Active Towns has just posted an hour-long conversation with me, one that takes me a little deeper than usual into my professional work as a transit planning consultant. My video was a little fuzzy at times, but it’s all clear enough. This is a good deep dive into what I’m about, especially for those with a professional or geeky interest in transit network design.
It’s also listenable as a podcast. You don’t have to have the visuals to make sense of it. It’s here.
Last month I did an event at the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA (the University of California at Los Angeles), hosted by Jacob Wasserman. It was fun, with many excellent questions that made me think. The video is on Youtube here.
The first 30 minutes are my presentation, and the fun part, the questions, starts at 33:40. Some highlights:
Yesterday I had a wonderful conversation with Rachel Zack of Remix about what Covid-19 means for transit. Like all crises it’s an opportunity, and I hope you enjoy this exploration of all we can learn from it.
The conversation goes from 2:57 to 51:50. Q&A starts at 32:07, but the questions were all excellent, so stay with it to the end. You can treat this as a podcast, since almost all of it works as pure audio.
On January 17, 2020 I did a very fun webinar with the urban designer Jeff Speck (Walkable City, Walkable City Rules), sponsored by the Maryland Department of Planning on behalf of the Smart Growth Clearinghouse. Jeff “entertained himself” (in his own words), and I, always the serious one, talked about freedom.
It’s here. Jeff starts at 6:42. Jeff introduces me at 41:51. After my presentation, a great conversation between us ensues at 1:07:00. (Unfortunately the video freezes awkwardly in this stretch so by all means turn it off.)
My keynote at RailVolution in Pittsburgh last fall is now available on video below. It’s one of the best I’ve done in a while, pulling together most of what’s on my mind these days. Enjoy!
It was fun to finally meet famous anti-transit and anti-planning writer Randal O’Toole, and spar politely with him in a Washington DC event sponsored by the Cato Institute.
We inevitably talked past each other a bit, but it was a great session. I only wish there had been more hard questions from libertarians. Here’s the video. You can also download a podcast here.
In May 2017 I made a quick trip to Santa Cruz, California to do presentations both to the public and to the Regional Transportation Commission. Some of my presentation is my usual shtick, but I also talked a lot about chokepoints in the Bay Area, and was also asked to comment on a local proposal (proponents, opponents) to remove the rails from a rail corridor in order to create a wider and more attractive active modes path (though a functional path alongside the rail is possible in any case.)
It’s here. There’s quite a Q&A as well.
On November 8 I was the guest of the Board of Directors of the Portland area transit agency, TriMet, for a two hour workshop on issues facing the agency. It was not so much a presentation as a freewheeling discussion, where Board members got to engage with me, question some of my ideas, and sharpen their own views. I rarely have a chance to engage with transit planning in my own home town, so I was really honored by this opportunity.
Most of you have much better things to do than listen to two hours of this, but for those special folks who love these things, it’s here. There’s some cool new philosophical stuff at the beginning.
My part runs 0:24:26 to 2:28:30. There’s some further relevant Board/staff discussion, about where to go with the agency at 3:50.
In the context of the Moscow Urban Forum, I did a well-attended public lecture at the Strelka Institute, a prestigious center for urban policy and design. The video is here. I start talking (in English) around 6:08. (Click “Not now” if your credentials are challenged.)
Unfortunately, nobody told me that the event would be outdoors, so I was not quite dressed for the occasion; this explains the blanket and deeply unfashionable hat. I am one of those old-fashioned people who refuses to freeze for the sake of style.
For the Congress for the New Urbanism conference in Seattle last month, I tried out a new angle on my usual stump speech. I asked: Can we live without predictions? What would it mean to approach a city planning problem — say, transit planning, which I do — without needing to know the future?
I’m pretty happy with how it came out. It’s embedded below, but it seems to be slightly sharper here.