Transit

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.

And, side note: The giveaway for our spring pledge drive has changed since we recorded this podcast. Now, you'll be entered into a drawing to win a package of zines and books by feminist bike activist and writer Elly Blue. Thanks for your donation!

There are plenty of reasons why Omaha, Nebraska, isn't known for being a walkable, people-friendly city. It has one of the lowest bike commuting rates in the country. In a vote last year, Streetsblog readers crowned a location in Omaha as America's worst intersection.

Young people want to live in cities that give them a variety of transportation options and make it easy to get around without a car. That's the key finding from a new survey of more than 700 young adults by the Global Strategy Group. The survey was commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation and Transportation for America.

All across America, city buses are waiting. Waiting at stoplights, waiting behind long lines of cars, waiting to pull back into traffic, waiting at stops for growing crowds of passengers. And no, it's not just your imagination: Buses are doing more waiting, and less moving, than they used to. A recent survey of 11 urban transit systems conducted by Daniel Boyle for the Transportation Research Board found that increased traffic congestion is steadily eroding travel speeds: The average city bus route gets 0.45 percent slower every single year. That's especially discouraging given how slowly buses already move, with a typical bus averaging only 13.5 mph.

Did you go to the World Urban Forum in Medellín, Colombia, last week? Neither did your hosts Jeff Wood and I, but we sure found a lot to say about it anyway on this week's Talking Headways podcast. Medellín's remarkable urban transformation -- undertaken in the midst of war -- has gotten a lot of well-deserved attention lately for making the city's transportation infrastructure more equitable.

Earth Day is a week from tomorrow. How many people will drive to their local environmental festival without even a second thought to how they got there?

Jeff and I had a great time this week, getting all outraged at the short-sighted move by the Tennessee Senate to ban dedicated lanes for transit, and high and mighty about cities that devote too much space to surface parking at the expense of just about everything else. And then we treat ourselves to a fun conversation about the origin of the American playground -- and whether the entire city should be the playground.

It seems logical enough: In cities where parking costs are higher, more people ride transit. That's the major finding from a recent study published in the Journal of Public Works and Management Policy.