Talking Headways: A Streetsblog Podcast

This week we're joined by Yonah Freemark of the Transport Politic for our annual prediction extravaganza! Find out how last year's predictions held up and whether you agree with this year's thoughts on Montreal transit and Bus Rapid Transit in Boston. We also discuss the leaked infrastructure plan from the new administration and talk about our favorite writers focused on urban issues.

This week's episode features Fehr and Peers Ron Milam and me discussing the differences between the Transportation Research Board conference in Washington DC and the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, both of which took place on the second week in January. We discuss all the interesting topics that emerged from both conferences including delivery drones, curb management, massive data collection from autonomous vehicles, and the potential uses and rights issues that might arise in the built environment from the use of augmented reality.

This week we're back at NACTO 2017 in Chicago with a series of speakers that did quick presentations on how the work we do as advocates to change minds. Skye Duncan hosts and starts off with a discussion of the NACTO Global Designing Cities Initiative. Chris Bruntlett talks about the work he and his family do at Modacity "marketing the lifestyle of cycling". Ed Solis of The City of San Jose describes Viva Calle, San Jose's Cyclovia. Kris Carter of the City of Boston talks about the safety competition app "Boston's Safest Driver". Ankita Chachra discusses the language of design and tools to make change in small ways that empower citizens to demand change. And finally Ronnie Matthew Harris talks about showing people in his neighborhood alternative ways to plan journeys without the car.

This week we're back at the NACTO Designing Cities conference for the closing plenary. Paris' Deputy Mayor for Transportation and Public Space Christophe Najdovski discusses all the improvements that are being made to the city's transportation network. He chats about expanding the subway and tram networks, improving cycling infrastructure, creating more space for people in public squares and pedestrianizing the left bank of the River Seine.

This week we're chatting again with Jonn Ellege of CityMetric. This time it's my turn to interview and we cover a lot of ground. We talk about housing in London and out including the basics of council housing. We chat about major transportation projects including Crossrail and high speed rail while also discuss what's happening to the buses on Oxford street and how Transport for London is regulating Uber.

This week we're joined by Breen Masciotra, TOD Manager for the Port Authorty of Allegheny County and Karina Ricks, Director of the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure at The City of Pittsburgh. We discuss transportation in Pittsburgh and the challenges they face including topography, new technologies, and hostile streets. We also talk about awesome improvements to the system including new bus rapid transit, transit oriented development, eco innovation districts, and connecting multiple mobility types.

This week we're at the NACTO Designing Cities Conference in Chicago and hear keynotes from Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Illinois Department of Transportation's Director of Planning and Programming Erin Aleman. The Mayor discusses Chicago's distinct advantages compared to other cities as well as improvements that have been made to the cities transportation system. He also talks about new funding sources including a ride hailing fee for transit capital and why those things are related. In her discussion after the Mayor, Erin Aleman discusses how IDOT is working to use NACTO's street design guides, how improvements are being made to reduce fatalities on streets, and how transportation affects everyone.

This week we're joined by James Corless, CEO of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, the Sacramento area's MPO and COG. We chat with James about the Sacramento region and its connections to both urban and rural economies, his past working on federal transportation policy in Washington DC, why it's kind of ridiculous to do 30 year regional long range transportation plans, and why mid-sized cities are part of a whole new space race for providing jobs and housing around the United States.

This week we chat with Benjamin De La Pena, Deputy Director for Policy, Planning, Mobility, and Right of Way at Seattle DOT. We talk about SDOT's New Mobility Playbook which offers strategies for future transportation that focuses on people first. Benjamin also discusses his affinity for international transportation, how we help the unbanked with transportation solutions, and how organizations can get ahead on policy during this whirlwind time for new mobility.

This week we're sharing the last plenary session of the Rail~volution conference which was a panel discussion of three current mayors of major United States cities hosted by Maurice Jones of LISC. Mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland, Mayor Bill Peduto of Pittsburgh, and Mayor Michael Hancock of Denver discuss transportation and innovation in their cities including civic focused non-profits, public-private partnerships, neighborhoods pressures and resilience.

This week we're back again at Rail~Volution and joined by Diana Mendes, Transit/Rail Practice Leader and Vice President at HNTB. We talk about how Diana met the author of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and what needs to change about environmental planning. She talks about the environmental planning process for the Lower Manhattan Recovery after 9-11 in addition to early use of GIS.

