Mondays 188: Time Warp with Chrissy and Tracy

This week on Mondays at the Overhead Wire we’re joined once again by Chrissy Mancini Nichols and Tracy McMillan to tackle a whole host of topics including the connection between VMT and safety, chrono urbanism, how navigating cities protects your brain, and Austin’s housing construction success.

Check out the show notes below:

Main Discussion

Chrono urbanism – Landzine

Lower VMT means safer roads – SSTI

Austin housing growth – Pew

DC road pricing – Greater Greater Washington

Brains on streets – Medical Xpress

Connect Bay Area info

Below is a full unedited transcript of the episode:

Happy Monday. This is Mondays at the Overhead Wire, sponsored by our super generous Patreon supporters. I’m Jeff Wood, your host, and joined by

’cause we were like, well, what else are we gonna do? And then it kind of like fizzled out after a while. But that was six years ago. So we’re back six years later chatting about cities and everything is. Still messed up.

But how have you all been? Uh, I’m gonna start with Tracy and then I’m gonna go with Chrisy, but Tracy, I heard you’re moving to Austin.

And, uh, rather than going back to the office in the, the Bay Area, the Oakland office, though, I love that team. I love all, all of our folks, but,

Yeah. We’re feeling good. It’s great. Yeah. I’m looking forward to it. I’m looking forward to relearning Austin and the region. we had a call this afternoon with, you know, a, a regional agency and I said, you know, that I was coming back and I said, it’s just gonna take me a little bit to learn, everybody, learn everything again.

but it’s good, like you said, so much change. I mean, it’s still, back in 2000 4, 5, 6, when I was there, you know, we were still talking about it. We were talking about it being a mega region. It’s still, you know, it’s a mega region.

Saw some familiar faces, so that was great.

yeah,

I’m excited about that. I’m gonna be there in next week so I can, it’ll be open next week.

So we’re going there to. Like, see all the cool stuff Seattle’s been working on.

Yeah. So just, you know, traversing my way across Florida, across the west coast, wherever it takes me. Well, east, east coast, yeah. Anywhere.

And certainly I think, our firm. Chrissy, maybe yours as well. Like, we’re like, what? We don’t know what’s gonna happen with the work and what cities will do, and I feel like we never saw. The pace never changed. No.

Mm-hmm. But it’s even like for little things like can you. Come to this one hour meeting in person.

Mm-hmm. Which I’m super excited about. Oh. And they asked me to come and talk about a little bit about value capture and some other stuff. You know, they asked me like, well, do we do a podcast? And I was like, that would be fun. I might record it, but I think I’m gonna take it and do it myself. And so.

What we’d ended up deciding is, we’ll, we’ll probably still talk about value capture, but I’m kind of going back and looking at the last 13 years of the podcast and the last 20 years of the newsletter and kind of digging up and, and you all are gonna make fun of me for an article that we’re gonna talk about in a second.

But, those types of things where I connect the dots on like these little tiny like interesting things in the top corner that connect to everything else. And so, you guys have been part of this journey, since the beginning. Tracy, I mean, I’ve, I talked with, um. I, talked to Lawrence Frank a couple weeks ago.

And, and so I’m just like really happy to share that with folks and, excited that you all came back to the show too. ’cause I, and I, keep meaning to noodle you all a little bit more, but then I’m, so I’m like, I get in my own brain and then it’s Monday afternoon. I’m like, well I can’t tell text them now ’cause they’re going, he was just like, no way.

I can’t, read five articles in like an hour. Well it’s,

It was like two minutes. I’m like, oh

Uh, you know, there’s a way of, of that folks talk about it. Like, let’s run our governments like a business. And so the idea that like your balance sheet needs to be balanced, rather than saying like, we have all these assets, why don’t we take them and use them for the public good? And so thinking about it from that perspective, is kind of the direction I’m going.

But, there’s all these books that we’ve read on the show and there’s all these news items that I’ve collected over the, over the years that. weave a story together, going way, way back, to even, like, I, I start about by talking about 10 66 and the Battle Hastings, partly because I kinda wanna tell a little bit of a family story, uh, ’cause my, dad can trace us back to, the Battle of Hastings.

Um, where, you know, basically England, was taken over by the Normans. But, William, when he got to England, he started this thing called the Doomsday Book, which is basically like charting the value of every property and person and, and sheep and everything in the whole country. And so thinking about like, what does value mean?

What does, what does wealth mean? The collection of things that are valuable and, whatnot. So starting from there and then going on to. Discuss cities in a different way than I think in a way that some folks have talked about it. Um, we talk about a number of different things in that way, but just that’s how, I’m thinking about it anyways, and I’m really excited to kind of put it together and, tell this story, so I’m not done yet, but it’s, uh, like I said, I, I’ve been ready.

I’ve, ever since I talked to the folks at Moveability, I was like, okay, I gotta start writing this. It’s not until September.

Yeah. I’m excited about it because most of the times, like I go someplace and they’re like, Hey, let’s do a podcast. It’s like, okay, that’s cool. I’ll read a book and have an interview and that’s fun. But just. Going down and almost writing another book is kind of cool too.

It’s already paid. So also they’re trying to disband it, which I don’t even know how I feel about that, but you’re lucky.

