This week on Talking Headways we’re joined by writer Rob Walker to talk about his book, City Tech: 20 Apps, Ideas, and Innovations Changing the Urban Landscape. We discuss data collection, misconceptions, impressive transportation technologies such as e-bikes, and how technology has progressed in the last decade.

You can listen to this episode at Streetsblog USA or on our hosting site.

Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript:

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Early on when I started my blog back in 2006, around the same time as this newsletter, I thought I knew everything and wanted to share it. Now I know nothing, or at least it feels that way. Of course that’s not really true but that’s sometimes how it feels when there’s just so much information out there and I just don’t feel like I have enough of it to make an argument one way or another. Though it’s probably a good thing that keeps us measured and less likely to jump to conclusions, it can also limit us from being experimental or think outside of the box.

So here’s an experiment I want to run. When I find articles for the newsletter every day, I want to connect them all. In many instances they aren’t connected but I want to find one way in which they are so that cities make better sense to me.

So let’s take two potentially different topics, Paris losing population and Austin shelving electric buses for a year because of Proterra’s bankruptcy. On their face, they are two completely different topics under a general umbrella of cities.

But taking a closer look, what can we see?

Paris’ urban core is losing population to the tune of 10,000 people a year. Even with massive amounts of progress on sustainable transportation and climate action, their housing stock is limiting who can stay and live there.

Families and middle income residents can’t partake in the increased quality of life even as more homes are being built. Officials say more units become second homes and short term rental operations for those that purchase them. And existing apartments are being combined to make bigger ones, reducing housing numbers even more.

In Austin, the transit agency is mothballing around half of it’s electric vehicle fleet built by Proterra, an electric bus company that went bankrupt but whose business was purchased at auction. The reason being that there aren’t enough end of the line chargers to keep up service levels through the day. The other half of Capital Metro’s electric fleet built by New Flyer in Canada will continue operating.

The move in Austin represents some national frustration at the roll out of bus electrification programs. In an attempt to create movement on the laudable goal of emissions reductions through fleet electrification, the industry as a whole suffers a black eye and perhaps a setback from a perception of failure. As cities like Shenzhen have shown, fleet electrification is doable, but lessons need to be learned along the way.

Then what ties Paris and Austin together in this particular instance? Deferred resource allocation. Austin bought buses it can’t use at the moment and Paris residents are locked out of housing by absentee homeowners and 26,000 short term rentals. Paris is building more housing and Austin has purchased more buses, but they just aren’t getting used in ways that are beneficial to the population.

How does this get remedied? I’m not sure. You could argue as Anne Hidalgo’s administration has that more regulations on second homes and short term rentals are in order. Barcelona is going to have a go at that too.

In Austin’s case, there’s something off with the fact that federal and state governments have mandated zero emissions fleets for an industry that is somewhat bespoke and doesn’t have billions in sales and competition like the auto industry. Other cities have gone electric and seem to be figuring it out, but what’s really needed is greater service to reduce emissions through ridership gains. We do need to test these bus systems out and go through the growing pains of learning what it takes to make it work because there’s long term benefits as well.

I’m hoping that we can figure these things out. If cities and agencies can figure out how to show progress and get better at resource allocation issues like these, we might find better policies and quality of life all around.

A Flashback! That’s right we’re flashing back again to Episode 308 of the Talking Headways podcast with Sara Hendren discussing her book What a Body Can Do. Sara chats with us about how we think and talk about disability, reframing independent living, and designing a humane world for everyone. This is one of my favorites and I’m glad we’re getting to share it with folks again.

Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript

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Yesterday we shared a report from Brookings that looked at how State DOT’s could and should be more accountable in their transportation spending. It took the research team six months to catalogue how states select projects and what they found was that only nine states associate performance measures with long term planning goals and set targets. The rest obscure project selection and many times advocates have no idea why projects were chosen.

