This week’s podcast was recorded at November’s Urban Sustainability Forum in Philadelphia. The topic, Transportation Reform:  The Ticket Back to Town, was featured, exploring the absolute need for public transit and other automobile alternatives if any city is to be sustainable. Older citizens become trapped in their houses, especially in the suburbs, when they are no longer able to drive. Cities without safe and accessible bikeways and pedestrian friendly development are unable to attract younger workers. Yet states and regions continue to gobble up transportation dollars for faster and bigger highway systems, using money that should be used to fix aging transportation systems.

With the federal transportation funding bills now making their way through Congress, it is vital that Pennsylvania’s cities, towns, and regions look beyond what has always been done, and actually examine what their community needs to succeed now and in the future.

This podcast is just what the transportation doctor ordered! PennFuture’s Philadelphia Outreach Coordinator, Rachel Vassar, interviews two great experts, James Corless, director of Transportation for America and Byron Comati, director of Strategic Planning and Analysis for SEPTA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority), which serves Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties. Together these experts make a thoughtful and compelling case for all communities to seriously consider how transportation choices can help or harm their region.

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