This week we're back at the Rail~Volution conference in Denver talking with Congressman Earl Blumenauer who represents Oregon's 3rd District which includes parts of Portland. Congressman Blumenauer discusses how Rail~Volution got its start, how we can use congestion pricing and road user charges to pay for transportation, Vision Zero, and why urbanists should be thinking about the Farm Bill

This week we're joined by Tony Dutzik of the Frontier Group and Steven Higashide of TransitCenter to discuss their new report entitled Who Pays for Parking? We discuss where these parking tax subsidies come from, what are some case studies of cities that have learned how to create value from parking, and who benefits from these parking subsidies.

This week on the podcast we're bringing you an episode we recorded at Rail~Volution in Denver in front of a live audience. I was joined by transit advocate and Maryland local Dan Reed to talk about the Purple Line light rail project. After 31 years of discussion the Purple Line is finally under construction and Dan gives us some background on the project including where the project goes, how the public private partnership was put together and how lawsuits just couldn't keep a good line down. We also learn how Dan used to talk about the project with his friends in high school and how his advocacy has spanned 14 years.

This week we're joined by Abby Thorne Lyman, the Transit Oriented Development Program Manager at BART. Abby discusses BART's new TOD Guidelines and the group of agency policies they pull together. We talk about the importance of reduced parking, the ridership benefits, and expectations transit agencies should have for property developers.

This week we are back at the UITP Global Public Transport Summit in Montreal. We recorded this session on Land Value Capture featuring Julian Ware of Transport for London, Sharon Liu of Hong Kong's MTR, and Iain Dobson of Strategic Regional Research Associates in Toronto. Each of them discuss how each of their organizations looks at land value capture as a specific tool for transport development.

This week we're chatting with Nico Larco, an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Oregon and Co-Director of the Sustainable Cities Initiative. We talk about the secondary effects of autonomous vehicles and e-commerce such as street design, parking, and land values. We also talk about terrestrial drones, zombie cars, delivery bee hives, and the fact that cities just aren't ready yet for an autonomous future.

This week Robin Rather of Collective Strength joins the podcast to talk about missteps in the planning profession. She discusses how she got to thinking about urban issues and why she believes current planning practice is stuck in the 1990s. We also talk about the often jargon filled language the profession uses and use an example paragraph from Austin's current code rewrite to illustrate.

This week is the first part of two where I chat with Jonn Elledge, the editor of City Metric and the host of the Skylines podcast. In this episode Jonn interviews me about US transportation, particularly the history of urban subways and light rail and we also talk about transport politics and possible futures.

This week we welcome back Tanya Snyder of Politico Magazine for the 150th episode of Talking Headways. We discuss aviation legislation in the house of representatives including what it means for drones and whether private jets should pay more for air traffic control. We also talk about legislation on self-driving vehicles and all of the smaller details you might not have heard before including state versus federal regulations of vehicles and children's safety.

This week we're joined by Lee Einsweiler of Code Studio in Austin Texas. We talk about all things land use codes and zoning including what goes into a zoning code, different countries approaches to zoning, the dreaded topic of parking, as well as why they usually haven't been updated for 50 years.

This week on Talking Headways we're joined by Zack Wasserman, Head of Global Business Development at Via, a ride sharing company headquartered in New York. We talk about Via's role as a ride sharing provider and software builder for transit agencies and how we can get more people sharing rides. We also discuss how future transportation will likely change in lower density places and the role of innovation in both the public and private sector transportation space.

This week we're coming to you from the UITP Global Transport Summit in Montreal with guest Projjal Dutta, the Director of Sustainability at the NYMTA. We chat about the idea of transit avoided carbon, how you measure emissions, and the impact of Superstorm Sandy on sustainability thinking in the NY region.

This week on the podcast we're chatting with Beth Osborne of T4America and Kevin DeGood of The Center for American Progress about infrastructure plans of the new administration. We talk about the budget process skinny or thick, the possible benefits and drawbacks of public private partnerships, the difference between funding and financing, and what this means for transportation in rural areas.

This week we're joined by Patrick Oliva, the Co-Founder of the Paris Process on Mobility and Climate to talk about decarbonization of transport. We chat about electrification of the transport sector and what it means for climate change, the role cities need to play in the Paris process and what levels of government work best, and the what the focus should be for mayors in the coming decade.

This week we're joined by Matthew Heins to talk about his book The Globalization of American Infrastructure: The Shipping Container and Freight Transportation. Matthew talks about how the American highway and rail systems created a global standard for shipping containers, the local actors shaping globalization, containerization's effects on labor and relevance to an automated trucking future, and the massive intermodal terminals in cities like Chicago.

