Podcast: Can All Cities Be Great?

The guest this episode is Alexander Garvin, author of the recently released book What Makes a Great City. We chat about why people are an important factor in building cities and taking pictures; Houston’s Post Oak Boulevard is going to show up Chicago, San Francisco, and New York’s best streets; and Alexander’s heroes, from Edmund Bacon to Haussmann to Robert Moses.

Podcast: High Speed Rail Station Planning in France, Parts 1 & 2

In a two part discussion of French high-speed rail and cities, guest host and German Marshall Fund fellow Eric Eidlin interviews Stephan de Fay, executive director of Bordeaux Euratlantique, the public agency overseeing the redevelopment of Bordeaux’s main train station, and Etienne Tricaud, president and CEO of AREP, the French railway’s architecture office.

We thought you might find their thoughts on the subject illuminating so we pulled some specific quotes from Episode 1.  We'll be back with more in Episode 2 in a subsequent post.


A few quotes of significance from the first episode:

On the citizens mental map of France:

HSR has fundamentally changed the mental map of France. Time-space relationships are now completely different. The French now think of their country as a network of cities that are easily connected to one another. - Etienne Tricaud

On having experts in-house:

...we exist to take risks and to take decisions. At some point, we need to be able to evaluate things by ourselves. It is not our role to do architectural design, for example. But having people on staff who know how to design, and who therefore also know how to speak intelligently with people who design is very important. This in-house competency helps us to be more relevant, both in terms of the questions that we ask and ultimately the decisions that we make. - Stephan de Fay

On urban planning:

Fundamentally, architecture is space planning, it’s organization of the space. So early on, we need to think about the organization of the pedestrian spaces of the station, the organization of the surrounding district, as well as the layout of the local transportation systems that serve the station.- Etienne Tricaud

On value:

However, if the public sector leverages that value of the investment that it is making in transportation (HSR), additional public subsidy for urban development in station areas is not necessary. In our case, our expenditures are equal to our revenues. We invest one billion euros on the district around the station and we earn on billion euros through the sale of construction rights. - Stephan de Fay

The audio above was first posted at Streetsblog USA.



The audio above was first posted at Streetsblog USA.

Transit Trends Episode 10: Electric Vehicles and the Environment

Drive Oregon's vision for electric mobility includes more than just electric cars. We sat down with Jeff Allen, Executive Director of Drive Oregon, to discuss electric mobility innovation and the challenge of connecting with consumers.

Podcast: Innovation, Introverts, and Uber Wars

This week we’re joined by David Zipper, managing director at 1776 Ventures, a global startup hub based in Washington, DC. A veteran of the Bloomberg administration in New York City and the administrations of Adrian Fenty and Vincent Gray in Washington, David discusses the deal DC struck with Living Social and the introduction of ride-hailing regulations during the city’s infamous Uber Wars. We also chat about transportation companies blossoming around the globe and what traits make for great innovators.

Podcast: Cities on a Hill with Francis Fitzgerald

This week we’re joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Francis Fitzgerald to talk about her 1986 book, Cities on a Hill. We discuss the different “visionary” communities described in the book, including Rajneeshpuram in Oregon, San Francisco’s Castro district, Sun City retirement communities, and Jerry Falwell’s moral majority in Lynchburg, Virginia. Francis also talks about living in New York City and restaurant culture in Vietnam. Fitzgerald’s latest book, The Evangelicals, is out April 4.

Podcast: Navigating Nairobi

This week’s guest is Stephane Eboko, chief revenue officer at Ma3route, a transportation information platform with over half a million users in Nairobi. Stephane tells about about the platform and how it helps people avoid traffic, interesting information from users reporting their experiences, and what travel on the private buses called Matatus is like in Kenya’s capital.

Podcast: Every Cocktail Napkin Has an Alternative Alignment

This installment of the Talking Headways podcast comes from this year’s NACTO Designing Cities Conference in Seattle. Moderated by David Bragdon, executive director of TransitCenter, this discussion examines the obstacles streets and transit agencies face when trying to move good projects forward, and the relationships that help make progress possible. The panel features LA DOT’s General Manager Seleta Reynolds, LACMTA’s Deputy Chief Executive Officer Stephanie Wiggins, Seattle DOT’s Director Scott Kubly, and Sound Transit CEO Peter Rogoff.