We had to change state law and all this other stuff, but we only got it passed because Obama was leaving office and finally the mayor was like, okay, we gotta do it.

could that money go to transit? I don’t know. But I like that that’d be a logical

I’ll, I’ll talk about it then, but, um, let’s get into it, shall we? We have so much to talk about. I mean, I feel like we could just have this conversation for an hour and not even talk about any articles. Uh, super fun. But thanks to everybody who’s ordered bus or bike scarves. If you’d like to order one, just go to the overhead wire.com or email me at the overhead [email protected].

Also, I love getting pictures of folks wearing their scarves at events and, rallies and things. Uh, that’s what they’re for. Uh, this week Catherine sent me a picture with her and a bullhorn and a bike only scarf at a pro bike rally outside of her city hall. I love that. That’s really good. And, uh, I’m gonna design a new ones.

And I wanted to ask you all because, I’m, thinking about designing a new one. I have my bike only. I have my bus only. and I’m thinking about doing like a high speeded rail, but like, should I do like a curb management scarf for like,

Well,

It’s like,

I

But it needs to be like, train focused. We did bikes, we did buses. It’s probably trains or streets in some form or fashion. So that’s the idea I’m, I’m having is trying to think about how to, do that.

That would probably be good. Um, and as always, as we note, everybody thinks, everybody for supporting us on patreon.com/the overhead wire buying books off the bookshop site, you can find all the books of the authors that we’ve, uh, almost all the books of the authors that we’ve interviewed on the show, bookshop.org/shop/the overhead wire.

And also you can get our cars or cholesterol merch at bit ly slash cars or cholesterol. This is episode 180 8. We’re in session, and before we get to the show, I’ll let folks know that they can get this podcast or talking headways wherever you find a podcast. iHeartRadio, Spotify Overcast podcasts, and of course Apple Podcasts.

So this, that leads, gets us to the news. here are few stories that piqued our interest from the newsletter over the last few weeks. I had to cut it down. Usually I’ve been going and doing like 25 stories or something ridiculous on a Monday show, but since, both, a lot, both of you all are here. I know.

Yeah. You’re like overwhelm. That would be overwhelming.

Krono urbanism evolves in addition to spatial layouts of cities, they also function with a temporal or time component. Since the industrial revolution, time has only become more important as people’s schedules are synchronized by time. But as technology uncouples schedules for movement and people, begin to see time as distance through the use of chronotypes, the importance of good urban places emerges.

This is in Lanine. so this is quite a long item, as you all noted. uh, and it goes through a number of ways that time and space interact. And I’m wondering if you had anything specific that stood out to you the most.

It, just was like a, blueprint, because it’s like what’s, what is the time of activity and um, how streets are grouped together and neighborhoods are grouped together. ’cause there’s so many similarities between how things function. But what I think is interesting is you throw in a coffee shop, or I mentioned, I’m working with Redmond.

They just got a new hot chicken restaurant and it’s just like the ti how we think of typologies in terms of spatial or temporal, just like goes out the window, throw in one hot chicken place, it’s like delivery and people and it just changes all the flows. And it’s interesting because, so, even probably like on our first podcast we were talking about let’s have flex zones where there’s delivery in the morning and then it moves to parking and it’s like, oh, these times just magically, Are similar across cities and the way people operate, but I just, that’s like gone. you know, I don’t, I just recommend now just create some short term zones. Whoever wants to use them can use ’em. And, delivery patterns are 24 hours a day. passenger pickups and drop offs, you know, all that temporal planning in dense areas is just no longer predictable anymore.

So thrown out the window.

So your white collar worker. Said that kind of ebb and flow of a transit system, the traffic movement throughout a day. And, who was left out of that conversation of the time and space activity in an urban center, I found to be really interesting, in to, Chrissy thinks of things in terms of the, curb management.

And then I often think about things from a transportation safety standpoint and in thinking about the relationship between time and space and, opportunities for, you know, trying to remove opportunities for conflict between, movements. And so in thinking about this article and while. The idea of, you know, a 15 minute city or the transit oriented development, you know, where you may be creating a greater density of opportunity within a space we’re not.

it sort of relates to the other article that you had shared on safety in terms of vehicle miles traveled and how that is a factor in safety in urban cities. And so maybe we have a greater density of opportunities for conflict, um, within a time and space. But maybe there’s also, again, that, awareness and spatial understanding, Community understanding of the function within that space.

Yeah.

interesting article.

Um. So we will, we’ll get to those in a second. I, I, I, think that’s really, like that’s, and that’s why I’m always talking about like everything’s connected because the, all these things are, are inter interchange interchanged with each other. I found it fascinating from the time perspective because we have had all these discussions recently about time, like Car Carlos Moreno in the 15 Minute City, and you know, before that it, it mentioned the article, like TOD, the, the discussion of kind of getting people close to transit so they have access to place the chronotype, thing that, I know that Jarret Walker talks about it, but other folks have have mapped that out and there’s like all these mapping programs now where you can actually map the time instead of the distance, which I find fascinating.

But I was looking like at the history and IF found it interesting that, you know, humans basically like time became a thing in the industrial revolution because we had to like manage. Like the railroads and how they connected to each other across time zones and things like that. Um, and I find that really fascinating that you know, this, this, uh, this EP Thompson, they mentioned in the article, um, like described how industrialization replaced task oriented labor with a regime of measured hours.

Productivity was no longer defined by the completion of work, but by the duration of labor itself. And so thinking about like the eight hour workday mm-hmm. 40 hour work week and how like now with all the technology and stuff and people are talking about compressing that down even further to like 30 hour weeks or 35 hour weeks, or trying to get four day work weeks, or those types of things.

