After cancelling the 710 highway widening, LA Metro found itself with $743 million to spend elsewhere. A 35 person task force was put together and came up with a plan for spending the money on active transportation, transit, complete streets, safety and more.

I’ve been reading Megan Kimble’s book City Limits on Texas’ highway fights and I continue to think about how TXDOT could better spend the $85B it’s allocated to mostly highways over the next decade. Instead of widening three highways, taking taxable properties off the rolls, and doing more environmental and social harm, they could focus on community improvement and access projects. I can imagine that $85B would go a long way in doing some real good, but we’re not there yet.

It also doesn’t have to be just road projects re-imagined. After figuring that a second downtown route with a subway wasn’t going to be in the cards at this time, DART now has $1.3B to spend on other priorities. I love a good subway as much as the next person, but it might behoove us to think about how we can boost access during this massive pandemic induced urban realignment.

***

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This week we’re joined by Gabe Klein, Executive Director of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation. We chat about the Joint Office’s white paper focused on best practices and solutions for electric vehicle charging entitled: Community Charging: Emerging Multifamily, Curbside, and Multimodal Practices.

White Paper Link

The EV Charging Infrastructure Playbook – Link

To listen to this episode, visit Streetsblog USA or find it in our hosting archive.

Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript of the episode:

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Piggybacking on yesterday’s item in the Premium newsletter on car insurance driving inflation, I stumbled across this piece on Twitter from November of last year discussing Prop 103 in California which regulates insurance rates. It’s interesting and long but perhaps worth the read if you’ve been itching to dive in on the topic and how it might be reformed.

But what it gets me thinking about how a lot of our problems aren’t getting solved perhaps because we are stuck in a negative feedback cycle that’s just pulling us in deeper. We’ve been hearing a lot about insurance rates going up on buildings and cars. Those increasing rates are in part causing inflation and some real estate market instability. And the land use patterns that we build focused on a transportation system that is car oriented also feed into this negative loop as we choose bigger more expensive vehicles which are of course more expensive to replace and build roads and make rules that enable more collisions than other countries.

We can talk about the same thing with housing. We’ve decided to build a lot of housing in 100 year flood zones or fire prone areas that are getting exposed by climate change. The high cost of housing overall brought on by regulations and a shortage of workers also in part due to high housing costs also makes insurance replacement if your house does get wiped out even harder.

And states and the federal government are sucked into this moral hazard as they back stop insurance that mainstream companies see the risks on and won’t take.

The spiral and seeming connections go on and I’ve been trying to think about how they all go together, but it’s probably a longer piece than the intro to a newsletter. At the moment I’m not sure how it gets fixed but maybe it starts with how we build cities and move around in them.

***

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Happy Mondays!  This week on Mondays at The Overhead Wire we’re Han Solo again but we have a lot to catch up on.  We’re going over some of the news we didn’t get to when we were away in China for a month.  We cover LA’s spongy infrastructure, an idea to connect zoning reform to transportation funding, and the transition from governments incentivizing retail businesses to warehousing infrastructure.  Of course there’s more but listen in to hear everything we share.

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New research from RMIT Centre for Urban Research discusses how Melbourne hasn’t seen an equal increase in transportation investment compared to housing growth. An 88% increase in housing has only gotten a 5% increase in transport services.

I found this general idea and discussion really interesting because it reminded me of the chicken and egg debates we have about land use and transportation. If you build this line, more housing will come. Or if you build this housing, the city will build or bring you new transportation. Both of which are often used as arguments against building anything, housing or transportation.

Of course that’s one of the powerful ideas behind the bus network redesigns that have been happening around the country in that we can readjust service to places that need it, or have grown. At this moment in time, building new high capacity transit infrastructure can be difficult and expensive. But transportation costs are up everywhere and if we defer investments now, we’re making individuals pay for the increases.

In fact, vehicle insurance rates are up 22% and repair costs up 10% according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the largest increase since 1976. Not to mention the average cost of a new personal vehicle is $48,000. With those increases, it’s increasingly important that cities invest in transit projects and service and promote sustainable mobility in all forms. Today’s piece in Vox about DC’s transit system show what’s possible on the transit side. Our recent discussions with Aaron Breetwor and Dan Sturges show what’s possible when we think outside of our usual boxes as well.

***

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This week we’re joined by Sara Stickler, President and CEO of WTS International. We discuss how WTS highlights women’s expertise in transportation and how they create opportunities from mentorship to leadership and education. We also chat about some of their legislative priorities on workplace policy as well as some of the barriers women face in the field.

