Japan slows its streets way down
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Join us for CoMotion LA ‘26 this November 18-19 for our 10th edition: Cities on the Move: Mega-events, AI & Shaping What’s Next — featuring the OMF Summit Track.
Japan’s roads are five times safer than America’s, but that’s just not good enough for the Japanese: they’re cutting the speed limit on residential roads in half. Speaking of road safety, robotaxis could do wonders in rural areas where people tend not to have alternatives to driving and are more likely to die in car crashes. Unfortunately, that’s not where robotaxi companies want to operate.
Plus, the United Arab Emirates is hungry for Boring tunnels, America’s solar industry is booming and Salt Lake City is the latest American city struggling to build desperately needed housing over the objections of older homeowners.
What you need to know
Japan slashes speed limits: Japan cuts the speed limit on narrow urban roads in half –– from 60 km/h to 30 km/h (37 mph to 19 mph). The dramatic speed reduction applies to about 70% of the country’s roads. Japan was already a global leader in traffic safety; its traffic fatality rate is about half that of western Europe and one-fifth that of the U.S. Sadly, the nation that would benefit the most from reducing speeds seems the least interested in doing it.
More money for Boring: Elon Musk’s Boring company raises $3 billion at a $23 billion valuation thanks to a big investment from the United Arab Emirates. The funding announcement says the investment will help the company “deploy mass quantities of underground infrastructure across the UAE.”
Breaking Through Multifamily Charging with Jeremy Cohen, SWTCH Energy
Nearly 40 million people in the United States live in a multifamily building, where EV charging access has to be shared. But the majority of both funding and infrastructure devoted to charging is still either in the roadway or in single family homes. What’s an apartment-dweller to do?
Enter SWTCH Energy, which rapidly scales the EV charging network in multifamily and commercial buildings; in this episode of Fast Forward, host Nick Perloff-Giles sits down with Jeremy Cohen, Head of Real Estate Partnerships, to talk about the challenges of compliance, the future of charging, and what’s in store for the market more broadly.
America’s solar boom: Despite a federal government hostile to green energy, U.S. solar power capacity is now great enough to power 50 million homes following a major building surge in the first half of the year. Solar and battery storage projects accounted for 70% of all new electricity-generating capacity added to the U.S. grid this year.
inDrive wants your attention: inDrive, the Silicon Valley ride-hailing platform where customers negotiate fares with drivers, is expanding into following in the footsteps of more established rivals by expanding into delivery and advertising. It recently launched “Ride Media” to show ads to customers in the app while they’re waiting for their ride. In the end, 20 minutes of your attention may very well be worth more than your fare.
Salt Lake City faces a big challenge over small houses: Like many other major American cities, the rapidly growing Utah capital is trying to enable a greater variety of housing types in single-family neighborhoods. And as is the case in virtually every other American city, the proposed changes are meeting fierce resistance from incumbent homeowners.
What we’re reading
Robotaxis aren’t where they’re needed most: In CityLab, David Zipper writes that rural areas are where AVs would do the most good because there aren’t already other mobility options like public transit. Plus, rural residents are more likely to die in car crashes. Unfortunately, for the same reason that traditional taxis shun rural areas, so do robotaxi operators.
