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Parking is a very important factor in urban design and transport mode choice, yet is frequently overlooked as cities consider it part of zoning codes rather than transportation infrastructure.

Sustainable transportation consultant Rachel Weinberger joins me to explain the connections between parking, transit and the urban environment. The costs of driving are not only heavily subsidized by all levels of government but also bundled into the costs of goods and services in the public and private sectors. As a result, the provision of free or cheap parking (and the perceived endless need for it) promotes driving and makes it more difficult to walk or use other transport modes. We also talk about her work on the original PlaNYC and other transportation politics and trends.

Find out more about Rachel Weinberger by reading her articles and in coverage on Streetsblog.

Please send questions, comments and suggestions for future topics or guests to feedback@criticaltransit.com.

** Due to problems with podbean, this is the LAST episode to be posted here.  Please visit criticaltransit.com to read my near-daily blog posts and subscribe to the new blog feed and podcast feed. Thanks! **

Hurricane Damage Cost New York City MTA $5 Billion; Nova Scotia intercity bus regulation change increased operator flexibility; transit users save $9,798 annually but only if you don’t already own a car; parking makes cities less walkable and transit friendly; cities make people more liberal and open-minded; Vancouver to upgrade 99 B-Line bus to subway (as it should); Minneapolis has also been upgrading busy bus lines to light rail (construction updates); Ottawa is upgrading their model BRT system to light rail. Pittsburgh has three excellent busways. Read more about bus rapid transit in other places like Bogota and Curitiba. And you can follow Toronto’s mayoral saga or the more interesting transit expansion news and the new US House T&I Committee chairman.

Follow the blog at CriticalTransit.com; also leave a message, and subscribe to the podcast feed. Send email to feedback@criticaltransit.com.

Hurricane Damage Cost New York City MTA $5 Billion; Nova Scotia intercity bus regulation change increased operator flexibility; transit users save $9,798 annually but only if you don’t already own a car; parking makes cities less walkable and transit friendly; cities make people more liberal and open-minded; Vancouver to upgrade 99 B-Line bus to subway (as it should); Minneapolis has also been upgrading busy bus lines to light rail (construction updates); Ottawa is upgrading their model BRT system to light rail. Pittsburgh has three excellent busways. Read more about bus rapid transit in other places like Bogota and Curitiba. And you can follow Toronto’s mayoral saga or the more interesting transit expansion news and the new US House T&I Committee chairman.

Follow the blog at CriticalTransit.com; also leave a message, and subscribe to the podcast feed. Send email to feedback@criticaltransit.com.

Amir from Israel shares a few of the unique public transit challenges there related to religious tension and military transport. Minku from the Vegan Pedicab Podcast sent in an article on mobile transit apps, prompting some grand thoughts on how to make mobile transit apps useful.

Follow Americans for Transit on Twitter @A4Transit and Facebook. Check out their Organizing Guide and Directory and other great resources for advocacy and activism. You can also read the article written earlier this year on Streetsblog, and remember that transit agencies are not allowed to advocate for us so we must do it ourselves.

This week’s super long show explores only a fraction of the system, including the Green Line light rail/trolley network, Blue Line heavy rail line, Silver Line bus rapid transit (BRT) lines, and the bus network in Harvard Square.

Please send in questions or comments on anything you hear to feedback@criticaltransit.com or comment on this page.

In other news … If you want cyclists off the sidewalks you have to make the streets safe for cycling. A geography lesson shows the segregation and sprawl in many coastal areas of the NY region, and apparently some people want MTA chief Joe Llota to run for mayor next year. City residents tend to own cars but use them infrequently, a terrible waste of public space.

Send your comments, questions and suggestions to feedback@criticaltransit.com and I will read them on the air. Critical Transit is listener supported, so if you enjoy the show, tell your friends and colleagues, leave a review on iTunes, and please consider making a donation or sponsoring an episode.

PLEASE NOTE: The podcast is moving to a new feed and will soon only be hosted at the main site. Please go there and resubscribe to the podcast feed on the upper right side, or copy and paste this link into iTunes or your preferred podcast software. Thanks for your support.

This episode features bits of live audio from Boston during the hurricane and from my epic transit journey from Boston to New York via a combination of local bus services when intercity carriers were not running.

Next week is a discussion about bicycling in Toronto with Yvonne Bambrick, along with NYC area storm recovery efforts. Later this month, the rest of my audio from riding, walking and biking in Boston.