And what does that mean for our transportation systems? Like we found out with the pandemic that. Bart actually has the same amount of riders that it did before, but they’re just not riding every day. They’re only riding three days a week because of the work from home. So the way that we’ve structured our cities and our transportation systems around time and around, you know, the time of day for rush hour for the most part, which is only like 18% of trips, right?

All the other, it’s like we’ve, created this system that like is a slave to time, um, but also is makes us less productive overall. Like it, me, me, messes up our time schedules because, um, we are stuck in traffic or we are, you know, we have, do have to wait, uh, for the transit to get where it’s going and it’s got stuck behind a car or whatever.

So all those things kind of connected for me and like thinking about time, differently and, You know, some of the other stuff that I’ve read about, like Barcelona, they have like laws about time, uh, and rules about time. They have conferences about time and how to plan around it. And the, um, you know, the super blocks are actually a time management mechanism.

let let people, be closer to the things that they need to access, like healthcare and things like that. So all these things we, we think about distance and space and, and, and urbanism and all those things. But this, this fifth dimension, this sixth or seventh dimension, whatever time might be, you throw that in there and it you know, explodes everything and makes it all weird again.

But as there’s, just one rail line in Austin. I mean, there’s, and there’s bus lines and, um, you know, I won’t be able to access bus lines. But, or maybe it’s just the way that, you know, whether it’s the luxury of that choice or, how I’ve chosen to make the decision in terms of where to live, that I have to be able to connect to those resources to be able to manage my time, and the spaces I need to reach, throughout the activities that I need to do on a daily basis.

it’s,

Um mm-hmm. So just how much you’re right, like transit dictates and how we set these up and who we included or didn’t include in that process of determining those rules.

And whether that’s dinner, lunch, breakfast, or, grocery shopping. and. You may be able to choose to live near a grocery store, but it might not be the grocery store you want to go to. Like if you need to go to like, uh, you know, a Safeway instead of a Whole Foods. Or like, in, in, Houston we had Fiesta, which is like the only place we could find Swiss charge for ravioli, uh, at Christmas time.

it was a, um, like a, a Hispanic themed, uh, rest, um, grocery store. But we talked with, um, Alex from El Paso on the show a number of years ago, and he was looking at, data, like phone data and like he would hear like, people are close to the grocery stores, but then they didn’t want to go to the grocery store that was next to them.

They wanted to go like across town. So that’s like a choice too, in that you’re trying to like. Access the place that you need to, or you feel like is more, connected to your needs rather than like, if it just exists. And I, I wonder if we make that mistake a lot, which is like, oh yeah, you live on a rail line and you’re next to

Oh no. I was, I was like going on Google and seeing which grocery stores are nearby, the, the trans, the high frequency transit. What did, what kind of products do they have? Is it like a target where it’s not really a grocery store, but Yeah. Or I remember even personally trekking to the Thai grocery store in New York ’cause I had to get certain ingredients or I basically planned my life around farmer’s market.

So, you know, yeah, I mean that’s what people are. I, I plan my life around a grocery store ’cause I love going to the grocery store. But, yeah.

I’m like, okay, I’m gonna go on this run. ’cause at the end of it, I get to go to the BuyRight. It’s like, yeah. But really the farmer’s market and like, we are so lucky to live in a place with fresh produce. So that’s where I get most of my groceries.

Like that’s your, that’s your go-to, or you have to, you have to go there at least once every two weeks or something along those lines to get something specific.

yeah, we have a local butcher, it’s changed. That has changed because it, it eliminates the need to have to go to like a big grocery store. You’re like, oh, I can just run to the butcher and they have fish. Yeah. You know, like. It’s that’s like a luxury for me.

There’s like two fish markets, actually. One kind of close to us, but then that’s, more expensive. But then there’s another one that’s like on mission, that’s like, you can go and get your, when the crab, it’s crab season, you can go and get it for like six bucks at six bucks a pound or whatever.

and then you can get whatever fish you want. There’s like a, there’s another like Mexican joint across the street that when they’re closed, you can go there. The farmer’s market’s on, like, it’s only through March, through like November or March through October, but there’s like a Thursday one. so yeah, there’s like lots of different places and there’s like a spice market like down here too, that where you can, you know, you can go to Whole Foods and get like the jar of spice, whatever it like, Ground garlic or whatever it is, a garlic powder. But you can go there and get like a two pound one for like the same price. So like those things, those types of things, like just being able to access all that like is pretty, pretty awesome. Yeah. Like just from a grocery standpoint. And then the flips, we don’t talk about those trips

No, but the flip side, and I’m going to do a focus group and, a small, small community in Yavapai County, Arizona on Friday, where the grocery store choice is more like a family dollar. Mm-hmm. Or Dollar General. Yeah. otherwise, they’re driving 20, 30 miles to get to a larger format grocery store.

So the luxury of

In the marina market. a banana’s, like $5, but it’s like if you, if you like need something, you can, it’s there.

yeah,

Build it.

Love

What an interesting place that Safeway, for many reasons, shall we get to go to street safety is less driving. street safety is less driving a new report from streetlight data intimates that vehicle miles traveled. And the reduction thereof is the single most important factor in determining a street safety.