This week we're back with part 2 of our discussion with Dr. Lisa Schweitzer of USC's Price School of Public Policy. We talk about the idea of jobs housing balance, her blog post on the Smartest Boy Urbanist, her favorite planning books and mentors, and we get a preview of her upcoming book on firearms and cities.

This week we're joined by Dr. Lisa Schweitzer of USC's Sol Price School of Public Policy. For this first episode of two with Dr. Schweitzer we chat about how her students respond to urban planning classes, the recent dustup between bike advocates during a city council election in Los Angeles, and autonomous vehicles and land policy.

This week we chat with Streetfilms own Clarence Eckerson Jr. We chat about how he started making films and his beginnings with BikeTV. Additionally, we talk about the best way to make films and what some of recommendations are for approaching people on the street. There might also be a few stories about Veronica Moss, The Zozo, and The Color Gurple.

This week we're joined by Shelley Poticha, Director of NRDC's Urban Solutions Program. We chat about a couple of programs she's working on at NRDC including SPARCC and the City Energy Project. I ask about the Clean Power Plan and we talk about how FTA and HUD were finally connected as well as the 1993 book she wrote with Peter Calthorpe about TOD called The Next American Metropolis.

This week we're chatting with Matt Horton of Proterra, a company that designs and manufactures battery powered electric buses. We chat about the basics of electric buses, power consumption and recharging, the benefits and costs, as well as possible environmental outcomes.

This week we're chatting with Chuck Wolfe about his new book Seeing the Better City. We discuss how he makes his own urban diaries with images, the ability to sense events long passed in places we know, the best way for bloggers and urbanists to use pictures in their work and advocacy, and a future where images are data mined hopefully not resulting in the extermination of humans by our AI overlords.

This week we're joined by UITP's Sylvain Haon ahead of the organization's global public transport summit in Montreal. We talk about big projects happening around the world, private and public moves towards mobility as a service, sustainable mobility planning in Europe, and how autonomous vehicles will help transit support a shared transportation future.

I can't believe this episode is finally out for everyone to hear! Over a year ago I was approached by a colleague who told me that something big was happening in Oakland and that I should monitor the process as they try to put together a new Transportation Department. This the first and hopefully not the last episode in this series I'm starting on the Oakland Transportation Department to cover how it came to be and what comes next. This particular episode follows new advocacy group Transport Oakland as a parklet project they wanted to see completed became political. Future episodes will cover more politics and mechanics of the department specifically, but I thought this would be a good starting point. So I hope you enjoy this first part of the series, and hopefully it won't take another year to get to episode 2!

This week we're joined by Darnell Grisby, Director of Policy Development and Research at the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). We talk about the national dip in transit ridership, who rides transit around the United States and federal policy going forward. Darnell also talks about technology innovation that might be coming to transit agencies including autonomous buses, different vehicle sizes, new payment systems and more.

This week we're back at the Shared Use Mobility Summit in Chicago this last October. In what feels like a bit of a time warp, Laura Washington of the Chicago Sun Times hosts a panel featuring The Metropolitan Planning Council's MarySue Barrett, the Shared Use Mobility Center's Sharon Feigon, and Transportation for America's James Corless. The panel discusses what they think federal policy will be like with a new administration and what to expect from a Republican Congress. There's a lot of valuable information for thinking about our current infrastructure spending discussion including partnerships and programs even though there was no knowledge of the eventual November winner.

This week we're joined by Corinne Kisner and Matthew Roe of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) to talk about their mission and series of Street Design Guides. We talk about how the guides are put together, how cities are using them to change their streets, and the importance of creating streets for people.

This week we're joined by Yonah Freemark of the Transport Politic and Streetsblog's new series Getting Transit Right. This is our annual prediction show where we break down the results of last year's transit predictions and make some more for 2017. In between Yonah and I talk about high speed rail, transit and development, Elon Musk's crazy tunnel ideas, and the future of federal policy.

This week we're joined by Alexander Garvin, author of the recently released book What Makes a Great City. In this episode we chat about why people are an important factor in building cities and taking pictures, why Houston's Post Oak Boulevard is going to show up Chicago, San Francisco, and New York's best streets, and Alexander's heroes from Edmund Bacon to Haussmann to Robert Moses.

German Marshall Fund fellow Eric Eidlin guest hosts the podcast this week for part II of our discussion of French high-speed rail and cities. Joining Eric are Stephan de Fay, executive director of Bordeaux Euratlantique, the public agency overseeing the redevelopment of Bordeaux's main train station to accommodate several new high speed rail lines by 2020, and Etienne Tricaud, president and CEO of AREP, the French railway's architecture office. This week we chat about how large projects in France are treated as projects of national significance and the expectations on these projects. There's also a discussion of the Paris region's over 1,483 mayors and the way the Grand Paris project has created better governance structures. Finally Stephan and Etienne discuss their perceptions of Diridon station and how we can create value with these opportunities.

