DrunkEngineer

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."

According to prosecutors, Harris killed Whitley in retaliation for a fight the men had two months earlier. At the time, Harris was working as an activist and life coach at a community center in Hunters Point.

That case was already working its way through the legal system, with delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, court records show. Now, Harris has been charged with three additional counts of murder.

The Cuomo violation — which would result in a traffic ticket if it had been seen by a police officer, but in a criminal summons if he had been on a bike — followed the endorsement announcement.

It is unclear why Cuomo would drive into the most-congested part of the city, which, conveniently, is the part of the city with the best transit. The endorsement meeting was steps from Penn Station, as well as the A/C/E and 1/2/3 trains.

The vote came after its sponsor Sen. Andrew Gounardes (D-Bay Ridge) showed up to lobby his colleagues on its behalf. He made his standard pitch: The bill, which requires a speed-limiting device to be installed in the cars of motorists with six or more camera-issued speeding tickets in 12 months, is better than license suspension because everyone knows that drivers in a car-dependent state like ours will still drive even if their license is suspended.

It’s official. As my colleague David Dayen and I both predicted, enough Democratic senators have voted for a crypto “regulation” bill (called the GENIUS Act), basically written by the industry and Donald Trump’s minions, that it passed easily on Monday. If anything, it was even worse than I expected—just nine Democrats were needed to get to the necessary 60 votes, but 16 voted for it. (Two Republicans, Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Jerry Moran of Kansas, voted against it.)

This vote was technically for cloture, meaning the bill couldn’t be halted by a filibuster, but it’s the only vote that mattered. The official vote, now scheduled for Thursday, is only a formality, and I expect several of these senators to vote against it so they can pretend they aren’t monumentally corrupt.

The Crypto Sixteen are the following: Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who co-sponsored the bill, Adam Schiff (D-CA), Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), Mark Warner (D-VA), Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), John Fetterman (D-PA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), and Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE). Every one of them ought to be primaried in their next election.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who has more experience in financial regulation than anyone in Congress, outlined the problems in a speech on the Senate floor. First, the bill gives a clear green light to Trump’s world-historical corruption. “Passing this bill means that we can expect more anonymous buyers, big companies, and foreign governments to use the president’s stablecoin as both a shadowy bank account shielded from government oversight and as a way to pay off the president personally. For crooks, it’s a two-for-one,” she said.