Great photos of the damage and amazing recovery efforts courtesy of MTA Photos on flickr:

We end with a very informative clip from a talk by Human Transit author Jarrett Walker earlier this year, focusing on the four important questions to consider before attempting to design transit service. In other words, ask yourself what you are trying to achieve.

I am in Boston this week so stay tuned for some great content including on-street interviews and transit trips when I return.

Check out the fine work of the Somerville Bicycle Committee and their facebook page.If you’re in the Boston area, lend your support for the city’s first protected bike lane on its busiest cycling route.

We mentioned research by John Pucher and the Victoria Transport Policy Institute on cycling, parking policies, and highlighted efforts to improve the plight of Indian rickshaw operators and a new UBC study showing that bike infrastructure in Vancouver reduced injuries by as much as 90 percent. We also love that Park(ing) Day shows how cars waste urban space. And why cycling is both progressive and conservative.

Next week I have another great show for you while I am visiting Boston to ride buses, trains and my bicycle.

I talk about the importance of redesigning streets to improve safety and comfort for people of all abilities, and it doesn’t have to be an expensive, long-term project. Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue speedway was just redesigned using only paint and plastic bollards (more on road diets). Advocates are targeting the dangerously narrow and inadequate bike and pedestrian path on the Pulaski Bridge for improvements. This bridge shows why conflicts arise between pedestrians and cyclists, because both groups are given inadequate facilities even while motorists dominate the streets.

Bike helmets aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. A few Swedish engineers are working on an invisible, inflatable bike helmet. I argue that helmets do not prevent crashes, and by pushing helmet use we neglect the things that actually matter for bike safety like safe bicycling advice, driver education and enforcement. Bike Walk Lee showed the power of bikes in social justice by holding a clinic to help homeless people get access to bike repair services. Toronto removes a key north-south bike lane despite it having tripled bike travel on the corridor in just a few short years.

The last piece of bad news is from California, where politicians are releasing emergency oil reserves to try to appease frustrated motorists. But as we know, that is not a solution.

On the transit side, the Worcester Regional Transit Authority, the disproportionately small bus system in New England’s second largest city, is buying three all-electric buses. This a big positive development yet it also highlights the problems with the federal transit funding formulas.

Free service on the Silver Line bus between downtown Boston and Logan Airport will continue until January. The absence of on-board (or any) fare collection has surely caused a dramatic reduction in travel times and made things easier for everyone. In a related development, my favorite transit blog, Human Transit, discredits route-level fare recovery analyses since each route is part of an interconnected urban transportation system.

Improved bus service is coming to the 14/15 Jeffrey Corridor in Chicago and the S79 on Hylan Blvd in Staten Island (New York City). Both will reduce travel times but neither can really be considered Bus Rapid Transit. In this show I discuss what BRT really is and how our continued pro-car bias routinely prevents us from implementing high quality bus service.

It’s a long show but I think you’ll enjoy it. Let me know what you think.

Read all about how to be an “Unracer” in Grant Petersen’s Just Ride; see the review in Bicycle Times Magazine (which you should definitely subscribe to). We heard closing music from The Bicycles: “B-B-B-Bicycles!”

Only a few links this week.  LANTA provides local bus service in and around Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton; Greater Greater Washington wrote last year on Amtrak’s declining service levels; and Transit Maps from Cameron Booth.  We heard music from Manudub, Funkysushi, and Broken Social Scene.

In the news this week, San Francisco tries off-board fare payment, New York plans to restore some services that were eliminated in 2010 due to budget cuts, and the fallacy of traffic projections is exposed.

SF: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/07/experiment-worth-watching-all-door-bus-boarding-san-francisco/2543/ and http://www.humantransit.org/2012/07/in-san-francisco-passengers-will-be-able-to-board-through-any-door-of-any-city-bus-as-they-have-long-been-able-to-do-on-ligh.html

NYC: http://www.streetsblog.org/2012/07/19/mta-partially-restores-transit-service-and-adds-some-new-bus-routes/

MN: http://www.streets.mn/2012/07/23/the-projections-fallacy/

In this first episode, I also discuss the same-old U.S. transportation funding bill and argue that the distinct between “choice riders” and the “transit dependent” is unhelpful. New York welcomes bike sharing, Boston moves forward with a plan to sell naming rights to its subway stations, and Toronto subway riders offer transit user tips.

Show notes and links:

Transportation Authorization Bill (MAP-21):  Transportation For America

Atlantic Cities:  attracting “choice riders”

Transit Matters:  station naming rights

Toronto:  TTC Subway Rider Efficiency Guide

Epic Transit Journeys:  intercity journeys on local transit