearly 70 buses an hour through the Flower Street bus lane each evening! pic.twitter.com/funsVVdX81
— Metro Los Angeles (@metrolosangeles) July 23, 2019
Brighton Ave. in Boston (in a video made by the Loop Lab, a Cambridge non-profit that trains women and people of color in digital media production):
And a 2018 MBTA time-lapse of the Roslindale bus lane (which will soon be duplicated to serve the southbound direction):
