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Category Archives: Blog

(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 560: If You Want to Win, You’ve Got to Fight

December 17, 2025

This week on the Talking Headways podcast we’re joined by Carter Lavin to discuss his new book If You Want to Win You’ve Got to Fight: A Guide to Effective Transportation Advocacy. We discuss the mess and practice of politics, how we have more power than we think as advocates, and how we can get



(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 559: The Unfinished Metropolis

December 10, 2025

This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined by Benjamin Schneider to talk about his book The Unfinished Metropolis: Igniting the City-Building Revolution. Ben chats about the unfinishedness of cities, the larger origins of NIMBYism, and how much our economy and built environment cater to cars. Listen to this episode at Streetsblog USA. Find


Transportation as Housing Policy

According to a YouGov survey, Americans believe that housing isn’t affordable, but they disagree on why. More than any other reason, people believe mortgage rates or the costs of building materials are culprits. I know from renovating spaces recently that labor costs are one of the big reasons things, at least here in the Bay


Mondays 182: Affordable Housing on Top

December 8, 2025

This week we’re Han Solo but we’re sharing news about fire departments and their impacts on cities, how Boston and Denver are considering putting housing together with other public services like libraries and police stations, and a bill that would allow transit agencies to get projects environmentally certified in state. And much much more!!! Below



One Simple Trick to Add Bike Lanes

The City of Toronto has plans for 20km more bike lanes, pushing back on Premiere Ford’s wishes to rip them out to appease car drivers. To get around any prohibitions and limits, the city will reduce car lane widths in order to give bikes more space, technically within the mandate that the number of vehicle


Mondays 181: Mondays at The Overhead Wire – Fran Sans

November 24, 2025

This week on Mondays at The Overhead Wire we’re Han Solo, but we’ve got some interesting news from the world of transportation and urban planning to share.  We talk briefly about tram trains, the NAVI electric vehicle program, Chicago’s big win, and much much more!  Below the fold are the show notes with all the


(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 557: Emotional Consumption in Chinese Cities

November 19, 2025

This week on the Talking Headways podcast we’re joined by Olivia Plotnick, Founder of Wai Social in Shanghai China. We discuss her summer trip to over 30 different Chinese cities to experience different retail, the impacts of high speed rail, and the social e-commerce ecosystem. We also discuss how competition has made Chinese retail sharper, electric


A Thought Experiment on Government Silos

In a recent Eno Center for Transportation series on re-imagining USDOT, the items got me thinking about what a complete revamp might look like if we thought outside of the box on transportation. Early on in this newsletter’s history I was asked if I would ever just focus on transportation, and while tempting I ultimately


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