Inclusive Transportation: a Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities

How often do we consider the intersectionality of transportation and community-building? That's what we unravel with Veronica O. Davis, author of Inclusive Transportation: a Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities. We venture beyond the conventional realm of transportation planning, shedding light on how it weaves into the fabric of our communities. Veronica's unique perspective on transportation planning, the challenges it presents, and the potential solutions are insightful and something you wouldn’t want to miss.

In our engaging discourse, we examine the concept of embedding equity into our planning processes. We discuss the obstacles in achieving this, making it equally critical and complex. Veronica navigates us through a comprehensive roadmap of how to approach this, emphasizing the significance of prioritizing community needs. Additionally, we also brush upon our own transportation journeys and how our individual experiences shape our stance on urban planning.

As we steer towards the end, we delve into the realm of practical challenges in transportation planning. We touch upon the value of quick-fix solutions, the power of transparency in decision-making, and the need for leaders in the field to express their decisions more openly. Join us to explore a new perspective on this often overlooked aspect of urban planning.

Show Notes:

• The book Veronica referenced as being impactful on her views: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
• Stephanie’s Transportation Story: https://www.theplanninglady.com/blog/transportation-story 
• Stat on motor vehicle deaths as for children mentioned in the show: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761#:~:text=The%20previous%20analysis%2C%20which%20examined,to%2019%20years%20of%20age
• To buy the book head to https://islandpress.org/books/inclusive-transportation  

Transcripts: To view the show transcripts, click on the episode at https://bookedonplanning.buzzsprout.com/

Episode Artwork by Harshil Gudka via Unsplash.

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Transcript

Stephanie: 0:00

Before we dive into today's episode, we wanted to take a moment and thank our episode sponsor, RDG Planning and Design. RDG is a talented team of architects, landscape architects, engineers, artists and planners with a passion for design and a drive to make a difference. They believe in applying new ways of thinking and innovative approaches to the preparation of plans that address community and regional issues. They have a network of offices in Omaha, Nebraska, St Louis, Missouri, Denver, Colorado and Des Moines, Iowa, with design and planning professionals dedicated to applying their talents in extraordinary ways. Check out their work today at rdgusa. com.

Stephanie: 0:46

You're listening to the Booked On Planning podcast, a project of the Nebraska chapter of the American Planning Association. In each episode, we dive into how cities function by talking with authors on housing, transportation and everything in between. Join us as we get Booked On Planning. Welcome back Bookworms to another episode of Booked On Planning. In this episode, we talk with author Veronica O'Davis about her book Hot Off the Press Inclusive Transportation and Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities. Before all the non-transportation planners skip to the next episode, I want to make sure you keep listening because, while this book comes from the perspective of transportation planning at its core, it's really about embedding equity in our planning processes and making a better effort to do community engagement in a more impactful way. Veronica talks about how her audience isn't just transportation planners or engineers, but advocates, city officials and anyone working to improve communities.

Jennifer: 1:49

I would like to echo that sentiment. I am not a transportation planner at all and I normally turn my redevelopment plans over to people like Stephanie to make sure that we get transportation in our redevelopment areas right. So I went into this book thinking, well, maybe at least I'll learn something, but wasn't as excited about it as I know you are, Steph.

Jennifer: 2:11

Every planner should read this book and consider Veronica's points as they think more holistically about development. Her reflection prompts really make you stop and think about your own experience.

Stephanie: 2:22

She also asked the reader to stop at the end of one of the early chapters and define equity in your own words, which I found hard because it's been shaped by so many webinars and conference sessions telling me what equity is and is not, and most often using the graphic of the three people trying to watch a baseball game over the fence which Veronica references in the book and in our conversation.

Jennifer: 2:44

I liked her prompt asking us to think about our own transportation story. I know we talked about it more in the episode, but I grew up many miles away from even the small town I went to school in, so I was driven or dropped off everywhere and then I started driving at a really young age. Now I prioritize being in a central location where I can quickly access most things, and it never really occurred to me that that might be because I always had to drive everywhere when I was growing up.

