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I would support a law banning private automobiles in cities.

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I would support a law banning private automobiles in cities. Automobiles take up so much room on city streets especially after snow storms. They cause unnecessary congestion and require additional lanes for parking and smooth traffic flow.

Instead if you lived in a city and wanted to have a car, you could park in privately financed parking lot or garage on the outskirts of the city, take a ride share or bus. The increased use of transit in the city would make it cost effective and lead to much more regular bus service throughout the day.

Trees Shadow the Path

Why New York should eliminate cash bail for smaller crimes | CSNY

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Why New York should eliminate cash bail for smaller crimes | CSNY

Money should not be the determining factor for someone’s freedom. That’s why our bail bill carefully balances public safety concerns with the need for fairness and justice, and protects the presumption of innocence.

The bill eliminates cash bail for all nonviolent felonies and almost all misdemeanors. Instead of setting cash bail, judges would have the authority to release people with non-monetary conditions, such as having someone check in with pretrial services agencies.

It levels the playing field by eliminating the shameful practice of imprisoning persons simply because they are too poor to pay their way out of jail. This change will go a long way towards advancing equal justice and making pretrial release the norm and pretrial detention the exception.

Michigan’s 75-MPH Speed Limit Has Made Highways More Dangerous

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Michigan’s 75-MPH Speed Limit Has Made Highways More Dangerous

Speed can still kill. That's the lesson Michigan is learning on the 600-plus miles of rural freeways where the speed limit was raised from 70 mph to 75 mph thanks to a 2017 law. With the number of drivers now going over 80 mph on the increase, more people are getting into crashes and losing their lives.

Bridge Media analyzed state police records and found that roads with the new 75-mph speed limit had, on average, more crashes and injuries in 2018 (the full first year for the new limits) compared to the entire road network. While the statewide average for crashes rose 3.4 percent in 2018 compared to the annual average from 2014-16 (remember, the speed limits went up part of the way through 2017), the average on the 75-mph roads went up 17.2 percent, Bridge Media found.

The real-world average speed increase on the 75-mph roads in one single-day test sample was just under 2 mph (from 74.6 mph in 2016 to 76.9 mph in 2018), but the total number of people going over 80 mph went from 10 percent to 40 percent of all cars. The result for some rural Michigan roads is that plenty of people are still driving well under 75 mph, but more are now going even faster.