Transit

The House of Representatives is preparing to vote on that rarest of Capitol Hill treasures -- a bipartisan budget deal. If both houses approve the deal, negotiated by Democratic Senator Patty Murray and Republican Congressman Paul Ryan, it will be the first time since 2010 that Congress has passed a budget.

Jeff Wood and I talk about the news of the week that most tickled us or burned us -- the BBC's exposé of anti-social urban design features intended to repel people, San Francisco's social tensions over the Google bus, and the decision by Cincinnati's new mayor and City Council to "pause" construction of the streetcar. (Update: The streetcar might be salvaged!)

Detroit, the country's 18th largest city, has seen its transit system shrink to the point where few people can rely on it to get to work. The situation got so bad that one young entrepreneur stopped waiting on the region's dysfunctional government agencies and started running private buses.

In the late 1990s, an organization called Envision Utah brought together a broad spectrum of people to figure out how to plan for major population growth. They started by asking participants to mark out areas that shouldn't be developed -- wilderness, national parks, agricultural land. Then, they had to figure out how to fit future residents in the developable areas that were left. They concluded that the way to do that without massive congestion, soaring public costs, and environmental ruin was to build walkable development with good transit access.

This week, Jeff and Tanya take on the Atlanta Braves' terrible, no-good, very bad decision to move their stadium to Cobb County, Georgia. We discuss cities that are (and are not) shaped like wedding cakes, and whether that means you need to smoosh your spouse's face in it. Tanya makes a pedestrian-rights argument against high-heeled shoes (and Jeff abstains from taking sides). We parse the differences between "shared streets" -- without marked-out space for cars, bikes, and people on foot -- and vehicular cycling.

If you’ve ever looked deep into the abyss of partisan gridlock and anti-tax paranoia and wondered where the bottom was -- well, Seattle might be approaching it right now. Facing a massive budget gap -- caused largely by the antagonism and negligence of state legislators -- Metro Transit has announced a plan to cut spending 17 percent by eliminating 74 bus routes.

Many transportation reform advocates were disappointed in the performance measures included in MAP-21, which was signed into law in July 2012. They weren’t tied to funding, they gave states and localities too much leeway to set their own performance targets, and they measured the wrong things. But there’s still a chance for them to get much stronger.

Living near a SEPTA station can add as much as $37,300 in value to your suburban Philadelphia home.

According to a spate of recent studies, Millennials -- a bigger generation than the Baby Boomers -- are driving less than their parents did. But the underlying reasons are a matter of some dispute. Will younger Americans start happily motoring again once the economy is really humming, or is a lasting generational shift underway?