ModeShift

It’s no secret that America’s streets are dangerous: roughly 40,000 people die on our roads every year. In response, over the past couple of decades, 60 cities have embraced VisionZero — a framework for road safety developed in Sweden — to make roads safer by slowing down cars and expanding curbs and other infrastructure that makes pedestrians and cyclists more visible.

Although VisionZero has a mixed record in America, the tiny, dense city of Hoboken, New Jersey has emerged as proof that VisionZero can save lives and cut down on injuries. 

Much of that success can be attributed to the work of Ravi Bhalla, who served as mayor from 2018 until earlier this year. Bhalla added bumpouts to intersections, crosswalks and slowed speed limits across the city. As a result, Hoboken hasn’t seen a single road death since 2017 and drastically cut serious injuries. 

In this episode, Bhalla explains how a lack of safety was hurting Hoboken, the resistance he confronted in his pursuit of new policies, and their cascading impacts on the community.

Listen to ModeShift on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Across America, small and medium-sized cities are growing at a rapid clip. In many of them, transit services have failed to keep up. 

In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, that is not the case. In this episode, we hear from Paul TenHaken, the city’s outspoken and candid mayor. Under TenHaken’s watch, Sioux Falls has overhauled its transit system with remarkable results. 

In partnership with Via, Sioux Falls added more paratransit services, made bus routes more flexible, and boosted its on-demand services; the result is a system that works hand in hand with the city as it grows.

Listen to ModeShift on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts.

America is hooked on parking. There are roughly two billion parking spaces in the United States; that’s about eight spots for every single car. All of that parking takes up a lot of space; roughly a third of the land in our cities. 

For Henry Grabar, the acclaimed author of “Paved Paradise,” our fixation is fueled by what he calls the parking trilemma: our quest for a parking space that is convenient, available and free. Yet, for Grabar, this trilemma has eroded the very communities it aims to make accessible. 

In this episode, Grabar digs into the history of parking to explain our unquenchable thirst for it, the cascading impacts of all that parking and case studies that demonstrate we can change the parking status quo.

Listen to ModeShift on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Last year, New York City launched one of the most ambitious and dramatic transportation-related plans America has seen in a quarter-century: congestion pricing. The plan charges most vehicles $9 to enter Manhattan south of 61st Street; those funds are being used to overhaul the region’s transit system, and the reduction in traffic has led to both healthier air and smoother travel.

While the plan ran into some very public friction with the federal government, the drama surrounding congestion pricing actually goes back 20 years. In this episode, we hear from one of the architects of the plan, Kathy Wylde, the former CEO of the influential business organization Partnership for NYC. Kathy walks us through the long road to congestion pricing, pushes back on the criticism it has faced, and highlights its remarkable accomplishments.

Listen to ModeShift on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts.

When people talk about economic opportunity, they usually focus on jobs, education, or housing.

But there’s another factor that shapes all of those things: how people move.

In season two of ModeShift, host Andrei Greenawalt explores how cities across the U.S. are rethinking transportation — not just as a way to get around, but as a driver of economic growth, safety, and access.

From congestion pricing and integrated transit systems to new technologies like AI, this season looks at the ideas reshaping how cities move — and what that means for opportunity.

Episodes are dropping soon. Subscribe to Modeshift anywhere you get your podcasts.