City streets are safer, but now they’re getting more crowded with delivery trucks. And even now, autonomous taxis, the best way to continue down a safer path could then be tied to a better urban planning that reduces the need to drive and all that, the, risks that that entails. This is by Bryant Novinski, Lois and SSTI, state Smart Transportation Institute.

any thoughts on this one specifically?

Delivery program with Seattle, that just past council, like the incentives to use e cargo bike deliveries. Mm-hmm. Um, just past council, Catherine Raa Esta was, she’s great. If you, want permits, you go to Catherine. Um, but one of the big reasons is there’s just all these big trucks parked, double parked, parked in intersections.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, and it just. If you can get an equal cargo bike to deliver, even if it’s last mile. I mean it’s interesting because we looked at different neighborhood typologies. So in like Capitol Hill in Seattle or Chinatown where there’s a lot of density and a lot of multi-unit part apartment buildings, you could use any cargo bike like for pizza.

’cause you can deliver three pizzas in one, ride. Mm-hmm. But once you get even to a Columbia City where there’s a lot of retail density on one or two streets and it’s getting to be more dense, but it’s like still a lot of single family, those e cargo bike trips become longer and more expensive for, to deliver.

You can only deliver one pizza at a time and then it’s taking, so it’s like interesting how even if you have a dense retail district and you think, oh, you can make all these deliveries from. You know, the near my businesses, but you really can’t. So how do you get rid of all the trucks in all the neighborhoods is, you know, ’cause they’re just causing so much havoc.

so I feel like there’s, some detail that was, lost in, the summary, because I think you’re right. I mean, maybe VMT is related to total crashes, but when we’re talking about the severity of the crash, some of these other variables are, are, I would think are maybe more important than VMT. what are the speeds and the speed differentials?

what is the mix of traffic on the streets? again, and going back to that separation of. Of users and time and space. These are the things that we, wanna see and why. say programs like in San Francisco, the Automated speed enforcement and the Red Light Camera Enforcement automated, um, have shown some success because those are important factors to certainly the severity of crash.

yeah. So I, I, just think it’s, I mean, I just think it’s, it’s good to talk about how. More driving in, in, you know, engenders more risk and means that you’re more likely to have a, an a collision or, a traffic death, right? Yeah. And so if we’re, we’re inducing people to drive across the, across the city to a grocery store, right, that they have to, they’re, we’re creating more risk for them in order to, you know, allow them to do, go about their daily, you know, lives.

And so I think that’s, from that perspective, I think it’s really important to think about how much we’re for forcing people to drive and, you know, putting them at risk for collisions, for possible traffic deaths, for, traffic safety situations and, making them drive there, putting other people at risk who may be crossing the street, who may be, you know, getting, interacting in their path, whatever it may be.

But there’s all these, uh, you know, possible collision points where we’re creating them because we’re creating the built environment that we’ve created.

We would love to see more people walking, more people biking, and not as many, and, see that increase in proportion to the vehicle miles travel. But that then that is increasing the exposure of, vulnerable road users to, potential crashes. But then there is a, there’s a factor of, awareness hopefully in exposure there.

So in areas where we don’t have a lot of pedestrian or bicycle travel, certainly vehicle awareness of those modes of travel, um, may also not be as high. And could one argue that also can increase the risk.

Mm-hmm. But the speeds are lower and so that speed differential part is a part of it. We, we talk, you know, with David Eder and Kerry Watkins about this, which is like the safe systems pyramid and creating a system that you reduce the kinetic energy that’s possible. Right? Right. So you slow people down.

Right. And so the crashes, they, you might still have a number of crashes, but they might be low speed and so it might not as be as deadly. Um, and so there’s that part of it too is like connecting it to the built environment in that way.

And then, just the pure speeding through a neighborhood. And again, like if, we can implement measures to bring those down in any environment, then it would be interesting to see how that would offset, With their, ranked highest VMT measure.

Like Jeffy, they may hit you at 25 miles an hour, but it’s, you know, there’s still like these huge vehicles. Yeah, right.

So, you know, what can we do to incentivize, vehicle size and, like the manufacturer, auto manufacturers are clearly want big trucks and, but, you know, are there levers with other users?

Like I just read DoorDash, they’re, two wheel, like basically mopeds are growing, faster than autos in some cities. Not in all cities. So like how many more door dashes or whatever vehicle, vehicle type it is. Can we get on two wheels or at least a small vehicle if, people’s, if personal vehicle size is gonna keep growing?

And then as it gets to the other side, then they distribute with the,

No, I was, yeah, no, I was in China last, last September, October. And, um, but, but to your point, Tracy, about museums, they, they had their, the Beijing Planning Museum is right next to the Beijing train or the National Train Museum. Mm-hmm. So they’re like right next to each other. And so I highly recommend if anybody goes to check these things out.

’cause it’s like amazing. They have a whole, like the whole floor of a building is like, one eighth scale, size, map of the city of Beijing. Oh. And so basically it’s a whole floor of a building is like this, this map of the city. And they actually, the buildings, they, you know, when they build a new building, they’ll put a new one in.

so it changes pretty

It feels like that’d be really cool to have like a city of San Francisco or City Seattle or Los Angeles or Austin or wherever and all the buildings. Great history. I guess it takes some up upkeep and, but yeah, history would be good. All right, should we go to the next one? Speaking of Austin, Austin Housing Push Lowers Rents.

