The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast

Our sister podcast, Talking Headways is about to hit its 500th episode. But how did host Jeff Wood accomplish that massive milestone, and how does he keep finding all these powerful stories about how our cities work?  On today's episode of The Brake, our host Kea Wilson sits down for a long conversation with Wood himself to talk about how he's grown this incredible audio archive of interviews, how Streetsblog got lucky enough to host it, and how he spends his time when he's not behind the mic. And along the way, we chat about his dream guests — living and dead — and the single topic both he and Kea are dying to explore, but haven't found the perfect guest yet.  Check it out, and listen to a few of Jeff's favorite past episodes below: 

• Episode 27: Walt Disney, City Planner
• Episode 85: You Can't Surf After the Storm 
• Episode 177: Peak Experience with Jarrett Walker
• Episode 325: Designing Fair Transport Systems with Karel Martens
• Episode 422: The Messiness of Family Travel with Jennifer Kent

"Reclaiming public space" isnt just about turning vacant lots into parks — or bulldozing homes for highways. And in a recent report, the Regional Plan Association of the tri-state area argues that the planning profession needs a new approach towards repurposing our land and giving residents more "psychological ownership" over their communities. 

Check out RPA's recent case studies of how four U.S. cities are pushing the concept of "reclaiming public space" to new heights, then listen in to our conversation with Vanessa Barrios, the group's director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiatives to learn more. 

A lot of ink has been spilled on what autonomous vehicles could mean for America, especially if the tech-industry fantasy of a 100% driverless future somehow comes true. But my guest today argues that policymakers need to dig a lot deeper if they want to anticipate the potential side effects of the AV revolution — especially when it comes to public health and equity.

In his new paper, "Equity issues ssociated with the widespread implementation of autonomous vehicles," Dr. Andrew Dannenberg of the University of Washington runs down all the questions communities should be asking before they let robocars run wild. Questions like: How expensive will it be to retrofit our roads so AVs will be able to read them, and will the money come from other modes? How will people with disabilities really be impacted by the rise of "driverless" cars — and the loss of human paratransit drivers to help them get around? And maybe most importantly, what community problems will this technology actually solve that couldn’t be solved in other ways?

When a fatal car crash happens, authorities act fast to stablize the victims, clear the road, and get traffic moving again like nothing ever happened. But what if, instead, they treated those streets as the site of a catastrophic transportation failure — and took immediate action to prevent the worst from happening again? On this episode of The Brake, we spoke to Kevin Krizek and Tila Duhaime, who are hoping U.S. cities will try a radical new approach to post-crash response they're calling "Emergency Streets." The idea, in essence, is that transportation officials will act fast to slash local speed limits and to install temporary, modular traffic-calming infrastructure within a half-mile radius of the spot where someone just lost their life, and keep those changes for at least two weeks — or until the community can have a serious conversation about how to make roads safer permanently. And in the process, Krizek and Duhaime hope that cities can not just save lives without more police enforcement, but also change collective attitudes about who's responsible for stopping traffic violence in the first place.  Listen in, and if you'd like to chat with the advocates about their idea more, reach out at [email protected] and [email protected].

 "Project 2025" purports to be a blueprint for an ultra-conservative federal government should Trump win a second term as president in November. But what does that document actually say about the issues that sustainable transportation advocates care about most — and does either party really understand our issues?  On this episode of 'The Brake', we sat down with Transportation for America's Beth Osborne to chat through some of the standout passages of Project 2025 and break down what it would really mean if the next administration took the Heritage Foundation's advice to slash transit funding, let states raise more of their own transportation dollars, and push communities towards building more single-family-only neighborhoods. And we also explore where liberals, conservatives, and other political ideologies tend to overlap, and what it will take to push all of them towards a better conversation. 

Enrique Peñalosa Londoño has an international reputation for using the humble bus, bikeway, sidewalk and park to make cities more equitable, starting with his game-changing two terms as the mayor of Bogotá, Colombia. And in his new book, Equality and the City: Urban Innovations for All Citizens, he unpacks how those tools can transform communities into advanced cities where the transportation is an equalizer rather than a divider.  Tune into this guest episode from Scott Shepard of the #CitiesFirst podcast, and check out a transcribed excerpt from their converasation on Streetsblog USA

Who, exactly is designing America's notriously deadly road network — and how on earth do they keep getting away with it?  On today's episode of The Brake, we’re talking to traffic engineer, academic and now author, Wes Marshall, whose new book — “Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion that Science Underlies Our Transportation System” — unpacks the mountain of wildly outdated, severely limited, and often downright non-existent research that underlies so much of our national road design manuals.  More importantly, though, Marshall's book also unpacks the more fundamental reasons why engineers keep widening lanes and saying no to crosswalks, even when the manuals give them permission to do something better — which, more often than not, they do.

Listen in, and read an excerpt from "Killed by a Traffic Engineer" here.

The Dutch are known around the world as global leaders in sustainable transportation. But as excellent as they are at designing cities to optimize the mobility experience, what about all the other reasons residents might move through their communities — and what other questions should the Netherlands and America be asking about what public space is really for?

Those questions are at the heart of the new Dutch book “Movement: How to Take Back Our Streets and Transform our Lives,” which is now out in English for the first time. And on this episode of the Brake, we sit down with authors Thalia Verkade and Marco te Brömmelstroet to talk about how much of their country treats bikes as “cars on two wheels,” the good and bad ways that e-bikes are reshaping their landscapes, and how American communities can continue to learn from the Dutch example, while also joining them in the fight for even better streets.  

Most American communities don’t even bother to count what percentage of the population can't legally drive. In the handful of states that have tried, though, the answer has been around 30 percent – which is just enough to create a real movement for change, if we'd all just band together  On today’s episode of The Brake, we're bringing you an extended audio version of our conversation with author Anna Zivarts, who has been quietly building that movement of non-drivers through her work with groups like Disability Rights Washington and America Walks. And in her new book, "When Driving is Not an Option: Steering Away From Car Dependency," Anna outlines what you can do right now to to center the needs of people who are the least well-served by our auto-dominated transportaiton system — and how that shift would benefit even those who are able and willing to spend much of their lives behind the wheel.

Across the country, grassroots advocates are fighting a David-and-Goliath-style battle against massive, powerful departments of transportation who are attempting to widen highways in their neighborhoods. And in her new book, City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways, author Megan Kimble introduces us to the many Davids who are taking on one of the biggest Goliaths of all: the Texas Department of Transportation.

In this extended audio version of our recent interview, Megan unpacks not just why the Lone Star state is so uniquely emblematic of the larger movement to re-imagine our cities around people rather than cars, but what’s happened to these projects in the months since she finished her essential book — and what advocates in states without a visible freeway fighting contingent can do to galvanize their neighbors.