UPDATE: Well, this is embarrassing and a little maddening. We have been hacked through our hack-proof captcha coding. So, we’re shutting this sucker down and calling the winners based on voting as of May 10, when the hacking started. We will steer clear of Google polls in the future, and we sincerely apologize to everyone […]

We were so excited about the first-ever Census report exclusively on biking and walking that we devoted this entire episode of the Talking Headways podcast to an interview with its author, Brian McKenzie. Bike commuting is up 60 percent since 2000, the Census shows, and people with low incomes are by far the biggest proportion […]

The U.S. Census Bureau just released its first-ever report exclusively on walking and biking. Using data from the American Community Survey, the report shows how rates of active transportation vary by age, income, education, race, and the availability of a vehicle. It’s a lot more detail than the usual Census data release on how people get […]

It’s May, but we’re still getting doused with April showers. And it wasn’t that long ago that we were still getting hit with snowstorms too. And you know what? The bikers kept biking and the walkers kept walking — even when cars were stuck in the snow and schools closed down because the roads were […]

Rep. Jim Oberstar died peacefully in his sleep early Saturday morning at the age of 79. He represented Minnesota’s 8th Congressional district for 18 terms, from 1975 to 2011. Oberstar served on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee the entire time, and as its chair for the last four years. He was known for his passion for […]

Welcome to our all-California, all-the-time episode of the Talking Headways podcast. We start with a statewide debate over whether $60,000+ Teslas should qualify for tax breaks — or whether any electric vehicles should get tax breaks. Then on to the conversation about how California’s cap-and-trade dollars should be spent. One proposal, from the State Senate leader, […]

Yesterday, U.S. DOT did something it hadn’t done for a decade: submit a surface transportation authorization bill to Congress. And what a bill it is. The $302 billion, four-year GROW AMERICA Act has several major reforms that would shift federal policy in a more multi-modal direction. One big change that we’ve noted before is that […]

This week, King County voters decided 55 to 45 to defeat Prop 1, a ballot measure to impose a $60 vehicle fee and a 0.1 percent sales tax hike to avoid deep and painful cuts to Metro Transit bus service. Because of the failure of the initiative, legislation is already moving through the County Council […]

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? The Amalgamated Transit Union and the Sierra Club will announce tomorrow that they are joining forces to highlight the connection between transportation and climate change. Transit is important, […]

It’s April 15. If you bought an electric car in 2013, you can claim a tax break today. If you bought a plug-in hybrid, you can get a tax break today. But if you don’t own a car and walk to work instead? Sorry, Charlie. There’s a whole array of goodies in the U.S. tax […]