Future Timeline

Rainfall and floods are only expected to worsen due to climate change, and …(New York) city’s wastewater and drainage infrastructure isn’t equipped for the pressure. A FEMA report from this summer concluded that most cities’ drainage systems “were not built to handle the amount of runoff from increasingly intense storms.”

Those infrastructure problems are set to worsen, compounding the impact. Erika Smull, a municipal bonds analyst at Breckinridge Capital Advisors, is a water utilities expert and former environmental engineer. She explained to me earlier this year that US water infrastructure “is reaching or has reached the end of its usable life. It’s been there for longer than it should be. We are entering into a new era.”

Through its Maps app, Google has access to a monster trove of daily traffic data – and it's using it to provide cities with free, AI-optimized traffic signal timing suggestions that could reduce stop/starts by 30% and intersection emissions by 10%.

Project Green Light has partnered thus far with 12 cities worldwide, to provide timing recommendations on 70 different intersections. It gives these recommendations free of charge, for now, via a little web interface, and the company says that rolling the changes out can be a five-minute job that uses the city's existing management systems.

Data is one key here; city traffic engineers simply don't have access to the breadth and quality of information that Google gets simply by virtue of having so many Android devices and in-car navigation systems online and constantly reporting location data.

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Louisiana is a step closer to connecting its capital city to New Orleans via a revived train line. Gov. John Bel Edwards has signed a service development agreement that will advance the return of intercity passenger rail service between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, about an hour-long commute.

The agreement, signed Thursday, is a breakthrough for a project that has been in the works since 2008. “All eight years I’ve been governor, I’ve been working to reestablish rail service between Baton Rouge and New Orleans,” Edwards told WBRZ-TV. According to the agreement, passenger service could start as early as 2027.

The plan is to start with one round trip a day. More rides will be added as riders increase. Along the route, passengers can expect stops in Gonzales, Laplace, and Jefferson Parish. “An Amtrak line connecting Louisiana’s capital to the largest metropolitan area in the state will have immense economic benefits for both cities and the parishes in between,” Edwards said in a news release.

“Not only will this service potentially reduce the number of vehicles on the roadways which will result in less congestion, but it will also connect communities through employment opportunities and allow for more transportation options for festivals, sporting events, and concerts.” A $20 million settlement from the Road Home Program is helping fund the project, reviving the passenger train service that stopped running in 1969.