City of Yarra councillors end trial, claiming the company has not done enough to stop dumping and misuse of share bikes

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Shared ebikes will disappear from some inner-city Melbourne streets after a council scrapped its agreement with Australia’s largest electric bike operator.

The City of Yarra on Tuesday voted to end its memorandum of understanding with Lime, terminating its almost six-year-long trial.

City plans to triple system of underground pipes that distribute chilled river water, reducing need for individual cooling units

As heatwaves intensify across Europe, most cities are reaching for a familiar fix of more air conditioning. But in 1990s Paris, planning began for a different kind of solution: one of the world’s largest district cooling networks.

The system has 120kms (75-miles) of underground pipes distributing chilled water to museums, offices, hospitals, schools and other public buildings including the Louvre, the Grand Palais, and some luxury hotels and office districts. Instead of thousands of individual air-conditioning units, cooling is produced centrally and shared across the city like a utility.

For those of us who can’t drive due to disabilities, the drawbacks of these vehicles are vastly outweighed by the possibilities they offer

The robotaxis are coming! The robotaxis are coming! Well, actually, they’re already here. Until now they’ve been the stuff of science fiction, but this summer London’s streets have seen Silicon Valley-based company Waymo testing out self-driving cars. It hasn’t been the smoothest of introductions – from cars getting stuck in a cul-de-sac and repeatedly waking up the residents of Shoreditch to one driving into a crime scene, after a double stabbing in Harlesden.

The automated vehicles (AVs) have so far had trained drivers waiting behind the wheel to take control if needed, but will soon be shedding their human minders. Waymo and British rival Wayve are hoping to launch driverless minicabs in the capital this year, subject to approval from the British government and Transport for London, among others. A subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, Waymo currently operates ride-hailing services in 10 US cities, but London, with its narrow streets and densely populated centre, will serve as one of its biggest challenges yet.

Gabriel Stewart is a freelance writer and an intern on the Guardian’s positive action scheme

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The influential role vacated by the new Makerfield MP will be fiercely contested by Labour, Reform and the Greens

As Andy Burnham maps out the final steps on his path to Downing Street, he may feel that his future is clear. But a look back over his shoulder reveals a cloudier outlook, inviting the question: what now happens to his former role as Greater Manchester’s mayor?

An election has been set for 30 July, and with the job widely seen as having grown under Burnham’s tenure to become one of the most influential in British politics outside Westminster, Labour is desperate to cling on to it – but parties to its right and left both see an opportunity.

Ten years ago, after complaining that traffic was ‘driving him nuts’, Musk’s Boring Company began building underground tunnels to ease congestion on the roads. Did he overpromise and underdeliver?

It’s another blindingly bright day in Las Vegas but I’m 30ft underground and strapped in for a rocket ride to the future. Actually, it’s a Tesla ride to the future, and not a self-driving one. And it’s pretty slow – my driver tells me the speed limit down here is 30mph. It’s also pretty short: the journey is over in a matter of minutes. In fact, the Vegas Loop is a pretty underwhelming experience: a brief trundle down a white-walled tunnel only slightly larger than the vehicle itself, lined by strips of LEDs that change colour every few seconds, in an attempt to inject some Vegas glitz. I’d been hoping to ask other Loop-riders what they made of the experience, but … there aren’t any. I’m the only person here.

This is not the futuristic transport solution Elon Musk originally promised. When he first announced this innovative technology in 2017, it was accompanied by sci-fi visuals showing a car pulling over from the street traffic on to an elevator platform, which then descended into a network of tunnels and whizzed along on an “electric skate” at 200km/h (124mph). “There’s no real limit to how many levels of tunnel you can have … so you can alleviate any arbitrary level of urban congestion,” Musk said. A few months earlier, with characteristic edgelordly nonchalance, Musk had announced on Twitter: “Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging …” Followed shortly after by: “I am actually going to do this.” He did, and he named it the Boring Company.