Another report from Transportation for America then shows why this matters. While the IIJA (Infrastructure Bill) set up the opportunity for flexible funding and the ability to reduce emissions, many of the formula funds went to states that continued to expand auto oriented infrastructure such as highways.

The result is greater emissions to the tune of 50 coal fired power plants running for a whole year and roads run by states that continue to be unsafe. Investments in active transportation are so minuscule, their climate benefits don’t matter as much. And unfortunately with the bill coming up for renewal in 2026 and a more hostile administration, it doesn’t seem like climate relief is around the corner.

There were however some interesting findings from the report. Some rural states such as Wyoming and Montana were able to prioritize repair of existing roads over expansion and thus will end up with emissions levels below baseline.

In both the Brookings and T4 reports, Texas is uniquely horrible. Project selection based on metrics is absent and their expansion plans will create more emissions than Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania combined.

In thinking about the Brookings and T4 reports, it made me wonder if we’ll ever get the worst State DOTs to refocus on priorities that matter to everyone. Even if they didn’t touch climate, why wouldn’t they care about traffic deaths and safety. As David Zipper shares in his Vox piece today referencing another T4 report, 2/3rds of traffic deaths occur on 14% of road miles under state control.

And what about access and economic development? And public health and poverty reduction? Why are we building roads that increase driving, require a $50K vehicle to participate on, and increase exposure to risk and thus insurance rates? Why are we building the mechanism that’s fueling the housing crisis because it’s politically easier to build a big road than build more economically efficient density?

Roads shouldn’t be about just about moving cars. Because moving them creates a lot of externalities as mentioned above. That’s why we need accountability. That’s why we need shared goals and benchmarks.  Until then, more people will die, and more emissions will kill the planet as we know it.

This week we’re joined by Dani Simons, currently of Alstom but formerly Assistant to the Secretary and Director of Public Affairs at USDOT, to take a look back at how Biden Administration policies evolved from ideas to bills such as the IIJA and Inflation reduction act. We also discuss Buy America, the impacts of outside criticisms from different sides of the political spectrum, and the importance of storytelling.

You can listen to this episode at Streetsblog USA or find it on our hosting page.

Below is a full AI generated unedited transcript:

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I have noticed that there are a lot of post-mortems on the election, specifically looking inward at some of some of the acute problems cities currently see and why that likely led to a shift for some voters to the right. There are a lot of compelling arguments from commentators about governance and adaptation and I don’t have much to add there.

But there was an interesting item in The Nation that went a bit further on the idea of America overall, not just cities, as a civic desert, referencing Robert Putnam’s work Bowling Alone about the loss of local membership groups such as religious congregations, fraternal organizations, and political groups in the United States. These groups, once the center of communities, are now greatly diminished as the internet has become our (dis)connective tissue.

We are more connected than ever, but less connected to things like political parties that end up making huge decisions that impact our lives greatly. Many identify as a member but the only action taken is just send money every two to four years after checking a box on your voter registration that then gets mined by text and email farmers. The article’s author believes we’d be better off going back to more local organizing and organization instead of allowing party leaders to make decisions with big money fundraisers that outweighs a lot of the local committees that do exist.

The article is worth a read, but my mind instantly jumped to the information environment as well. We know from research that places that don’t have local papers or sources of information suffer greatly from the void as there’s less accountability for elected officials while the price of getting things done, infrastructure and otherwise, is much higher.

I myself feel like we suffer as I look through the news every day and see very good journalism on great topics, but also a huge amount of repetitive junk and useless pages that are just holding spaces for per click advertising. It will only get worse as machine learning and artificial intelligence combing and content producing grows.

So why does this politics and information stuff matter to professionals working on a whole host of urban issues? I worry that it will get advocates and professionals steam rolled on issues that are important but contested such as traffic safety, housing, or economic policy by those with big pockets or a big megaphone.

I kept telling myself I wouldn’t share any hot takes after the election but I don’t know if this is a hot take. Maybe just a larger observation connected to feelings I’ve been having even before the election. Maybe I just need to ride my bike to find dumplings more often.

