Talking Headways: A Streetsblog Podcast

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.

This week we're joined live from Rail~Volution by Houston Metro Board Member Christof Spieler. We talk about the progress on Houston's bus reimagining and Christof gives tips for public engagement and system planning. There's also a discussion about route alignments for bus and rail lines and a plea to use more data when making decisions.

This week we're chatting with Ian Brown, former Managing Director for London Rail. We discuss everything London transport including operations contracts, congestion pricing, constructing, financing and making the case for the massive Crossrail project, cycling, bus operations and even contactless payment systems.

This week I'm joined by Meea Kang, Rail~volution Board Member and Founding Partner of Domus Development. Meea joins me live from the Rail~volution conference to talk about what it's like to be an affordable housing developer building sustainable projects. We talk about the 16 variances it took to do TOD in Sacramento, workforce housing in Tahoe on a bus line with 60 minute headways, and what it takes to pass a state law that reduces parking requirements near transit.

This week I'm joined by Tiffany Chu, the Co-Founder of the transit planning software firm Remix. Tiffany discusses the positive responses that the company has gotten from the industry and what made got it started. We also discuss the possible policy implications as well as the movement towards open data.

This week we're chatting with transit advocate Sunday Parker about transportation access for people with disabilities. We talk about the design of transit stations, the layout of the new BART train cars and what that means for different types of users, the idea of universal design and access in the built environment overall, and our best transit days.

This week we're joined by Shane Phillips who writes at the blog Better Institutions. We chat about Los Angeles' and everyone else's housing issues including The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, development exactions, vacancy rates, and more. Shane also talks a bit about how he keeps motivated to write the blog and what allows him to think a little bit outside the box before thinking about the importance of urbanist happy hours.

This week we're joined by Rob Puentes of the Eno Center for Transportation, a 95 year old organization focused on better transportation outcomes. We discuss a number of different topics including some we usually don't hear much about. Aviation, freight, coordinating automated vehicle policy, and the presidential election are some of the big topics in our discussion.

This week we're joined by former Vancouver BC chief planner Brent Toderian. We discuss the best way to do density, when towers are appropriate for cities, what type of cities should take on the Olympics, and what happens to a planner after they have kids. Brent also talks about the negatives of not only NIMBYs but YIMBYs and whether we should believe all those articles that rank cities by any measure.

This week we're joined by Patrick Kennedy to talk about what's going on in Dallas. We discuss A New Dallas and the recent TXDOT CityMap Plan which will re-imagine the freeways and roads in downtown Dallas. We also discuss the importance of existing dense neighborhoods to promote new neighborhoods, downtown subways, urban politics, and what's going on with plans for the Trinity River.

This week we're joined by Josh Lapp, a board member at Transit Columbus to talk about Ohio's capital city. We talk about the changes that have been happening to make Columbus more urban, how its stadiums have been situated to support downtown growth and walkability, and transportation issues such as bike share, light rail, and of course the recent win by Columbus of USDOT's smart cities challenge.

This week we're going back to the Live.Ride.Share conference from Denver for the closing plenary. Speakers discuss the Smart City Challenge put on by the DOT, the future of shared use mobility carpooling services, autonomous vehicles, and their impact on cities and greenhouse gases. Speakers include: Mark Dowd, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at USDOT, Amanda Eaken - Deputy Director of the Urban Solutions Program, NRDC Emily Castor - Director of Transportation Policy, Lyft Jonathan Hall - Head of Economic Research for Public Policy and Litigation, Uber Technologies

This week on the podcast I'm bringing back a conversation I had in Cambridge England with Daniele Quercia and Luca Aiello of Bell Labs. This focus recently has been on data mining and aggregation which has led to sensory mapping<> in cities. With this information they have been able to map smell, sound, and how people feel on their favorite walking routes.

This week we're joined by David Sachs of Streetsblog Denver. David talks about the amazing advocacy landscape in the city as well as a number of specific projects and initiatives that are happening in the city from the controversial widening of I-70 to the possibility of a new transportation department and the rethinking of the 16th street bus mall.

This week we're joined by Paul Mackie of Mobility Lab, to talk about transportation demand management (TDM) and mobility in cities. We discuss how cities are not prepared for new mobility and the need to share data and plan for different mobility outcomes.

This week we're joined by cartographer Gretchen Peterson to talk about map making as well as her new book, City Maps: A Coloring Book for Adults. We talk about why she designed the book and why the cities she chose to display were included.

This week we replay the morning plenary broadcast live from the Denver Live.Ride.Share conference that happened last month. Jill Locantore of WalkDenver introduces University of Virginia Professor Peter Norton, author of Fighting Traffic who discusses how automobiles were sold to the public and Gabe Klein, former DOT Director in Washington DC and Chicago who talks about what he believes their future might be. Peter's talk is at the 5 minute mark and Gabe's starts at 28:15. Questions from the audience and a discussion between the two start at 1:02.15 if you're short on time.

This week we're chatting with Sharon Feigon of the Shared Use Mobility Center. I ask what shared use mobility is and we talk about the growth of bike share, car share, ride hailing, and more.

This week I'm joined by Kevin DeGood of The Center for American Progress and Deron Lovaas of NRDC to talk about rules proposed by the Federal Highway Administration to measure congestion and greenhouse gas emissions.

This week we're joined by Laurel Paget-Seekins to talk about her work as a transit activist in Atlanta, her thinking about transit networks from her time in Santiago Chile, and her current work on data collection and dissemination as the Director of Strategic Initiatives at the MBTA in Boston.

This week we're joined by Tanya Snyder to look back a bit on 100 episodes of the Talking Headways Podcast. We also talk about DC Metro, Moving Sidewalks, and your transportation habits when you move to a new house.

This week we're joined by Shima Hamidi, Reid Ewing, and John Renne to talk about their paper "How Affordable is HUD Affordable Housing?" in the Journal Housing Policy Debate which discusses the issue of housing and transportation affordability.

This week we're joined by Robert Ping, The Executive Director of the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute. We talk about complete streets, active living, and Pittsburgh's plans for shared space.