Houston

Houston's Bayou Greenways plan is perhaps the largest active transportation project in the country right now -- if residents can actually use it for transportation when it's completed.

Welcome to a super-long extra-bonus episode of Talking Headways! We only took on two topics this week, but we got so enthralled by both of them we just couldn't shut up.

You think the conflict between Uber and regular taxi drivers -- and cities like Seattle -- is bad? Check out how new taxi apps in China are upending the transportation system and central economic planning. Meanwhile, in Houston, a flea market has brought revitalization without gentrification to a depressed area near the airport, and now an urban design firm is bringing in pop-up infrastructure like mobile libraries and grocery stores, along with sidewalks and bikeways. And Californians are proving that the culture shift away from the automobile and toward other modes of transportation is happening -- maybe even faster than we'd thought.

This week's mayoral elections yielded good news for transit and safe streets in both Houston and Minneapolis. In Boston, meanwhile, the results are less straightforward.

Which city has the ugliest asphalt expanse? The deadest downtown? The most awful place to sit and eat lunch? Those are the questions you must ask yourself as we approach the finale of Parking Madness, our hunt for the worst parking crater in the U.S.

NCAA basketball has nothing on the drama, the intrigue, the heartbreak of a competitive parking crater tournament. We're now into the "Elite Eight" round of Parking Madness, and today's winner will join Dallas in the Final Four. It's going to be a fierce competition between Louisville and Houston.

With Milwaukee, Tulsa, Dallas, Louisville, Cleveland, and Atlanta advancing to the second round of Parking Madness, there are only two spaces left in the Elite Eight of parking disasters. In this installment, we're looking at two very different cities, each of which is extremely car-centric in its own way. It's San Bernardino versus Houston.