Podcast: Colonias — Informal Housing in the U.S.

This week on Talking Headways our guest is Emily Perlmeter of the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas. Emily discusses the half million people living in informal settlements known as Colonias, on the U.S. side of the Mexican border. Join us for a look at how these settlements are formed, who lives there, and their strengths and hardships.

Podcast: A Bus Full of People Should Go Ahead of a Tesla

This week’s episode returns to the Shared Use Mobility Summit in Chicago for a great discussion of how the changing technology and information landscape could yield more equitable outcomes. Jackie Grimshaw of the Center for Neighborhood Technology moderated this panel featuring Anita Cozart of Policy Link, Rob Puentes of the Eno Center for Transportation, and Joshua Schank of LA Metro.

Notes on Elaine Chao

Today it was announced that former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao has been nominated to be the next Transportation Secretary.  Many are saying that it's the most normal pick Trump could make though that's not saying much.  But it's also not the promised swamp draining given that her husband happens to be Senator Mitch McConnell.  (An old NYT piece gives us some more general life background)

Her family owns an international shipping business that in the past has had some shady business practices such as flying under the flag of Liberia due to it's easier labor rules.  Ms Chao was also the deputy secretary of transportation under GHW Bush though not much has come up from that time period.  

And Matthew Yglesias at Vox says that while it's a reasonable choice given her experience, it is hyper partisan because of who her huband happens to be.

Henry Grabar at Slate has a few positive notes...

As far as transportation goes, Chao has had a fairly open mind. She acknowledged decades ago that the major era of highway construction was over and should give way to one focused on solving traffic congestion. In George H.W. Bush’s Department of Transportation, she helped fund an early iteration of GPS in Los Angeles. And as secretary of labor under George W. Bush, she praised the potential of public transit. “Coordinated transportation is one of the most important, and perhaps least appreciated, components of a transition from a life of unemployment and dependency for Americans to one of employment and productivity,” she said at a luncheon in 2004.

She's also been a fellow at a number of  conservative think tanks.  Places like The Heritage Foundation and the Hudson Institute.  She also has ties to big banks, was on the board at News Corp (Wall Street Journal) and organizations like the United Way where she was CEO and the director of the Peace Corps. 

The Peace Corps stint was the most interesting to me because of the specific focus of her time in the Baltic States.  Given the Brexit vote and now Trump's election and nationalist sentiments in greater Europe, it seems we are getting closer to a weakening of Europe and its ability to defend against Russia, which coincidentally has its eye on the Baltic states. 

She established the first Peace Corps program in the Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union.

According to CityLab, she's always wanted to be the Secretary of Transportation. 

According to a 2001 Newsday article, Chao had mixed feelings about taking the cabinet post for the Department of Labor—which Chao later called “the most partisan of all the departments”—when President Bush initially asked her; she apparently had her “heart … set on leading the Department of Transportation.” Now she’ll get her shot.

When she was at the Heritage Foundation she focused on writing about things like pensions.  She's not a fan of largess in post retirement benefits and notes that unfunded obligations could be trouble for government agencies in the future.  I imagine transit unions aren't fans of this stance.

She is also against Buy America provisions which affect procurement of vehicles for High Speed Rail in California or regular buses and trains. 

The "Buy America" provision ("Dig a moat around America") in the stimulus package did more than squander America's credibility on international trade. It also created bureaucratic hoops that will slow down spending the stimulus funds on projects that are supposed to energize our economy.

In a letter from the Congressional Record in 2003 to Representative Paul Sarbanes, Washington Metro's Lawrence Drake complained that then Secretary Chao was blocking commuter benefits for federal employees at the Labor Department.  It seems the Labor Department under Chao wanted to use the increase from a $65 transit benefit to a $100 transit benefit as a bargaining chip in negotiations with workers.  DC's Eleanor Holmes Norton said at one point during a protest "Who ever heard of the notion that the union has to negotiate for things they are entitled to under the law?"

This was all I could find for the moment, but I'm sure we'll hear more in the coming days as more people have time to do deeper research.  Unfortunately the internet wasn't much of a thing during her first stint in the Transportation department.