New bus lanes on 85 were on the table as part of the Policy Advisory Board’s work. Haven’t been able to find any news on what’ll happen with those, unfortunately.
This may be true in suburban USA, but at least in European cities, sidewalks are used by pedestrians. You have to be alert riding a bike, but it’s a far cry from attempting to weave through foot traffic. The narrower roads also allow for quicker traffic light cycles, which is nicer than waiting a few minutes to cross your average suburban US arterial.
You’re right, I was thinking about a breach of privacy in general instead of actual legal consequences. (Though the possibility of governments backdooring Apple’s servers to access decrypted files stands, that shouldn’t make a difference with this iCloud-Photos-only spyware)
Vienna built a bunch of social housing under social-democratic rule to decrease rents, and unlike most other cities, they opened it to a relatively wide income bracket. The value added, if you want to call it that, is _less_ money is spent on rents in the city. Supposedly, a majority of units in Vienna still falls under social-housing restrictions, though I don't have the time to dig deeper now and so I can't tell you what proportion is directly owned by a public enterprise and what proportion is housing co-ops (a somewhat popular model in Europe).
Ikea's “Gerton” tabletop (90€ / $100. 155×75cm = 61×29.5”) is really, really nice — it uses ≈5cm-wide beech hardwood strips glued together and reinforced across the width with some metal . It works with Bekant legs (if you have a 10mm wood bit and some masking tape handy), which are also available as sit/stand legs (that's 430€ / $350, though. the non-adjustable ones are a lot cheaper.)
Onboard computers can have compasses and a pretty good idea of how fast they're going. You could just be monitoring for any weird jumps or incongruences (eg. there is a road here, but it's at a different angle than the GPS signal indicates, the path recently followed doesn't match up with the map based on current GPS reading, ...) assuming you have good enough accuracy and can track it over time.
Can't help being reminded of that talk by Gary Bernhardt: “The Birth & Death of JavaScript”[0] — exploring a hypothetical future where JS takes over everything without (most) anyone using it of their own volition.
As a ballpark for expenses: I know people paying well under €300 per month for rent in smaller cities. €2/day lunch at university is possible (though not necessarily tasty).