New research from the Pew Charitable Trust found that Austin’s ability to build more housing than other cities in the United States has led to lowered re rents across the region. The city has recently added 120,000 units, more than three times the average rate of growth in the United States. This was by Liz CR Clifford and Seva Rodinsky and Dennis Sue and Pew Research.

yes, they added 120,000 new homes from 2015 to 2024 and the, increase of 30% while the rest of the United States was 9% and the rents fell. Austin’s median rent was 1546 in 2021, and now it’s 1353. or 1296 actually. So four pl lower than the us so it was higher than the US average, and now it’s lower than the US average from all this housing growth, which is pretty impressive.

Yeah.

Um, but yeah, it’s, it’s pretty crazy. and I’ll say like, it’s way different from when I rented my studio for four $50 a month.

and again, it’s. It’s great that it has fallen, but there’s, still opportunity for improvement for sure. I also thought it was interesting that they didn’t discuss, didn’t talk at all about the short, the impact of the short-term rental growth.

And because that’s, that’s kind of the, that’s certainly the tension in so many places now. Including Austin,

Texas relays. Yeah, I’m sure for some of that. there’s just like a bunch of events game day for Texas football. Yeah. Like, or whatever it is. Like just, I feel like you could buy a house in a place like that where there’s just so many events that and then you could probably make money if you have a high end one that you rent to a couple times a year or something like that.

And it takes it off.

but even if not, like, there’s also that discussion of like, you know, ’cause. Rents in Austin, Houston, other Texas metros are getting higher, even though they’re, they’ve been building a lot of units and so like, what does it mean to have that growth? But then we’re seeing this all over the United States, like at least in high growth areas where it’s growing a lot, but the rents aren’t necessarily too, I mean, 1346 or 1353 or whatever it is, like 12 96 3, $1,300 is still a lot for a housing unit to, for a rental.

So those buildings, which are like the non-luxury, ’cause we always hear about, we need more affordable housing. And I, think we just need more housing in general. ’cause it, like we know it’ll bring down the cost of all housing. Mm-hmm. So class C buildings saw their decreased, 11.4, is that what you’re saying?

Yeah. And then Class A buildings, which were the higher end buildings, fell only 2.6%. and then the median rent for one bedroom unit was net affordable to a single person earning, 95% of the area median income in nine in 2 20 17. But that declined to 84%. So, even though they are building, I mean, I’m sure a lot of the, what they’re building now in Austin is on the high end.

You know, it’s just showing, it’s driving down the price of more affordable buildings. and it reduces rents at all these levels. So, yeah, I mean, we don’t need to, Peskin, who’s our other favorite supervisor that’s no longer a supervisor? Oh,

He haunted my dreams.

Basically, like the filtering goes down to those lower. Units. And, and I remember when, when I was in college in Austin, we always were looking for units that were usually, they were like these old seventies buildings with like, they were kind of like ding bats. they had the parking underneath and like, you know, it might’ve been an old motel or something like that.

And those were the ones that were like the 6 50, 700 for a two bedroom, at the time, which is crazy to think about now. but, and my, my, my place was the last place I live, I think I said four 50. It was actually five 50, but it was also a brand new, like they had just renovated it in like. It was brand new everything.

So, wow. That was pretty fancy for me. I was like, I was kind of, wow. Spending a little bit outside of my, outta my range for five 50 a month for a, um, for a, a single bedroom. But, yeah, those were the buildings that we looked for is those, those cheaper buildings, and those were the ones that always had the deals, for cheaper over time.

And then I guess with West Campus growing, like they mentioned this in the article too. It’s like there’s a number of stuff that happened. There was, the mixed use mm-hmm. Uh, ordinance, there’s the West Campus, construction boom, which basically, and I thought about this, uh, a long time ago, which is like, you know, a lot of folks used to go to university.

They lived, uh, on East Riverside, on the other side of the river. Mm-hmm. And they’d take the, bus, uh, the, the, you know, university of Texas bus, which is. run by Cat Metro. but then a lot of folks, because they allowed so much density in West campus and they le you know, it went from like bungalows and like one story buildings and frat houses to like these 20 story mm-hmm.

Buildings, 15, 20 story buildings where a lot of students could live. Like the demand for East Riverside, like, uh, dried up. But also, like, I was thinking about how much VMT that reduced, ’cause all the students would also drive over, over the bridge to go to, to school. So now they were walking from West campus instead of driving from East Riverside.

So there must’ve been appreciable, like traffic consideration. I mean, it probably, induced demand and all that probably filled up real quick. But it’s also, you know, something to think about when people are thinking about whether they wanna identify in their core, especially around universities where students, would love to walk to school.

And you’re like, why does this shape, like this? Like,

Mm-hmm. Uh, instead of making ’em more like a. Urban environment, or at least walkable within the building or putting the parking on the outside. There was just like, every building was like its own little island. And then there was parking all over it and it was really hard to walk places. Uh, I went to go visit friends for parties and stuff over there.

Time usually had to drive, so designated driver.

Longhorn Dam. Mm-hmm. Next to the Longhorn Dam. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So Town Lake is created by this dam. Just west of, or east of the mm-hmm. East of, uh, downtown. And there used to be like, it was like, and it also used to be the, by the old Austin Energy plant mm-hmm. Plant. So there was like a cooling, thing, or like a water outtake from the plant.

so you were running by the plant and then there’s this little outcropping, and then you had this little rainbow bridge or like little like arch bridge that you ran over the top. And it was kind of cute. It was like fun. But then you had to run over the dam and then like, cars were almost hitting you.