John Simmerman of Active Towns joins the Mondays Show post election to talk about some of the transit wins. We also look ahead and wonder if LA really could go car free for the Olympics and whether Canada is ready for high speed rail.

Below are the show notes and items we chatted about on the show with John. You can also find this show on YouTube!

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This week on Talking Headways we’re joined by Julie Huls, CEO of Waymaker Group. We chat about economic development strategies for mid-sized cities, the impacts of the pandemic on regional thinking, and what a future of Mega Regions means for cities trying to attract talent.

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

Below is a full AI generated unedited transcript:

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This week on Talking Headways we’re listening in on a 1 to 1 conversation between Julie Eaton Ernst, Climate Resilience Practice Leader at HNTB, and Dr. Cris Liban, Chief Sustainability Officer at LA Metro. They chat about the co-benefits of transportation, the evolution of the definition of transportation, and making change in small steps.

This podcast was produced in partnership with Mpact. http://mpactmobility.org

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

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We are still catching up on a bit of news from last week while we were at Mpact so some of the stories might have a bit older dates, but of course they are still very relevant! Looking at you Austin and your fun plans for Congress Avenue.

I also want to circle two items I think are important. A lot of the discussion around climate change often centers on emissions from transportation sources such as tailpipes, but less talked about from my perspective watching the news is from construction of the transportation infrastructure that facilitates those trips.

Often times that is road building but it can also be the construction of your favorite subway line or other infrastructure we think of as sustainable. And there are two ways I think of infrastructure construction from an ecological standpoint.

First is the impact those roads have after they are constructed such as on the urban heat island, the facilitation of driving, and on biodiversity and the free movement of animals. We talked with Ben Goldfarb (Transcript | Audio) about his book Crossings which covers this phenomenon in great, and often sad, detail.

But second is the impact of construction itself. In order to get emissions down to a reasonable amount or zero, it’s clear there needs to be a focus on sustainable construction and materials. The two materials most used for this are concrete and asphalt.

Asphalt as we found out talking with Kevin O’Reilly about his book on the topic (Transcript | Audio) has an interesting history and wild connections to politics all around the world.

There are naturally occurring versions of it including in Canada’s tar sands for example, but what we know of it now is mostly the process of asphalt extraction from refining crude oil to make gasoline. The good thing about it is that when you put it on the ground as a road it acts as kind of a carbon sink in that it never gets burned and released into the atmosphere and can mostly be reused over and over again. As Kevin said “…and so when you’re driving your car, the asphalt under your car wheels, that’s a carbon sink, but the asphalt that’s powering your engine is a carbon bomb.”

That’s why it was interesting to me when I saw the article about New York City deciding to test 50% mixes of recycled asphalt of low traffic streets. Reusing the material means that it isn’t being extracted. And although it has a big impact on the urban heat island, 200 tons of waste can also be diverted from landfills and reused.

The other material we use for infrastructure and roads and buildings is concrete. Unlike asphalt, concrete is not refined but the emissions come from limestone mined and baked at 1500 degrees Celsius usually using fossil fuels. Cement is the binder that when mixed with a specific kind of sand and gravel and water creates concrete.

And its emissions are skyrocketing. Between 2011 and 2013 China used as much concrete as the United States did in the whole 20th century. Other countries are following suit as demand for building roads and infrastructure and homes grows exponentially.

But the process is likely to get greener as companies look for ways to reduce emissions through either the heating process or by capturing emissions at creation of cement and storing it underground. Of course this isn’t a perfect solution and there are still risks of creating emissions. But I’m glad to see that solutions are sought.

This topic could prompt whole books to be written but I thought these two articles on asphalt recycling and greening concrete coming into the news list at the same time prompted some connections, especially since it’s something we’d chatted about before on the podcast in great detail. It’s definitely something to consider when thinking about emissions and lifecycle costs and impacts of these materials that are everywhere in our lives.