Jeff Wood

This week's guests are Breen Masciotra, transit-oriented development manager for the Port Authority of Allegheny County, and Karina Ricks, director of the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure for the city of Pittsburgh. We discuss the challenges they face in Pittsburgh, including topography, new technologies, and hostile streets. You'll also hear about how they're making a more walkable and multi-modal city through new bus rapid transit projects, transit-oriented development initiatives, and "eco innovation districts."

This week we’re joined by James Corless, CEO of Sacramento's regional planning agency. We chat about the Sacramento area and the connections between its urban and rural economies, his past working on federal transportation advocacy, how mid-sized cities are nationally important for providing jobs and housing, and why it’s kind of ridiculous to do 30-year long range regional transportation plans.

This week we return to Rail~Volution for a talk with Diana Mendes, who leads the transit and rail practice at HNTB. Diana tells us about meeting the author of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), what needs to change about environmental planning, the early use of GIS, and the environmental planning process for the Lower Manhattan Recovery after 9/11.

This episode examines the obstacles streets and transit agencies face when trying to move good projects forward, and the relationships that help make progress possible.

Our guest is former Madison mayor and current Wisconsin Bike Fed Executive Director Dave Cieslewicz.

This week we’re chatting with Ian Brown, former managing director for London Rail. Ian discusses everything London transport, including congestion pricing; constructing, financing; and making the case for the massive Crossrail project; bus operations; cycling; operations contracts; and even contactless fare payment systems.

This week I’m joined by Tiffany Chu, co-founder of the transit planning software firm Remix, which helps agencies quickly assess the impact of potential changes in service. Tiffany discusses the response the company has received from the transit industry and what got it started. We also talk about the possible policy implications of Remix, as well as the movement towards open data.

Paul Mackie of Mobility Lab joins me this week to discuss transportation demand management (TDM), urban mobility, and how cities need to adapt to change the transportation status quo.

This week I'm joined by cartographer Gretchen Peterson to talk about mapmaking and her new book, City Maps: A Coloring Book for Adults. We discuss why she made the book and why she chose the 40 city maps she included in it.

This week we're doing something a little different with the podcast. It's the morning plenary from last month's Live.Ride.Share conference in Denver. You'll hear Jill Locantore of WalkDenver introduce University of Virginia Professor Peter Norton, author of Fighting Traffic, who discusses how automobiles were sold to the public at the beginning of the motor age. Following Norton is Gabe Klein, former transportation director in Washington DC and Chicago, who talks about how cars are changing and what that means for streets and cities.