The Brake: A Streetsblog Podcast

A new zine from a top transit nonprofit explores not just why the needs of women need to be at the center of U.S. transit planning, but what it's actually like for gender-marginalized people who are working to change the status quo — in their own words, images, and even songs. In their unconventional and inspiring new zine, Subtext, editors Stephanie Lotshaw and Ashley Pryce of the nonprofit Transit Center sought to provide a radical new platform for the women and nonbinary people who keep our transportation networks running by looking beyond the stats and white papers and letting leaders speak about their experiences in whatever mediums they chose. Still, those stats are sobering. A majority of transit riders today are women (55 percent), but a shocking 83 percent of U.S. agencies are helmed by men — and women of color have even fewer opportunities to lead than their White counterparts, even as they increasingly become one of the largest single demographics left riding during the pandemic. And Lotshaw and Pryce argue those disparities will persist until we really listen to each other's experiences, and turn up the volume on the too-often unspoken realities of being a gender-marginalized person in the transportation space. On today's episode of The Brake, we sat down with Lotshaw and Pryce to talk about why they chose to take a page from the riotgrrl playbook to tell this important story, what it's like for them to be women in the transportation field, and how shifting away from male-centric notions of leadership could change transit in the U.S. forever.

This week on Streetsblog, we looked at two communities who each planned to calm an ultra-wide, ultra-dangerous road with the support of the vast majority of the residents they asked, only to have those plans scuttled in the face of vocal opposition. In San Antonio, Texas, that opposition is coming from the top down, as state DOT leaders and the governor himself step in and insist that 7-lane Broadway Avenue must continue to prioritize motorist speed over local safety; in Philadelphia, Pa., it's coming from the bottom up, as a coalition of business owners and residents of color claim that cutting five-lane Washington Avenue down to three would eventually result in their displacement, successfully persuading the city to rethink their plans. Both stories, though, prompt the same thorny questions: why is redesigning killer roads so difficult in American communities? Who should get the final say on how safe — or fast — a road through a neighborhood should be? And which structural changes could make it easier for road diet projects to actually make it across the finish line — and make sure that new dangerous, car-centric roads are never built in our neighborhoods in the first place? On today's episode of The Brake, we sat down with Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America, to tackle those tough questions, and talk about what strategies could get road diet resisters on board.

The phrase "car accident" has become so ubiquitous in American life that most people don't blink when they hear it, at least if they're not a street safety advocate who understands just how much damage that term has done. But not even the most diehard Streetsblog readers may realize just how recent the concept of a traffic "accident" is — or how deeply it impacts our ability to prevent future crashes. In her new book, There Are No Accidents: The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster — Who Profits and Who Pays the Price, veteran journalist and sustainable transportation advocate Jessie Singer digs into the disturbing history of "accidents" in America — and not just on our roads. And in the process, she offers a glimpse of a world where everyday tragedies are treated as urgent problems we can and must solve, where powerful interests are held to account, and where our desire for blame and retribution doesn't get in the way of lasting, systemic change. Today, we're launching our new podcast, The Brake, with this extended interview between Jessie and host Kea Wilson.