Jeff Wood
Recent Posts
Talking Headways Podcast: Sharing a Ride to the Future
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This week's guest on Talking Headways is Zack Wasserman, head of global business development at Via, a ride-hailing company headquartered in New York. We talk about Via’s role as a trip provider, as well as a software builder for transit agencies, and how we can get more people sharing rides. We also discuss how transportation systems are likely to change in lower density places and the role of technological and policy innovation in both the public and private transportation sectors.
Talking Headways Podcast: Avoiding Carbon Emissions by Taking Transit
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This week we’re coming to you from the UITP Global Transport Summit in Montreal with guest Projjal Dutta, director of sustainability at the New York MTA. We chat about the idea of "transit-avoided carbon," how you measure emissions, and the impact of Superstorm Sandy on sustainability thinking in the New York region.
Talking Headways Podcast: Giving Away TIGER and Transit Money to Wall Street
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This week Beth Osborne of T4America and Kevin DeGood of The Center for American Progress join us to discuss infrastructure and the new administration. We talk about the budget process — “skinny” or “thick”? — the possible benefits and drawbacks of public-private partnerships, and the difference between funding and financing.
Talking Headways Podcast: Lightsaber Fights From Autonomous Pods
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This week's guest is Dr. Lisa Schweitzer of USC's Sol Price School of Public Policy. In the first of a two-part series, Dr. Schweitzer talks about how her students respond to urban planning classes, what a recent controversy in a Los Angeles City Council election reveals about bike advocacy, and autonomous vehicles and land use policy.
Talking Headways Podcast: The Urban Policy Translator
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This week we’re joined by Shelley Poticha, director of NRDC’s Urban Solutions Program, who tells us about the organization's new programs like SPARCC and the City Energy Project. We get into federal policy like the Clean Power Plan and the story of how FTA and HUD were finally connected, and we talk about The Next American Metropolis, the 1993 book about transit-oriented development she wrote with Peter Calthorpe.
Talking Headways Podcast: The Battery Powered Electric Bus
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This week's guest is Matt Horton of Proterra, a company that designs and manufactures battery powered electric buses. We cover the basics of electric buses, power consumption and recharging, the benefits and costs, as well as potential environmental effects.
Talking Headways Podcast: Designing City Streets for People
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This week Corinne Kisner and Matthew Rowe of NACTO tell us about their influential series of street design guides that give transportation engineers "permission" to put walking, biking, and transit first. Learn how the guides are put together and how cities are using them to prioritize people instead of cars.
Talking Headways Podcast: The Future of Shared Mobility
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This week we’ve got a fascinating discussion from the Live.Ride.Share conference in Denver earlier this year. Hear what representatives from NRDC, Uber, Lyft, and U.S. DOT think about the future of shared-use mobility systems, carpooling services, autonomous vehicles, and their impact on cities and greenhouse gases.
Speakers include:
Mark Dowd, deputy assistant secretary for research and technology at U.S. [...]
Talking Headways Podcast: Sharing (Your Bike, Car, Bus) Is Caring
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This week we’re chatting with Sharon Feigon of the Shared Use Mobility Center. Bike-share, car-share, ride-hailing — we talk about all of that and then some, including how these new services may shape the built environment.
Sharon discusses what new research says about who’s using shared transport services and how even the “super sharer” still relies on transit as [...]
Talking Headways Podcast: It Costs More to Drive Til You Qualify
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The topic this week is housing affordability and transit, with guests Shima Hamidi, Reid Ewing, and John Renne. They discuss their recent paper in the journal Housing Policy Debate, “How Affordable is HUD Affordable Housing?” As it turns out, a lot of HUD rental assistance is spent in areas with high transportation costs. We talk about the impetus [...]
Talking Headways Podcast: The City Is a Painting You Walk Into
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This week I’m joined by James Rojas of Place It! to talk about art in planning and Latino urbanism. James is an award-winning planner and a native Angeleno, and he tells us about how growing up in East LA and visiting his grandmother’s house shaped the way he thinks about urban spaces and design.
Tune in and hear James discuss the [...]
Talking Headways Podcast: The Essential Link Between Transit and Land Use
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Think land use is none of a transit agency’s business? Think again. Transit routes serving sprawled-out areas draw fewer riders and cost more to operate than routes serving compact, walkable development.
This week, Brian McMahon and GB Arrington join me to talk about our excellent new report, Linking Transit Agencies and Land Use Decision Making. This is a research [...]