Jun 30, 2019 9:00 AM

Bike-Friendly Cities, a New Urbanism, and More Car News This Week

Copenhagenize Design published its list of the world's top 20 cities for cyclists, and Sidewalk Labs unveiled a plan to remake part of Toronto.

The world is full of problems. So sometimes it’s nice to give an enthusiastic thumbs-up to people who have solved some of them. This week, WIRED partnered with the Danish urban planning and design firm Copenhagenize Design to publish a list of the world’s top 20 cities for cyclists. These places are working towards public health, climate, and traffic goals by making it easier to get around on two wheels instead of four.

Also attempting to solve problems this week: Google parent Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs unit, which believes the fix for all manner of urban ills comes down to data—and hopes to test out its ideas in Toronto. Oh, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who really wants you to buy an electric car. It’s been a week. Let’s get you caught up.

Headlines

Stories you might have missed from WIRED this week

What the Boeing 737 MAX and the car you drive might have in common.
If, by chance, you did not have time to page through all 1,524 pages of Sidewalk Labs’ ambitious plans to remake a slice of Toronto in Google’s image, here’s what you need to know.
Electric car sales are struggling, but Arnold Schwarzenegger, plus an army of savvy marketers, are here to help.
Guess how many North American cities are on this year’s edition of the 20 most bike-friendly ones on the planet?
Los Angeles has relinquished control of the digital tool it uses to regulate scooters. Will cities and private transportation companies like Spin, Uber, Lyft, and Bird now become friends?
From WIRED Opinion: What China’s previous ebike boom can teach America about scooters.

River Patrol and Dive Team Rescue of the Week

Congrats to the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office dive team, which this week pulled 57 scooters and bicycles from the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon. The lights on at least one Lime scooter were still working. Tossing scooters into rivers, oceans, and seas has become a meme of the scooter-share era, with some environmental advocates complaining about the discarded vehicles’ effects on waterways.

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Stat of the Week

Dozens!

The number of hardware and software engineers who moved from the small autonomous vehicle developer Drive.ai to Apple this week, according to Axios. About 90 other workers were laid off in the transaction. The acquisition seems to confirm that Apple is still working on self-driving vehicles—and that it’s hard out there for a full-stack self-driving vehicle startup, now that the perfected technology feels further away.

Required Reading

News from elsewhere on the internet

At least 13 roboticists from the now-shuttered robotics company Anki have new jobs in Waymo’s self-driving truck division.
Federal prosecutors investigating crashes of the Boeing 737 MAX expand their probe to the 787 Dreamliner.
Larry Page’s flying taxi startup Kitty Hawk will work with Boeing to “advance safe urban air mobility.”
Grim times at electric vehicle startup Faraday Future, which has fired dozens of employees.
Another Tesla Model S catches fire, this one in Shanghai, but the automaker says it found no systemic flaws.
How Sikh truck drivers are transforming the American highway.
Explaining the Los Angeles bus rider exodus.

In the Rearview

Essential stories from WIRED’s canon
If you think competent urban cycling infrastructure is cool, chances are you’ll also enjoy this 2006 profile of a man who built a cycling machine that could go very, very, very fast.