Does Your City Need a Walkability Study? (Jeff Speck and Chris Dempsey)
The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast
Release Date: 02/20/2024
How Media and Culture Contribute to Traffic Violence (Myron Levin)
The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast
How does our popular media normalize dangerous behavior on our roads — and does it even help create it? Today on The Brake, we're talking about the role of culture in driving our road violence crisis, including car ads that make reckless driving seem like it never has deadly consequences, action movies, video games, and even social media trends. And my guest today, documentarian and journalist Myron Levin, wrapped all of that into a really fascinating, full length documentary that you can
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How Highways Tear Our Social Fabric Apart — and the Challenge of Measuring It (Luca Maria Aiello)
The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast
Decades of research prove that highways tear apart the physical fabric of our cities, segregating neighborhoods by race and income and making it harder for anyone outside a car to access the jobs, services and communities they rely on — at least if those things happen to be located on the other side of a dangerous road. But what impact do highways have on the invisible social fabric of our places — and does the internet provide a bridge between these disconnected communities, or only a digital mirror of the sharp divides that highways draw between our neighborhoods? Today on...
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Does 'Vision Zero' Need a Reset? (David Harkey)
The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast
Cities across America have been trying — and mostly failing — to achieve Vision Zero for more than a decade. But is it really time to trade the goal of ending road deaths and serious injuries for the aim of reducing them 30 percent by 2030? And would we be better positioned to eliminate the other 70 percent of fatalities if we made that strategic shift, or not? Today on the Brake, we sit down with the presdient of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, David Harkey, to talk about his organization's to push for a five-year full-court press on traffic violence, and why he...
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The Missing Ingredients In America's 'Minimobility' Revolution (Benjie De La Peña and Karina Ricks)
The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast
What’s a little bigger than a bike, a lot smaller than a car, and might be the tool you didn’t know you needed to get a big haul home from the grocery store two miles away in the pouring rain? The answer is actually an entire category of vehicles that aren't common on U.S. roads — but with the right mix of policy, code, and infrastructure reform, we could see a lot more of them. Today on the Brake, we sit down with Karina Ricks of CityFi and Benjie De La Peña of the Shared Use Mobility Center to talk about all things mini-mobility, also known as light urban vehicles (LUVs),...
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Everything You Need to Know About Keeping VRUS Safe In Your State in One Document (Michael Kelley)
The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast
What if there were a single document that told every U.S. resident exactly how safe their state is — or isn't— for pedestrians, bicyclists, and other vulnerable road users, as well as what that state is doing to save lives ? Turns out there is: the Vulnerable Road User Safety Assessment, or VRUSA. And since the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, every DOT in the U.S. has been legally required to write one – even if they don't always do it in ways that are particularly helpful to transportation reform advocates, Today on the Brake, we're sitting down with Michael...
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What's Missing From the 'Safe Systems' Approach (Roger Millar)
The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast
If you’ve been following Streetsblog for a while, you might have heard of famed planner/engineer/all-around transportation superstar Roger Millar, not least for his recent leadership as the head of the Washington state DOT. But you might not have heard that, while at WashDOT, Millar and his team did something quietly radical: they challenged every decision maker in their state to confront the role of land use in saving lives in our roads, by changing the very framework on which the state’s Vision Zero program rests. On this episode of The Brake, we sit down with Secretary Millar on the eve...
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When You Can't Drive in America's Hottest City (Mayor Kate Gallego)
The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast
More than a decade ago, Kate Gallego had a seizure that temporarily cost her the ability to drive – and opened her eyes to the difficulty of getting around her city of Phoenix, Arizona without a car. Now, in her third term as Phoenix's mayor, she's pushed for some of the most aggressive multimodal transportaiton investments in the city's history, including a new to tackle the impact of the community's notoriously sweltering heat on people who walk, roll, orwait for a ride. On this episode of The Brake, we dive deep into how Phoenix is using next-level data to put shade...
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How to Build a Car-Light Neighborhood From Scratch — Even in Texas
The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast
Across America, a new class of developers are building car-free neighborhoods from scratch — or at least, they're building places where residents don't need to drive quite as much as their suburban neighbors. But can these greenfield developments really serve as a model for communities across America, or will they always be a rare and coveted commodity for those who can afford the luxury of living at human scale? Today on the Brake, we sit down with Scott Snodgrass of , whose new development, is bringing slow streets, hyper-local agriculture, and to and suburban Houston. And...
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How America's 'Soft Power' is Shaping Mobility Around the World — And How Cities Like Tirana Are Resisting it
The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast
Tirana, Albania has gained international recognition for putting kids first on the road — especially their award-winning where cars are either banned or significantly limited from driving near learning centers and play spaces for kids are built instead. As the Balkan city grows its bike network, though, its mayor says it's still reckoning with a post-communist culture that sees cars as an aspirational symbol of success. And he has some fascinating thoughts about what it takes to shift that paradigm before it takes root any further. Today on The Brake, we finish up our...
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What the U.S. Can Learn From the 'Bike Mayor' of Africa, Manuel de Araújo
The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast
Quelimane, Mozambique might not be the first city that comes to an American's mind when she thinks of an active transportation paradise. With , though, the east African city has already been ranked as the — and now, it's setting its sights on becoming an international model for how to support people who walk and roll through visionary leadership and policy. This week on The Brake, we continue our dispatches from Bloomberg Citylab with an inteview with Quelimane's mayor Manuel de Araújo. In his 13 years in office, de Araújo's made it his mission to elevate the social status of his...
info_outlineA 'walkability study' can be a powerful tool to help cities and towns identify transformative strategies to welcome and protect pedestrians on their streets — and craft a plan to put those approaches into action. But what would it take to do this critical analysis in every American community that needs it?
On this episode of The Brake, we sit down with Jeff Speck and Chris Dempsey of the new firm Speck/Demspey, which is trying to do just that. And along the way, we talk about some of the low-cost ways that any community can get a little more walkable, whether or not they bring in the pros. (Hint: it might be time to trade some traffic lights for stop signs.)