July 29: Renaming 30th St. Station | Laura Sparks to head William Penn | Local impact of the downgrade | Bike share as transit

Chaka Fattah’s bill to rename 30th Street Station is sailing through Congress, with the support of every member of the Pennsylvania delegation.

Peter J. Degnan is resigning from the William Penn Foundation, and Laura Sparks will become the new Executive Director. Sparks says the Foundation’s programmatic focus will be broadly the same – education, watershed protection, and arts and culture.

The state Public Utility Commission will hold a hearing on permanent licenses for Uber and Lyft in August. PUC recently granted the ride-sharing companies temporary legal status to operate in Pittsburgh.

Emily Previti explains how the state’s credit downgrade will be felt at the local level. These agencies and authorities were also downgraded: Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, Pennsylvania Economic Development Financing Authority, Commonwealth Financing Authority, Philadelphia Regional Port Authority, and Sports & Exhibition Authority of Pittsburgh & Allegheny

Berkeley researchers Elliot Martin and Susan Shaheen give us an idea of how bike share changes mobility in cities. “The denser the urban environment (particularly for rail), the more bikesharing provides new connections that substitute for existing ones. The less dense the environment, the more bikesharing establishes new connections to the existing public transit system.”

Rachel Mendelson makes a compelling case that the work of political activists like Mark Gorton and Transportation Alternatives deserves more credit for changing transportation politics in New York City over the past 10 years than top-down efforts by Michael Bloomberg.