Secretary Sean Duffy withholding grants for America’s first high speed rail line. Congress surprisingly showing up for Amtrak in its annual budget. Elon Musk pushing for privatization. A surprisingly strong showing for trains in the Senate's budget proposal, and advocates who have even bigger hopes for the future. It seems like every time you turn on the news, there's an explosive new headline about passenger rail in America — but what's really driving them all? On this episode of the Brake, we sat down with the most plugged-in rail advocate we know, Jim Mathews of the National Rail Passengers Association, to break down some of the biggest rail stories of the day and give us a sense of where the State of the Union stands for this critical mode. And along the way, we dig into some stories you might have missed, like the massive freight merger that should make Amtrak passengers nervous, and more. 

USDOT is accepting public comments about what it should propose for the next surface transportation reauthorization bill — and one advocate is hoping that legislation will finally give victims a voice at USDOT. Today on the Brake, we're talking to Marianne Karth of AnnaLeah and Mary for Truck Safety, who's pushing for the creation of a new, non-partisan "National Roadway Safety Advocate" position, which will give victims, survivors, and advocates against traffic violence a champion at the nation's highest transportaiton advocacy. Already the subject of bicameral legislation, Karth calls the job the "missing piece" in our roadway safety puzzle, and a key guide to help the public understand what it takes to enact laws that save lives — and help DOT officials understand what victims need from them, too.  Listen in to learn more about what a National Roadway Safety Advocate would do, and check out Karth's step-by-step directions to leave a comment in support of this idea here.   

Autonomous vehicle giant Waymo is starting to experiment with subscription packages for teens — including those too young to drive. But as America's kids gain high-tech motorized independence, what will they lose in exchange?  Today on the Brake, host Kea Wilson is going solo for an informal chat about the debate over driverless cars as a youth mobility solution, how autonomous vehicles could even further isolate young people from their communities, and the dangers of relying on corporations for our basic human needs. And along the way, she touches on teen driving safety, the concept of "bumpability," and why parents are scared to let their kids outside on their own, even if they're not worried about car crashes. 

We’ve all heard the argument that the soul of America’s economy is based on how much we all love to drive. But does the data support the narrative that cars connect us to far-flung opportunities to make and spend more money — or has our country's car-powered productivity revolution actually stalled out?  Today on The Brake, we're talking to Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute about his new paper on the “mobility-productivity paradox”, and why so many economic indicators actually go down the more we collectively rely on automobiles — and many go up when we build a more multimodal future. And then we get into the really hard question: how to get our fellow Americans to believe it. 

As the Baby Boomer set ages out of driving, are American cities ready to support their changing transportation needs — and what policies should they be writing right now to help seniors and their neighbors weather the silver tsunami?  Today, we're posting an extended audio version of our earlier conversation with the fantastic author, attorney, and law professor Greg Shill about his contributions to the new book “Law and the 100 Year Life”. And in it, we dig into thorny questions about whether we need to reject what he calls “design essentialism” and accept the necessity of traffic enforcement; what it will take to get America’s seniors to move to places that can support their changing mobility needs (or for the leaders of the places they already live to make it possible for more seniors to get around in more ways); and, of course, golf carts. 

One in five U.S. college students are also parents with children of their own — and in many cases, a single unexpected expense can be enough to force them to drop out before they earn their degrees. And too often, that emergency comes in the form of a transportation challenge like a cancelled bus route or a flat tire that keeps them from ever reaching the classroom. In honor of Mother's Day and Father's Day on The Brake, we're talking to Abigail Seldin of Scholarship America about the 3.8 million students who are earning degrees while raising families, and how they're helping them access the emergency funds they need to keep moving towards their higher education dreams. And along the way, we revisit Seldin's past work on the challenges of getting students of all ages to class in a car dependent country, and explore why the "safe routes to school" movement tends to stop around 12th grade.

Listen up below, visit their site to donate, and learn more about the stories of the parent-scholars whose lives they've already helped. To donate to St. Louis's tornado relief efforts, please visit ActionSTL, LoveTheLou, the Urban League of St. Louis, the St. Louis Community Foundation, or any of the organizations listed here.

Are Americans really more "car-brained" than their peers in the UK or the Netherlands — and if they are, what can make us change?  The Brake is back from its spring hiatus with the return of two of our all-time favorite guests: researchers Ian Walker and Marco te Brömmelstroet, who teamed up for a new paper about how "motonormativity" manifests across their respective nations and the US. And along the way, they learned some fascinating insights about where our autocentric attitudes come from in all those coutnries — and what it would really take to change them. 

Tune in now, read the original paper, or check out the innovative crowd-funding platform that fueled this research. 

How does our popular media normalize dangerous behavior on our roads — and does it even help create it? 

Today on The Brake, we're talking about the role of culture in driving our road violence crisis, including car ads that make reckless driving seem like it never has deadly consequences, action movies, video games, and even social media trends. And my guest today, documentarian and journalist Myron Levin, wrapped all of that into a really fascinating, full length documentary that you can watch for free right now.

Decades of research prove that highways tear apart the physical fabric of our cities,  segregating neighborhoods by race and income and making it harder for anyone outside a car to access the jobs, services and communities they rely on — at least if those things happen to be located on the other side of a dangerous road.

But what impact do highways have on the invisible social fabric of our places — and does the internet provide a bridge between these disconnected communities, or only a digital mirror of the sharp divides that highways draw between our neighborhoods?  Today on the Brake, we’re talking to data science researcher Luca Maria Aiello from IT University of Copenhagen, who found a fascinating way to quantify exactly how much downtown highways disconnect our social networks, in addition to our sidewalk, bike lane and transit networks.  And along the way, we discuss what those divisions cost us in social mobility, democratic cohesion, and real dollars and cents. 

Cities across America have been trying — and mostly failing — to achieve Vision Zero for more than a decade. But is it really time to trade the goal of ending road deaths and serious injuries for the aim of reducing them 30 percent by 2030? And would we be better positioned to eliminate the other 70 percent of fatalities if we made that strategic shift, or not?  Today on the Brake, we sit down with the presdient of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, David Harkey, to talk about his organization's pivot to push for a five-year full-court press on traffic violence, and why he doesn't believe that means giving up on ending road deaths overall. And along the way, Kea presses him to examine what strategies would really rise to the surface if we set a tighter time horizon for more modest road safety gains, and why we have to sweat our strategy when it comes to saving lives.