The Week Observed: November 21, 2025
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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15-minute city
16 min read
The article extensively discusses the 15-minute city concept, its desirability among homebuyers, and a new study mapping accessibility. The Wikipedia article covers the urban planning theory's origins, Carlos Moreno's work, and the controversy around conspiracy theories mentioned in the piece.
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Highway Trust Fund
8 min read
The article references proposed elimination of transit funding through highway trust funds and mentions the gas tax shortfall. Understanding how the Highway Trust Fund works, its history, and chronic funding gaps illuminates the policy debate at the article's center.
What City Observatory Did This Week
Last train to Clarksville? Lack of transit funding could derail the Interstate Bridge Project. No one has committed money to build or operate the key light rail segment of the IBR project. The “deal” has always been that Washington state got a widened highway if Oregon got light rail.
The Trump Administration actively hostile to transit funding and to the Portland metropolitan area. IBR isn’t even planning on filing an application for federal funds until 2028, well after it starts construction
There is no plan for paying for the operating costs--neither of the region’s transit agencies--Tri-Met and CTRAN--have committed to spending the money. Much of Clark County doesn’t want anything to do with light rail, and certainly not to pay for it. The project’s planning documents called for an agreement to be reached years ago--but it still hasn’t happened.
Must Read
The end of federal funding for transit? Politico reports (paywall), that leaked documents show that the US Department of Transportation is proposing to eliminate federal funding for transit through the highway trust funds and also end the ability of states to “flex” highway funding to transit. The results, according to Transportation for America, would be devastating for the nation’s transit systems.
In a statement, Transportation for America’s Steve Davis says:
“This short-sighted proposal will annihilate state and local transportation budgets, strand millions of Americans who depend on transit every day in red and blue states alike, produce chaos and increase congestion, seize control from states, and utterly fail to actually solve our most pressing long-term transportation funding issues. The highway formula program alone spends $20 billion more than what the gas tax brings in every year—stealing transit funds won’t change that.”
The good news, if there is any, according to Davis, is that this should put dramatically change the discussion over proposed transportation reauthorization legislation in the coming year. This major existential threat to transit should end the “business as usual” approach to reauthorization, and provoke some serious examination of a program that has routinely raided general funds to subsidize highway construction and produced little to show for it in terms of tangible results like reduced congestion or improved safety.
Paul Krugman on cities and agglomeration economies. There have been headlines claiming that New York’s election of Zohran Mamdani, a avowed Democratic Socialist as Mayor will prompt capitalists to run for
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