Talking Headways: A Streetsblog Podcast

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.