The Strong Towns Podcast

The Highway Trust Fund brings in roughly $45 billion a year and spends closer to $80 billion. Congress keeps the system running by borrowing the difference and moving that money into a program still treated as if road users fully fund it. Rebecca Higgins, vice president of policy at the Eno Center for Transportation, explains how the fund reached this point and why the gap keeps growing. She and Chuck examine the choices lawmakers have avoided for decades, including higher taxes, lower spending, new fees, or a smaller federal role, and what happens when highway funding begins competing with other underfunded national priorities.

Additional Show Notes

Rebecca Higgins (LinkedIn)

The Eno Center for Transportation (Site)

The Last Exit: Fixing the Highway Trust Fund while Solvency is still Solvable (Report)

Mission Accomplished Report (Site)

Chuck Marohn (Substack)

 

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

Cities often spend years studying a street before making a change, only to discover that the public is reacting to plans no one has actually experienced. Krista Nightengale, executive director of Better Block, explains another approach: build a temporary version, invite people into it, gather data, and adjust what does not work. She and Chuck talk about winning over skeptical engineers, learning from residents, and making safer streets without waiting for a perfect plan. The goal is not to prove the first idea was correct, but to learn enough, quickly enough, to make the next decision better.

Additional Show Notes

Krista Nightengale (LinkedIn)

Better Block (Site)

Wikiblock (Site)

Chuck Marohn (Substack)

 

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

Putting a route near every community sounds fair until the buses only arrive once an hour. Jarrett Walker, author of Human Transit and principal of the firm helping Des Moines rethink its bus network, explains why cities cannot maximize frequency, coverage, and affordability at the same time. In Des Moines, the tradeoff comes with a 10% service cut, long waits, indirect routes, and streets that make some bus stops difficult or dangerous to reach. To understand whether the system is useful enough for people to actually rely on it, Walker asks a more revealing question: how much of the city can someone reach within a reasonable amount of time?

Additional Show Notes

Jarrett Walker (LinkedIn, Site)

Human Transit (Book)

Des Moines: Welcome to Your New Transit Network (Article)

Final Network Report Reimagine DART (PDF)

Chuck Marohn (Substack)

 

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

Street trees, benches, slower speeds, and beautiful proportions are often treated as extras, added only after the “real” engineering work is done. Victor Dover argues that this gets the whole assignment wrong. In this episode, he talks about the second edition of Street Design: The Secret to Great Cities and Towns and why great streets have to be designed as places, not just routes. Dover makes the case that beauty belongs in the brief from the beginning, because when a street is designed only for traffic flow, that is all it can ever really become: a place for traffic.

Additional Show Notes

Victor Dover (LinkedIn)

Street Design (Book)

Dover, Kohl, & Partners (Site)

Chuck Marohn (Substack)

 

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

Pedestrian deaths have climbed sharply since 2009, yet transportation agencies often point to small, recent dips as proof that things are getting better. Beth Osborne, president and CEO of Smart Growth America, returns to the Strong Towns Podcast to talk about the latest Dangerous by Design report and the choices that keep making American roads so deadly. She and Chuck dig into why state-owned roads are especially dangerous, how street design shapes driver behavior, and why blaming pedestrians or waiting for automated vehicles keeps the focus away from the roads themselves. The big question is this: when will we stop treating roadway deaths as the cost of getting around and start changing the roads that make them predictable?

Additional Show Notes

Beth Osborne (LinkedIn)

Smart Growth America (Site)

Dangerous by Design 2026 Report (PDF)

The Deadly Rise of Giant Trucks and S.U.V.s (Article)

Chuck Marohn (Substack)

 

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.