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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Episodes
145 episodes
Colorado Voters Can Unlock Regional Rail This November
Colorado’s Front Range is growing fast, and I-25 is already paying the price. When the only real north-south artery turns into bumper-to-bumper gridlock at 9 a.m., “just add lanes” stops sounding like a plan and starts sounding like a loop. Tha...
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A New Plan for Passenger Rail in Central Texas... Again
A shiny new rail proposal just dropped for the Austin to San Antonio corridor and the details are going to spark arguments. The headline sounds great: “higher speed” passenger rail along SH 130 with top speeds around 125 mph and a trip time nea...
Illinois High-Speed Rail
A two-hour train ride from Chicago to St. Louis should sound normal. In the United States, it still sounds like science fiction, yet Illinois is quietly laying the groundwork for exactly that: a 220 mph high-speed rail corridor that could turn ...
Transit Tour - Dresden, Germany
From a U.S. perspective, a city about the size of Tucson shouldn’t be able to pull off a dream transit system, but Dresden does. We set out to explore all public transit available in Dresden, starting at Dresden Hauptbahnhof and hopping straigh...
Canada’s High-Speed Rail Moment
Canada has talked about high-speed rail for half a century, and we might finally be watching the moment it turns into steel in the ground. Alto, a new federally owned Crown company, is proposing a 1,000 km high-speed rail line from Toronto to Q...
Transit Tour - Berlin
Berlin is one of those cities where you can feel history in the street layout and then confirm it by looking at the transit map. We start at Berlin Hauptbahnhof, the modern central station that finally brings together rail lines that were once ...
Utah's FrontRunner Closer To Federal Transit Funding
$1.2 billion doesn’t just buy track and trains. It buys time back in your day, the kind you lose when your “commuter rail” only shows up every 30 to 60 minutes and a single delay wrecks every connection. We dig into the newly awarded federal Ca...
Self-Driving Cars Cannot Replace Good Transit
People keep telling us self-driving cars are going to make public transit irrelevant. So we pressure-test that claim using the stuff that actually decides whether a city works: speed between cities, traffic and reliability, passenger capacity, ...
New York Is More Than Just NYC: The Empire Corridor Plan
New York dominates rail conversations in the country, yet the most realistic statewide upgrade might be hiding in plain sight. We’re talking about the Empire Corridor and a plan that could make intercity passenger rail in upstate New York faste...
The Southern Rail Commission is Fighting for More Passenger Service in the South
Passenger rail in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama doesn’t get the spotlight often, but the story behind Amtrak’s new Mardi Gras service proves how much demand has been waiting on the sidelines. We sit down with Knox Ross, chairman of the So...
Next Stop: Fast Buses, Better Service - A chat with NYC's DOT Commissioner, Mike Flynn
New York City has the most famous subway in the United States, yet the bus is the workhorse that moves millions of people every single day. That’s why we sat down with Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn to unpack NYC’s newly announced Bus A...
Brightline: Is it a Success?
Brightline has been held up as proof that private passenger rail can work in the United States and right now it’s also a warning sign. We went to Florida to ride the Miami to Orlando train for ourselves, then pulled the thread on the business m...
A Miami Built For People: Transit Alliance Miami
Miami traffic isn’t just annoying; it’s expensive, unsafe, and deeply political. We’re joined by Cathy Dos Santos from Transit Alliance Miami, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit advocating for a Miami built for people, not cars. We talk about what it really...
Transit Tour - Miami
Miami’s transit network can feel like a highlight reel one minute and a facepalm the next. We start downtown at Government Center, hop the MetroMover, and then ride Metrorail south on the Green Line, where the elevated guideway, solid headways,...
Is Austin's Project Connect Off the Rails?
Austin’s Project Connect is getting dragged in the headlines as “off the rails” and “one of the most expensive light rail projects in the country,” so we slow down and fact-check the story with the full timeline. We walk through what Austin vot...
Orlando’s Star Plan: A Discussion with Sunrise Movement Orlando
Orlando isn’t short on pavement, but it is short on fast, reliable public transportation and the cost shows up everywhere: rent, commute times, missed opportunities, and that feeling that the city is always one traffic jam away from chaos. From...
California Bullet Buses
A 140 mph bus on California freeways sounds like a joke you would see in your news feed, until you realize Caltrans is seriously studying it. We dig into the “bullet bus” concept and what it would actually require to run intercity service at "a...
Transit Tour - Orlando
What happens when you try to live in the real Orlando without a car? We spend a full day riding Lynx buses from the airport to downtown, up to Winter Park, back through the Florida Mall Superstop, and finally to Disney Springs, testing what pub...
The St. Pete SunRunner
A beach trip shouldn’t require a car, so we put St. Petersburg’s Sunrunner Bus Rapid Transit to the test the only way that counts: we rode it, timed it, transferred on it, and paid attention to the small details that make people trust a transit...
RIP, Spirit Airlines
Spirit Airlines didn’t just sell cheap tickets, it reshaped how Americans think about flying. Now it’s shut down, and we’re asking the uncomfortable question: if the biggest ultra-low-cost carrier disappears, do all of us end up paying more eve...
Atlanta Introduces the A-Line
Atlanta just took a real swing at better bus service and it’s bigger than a single new route. We’re breaking down MARTA’s newly opened A-Line bus rapid transit and the agency’s full bus network redesign, a rare top-to-bottom reset aimed at maki...
California Transit's Fiscal Cliff
Caltrain finally delivers the kind of service the Bay Area has asked for: faster trips, better frequency, and a smoother ride after electrification. Then we hit the uncomfortable question: why is a transit fiscal cliff still approaching even wi...
World Cup Transit Price Gouging
$150 to take the train to a World Cup match is the kind of headline that makes you do a double take. We dig into the growing fight over World Cup 2026 public transit pricing and why some US host regions seem ready to treat trains and buses like...
Colorado Front Range Regional Rail
Colorado’s Front Range is one of the most obvious “should have a train” corridors in the United States, yet the Denver to Boulder to Fort Collins connection has stalled for decades. We dig into what’s changing and why a new Front Range passenge...
The Rio Grande Plan: Salt Lake City
A historic train station sits near the heart of Salt Lake City, but many riders still get dropped on the edge of downtown and told to transfer and walk through empty industrial blocks. That disconnect is at the center of our conversation with c...