The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast

Veronica O. Davis discusses the need for an inclusive transportation approach to repair divided communities in the face of federal investment. She emphasizes prioritizing resources in high-injury areas, community engagement in projects, and advocating for non-car modes of transportation for equity and well-being.

State transportation bills may not get as much attention as their federal counterparts, but they have a colossal impact on how we get around. And the state of Minnesota may have just created one of the most exciting blueprints yet for progressive governments across the country to follow — even if it took them the better part of three decades to do it. On this episode of The Brake, we sit down with two Minnesota lawmakers and transportation committee chairmen — Senator Scott Dibble and Representative Frank Hornstein — to unpack what's in their massive new transportation finance and policy bill, as well as how it will help the Land of 10,000 lakes meet its ambitious driving reduction goals, and what other communities can learn from their fight to get it over the finish line. Listen in, check out the full text of the bill here, or head over to Streetsblog for a cheat sheet.

On paper, a lot of people care about making their cities less car-dependent — but not all of us are taking action to actually do it. So why do so many people stay on the sidelines, and what will itake to get them into the fight? Today, we're sitting down with Carter Lavin, a Bay-area activist who's made it his mission to give people the skills, vision, and capacity to campaign for better sustainable transportation policies in their town, whether they're candidates for office, bike/walk nonprofits dealing with burnout, or just a couple of neighbors who just want a speed bump on their street already. Listen in, check out our past coverage of Carter's work, and check out his website for more info — including free online trainings, opportunties to sponsor other activists, and more.

late's cities reporter Henry Grabar's new book, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World (Penguin Press), could have been a sleeper, aimed at livable cities nerds who already know how drivers' obsessive demand for free car storage has ruined our cities and enabled sprawl, all the while devastating our air quality and congesting our roads. Instead, it's quickly becoming a media sensation that's catching the attention of people far outside the movement — and getting them talking about the need for reform. On this episode of The Brake, guest host Gersh Kuntzman gabs with Grabar about some of the most shocking stories from America's long love affair with asphalt, including Chicago, where a privatization-obsessed mayor undervalued parking spaces — and lost $1 billion in a deal with Wall Street in the process— Los Angeles, where downtown merchants were so obsessed with "getting back" suburban shoppers that they turned their entire neighborhood into a shopping crater, and more.

What is an electric car, really? Is it a godsend that could save the planet from climate catastrophe by slashing emissions in the sector that contributes the most greenhouse gases in virtually every developed country in the world Is it an important tool for climate harm reduction that we have to invest in big, even if it doesn't solve all of the problems of car dependent transportation systems? Or is it just a heavier and more heavily subsidized car that makes nearly all of the core problems of car dependency worse, while using its climate benefits as a screen to shield us from those harms? On today's episode of The Brake, we sit down with Agnieszka Stefaniec, co-author of the new paper "A wolf in sheep's clothing: Exposing the structural violence of private electric automobility," to get her take — and talk about why the EV debate is so polarizing.

One in nine Americans live in poverty, and millions more live in a precarious place somewhere between precarity and true security. A new book argues, though, that it doesn't have to be this way — and that we can all play a role in challenging the systems and individual choices that "keep poor people poor" for benefit for everyone else. On this episode of The Brake, host Kea Wilson sits down with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond to talk about his new book Poverty by America, the poverty abolition movement, and how it intersects with the movement to end car dependency. (Hint: it's not just about hefty monthly car payments.) Listen in, and buy your copy anywhere books are sold.

Look up traffic fatality stats for almost any country in the world, and you'll find that men are almost always drastically over-represented among the dead, even in countries like the Netherlands and Sweden which have made the most progress towards Vision Zero. But if good road, vehicle and systems design isn't saving as many male-identified lives, what will — and why is it so hard to talk about cultural forces without denying the dangers of our built environment? On this episode of the Brake, host Kea Wilson sits down with researcher and urban planning professor Tara Goddard to talk about how toxic masculinity plays out on our roads and what can we be done to stop it. Listen in, and check out the resources below mentioned in the show: Tara's recent presentation on transportation safety culture at Portland State University Cara Daggett's "Petromasculinity: Fuel and Authoritarian Desire" "French Warn Parents of an Underestimated Roadway Danger: Toxic Masculinity"

"Roadway safety is a shared responsibility, and people in cars and outside of cars play an equal role in keeping each other safe." "Sprawl is good, actually, because it means people can have big, beautiful houses and some quality alone time on their daily commutes." "We won't need to worry about transportation emissions or the broader impacts of automobiles on the environment for that much longer, because haven't you heard? electric cars are here!" Those phrases might spike make the average sustainable transportation advocate's blood pressure spike. But in the world of corporate disinformation, they're simply a handy way to reframe the conversation about car dependency — and to manipulate the public into accept ing the avoidable deaths of their loved ones and their planet. On today's episode of The Brake, host Kea Wilson brings you an extended interview with Grant Ennis, author of Dark PR: How Corporate Disinformation Harms Our Health and the Environment. Listen in, and check out a sharable summary of the "nine devious frames" he outlines in his book here.

Most bikeshare rides taken on U.S. soil happen in a handful of gigantic cities, on systems maintained by big corporations. At YoGo Bikeshare, though, Ronnell Elkins and his team are building a bespoke micromobility option specifically for his neighbors in Youngstown, Ohio — and hoping to create a model for other small cities to combat car dependency. On this episode of The Brake, host Kea Wilson sits down with Elkins to talk about what makes this Black-led, family-owned bikeshare stand out, why YoGo's investing only in e-bikes, and what it takes to get a town of 60,000 people on board a revolutionary new transportation mode. Learn more about YoGo Bikeshare on their website.

Across America, a shocking number of drivers are illegally hacking their cars to be as loud as possible — and evidence is mounting that the phenomenon has a huge impact on public health. But what can cities do about it? Today on The Brake, we sat down with researcher Nick Ferenchak, whose work on traffic safety we've been following for years. Now, he's turning his attention to the link between vehicle noise pollution and dangerous driving — and launching a company to help cities put equitable and effective noise camera programs on their streets. Join us for a deep dive on noise cameras, and learn more Not-A-Loud and Nick's research on his website.