But now they have this beautiful bridge that’s like a three-pronged bridge that goes one side to one side, and then all the way to the other side. I highly recommend people check it out and, there, there’s, it’s, you know, there’s, I’m sure there’s drone shots out there of it now. It’s really pretty.

Yeah. I

Um, which makes sense. It was a pretty section. And the wildflowers grow in the spring. I bet you it’s really pretty right now actually. Yeah. I saw all my friends from high schoolers posting their blue bonnet pictures.

There still is a lot of single family development. there is a good distribution of the type of housing that’s being built. Mm-hmm. And not only in the city of Austin, but it did refer to some of the outlying suburbs as well. So I think that, again, like we’re talking about, not only it, that also increases the, housing production, the number of units that have hit the market.

This was by Chelsea Allinger, Alex Bcca and Caitlin Ruger in Greater Greater Washington. so I was, I, saw like all the, the social media about it being released and the next day I read this piece they were like, yeah, we sued and we tried to get it, get this, uh, out. And I had no idea about the history of this.

Uh, and apparently, they’d been trying to get it released for a long time after they, yeah,

So I’m wondering what you think about this. Like, um, I think that for me specifically, I think the most interesting part of this isn’t necessarily the, like the pricing part, but just like that she, the mayor couldn’t be compelled to release this after a lawsuit. After like council had said like, we’re not gonna redistribute funds unless you release this.

And then they just forgot about it. Or they just like let it go. Like it, it kind of is frustrating from like a larger standpoint of like things that. should be done or rules that should be followed that just aren’t followed these days. People are just like picking and choosing what they want to like allow and not allow.

And I, I, find that more frustrating than like the report itself. Like it’s outdated. It’s, we know how pricing works with New York City now, but like the anti rule following things that I think the thing that bothered

Maybe that’s why she does. She doesn’t wanna do it, but she’s also her terms up. it seems like the, two leading candidates for to take over as mayor are both in support. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t get the opposition to releasing it. Is it that she just didn’t wanna stir up anything? And I mean, is there a secret mission to have road pricing and she doesn’t wanna stir up a conversation too soon?

I, I mean, is that, it’s baffling to me.

On

Bi bicycle, protected bicycle lanes to be, uh, discussed about being removed now. So I, I think the whole city is tense with politics, but that doesn’t excuse the, it doesn’t answer the question of the five years that it wasn’t released since it’s been in their possession.

even now a little bit of, like, you see the rumblings from like people who are frustrated with Mayor Wu and Boston, with what Karen Bass did last week, trying to like, push back on the, the, Kline, plans, that would go through West Hollywood. I wonder how much of it is like the politics of it are so.

the, the NIMBYs of it all are so loud about this specific thing. The, the, the bike lanes, the transit lanes, the transit expansion, the in Los Angeles, who is the, it’s gonna be 10 stories down, but there’s gonna be tunneling under people’s houses. And that’s always been a frustration in LA for certain folks.

I’m wondering how much of it is just like somebody gets in their ear and is just like, don’t do this, or, I’m gonna make the life a living hell. And so it’s like five people, right? Or five people. Like I have a pen in my head, five people, four fingers, five people, five people that are like in somebody’s ear.

They’re like, we’re gonna just like, you know, make it worse for you, if you do this. And so I feel that that feels like more what it was like the kind of a hostage situation more than it is. Oh,

yeah. we don’t know what, certainly in the case of New York City was the commercial, goods movement lobby not a fan of this.

I mean, it, you, I think you have to think about yeah. Who are the

And I I, I can’t remember who it is now, but you would know them. They’re, famous person generally, or their family’s famous. Um, and so those types of things, even here in San Francisco, I mean, when the, the, uh, the de Young Museum folks Yeah, right. Were against, uh, JFK Drive. Like it’s, it’s like that one or two, the lobby is the down.

Yeah. I don’t know. I, think that’s just the frustrating part about this to me. Not necessarily like pricing. Yeah. We kind of see what’s going on. It’s an old report,

And so there were at the last minute, you know. There were like, who’s, who are they gonna talk to last? And how do we make sure we go and visit, go to that bus, like figure out when we can meet with them, you know? And I walked to the study area like three times and went to every business. It is like, what can you do to meet with people to help them not make those calls?

I mean, that’s, that’s basically our jobs. Um, essentially. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. because it, like, just before, I mean, I’ve had this happen like right before a council meeting. Someone calls and then you’re like, oh God, like I had these votes and now. That just killed it.

Mm-hmm. Already, and they’re, you just have to be prepared for them coming back up again and, yeah.

they wanna know of how their, where their staff is going to park. And so it’s getting all that information ahead of time. Like we kind of know what their arguments are going to be, so what is our plan for addressing them? we can figure out who does need to drive if they don’t have the luxury, like we’re talking about earlier, of taking transit to work and they’re getting out at midnight, and how do we help them know that they need to drive?

Mm-hmm. Or can we do these other things? But yeah, I mean, I, for that particular Bellevue study, we just walked, I mean there was probably, it was. Four big study areas, and I just walked business to business and I talked to employees. I, you know, heard that well, people that were driving it was like people making minimum wage and getting two tickets a week from, you know, two parking citations a week.

so how can we now have that data point to say, well, people are already paying through parking citations and that’s worse. You know, if we could just issue them a permit or, you know, they’re paying a daily rate that’s, cheaper for them, or like, customers aren’t going to come, that’s the biggest one.

