Tanya Snyder

In Gabe Klein’s exit interview with Chicago Mag, the outgoing transportation commissioner predicted that in the next few years, cities will be paying more attention to the correlation between lawbreaking by drivers and other kinds of crime.

As the nation prepares for the expansion of the Panama Canal and all port cities go crazy deepening and widening everything in sight, the second biggest biggest port in the country is doing something unexpected: planning a highway teardown.

A few months ago, we told you that Building America's Future had released an app called, "I'm Stuck!" It allowed you to send a quick email to your Congressional representatives, telling them that you were stuck in traffic, or on an overcrowded bus or a delayed train, and you wanted Congress to approve more funding to upgrade infrastructure. At the time, we noted that there was no bike/ped component to the app, but BAF has changed that -- halfway, at least.

Transportation for America has been in hiding. Perhaps you’ve noticed.

You’d be forgiven for being cynical about big plans in Washington to create an infrastructure bank.

After a long period of inaction on Capitol Hill, the wheels are beginning to turn again. Lawmakers introduced not one but two good transportation-related bills yesterday: one that aims to improve the safety of walking and biking and one that would establish a national infrastructure bank.

The official 2012 death toll is out for our nation's poorly-designed, auto-centric transportation system. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, traffic injuries on the nation's roadways claimed the lives of 33,561 people. The headline of the agency's press release, "NHTSA Data Confirms Traffic Fatalities Increased In 2012," is quickly walked back by the subhed, which attempts a silver lining: "Highway deaths over the past 5 years remain at historic lows."

Welcome to the second edition of the new Streetsblog podcast, which we're calling Talking Headways. Reconnecting America’s Jeff Wood and I return as your hosts, talking about everything from bicycle carnage to Texas sprawl, and from misguided transportation priorities in Tennessee -- one place that ought to know better -- to motorcycle-riding assassains in Bogotá. (With a brief, emotional interlude about Gabe Klein leaving Chicago.) And then we go to our happy place.

A few years ago, the Center for Neighborhood Technology gave a wonderful gift to urbanists and planners: the Housing + Transportation Index. This simple calculation clarified and popularized a key concept: that transportation costs must be taken into account in any measurement of “affordability.”

Law professor Frank H. Buckley seems to want to be the next Dororthy Rabinowitz. That is, he wants to gain notoriety by clinging to old and unsafe street designs while, simultaneously, shoring up the Wall Street Journal's reputation as a bastion of change-averse curmudgeons. Done and done.