When Car Dependency Meets Climate Disaster (Sara McTarnaghan and Will Curran-Groome)
The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast
Release Date: 10/15/2024
What Will It Take To Give Victims and Advocates a Voice at USDOT? (Marianne Karth)
The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast
USDOT is about what it should propose for the next surface transportation reauthorization bill — and one advocate is hoping that legislation will finally give victims a voice at USDOT. Today on the Brake, we're talking to Marianne Karth of AnnaLeah and Mary for Truck Safety, who's pushing for the creation of a new, non-partisan "National Roadway Safety Advocate" position, which will give victims, survivors, and advocates against traffic violence a champion at the nation's highest transportaiton advocacy. Already the subject of , Karth calls the job the "missing piece" in our roadway...
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America's Kids Deserve More than Waymo Subscriptions
The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast
Autonomous vehicle giant Waymo is starting to with subscription packages for teens — including those too young to drive. But as America's kids gain high-tech motorized independence, what will they lose in exchange? Today on the Brake, host Kea Wilson is going solo for an informal chat about the debate over driverless cars as a youth mobility solution, how autonomous vehicles could even further isolate young people from their communities, and the dangers of relying on corporations for our basic human needs. And along the way, she touches on teen driving safety, the concept of...
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Does Constant Driving Really Make our Country Richer?
The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast
We’ve all heard the argument that the soul of America’s economy is based on how much we all love to drive. But does the data support the narrative that cars connect us to far-flung opportunities to make and spend more money — or has our country's car-powered productivity revolution actually stalled out? Today on The Brake, we're talking to Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute about his new paper on the and why so many economic indicators actually go down the more we collectively rely on automobiles — and many go up when we build a more multimodal...
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What Will It Take to Prepare Our Cities For the Impending Influx of Seniors? (Greg Shill)
The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast
As the Baby Boomer set ages out of driving, are American cities ready to support their changing transportation needs — and what policies should they be writing right now to help seniors and their neighbors weather the silver tsunami? Today, we're posting an extended audio version of our earlier with the fantastic author, attorney, and law professor Greg Shill about his contributions to the new book “. And in it, we dig into thorny questions about whether we need to reject what he calls “design essentialism” and accept the necessity of traffic enforcement; what it will...
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How One Transportation Emergency Can Keep Parents From Achieving Their College Dreams (Abigail Seldin)
The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast
One in five U.S. college students are also parents with children of their own — and in many cases, a single unexpected expense can be enough to force them to drop out before they earn their degrees. And too often, that emergency comes in the form of a transportation challenge like a cancelled bus route or a flat tire that keeps them from ever reaching the classroom. In honor of Mother's Day and Father's Day on The Brake, we're talking to Abigail Seldin of Scholarship America about the 3.8 million students who are earning degrees while raising families, and how they're helping them access...
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Where Does 'Motonormativity' Come From — And Which Country Has It Worst? (Marco te Brömmelstroet and Ian Walker)
The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast
Are Americans really more "car-brained" than their peers in the UK or the Netherlands — and if they are, what can make us change? The Brake is back from its spring hiatus with the return of two of our all-time favorite guests: researchers Ian Walker and Marco te Brömmelstroet, who teamed up for a new paper about how "motonormativity" manifests across their respective nations and the US. And along the way, they learned some fascinating insights about where our autocentric attitudes come from in all those coutnries — and what it would really take to change them. Tune in now, ,...
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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),...
info_outlineOver the past few weeks, U.S. news has been flooded with images of hurricane disaster: endless traffic jams full of evacuees, communities destroyed by deadly winds, and residents struggling to access the resources they need to survive while multiple feet of water stand in the streets. But how has car dependency impacted the course of these unthinkable events — and how can addressing it make us more resilient to whatever climate change throws at us next?
On today’s episode of the Brake, we’re sitting down with two experts from the Institute, Sara McTarnaghan and Will Curran-Groom, who are thinking deeply about the intersection between disaster planning and everyday urban planning, and how making our neighborhoods less centered on the automobile can help everyone when the big storm comes — which, as we’ve been reminded this week, can happen just about anywhere.
And along the way, we get into hard questions about how to evacuate people who don’t have cars, how ending exclusionary zoning now can pay dividends when communities set up resource hubs after a disaster, and so much more.
Note: this episode was recorded after Hurricane Helene, but before Hurricane Milton. We are sending all our thoughts to the people in the path of both of those storms, and all the storms to come. If you are looking for ways to support the victims, here are a few resources.