To listen to this episode, visit Streetsblog USA or find it in our archive.

Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript of the episode:

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It looks like most if not all subscribers got yesterday’s email after we had an issue with Microsoft Outlook delivery in the last few weeks. If you are missing some emails that you wanted to read the news from, let me know and I’ll forward them along. All the longer form intros are at The Overhead Wire blog too.

Still tying up a few loose ends but thanks for everyone’s help to get it fixed. If you ever have the feeling that you’re not getting the email, please let me know and I’ll try to do what I can to fix it. Or ask your email administrator to see if it’s getting caught in quarantine filters. As with this instance, that might be the case.

Thanks everyone for reading, I am super happy we get to keep doing this after 18 years and you all make that possible.

~~~

So with all that back end stuff out of the way, it actually makes this Tweet/podcast from The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson a bit more interesting to me today. The short explanation is that there are four dark laws of online engagement according to psychologist Jay Van Bavel: 1. Negativity bias drives headline clicks 2. Extreme opinions drive in-group sharing 3. Out-group animosity drives engagement 4. “Moral-emotional” language goes viral.

I was chatting with former DC and Chicago transport head Gabe Klein for a podcast we’ll release soon on his office’s work on electric vehicle charging infrastructure. He mentioned that news headlines on stories he’s been in lately discussing that work have been changed from positive to negative in just 24 hours just to get more engagement and eyes on an article. One headline he mentioned said the complete opposite of what the article did, but I guess that’s what drives people to subscribe to news sites or drives advertising revenue.

It also relates to the recent discussion of congestion pricing in New York City. The majority of public comments for the policy have been positive, but you wouldn’t have known about that from the media headlines or driving celebrities. In my news search, it always looked like a 80-20 negative split.

It can be frustrating to us here because we’re not going around creating a rage factory to get the policies we want. But it can also be a positive because even if we see a bunch of negative headlines, perhaps there’s always something good that can be found under the surface. Let’s keep digging.

***

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Last week we posted a very popular piece about how fire departments should be rethinking how they approach safety to encompass more than just fire safety in buildings.  Since they are often the first responders in car collisions and calls about homelessness, their prescriptions for urban policy might change. This means thinking about what it means to have safer streets for everyone, not just themselves.

So I was struck by this thought again when I was reading the Texas Monthly piece on the new Mayor of Houston John Whitmire, who on a ride along with the chief of police just blindly listened to his safety musings on a recently completed road diet. The mayor didn’t bother asking who the safety improvements were for or why the police chief believed it made the street more dangerous in his mind.

I imagine this happens quite often. Public safety officials such as fire and police are held in high regard and often hold a lot of political sway. But we know from recent political actions they aren’t experts in street design or transportation policy.

Maybe that’s on us to help them understand the speeds that kill pedestrians on streets or how safe systems work. But it’s also frustrating that it doesn’t seem like they’ve even tried to learn. If I were them I might ask why more people were dying in collisions and why the US is so far behind other comparable countries in this regard. I’m certain we’ll get there eventually, but there’s a lot of work to do.

***

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This week we’re featuring a one to one conversation between Billy Terry, Executive Director of the National Transit Institute at Rutgers University, and India Birdsong Terry, General Manager and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority. They discuss leadership, hiring, and culture change at Ohio’s largest transit agency.

This podcast was produced in partnership with Mpact. To find out more, visit http://mpactmobility.org

To listen to this episode, visit Streetsblog USA or our hosting archive.

Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript of the episode:

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This week on Mondays at The Overhead Wire Jeff talks about his month long trip to China. Subways, multi-use paths, urbanism and more! We chat about Chinese mall culture, great food, and a really cool station design in Shenzhen.

To see some pictures from the trip visit our Instagram @theoverheadwire

This week on the Talking Headways Podcast we’re sharing a San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR) forum on how a statewide coalition of transit advocates were able to organize a funding bridge to avert a fiscal cliff for transit operators in the state. The discussion led by SPUR’s Laura Tolkoff, shares how they did it and what’s next.

Featured guests include…

Laura Tolkoff / Interim Chief Policy Officer & Transportation Policy Director, SPUR  | Rebecca Long / Director, Legislation & Public Affairs, Bay Area Metro | Cyrus Hall / Independent Sustainable Transportation Advocate | Zack Deutsch-Gross / Policy Director, Transform CA | Raayan Mohtashemi / Legislative Aide, Office of California State Senator Scott Wiener | Monique Webster / Regional Government Affairs Manager, SFMTA | Adina Levin / Policy Director and Co-Founder, Seamless Bay Area

OOO

You can listen to this episode as always at Streetsblog USA or find it in our hosting archive.

Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript of the episode.

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There have been a lot of items around residential sorting and how it impacts people’s politics, or conversely how people’s politics impacts sorting. Analysis of thousands of homes in South Florida found that political party differences are important in explaining neighborhood political segregation and choices.

This also seems like it can explain some of the transportation choices and policies that are favored as well. As found in the research noted above, Republicans often sort themselves into lower density areas. But that also means they often need to drive into areas of higher density or center cities for jobs or cultural activities. This would appear to influence why certain policy choices are not welcome including (de)congestion pricing and why more MPOs with suburban representation widen roads to facilitate those trips.

But here’s another interesting potential connection. The loss of radio listeners. AM radio in particular has been under threat from the electric car revolution as it’s harder to get a signal in the car. Politicians and activists from both parties have pushed car companies to remedy the issue for different reasons, some political, some safety driven.

Now policies that are likely to get people to make less car trips such as (de)congestion pricing are also seen as a loss for the radio industry since it is likely to reduce driving and thus radio listeners. Of course listeners can stream many radio stations, but drivers often listen over the air. As mentioned, audio has seen many disruptions before; 8 tracks to satellite radio and everything in between. A small percentage of those who access Manhattan drive so I don’t know if it will make a huge difference, but it’s always interesting to see what people worry about when policies are proposed or come into effect.

***

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This week we’re joined by Heidi Simon, Director of Thriving Communities at Smart Growth America. Heidi talks about lessons learned from Complete Streets Leadership Academies as state and local officials and advocates work to create safer streets through quick build projects.

Find the report here.

Listen to this episode at Streetsblog USA or find it in our archive.

Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript: apologies for any spelling errors.

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Two interesting items today about two problems that are related to electric vehicles in cities specifically, but also a wild idea below.

According to CNBC vehicle tires are a relatively slow growth and steady market, but with the coming wave of electric vehicles, business is expected to rise as tires for the heavier vehicles cost about 50% more and wear out 20% faster. This of course means more profits for them, but also particulate pollution and microplastics that are released onto streets and into storm drains if they can’t design a better tire.

The second item reports that San Francisco plans to deal with charging cables that cross over sidewalks and impede wheelchairs, strollers, and skateboards. In the city where many people don’t have a garage, charging cables have been seen crossing sidewalks on the ground and overhead through trees. The city will now launch a study to look at curbside public charging infrastructure to deal with the cable problem. I imagine this is a problem that many cities with higher densities and more apartments will need to confront if the inertia of our current transportation paradigm continues.

This does provide however another potential opportunity for cities fund transportation according to public policy goals. Shell just said it would have 200,000 charge points by 2030 and is phasing out some of it’s retail gas stations around the world. But if its easier to charge at home than go to the closest energy station, cities with management of curb resources are poised to be the retail point of purchase for electricity to power cars.

Then if cities or transportation agencies in cities were to act as a public utility that manages curbs and energy provision, the revenues generated from becoming a retail provider of electricity or even leasing valuable curb space could support active transportation spending, much in the same way electric companies supported early streetcar expansion.

The question then of course is what the long term policy goals might be for any profits from this endeavor. In Shenzhen last weekend, I heard that subsidies to support the transition to electric vehicles allow energy costs for a month of driving to just be $10 for a car that’s driven 6,000 miles a year. We should support vehicle electrification, but that seems excessive and supports too much driving for short trips. Instead we should focus on reducing VMT and increasing accessibility with funding of active transportation.

Of course this is just a wild idea, but I enjoy sharing them with people just in case someone can make it work. As of now we’re barrelling towards a future of more driving and increased emissions. The oceans are already warming more than scientists expected and we probably don’t have a lot of time, but we can hope.

***

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As the announcement goes out that the Bay Area could have a ballot measure in 2026 to support transit improvements and provide $750M in funding, I’m sometimes struck by the funding options we don’t quite have yet nationally including transit agencies selling credits in carbon trading markets.

One of the things that was interesting to me from my interview with Paula DiPerna (audio | transcript) last year on her book Pricing the Priceless is her admission that her visit to China to help set up a carbon market like the one she started in Chicago led to proliferation of carbon markets in cities all over the country. All the young students in the room when she visited to share her experience are now running markets in different cities. Now most cities are benefiting from that experience including Chongqing.

