{"id":114,"date":"2026-06-25T15:11:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T15:11:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=114"},"modified":"2026-06-25T15:11:47","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T15:11:47","slug":"talking-headways-podcast-the-transit-abundance-playbook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=114","title":{"rendered":"Talking Headways Podcast: The Transit &#8216;Abundance&#8217; Playbook"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we\u2019re joined by Will Poff-Webster of the Institute for Progress to talk about the\u00a0Transit Abundance Playbook, a new collection of ideas to reduce transit project costs. We discuss how to translate ideas into legislation, how these ideas fit into the current transportation bill, the importance of building public sector capacity, and how to cut costs in order to build more transit projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=112\">Wednesday\u2019s Headlines Power Up<\/a><\/p>\n<p>And, as always, let\u2019s review all the ways you can enjoy this spirited content:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Click the player below to listen.<\/li>\n<li>Check out the lightly edited excerpt below the player.<\/li>\n<li>Click\u00a0here\u00a0for a full transcript, albeit with some AI typos.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>\n<iframe allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" loading=\"lazy\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-forms\" src=\"https:\/\/play.libsyn.com\/embed\/episode\/id\/41798900\/height\/192\/theme\/modern\/size\/large\/thumbnail\/yes\/custom-color\/3c849c\/time-start\/00:00:00\/hide-playlist\/yes\/download\/yes\/font-color\/FFFFFF\" style=\"height: 192px; width: 100%;\" title=\"Embedded content\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div>\n<p>Edited transcript:\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeff Wood:<\/strong>\u00a0Which of these fixes might be easiest for a layperson who isn\u2019t deep in the weeds to understand?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Will Poff-Webster:<\/strong>\u00a0There\u2019s one pretty simple one, which is the fire code that most US transit agencies follow. It requires twice as many extra passageways in between subway tunnels as Europe or Asia does, and we spend a lot of money building those extra tunnels, and there\u2019s no evidence that it improves fire safety.<\/p>\n<p>Because guess what? Trains are made of metal. There\u2019s not a lot of fires in train stations. It\u2019s not that safety isn\u2019t important, it\u2019s just that this kind of extra expense doesn\u2019t seem to do anything. Other countries study whether to follow the American model or the European model for building subways, and they go with the European one because they\u2019re like, \u201cWe don\u2019t want to spend all that extra money.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s one of them. Another? We should let transit agencies buy land when they actually want to build the project instead of waiting five years to complete a book report before they\u2019re allowed to buy land.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=110\">Porchfest Brings Affordable Entertainment to the Streets<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeff Wood:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, a book report. That\u2019s funny. I remember seeing the NEPA application for, I think it was the Portland Streetcar, and it was, like, taller than me when they stacked them up on top of each other.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Will Poff-Webster:<\/strong>\u00a0The joke I\u2019ve heard about this is the way to have a really bulletproof environmental review that no one can sue and stop you is to make it literally so thick with paper that you can\u2019t shoot a bullet through it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Jeff Wood:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s literally bulletproof.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Will Poff-Webster:<\/strong>\u00a0And it\u2019s so sad that we require more environmental review, more pages of it, for congestion pricing or high-speed rail or a transit project, projects that actually improve the environment. Like there\u2019s no negative environmental impacts of congestion pricing. It\u2019s just straight up a good thing for the environment, but we make it go through years.<\/p>\n<p>And, I mean, the conclusion that our authors come to is that that creates this avenue for the small percentage of people who do not want transit, who, you know, probably are drivers and, and don\u2019t care about this. They just have so many ways to stop a project and delay it until it dies. And so instead we should be listening to the majority that voted for these projects and wants them to go ahead.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=108\">Uber and Lyft Want Congress to Let Them Off the Hook<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone is talking about &#8220;Abundance,&#8221; but in the transit world, its de-regulatory approach might work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transit-policy"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Talking Headways Podcast: The Transit &#8216;Abundance&#8217; Playbook - Urban Atlas Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/urbanatlasmedia.com\/?p=114\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Talking Headways Podcast: The Transit &#8216;Abundance&#8217; 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