And. We talk about, well of course your customers that drive often walk in and start complaining right away. You’re not gonna hear from. So it’s just kind of anticipating what they’re going to say. I mean, it’s always challenging, but you just, I mean, the biggest thing is who are your champions? So if you can get a few champions to come out and testify or have someone on counsel that really can make the case, then you know, that’s how it gets passed.

but yeah, I mean, I don’t think if we hadn’t done all that outreach, I mean we did a hundred meetings just table. If we hadn’t done that, I don’t know if it would’ve had we changed the mayor’s mind in the council meeting, because we had champions there, like that testified, even champions on the council.

but yeah, there’s always the chance that the last person that calls, it’s not. It gets in their ear.

The more complex task of navigation seems to help brains ward off cognitive ailments like dementia and Alzheimer’s. This was by Elizabeth Tarika in Medical Express. there was a report out, I was interested in the study specifically. ’cause this says that if you were navigating a city, you are likely to, and can they make those brain connections that might ward off Alzheimer’s and dementia, but then also you’re in the city and breathing in the exhaust from all those intersections.

So it makes it, maybe it makes it worse. They didn’t mention that, but public health, that’s what came to my mind. Yeah, I was reading it, I was like, that’s been, the research has come out lately that, um, you know, particulates and, and, uh, PM 2.5 and, and, and a number of other emissions are part of the problem with, uh, dementia and Alzheimer’s and other brain ailments.

So, is it like, you know, how much of it is like, going up and down, but, I’m curious what your thoughts are of like, this, the connections that people make or navigating, maybe not driving, but walking around places actually helps them, their brains, stay healthy.

Reading maps. I love reading maps. Like I always just loved reading maps and riding. Riding in the car, sorry. But you know, and reading a map and we don’t do that anymore. Like I’m thinking about, my son Angus, he’s 18. Like physically holding a map and reading it, it’s not done. And that is, you know, that challenges your brain now.

You just put in an address and you listen to where it tells you to turn. That does not challenge your brain in the same way. And so I thought, I thought a bit about that. And again, these different complex exercises that we do, because that’s part of what they say to do as we age to, to add that complexity or don’t lose that complexity.

But I, I also thought about my dad and stepmom who lived in Manhattan forever. My stepmother is, born and raised New Yorker. And during the pandemic they, they had started doing kind of the, snowbird thing down to Florida and they would be down there for three months of the year. And during the pandemic, that’s where they were.

’cause it was over the wintertime in New York. And, and they really never went back to New York ’cause they were aging and they lived in a three story walkup and life was just getting harder, they thought up there, but my stepmother and, so they sold their place in New York and, and she’s just, changing I think.

And I think, and I’ve seen some cognitive change and I don’t know if it’s because of the lack of doing this activity, you know, the daily routine of traversing the, streets. so it’s, maybe correlation rather than causation, but it, it was an interesting thing to think about and it, and totally makes sense.

Mm-hmm. She also was like paying attention to stuff. she was always thinking, always like,

And I, I do think this happens to folks who like end up living somewhere where they can’t go places. If they don’t have something to keep themselves active, they, uh, might, go a little inward. And there’s also a loneliness factor too. I feel like there’s a. there’s big campaigns I know in, in, in Europe and at least in England, uh, about, you know, loneliness and, and getting folks out and about and meeting with people and those types of things.

But I wonder if that’s part of it too, is like if you live in a city and you connect with people or you like even going down the street, like here in, in Noe Valley, like I. Have made it a point to like meet like some of the shopkeepers and like say hi to them every day when I walk by and all this stuff.

So like you have that constant interaction or your constant like kind of negotiation with other people. And if I, I feel like if I lost that, you would, you my, I feel like I would mm-hmm. My brain would turn a mush, to a certain extent just because of the lack of like, connections. so one of the things about doing the podcast and the newsletter from home since 2014 is like, I’m here at home and I don’t get that kind of interaction, so I have to go out and make it a little bit more because, uh, otherwise you’re just like, kind of in your own mind, in your own head.

And social media is not a substitute for individual, you know, connection with people. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. And so many of the riders are seniors, you know, they, take the, shuttle every day. They go to the senior center or they go to Walmart. ’cause those are, the two, big destinations. Mm-hmm. And. It’s like if they didn’t have that bus to pick them up to actually help them too.

It’s not like they’re just walking down the corner. and can, I mean, some of them could walk to the corner bus stop if it is at the corner, you know, depending how far it was and, navigate the bus themselves. But the driver gets out and helps and, help them get on the bus. But it’s just, if they didn’t have that connection, then they’re not leaving their house.

They’re not, and what I worry is in Fresno measure C, there is the local sales tax that funds a lot of transit and helps the agency get its fair box recovery ratio and, and meet those, requirements and it’s up for renewal and there’s like a big chance it won’t pass. So if it doesn’t, you know, does it

And, and then what it’s going to do basic, like, people now aren’t gonna be able to go to the senior center and now they’re, we’re gonna have to pay for their healthcare. And if they’re not using their brains and getting out and exercising and all these things. so it’s just like, yeah.

The transportation insecurity of it all. it’s really important.