This week German Marshall Fund fellow Eric Eidlin is the host for two French High Speed Rail experts; Stephan de Fay, the Executive Director of Bordeaux Euratlantique, the public agency that is overseeing the redevelopment of Bordeaux's main train station to accommodate several new high speed rail lines by 2020 and Etienne Tricaud, President and CEO of AREP, the French Railway's architecture office. Together they discuss the geography of France and its high speed rail network, the station areas as not just transportation projects but major urban projects, the experts and powers available to public agencies working on station area planning in France, the design of the station area versus that of the district as a whole, and finally the importance of having an overall vision for integrating transportation and land use in the station district. Join us for part 1 of this interesting discussion.

This week we are joined by David Zipper, the Managing Director at 1776 Ventures, a global startup hub based in Washington D.C. A veteran of the Bloomberg Administration in New York City and the mayoral administrations of Adrian Fenty and Vincent Gray in Washington D.C., David discusses innovative initiatives he's been a part of including a deal DC struck with startup company Living Social in addition to the introduction of ride hailing regulations during the infamous DC Uber Wars. We also chat about innovative transportation companies blossoming around the globe as well as what kinds of traits make for great innovators.

This week we're joined by Pulitzer Prize winning author Francis Fitzgerald to talk about her 1986 book Cities on a Hill. We discuss the different "visionary" communities from the book including Rajneeshpuram in Oregon, San Francisco's Castro district, Sun City retirement communities, and Jerry Falwell's moral majority in Lynchburg Virginia. Francis also talks about living in New York City and restaurant culture in Vietnam.

This week we're going back to NACTO in Seattle and listening to a plenary given by the Los Angeles Bicycle Coalition's Tamika Butler. The plenary, "Planning While Black" goes through some of Tamika's personal history, issues of diversity and equity, and how we should be planning for people who aren't represented in the process.

This week we're joined by Stephane Eboko of Ma3route, a transportation information platform with over half a million users in Nairobi Kenya. We chat about the platform and how it helps travelers in the city avoid traffic, what interesting reports and information have come from users reporting their experiences, and what travel is like in Kenya's Capital.

This week we head to Seattle for the NACTO Designing Cities Conference<> to discuss the myriad of issues transportation agencies face when trying to move projects forward and the relationships that make it work out in the end. Moderated by David Bragdon, Executive Director of TransitCenter, the panel features LA DOT's General Manager Seleta Reynolds, LACMTA's Deputy Chief Executive Officer Stephanie Wiggins, Seattle DOT's Director Scott Kubly, and Sound Transit CEO Peter Rogoff.

This week on Talking Headways we're joined by Emily Perlmeter of the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas Texas. She joins us to talk about the half million people that live in informal settlements on the US side of the Mexican border called Colonias. She discusses how these settlements are formed and the demographics of who lives there as well as their strengths and hardships. Join us as we take a look into a little discussed housing problem you might not have known existed.

This week we're back at the Shared Use Mobility Summit in Chicago listening to a great panel discussing how we can use a changing technology and information landscape to get more equitable outcomes. Jackie Grimshaw of the Center for Neighborhood Technology moderates this panel featuring Anita Cozart, Deputy Director at the Center for Infrastructure Equity at Policy Link, Rob Puentes President and CEO for the Eno Center for Transportation and Joshua Schank, the Chief Innovation Officer at LA Metro. A lot of interesting discussions come up including the idea that innovation doesn't always have to be from technology, the fact that not all people are benefitting from transportation investments, the measurement bias in the models we use to make transportation decisions and much much more. It's a great discussion and I highly recommend the listen.

This week we're at the Shared Use Mobility Summit in Chicago listening to a keynote speech from Zipcar Co-Founder Robin Chase. Robin talks about her ideas on the brave new world of shared mobility services and autonomous vehicles. She discusses how autonomous vehicles could be heaven by making space for more active transportation like biking and walking or a hell where we are just swapping out everyone's cars for a driverless version and continuing existing policies.

This week we're in Madison Wisconsin for the Empty Storefronts Conference and joined by former Mayor and Executive Director of the Wisconsin Bike Fed Dave Cieslewicz. We chat about his transportation hero, how bikes interact with small businesses, economic development, and why new technologies should make us think twice about building new parking spaces.