So I wasn’t surprised to see that the Chongqing carbon market certified that sale of the local transit agencies emissions reductions (167K tons) for about $850,000. It was the first transit related transaction in the country and I would expect more to follow.

Some states have created markets and California does give some of its cap and trade money to transit and high speed rail, but there are likely lots of mechanisms for funding good transit service that are just sitting on the sidelines. As Paula mentioned on the show, the turning point between the two countries really was the Waxman/Markey bill which passed the House in 2009 but didn’t get a vote in the Senate that year. That climate bill included a cap and trade provision which could have created a national market for transit agencies to sell credits.

***

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This week we’re joined by vehicle designer Dan Sturges to talk about his book Near to Far: A Design for a new and Equitable Transportation System. We talk about new ways of thinking about vehicle design, mobility for low density areas, as well as pop culture perceptions of small vehicles.

To listen to this episode, visit Streetsblog USA or our hosting archive.

Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript for the episode:

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I think when people come back from a trip to a wonderful place they often compare the cities they live to the city they visited and spent a little time in. Of course visiting is never quite the same as living somewhere so the little imperfections might not be so apparent. So far I’m really enjoying my time here in China and have been watching from the windows of buses and taxis to see what might be the same or different from the US. There are things I like (multi-use pathways on most streets, lots of bus riders, and commerce everywhere) but also things I don’t (pollution and smell of diesel vehicles), but overall the experience has just been refreshing because it’s so different than home.

One thing I have noticed here is that I’m not burdened by the weight of politics, of everyday fights over infrastructure or planning, or general sadness over the state of the planet and its ecosystems. I get it in glimpses on my home social media feeds but I’m sure I’ll get back to those life dragging things in due time. I just don’t know enough about the politics here to comment or have an opinion and for the most part I’m interacting with people who are just living their lives or doing their work, whether that’s someone driving a cab or working at a restaurant or even my in-laws, who have asked me if what I’ve been experiencing is what I expected.

I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect as the media on China is often negative because its so focused on geopolitical issues. But really it feels similar to home except everything is in a different language, there’s a lot more people, and the buildings are tall everywhere. I do also notice that as a foreigner you get looks from many people you pass. None of them seem negative, but the eyes do linger more than I’m used to.

Those are minor things really when walking through neighborhoods that might as well be in any international oriented US city. The food is great, the people I see including children and young people want to say hello in English if they see me. A cab driver even tried to use a translation app as I was trying to get my internet to work. And I think this is something everyone should experience. It’s definitely not Europe which is where a lot of Americans will get their international experiences, but it’s definitely a place to take lessons from and just experience for themselves. Though I do recommend a translator and I thank my wife for that help and perhaps burden on her.

***

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This week we’re featuring a 1 to 1 conversation between Adelee Le Grand of Intellectual Concepts and Scott Wilkinson of AlphaVu. They chat about how transit agencies can get a better handle on how riders and non-riders alike feel about their service.

This episode was produced in partnership with Mpact. Find out more at http://mpactmobility.org

Listen in first at Streetsblog USA or find the audio in our archive.

Below is a full AI generated unedited transcript of this episode:

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This week we’re joined by skateboard advocate Aaron Breetwor, brand manager for Comet Skateboards. Aaron chats about using skateboards for transportation, designing streets for safer skateboarding, and this last years incident at the Dolores Street hill bomb.

To listen to this episode, visit Streetsblog USA or our archive site.

Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript:

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Prediction Time! This week on part 2 of our chat with Yonah Freemark, we score our transportation predictions from last year and make new ones for 2025. We talk about the Roosevelt Subway, Transit agency bailouts, open gangway trains, and coming transit elections and extensions.

To listen to this episode, visit Streetsblog USA or our hosting archive.

Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript of the episode:

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After being threatened with losing federal transportation funding, Louisiana changed the state’s drinking age from 18 to 21 in 1986. Ever since, pulling transportation funding to induce different policy outcomes has been discussed for a number of topics including traffic safety with the Louisiana example as a precedent.

Now that idea of withholding transportation funding is being discussed as a way to fix the housing shortage. In Colorado, Democratic state legislators have introduced a bill that would limit transportation funding in 30 communities inside of MPO boundaries if they don’t take steps to reach certain housing goals laid out by the state. Cities could meet those goals in a number of different ways giving each city it’s own pathway to keeping transportation funding. As with all legislation that changes the status quo, this one is coming up against opposition, though advocates believe they have a path forward.

