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Category Archives: Blog

One Simple Trick to Add Bike Lanes

December 3, 2025

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


Symbiotic Natural Infrastructures

November 18, 2025

Something I think about a lot is how our transportation system actually interacts with natural systems. In his book Crossings, Ben Goldfarb shares the many ways that our obsession with road building blocks off animal movements and in some instances even reduces the gene pool for some. While he talks about creatures big and small, he


(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 556: From Bahrain to Connecticut

November 12, 2025

This week we’re joined by Cortni Desir, Executive Program Manager for Public Transportation at the Connecticut Department of Transportation at the Mpact transit + community conference in Portland. We discuss her international influences, upgrading bus stops, customer experience, homelessness and transit, and being curious. To listen to this episode, visit Streetsblog USA or find it


California Forever and Hong Kong’s Rail + Property Model

This video from the Flying Moose is from several months ago, but it’s the best explainer I’ve seen on Hong Kong’s rail + property model of developing the MTR subway network. What they are clear about is that you can’t just prop up this type of system overnight, it takes decades of planning and lessons


For the Many, Not the Few

November 6, 2025

I know that everyone is talking about the mayoral race in New York City and I’ll get to that in a second, but I do also want to marvel over what has happened in the last few weeks pertaining to transit and governance as well. On Halloween, the Illinois legislature sent a transportation reform and


(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 555: Three Principals for Federal Transportation Policy

Note: Apple podcasts users may not see the last three podcasts in our feed as we’re having technical difficulties.  Please use the Libsyn or other feeds to listen to the show if you aren’t getting it.  We apologize for the inconvenience. This week on the Talking Headways podcast we’re joined by Corrigan Salerno of Transportation


Mondays 180: Signal Timing

November 3, 2025

This week on Mondays at The Overhead Wire we chat about signal timing tinkering in Houston, the impact of commute times on sleep disorders, Phoenix’s lack of water for sprawl, and how many times Raleigh had to bid for contractors to build bus rapid transit. Below are the show notes:


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