You know, it’s a dementia community, but it’s set up to simulate a town and the, cognitive benefit of going through those activities of daily living and navigating that space. yeah. And I, wish, I’m

’cause then like, they’ll sit there, but there’s no bus coming, right. There’s a bus stop. There’s no bus. And so it’s kinda like a way for them to get Yeah. Pulled them back into the community so they don’t leave. but yeah, the urban design implications of that are fascinating, especially from when we’re talking about, you know, what we’re talking about here.

and a couple of weeks ago, I mean, we were talking, with folks about, you know, historic preservation and that whole. industry and the, the idea of like beauty and like what, makes people interested in like, uh, walking. And there’s a other article last week that was about, from the University of Colorado where they were talking about, it’s not just about the distance, from a walkable standpoint, it’s actually like what you see and like how you interact.

Like the, we know this, the fenestration of the buildings and like the urban, the, quality urban design, the street furniture, all that stuff. And like, that’s powerful too, is like how it stimulates your brain the same way maybe nature might, if you’re out in, you know, walking in the woods. The city could do the same thing.

If it’s boring, it’s boring to everybody, right? But if it’s,

There was, um, and I think it was on six 60 minutes, there was this, last night. Was it last Sunday? The dog project, and they’re studying Alzheimer’s? Well, Rayla and dogs and there’s all these results of how it compares to people.

And it was like the same exact, if dogs are around other dogs, like just they were looking at dogs’, brains and dogs that have had start to started to lose their cognitive, abilities. Mm-hmm. And like memory loss and things. And it was just exactly the same as humans. So they’ve studied like 50,000 dogs.

We’re humans are social animals. Mm-hmm.

$2 a month will get you some stickers and a handwritten note. $10 a month will get you a bus only. Only scarf or bike. Only scarf or maybe, a different type of, of, a cooling towel. Cooling towel. Yeah. I’ll have to, I’ll work on that. Or, uh, if you do a dollar a month, you can get this podcast without outside advertising.

Listen to questions and comments. This is part of the show where we talk about something fun, interesting. Or maybe, or actually no. If you have a comment or question, feel free to tweet us or comment any the social sites where the podcast appears or feel free to email [email protected]. Puppies and butterflies is the part of the show.

Always talk about something fun, interesting. Or maybe just in fit in the other sections. Do you all have a puppies and butterflies for this week?

Maybe a marina style grocery store design. Yeah, it’s called a marina style. So, and when it was built in 1959, it was designed by Worcester, Bernardi and Emmonds. And it was the first time a grocery store wasn’t a, just a block. And it had curved, a curved roof with wings on the end. Oh. And they’ve, I think they’ve just kept, like, kept some of that.

But anyway, that started if you, and then it was like, I was reading this article, but like. Like even Dollar General, like all of these other stores have this

Yeah, it’s like a curved roof with the curve and then, you know, Safeway and blocks underneath and like, it wings out after the curve. it’s called marina style architecture for grocery, like big block stores.

Especially

And so you have to be, and then you have, allocate population and stuff like that. And so now it’s a big deal. ’cause now like if you’re out of compliance, you can, developers can basically kind of build whatever they want. yeah. As long as it has like this, that, and the other thing, they can just do it if it falls, like building code and stuff.

So now there’s like these, all these development, like, it’s like 30 story buildings in the, in the sunset and whatever else, uh, that people were like saying that they possibly could do if they divided subdivided a couple times. And it was, it’s wild. It’s wild.

Okay.

Did you see the time capsule? Yeah.

I wish you had given a

I, I think I messaged you and said I need to get back on the schedule and have it be like once a month. Okay. Along,

End. Do it and remind me. Yeah. Remind, remind. You remind about and I’ll remind you about the puppies and butterflies. Well, so my puppies and butterflies is, and I was telling you, I started to tell a story, but I, I remember that I had put it in my puppies and butterflies when I was put in my notes. But I, I actually was out on Friday afternoon collecting signatures for the ballot measure, uh, that we might have if we can collect 200,000 signatures for to save Bart Uni.

AC transit, et cetera, in the region. Mm-hmm. So, um, I had never thought about doing anything like that before in my life. And so thank you, uh, Carl Lavin and Liz Brion, for the impetus. And so I went, on Thursday to go pick up some supplies, including signature stuff, and I went, to, to Town Square in Noway Valley, and I was just staying there and I, I wore my, um, SF City FC jersey with the Muni logo on it.

And so as people would walk by, I would just say, uh, support from Muni and I’d just point to my shirt. And it seemed to work. It seemed to work. Okay. Ha. Um, but yeah, we got a couple signatures, so I’ll be out a little bit more this week and maybe, uh, in the next coming oncoming months to try to get those 200,000 signatures.

But that’s, that’s, uh, that was my puppies and butterflies. I think that was, um, I haven’t really been that involved with local stuff, and so I figured, maybe I should do it. Job. Do your civic duty. Yeah. So get those signatures to get that on the job. So that was, that was what I’ve been up to. And if you wanna support the campaign by donating or volunteering or anything else, check out connect bay area.com.

so where can folks find you all if you wish to be found Tracy first and then we’ll go with Chrissy.

And of course, at my website and in your inbox every morning if you sign up for the overhead wire Daily Flicker. you can find me by typing in transit nerds. Uh, everything else is at the ar red wire. thanks for joining us at Mondays at the ar red wire, and thanks for our generous Patreons for sponsoring this week’s podcast.

Thank you Chrissy and Tracy for coming. Thank you, Dawn, on the show. Oh, we really appreciate you spending time with us and reading up the material. I know it’s a lot of work, but I appreciate it.