Along those lines, the Federation of American Scientists along with other groups including the National Zoning Atlas has issued a housing ideas challenge which resulted in two scholars writing up a similar but more narrow plan for federal housing as the one released in Colorado. In this proposal, federal highway funding would be conditioned on the adoption of zoning reform. The withholding of highway funds would occur in Metropolitan Statistical Areas with median incomes above the national average where more than 30% of the population are rent burdened.

What’s interesting about these bills and suggested policy is that they are tying together urban policy that should have been connected more closely a long time ago. The disconnection of transportation and housing policy has really made our climate challenge even harder considering all the infrastructure we’ve built for vehicle travel and it won’t be easily fixed by an electric vehicle changeover.

But it’s not just our housing policy but industrial policy as well that suffers from this short shortsightedness. As our friend Scott Bernstein points out in a recent piece written with Bruce Katz, manufacturing, warehousing, and supply chains are impacted by this disconnect as well. Instead of building wealth and siting investments appropriately based on transportation infrastructure, everything costs more than it should. Perhaps it’s time to change that.

***

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This week on the Talking Headways podcast we’re joined once again by transportation and housing expert Yonah Freemark. In part 1 we talk about the equitable distribution of transportation grants, potential for flex funding for transit, and our annual transit openings discussion.

You can find Transit Explorer through the Transport Politic.

You can listen to this show at Streetsblog USA or find it at our hosting archive.

Below is an AI generated unedited full transcript of the episode:

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I hope everyone has a great Valentine’s Day however you celebrate.

Over the last few years articles about state pre-emption of cities have been increasing a lot. (There are 44 links specifically on the topic in our premium link archive) As more and more cities go to left leaning elected officials, conservative states try to gain back lost leverage and control over legislative priorities. But lately culture war politics have been spilling into policy disputes such as when the Texas Republican Party Platform decided road diets were a plot and needed to “protect drivers”. San Antonio was the target of the governor specifically on this front. A single Indiana legislator has also been trying to kill approved bus lanes for several years.

The most recent of these is a bill in the Arizona legislature which would approve a continuation in funding for the Arizona State DOT. But the tagged amendments are quite ridiculous and read off like someone watched too many 15 minute conspiracy theories on TikTok. The primary objective is to kill intercity rail between Phoenix and Tucson by restricting funding from federal sources. That specific fight is an old saw, but the other added items in my opinion are more damaging longer term. The bill would restrict the State DOT from doing any lane reductions, building or maintaining electric charging stations, planning for emissions reductions or reducing VMT.

My favorite response to the bill was from State Senator Teresa Hatathlie who said “If you want to go suck on somebody’s tailpipe, be my guest.”

I would expect the governor to veto this specific bill over these additions, but my guess is that some state legislatures around the country will only get worse when it comes to transportation and climate policy bill restrictions when cities try something different.

***

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This week on Mondays at The Overhead Wire we’re Han Solo.  The news continues and so do we.  We chat about productive transit subsidies, transportation flex funding, and a coming connection between trees and health!

Join us below for the show notes:

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One of the things we emphasize on the podcast and here at the newsletter is how everything is connected. One of my favorite targets for this connection are our roads. They mean so much to everyone and I don’t think many people understand how much they carry. It’s not just cars as many would have you believe, but people, drainage and water supply, gas and electric energy, connectivity through the internet, and commerce to name just a few main items.

And that’s why what’s happening with sea level rise in places like Charleston and all the rainfall and atmospheric rivers drenching places like California are so important in a transportation sense. Streets and the drainage below them aren’t designed for the rain events that are going to become more commonplace with climate change. Engineers agree that we just can’t retrofit all the pipes under all the streets that are designed for five to ten year flood events that will become even more frequent.

As the New Republic article cited above notes, we need to be focusing on ways to not allow the water to get into the pipes as fast through green infrastructure like retaining ponds, creating space for rivers to overflow, and bioswales on streets. We could even fix up our lawns and yards to do a better job of collecting excess runoff and support biodiversity at the same time.

Perhaps this is where the highway widening money could go that the trades are worried would disappear when we stop building highways. Street level water management. Maybe we could also create some transportation changes that make us safer as well. Changing large systems like roads is hard, but it is necessary unless we want to get swept away.

***

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