Talking Headways: A Streetsblog Podcast

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.