This year, the transportation sector was marked by transit system death spirals, service cuts and escalating federal attacks on public investment — even as car dependence left many residents with few real options. Yet readers remained deeply engaged with stories about what can work. With coverage of cities still leaning into zero-fare public transit, new models for sidewalk repair reform, and bold approaches to guerilla urbanism, Next City examined where mobility systems are breaking down and where cities are charting new paths forward.

Below, find this year’s most-read stories on transit, mobility and infrastructure.

L.A.’s Traffic Ordinance Went Into Effect 100 Years Ago. It Changed Streets Across America.

American streets were once dominated by people. A documentary travelogue of New York City in 1911 is crowded with pedestrians crisscrossing streets in their daily routines. Trollies, carriages and the occasional automobile jostle by, unhindered by traffic signals or centerlines.

In the early 1900s, L.A. had the most extensive electric streetcar system anywhere. From Minneapolis to Washington, D.C., bicycles were used by women and men commuting to work in the 1890s. People rode bikes in U.S. cities as much as they now ride in Amsterdam and Copenhagen, the best cycling cities in the world.

This was all before the Los Angeles Traffic Ordinance was passed. January 24, 2025, marks the centennial of the implementation of a 35-page bureaucratic document that redefined the use of America’s streets, tailoring them to the benefit of the automotive industry. —Alison Sant, January 2025

What Free Transit Looks Like in Albuquerque, Nearly Two Years After the City Eliminated Fares

Albuquerque made zero-fare transit permanent in November 2023, becoming one of the largest U.S. cities to implement zero-fare transit. About a year and a half later, transit officials and advocates say the zero-fare program is working as intended, by serving the city’s lowest-income residents. As some other mid-sized cities walk back their plans to make transit free, in Albuquerque the program is sticking around.

Ridership has steadily increased since Albuquerque first piloted zero fares in 2022, with overall ridership up 20% in the past three years. City officials credit the zero fare program with helping ABQ Ride’s ridership numbers creep back up toward pre-pandemic figures. —Erin Rode, July 2025

Cities Have a Public Bathroom Crisis. Are Smart, Portable Bathrooms the Way Forward?

After years of complaints from riders, LA Metro is rolling out more free public Throne bathrooms this year at transit stations across L.A. County. The portable, touchless trailers are self-contained, requiring no water or electric hookup. This allows the company to rapidly deploy restrooms wherever needed — like a busy train station. The new location at Little Tokyo station has been particularly popular, with 120 to 150 uses per day during the weekend. Thrones have also been deployed in the D.C. area; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Beverly Hills; and in the Bay area.

Throne says its “smart” bathrooms use accountability to solve the age-old problem of unwanted bathroom activity. Accessing a Throne requires a unique user ID, usually a cell phone number. For those without access to a phone, Throne also distributes key cards through local service providers. “[It’s] just behavioral science,” explains co-founder Jessica Heinzelman. —Maylin Tu, March 2025

Should Cities Take Over Responsibility for Fixing Sidewalks?

About 40% of Denver’s sidewalks are missing or don’t meet the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Remarkably, the city’s own plan recommended a fix over 20 years ago: Move responsibility for sidewalk repair from property owners to the city and implement an annual fee to pay for the program.

The fix might seem simple, but it took over 20 years and grassroots advocacy to make it happen. “In 2022 we just got tired of waiting and decided to do a citizen-initiated ordinance,” says Jill Locantore, executive director of the Denver Streets Partnership. The ballot measure, dubbed “Denver Deserves Sidewalks,” swayed 56% of voters. There was no organized opposition to the measure. —Maylin Tu, July 2025

Why Are We Still Building Car-Oriented Development Next to Transit?

We keep calling for transit-oriented development. Yet, too often, it is still car-oriented development built next to a train, and our cities are missing a golden opportunity.

Despite placing density near rail and rapid transit, we continue to default for wide roads and high parking ratio. In doing so, we dilute the very purpose of transit-oriented development: to shift travel behavior away from the car and toward transit, walking and cycling.

Billions are being spent on new lines across North America. If land use around stations is still car-dominated, ridership will underperform and fiscal returns will disappoint. Every square foot of asphalt is land lost to housing, parks or commerce – an unaffordable tradeoff in growing regions. —Naama Blonder, September 2025

Could Cities Partner With Guerilla Urbanists For Safer Streets?

Painting a crosswalk is cheap and easy. A group of neighbors can paint an entire intersection in one morning for $100 or less. Getting the city of Los Angeles to paint a crosswalk, on the other hand, might take 14 years and the death of a 9-year-old boy.

Across L.A., neighbors are banding together to paint crosswalks to protest the city’s failure to protect people outside of cars. People’s Vision Zero is painting crosswalks across the city to protest for safer streets. Painting guerilla crosswalks in L.A. is not new — the anonymous group Crosswalks Collective LA has been doing it since 2022. What is new: UCLA law student Jonathan Hale is putting his name and his face on the movement, challenging the city to take a public stance on vigilante crosswalks. –Maylin Tu, November 2025

Why Is Ontario Ripping Out Toronto’s Hard-Fought Bike Lanes? It’s Not About Traffic.

Late last year, about 1,000 cyclists gathered in Toronto to protest against Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s controversial Bill 212, ostensibly meant to address Toronto’s hellish traffic. The legislation greenlights the removal of major downtown Toronto bike lanes on the bustling Yonge, Bloor and University Avenues — and curtails potential bike lanes by forcing the municipal councils to gain approval from the province before any future installations.

Why is the province attacking bike lanes now, after three years of construction? Experts say it’s a clear political move to undermine the city’s urban core rather than a true effort to address the congestion crisis. –Michael Koy, January 2025

In the Wake of Devastating Wildfires, Could L.A. Rebuild More Connected Streets?

It’s an unforgettable scene from the Palisades Fire: The screech of metal-on-metal as cars abandoned on Sunset Boulevard are pushed aside by a bulldozer. Residents stuck in gridlock left their vehicles to flee on foot during a mass evacuation, blocking the way for emergency response vehicles.

For UCLA urban planning professor Adam Millard-Ball, that scene of gridlock illustrates a familiar problem: Sprawl and the car dependency it requires. Millard-Ball and his colleagues mapped street connectivity, including the dead ends, cul-de-sacs and loops that decrease it, worldwide. He couldn’t help but notice that the neighborhoods that struggled to safely evacuate are also some of the least connected in L.A. County, with only a few ways to get in and out.

Predictably, this causes potentially deadly gridlock during a disaster, forcing both fleeing residents and emergency vehicles into the same chokepoints. —Maylin Tu, January 2025

This post was originally published on Next City.