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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This week on the Talking Headways podcast we’re joined by Elaine Clegg, CEO of Valley Regional Transit in Boise Idaho. We chat about how the Boise bus system is changing, the impact of fast regional growth, energy infrastructure and favorite transportation board games.

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

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

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On January 1st 94% of India’s trains have been electrified. In 2015 just 45% of the system had overhead wires, but a dependence on foreign oil imports to power diesel locomotives led the country to move towards 100% electric trains which will happen soon, and a goal of becoming net zero by 2030 is closer to reality.

I would love to see this happen here, but we’re distracted by plans for hydrogen train sets, freight rail companies set in their ways, and a deep dislike of overhead wires. I’m looking forward to seeing what Caltrain’s success looks like after electrification and wonder if that will change minds around the country on reducing emissions without having to carry energy on board.

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The EPA is preparing to reject an air quality plan for the Los Angeles region put together by the South Coast Air Quality Management District because it won’t do enough to reduce smog. The District plan calls for the Federal Government to reduce 67 tons of emissions a day through the things it can control such as shipping, trains, and aircraft. The EPA then says states can’t tell the Federal Government what to do under the Clean Air Act or the Constitution, and it seems to have degraded into a Spider-Man meme where everyone is pointing at each other as if to find the imposter.

None of these agencies or the state of California seems to really want to deal with the true cause of the problem which is transportation emissions that we continue to make worse with highway expansion after highway expansion while we also slow walk solutions that can reduce the federally regulated airport emissions such as high speed rail. The port of Long Beach is already spending $1.5B to reduce truck trips with trains, why not electrify them? Even CARB, the California agency responsible for reductions in pollutants has said reducing VMT is important, but has punted to other agencies to enforce their mandates that ignore climate impacts of driving expansion.

Punting doesn’t seem to be going well. So maybe this is what the EPA is working towards since the region won’t get federal highway funding if this ends up at an impasse. And the Clean Air Act says that federally funded projects shouldn’t be increasing pollution in already polluted areas. Any other request to reduce driving is politically charged as a recent California Transportation Commission meeting showed. So this might just be the only way to get California to stop expanding highways since no one else will.

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This week on the Talking Headways Podcast we’re joined by Dr. Kathryn Howell, Director of the National Center for Smart Growth at the University of Maryland. We talk about her daily e-bike commute, organizing around the Purple Line, the importance of eviction data, and commercial displacement.

This episode was produced in partnership with Mpact.

To listen to this episode, head to Streetsblog USA or find it in the hosting archive.

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

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Many times in my daily search on items related to housing I come across pieces that share stories about communes or ecovillages, co-housing and co-living. Many of these ideas born out of high housing costs and a disconnect from modern life also lead to higher level health discussions, like the idea of blue zones or health care design such as the French neighborhood created for people with Alzheimer’s. Most of these items are optimistic and share a way of living that creates a sense of community for those that choose it as well as a basic level of care that’s expected as long as we’re living.

To a certain extent I think I personally connect all these dots because I feel many in society are looking for community, or more specifically, the group they can relate to. Not only that, they want to feel like someone has their back. We’ve designed cities for a lot of individualism with cars and single family homes, but the inertia of that decision has taken us away from some of the natural connections that can be made in a more compact community. Not sure how we fix it, but the connected city brings all these issues together and sometimes gets us to think more seriously about it.

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If you’re in the Bay Area this Thursday, we’re hosting a happy hour with Urban Environmentalists Bay Area, Streets for People, and Seamless Bay Area at Elixir on Thursday February 1st at 6pm. It’s easy access to BART at 16th/Mission and I hope folks can join us!

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One of the premises of Des Fitzgerald’s book The Living City (Ep 456) is that he’s not quite been sold on the benefits of trees to cities or human health. He’s not saying there isn’t a connection, but he also believes the research is not quite as solid as people make it out to be from a number of observational health studies. Many of those trees and green spaces are also in rich neighborhoods and absent in poor neighborhoods, where there are possible other issues related to a number of socioeconomic factors.

Tree politics can also be confounded he says by people’s feelings about what makes ‘the good city’, and “that kind of sense that you govern the trees, you govern the city.”

Enter Aruni Bhatnagar, a cardiology researcher whose “Green Heart Louisville” project featured in yesterday’s Washington Post is seeking to show a real clinical connection between greenness and human health such as reduced stress and less hardening of arteries from transportation pollution.

Bhatnagar’s project has planted 8,000 trees and shrubs and has gotten super detailed health data from 500 residents including blood, urine, and hair samples and set up the study from a baseline of unhealthy air next to a major highway in a neighborhood with little existing greenery.

He cautions, rightly so, about expectations, but also believes he’s starting to see some results including higher pollution near fast food restaurants and better sleep near greenery. Soon Des might not be able to be as skeptical about health connections, but he’s also not wrong about the politics of trees and by proxy the cities in which they live. In the future it may just be, if you govern the trees (and reduce transportation pollution), you can save the planet and the humans that reside on it.

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If you’re in the Bay Area this Thursday, we’re hosting a happy hour with Urban Environmentalists Bay Area, Streets for People, and Seamless Bay Area at Elixir on Thursday February 1st at 6pm. It’s easy access to BART at 16th/Mission and I hope folks can join us!

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For this intro post and more news in your inbox every morning, sign up for a two week free trial of The Overhead Wire Daily, our popular newsletter established in 2006.

This week on the podcast we’re Han Solo but we’ve got some great news and information for you including items on Beverly Hills residents being denied permits for underground pools, we’ve got money for transit operations in a house bill, and we’re noticing the Introvert Economy is in full swing.  Come join us, we were told there would be no math in podcasting, but it turns out that’s just not true.

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Join our February Happy Hour!

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Below the fold are more show notes…

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CA State Senator Scott Wiener will introduce two traffic safety bills to reduce traffic deaths. He detailed them both in a thread on Twitter. The first would require auto manufacturers to add a speed limiter to vehicles that only allows ten miles above a speed limit. The second would require Caltrans to upgrade safety features on roads when doing capital work.

I don’t recommend going to Twitter to see the replies, but I will say it was an amazing show of (mostly) men tweeting about the ability to break the speed limit as if it were a god given right. For that reason, the bill which I believe is necessary to stem the traffic safety epidemic, will be hard to pass. People will be very angry and let legislators know. But Senator Wiener has picked up hard issues before and got them through. Just look at his record on housing.

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If you’re in the Bay Area we’re hosting a happy hour with Urban Environmentalists Bay Area, Streets for People, and Seamless Bay Area at Elixir on Thursday February 1st at 6pm. It’s easy access to BART at 16th/Mission and I hope folks can join us!

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For this intro post and more news in your inbox every morning, sign up for a two week free trial of The Overhead Wire Daily, our popular newsletter established in 2006.

This week we’re joined by Angie Schmitt, Owner and Principal at 3MPH Planning and Consulting. We chat about changing travel behavior in cities, the impact of recent social isolation on social trust, and polarization in policy solutions.

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

Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript:

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