Stephanie: 3:10

Yeah, that's a really good point, and we ended our conversation talking about work-life balance, which I'm coming to realize is really important when it comes to working in a field where you're constantly advocating for improvements. I know I felt burnout. Sustaining kind of a constant marathon pace, which Veronica mentions in the episode, is a recipe for burnout. She makes a good point that when you're working in a field like planning, you have to take breaks. You may give it your all and your complete focus for a period of time when you really need to do so, but when you can take a break and check out for a week or two, you need to do so and not continue to work, sort of, while you're on vacation. That was a message that was perfectly timed for me, since I went on vacation the week after we recorded this episode.

Jennifer: 3:55

And I am actually really glad to hear that you took it to heart. We've been having quite a few advocacy marathons lately. I feel like, yes, the life balance is always hard, but I think it's especially difficult in our line of work, since really actually the hustle is ingrained in us. Early on I remember being in our planning program and hearing people brag about how they slept on the couch in the graduate study room and for a long time I thought that that was the only way to be successful, because that was kind of what was shown to us in the professional world as well. So I'm really glad the conversation is turning and we as a profession are really becoming more aware of the dangers of burnout.

Stephanie: 4:35

Well, we hope you enjoyed this conversation with author Veronica Davis about her book Inclusive Transportation. You can get your own copy through the publisher at islandpress. org and check out the other great titles that we've covered while you're there. Veronica, thank you so much for joining us on Booked on Planning to talk about your book just released at the beginning of July Inclusive Transportation and Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities. In your acknowledgments you think your editor, who's the one who asked if you'd want to write a book. After hearing you give a presentation, I'm curious if you had ever thought of writing a book before and what prompted you to say yes.

Veronica: 5:12

Well, thank you for having me on here. I'm really excited. So what prompted me? When I was 23 years old, I was an intern at New York City Department of Transportation and on one particular day I wrote this life strategic plan because at 23, why not? And part of there I had, you know, exceed professionally and I had this objective to be a world renowned transportation expert. And just one of the strategies in there was I'm going to write a book.

Veronica: 5:43

But I was 23 and pretty much forgotten about it. So it was there. You know, the seed of the thought was always there. And then meeting and talking with Courtney, you know it was just like all right, I can write a book, why not? And I don't think that also the other part that helped it was having a chance to go to Salisbury Global Seminar and meeting other really dynamic women who I now consider part of my brain and heart. Trust was, you know, who gets to define the expert. You know who gets to define who is the voice of this particular issue, whether it be planning or transportation. And so that was another impetus to write it of. Why can't I be the expert or be the voice on transportation?

Jennifer: 6:25

Before we jump into the content of your book, I actually wanted to ask you about the structure. This was one of the first planning books that I've read that creates real opportunity for the reader to reflect on their own lived experiences. I know that I did and I know that Stephanie even wrote a blog post about some of hers. Other planning books asked the reader to think about things, but you actually build in these opportunities for a full reflection and provide questions and prompts to assist. What made you take that approach?

Veronica: 6:57

The idea of the approach came from a book that I really like called Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill. So it is a book that sits in my near my bed, and one of the structures of the book is it's a book you can read from beginning to end. Here's these thoughts, here's these ideas. Two of these examples. Now you take the time to reflect on these thoughts and examples and so, as I was, you know, writing my book. It was.

Veronica: 7:20

I didn't want to be talking at people. I didn't want it to be a book that you read, it, pat yourself on the back because you read a book and you put it up. I wanted it to be that book that people, one took the time to reflect to. You know that type of a book that would stay on someone's desk, that would have sticky notes and dog ears, but really be that book that becomes a resource to people. In order to do that, it's being able to have these prompts and not just one time prompts.

Veronica: 7:51

But you know, as you have different projects or different things that you're tackling, it's oh, we're doing this policy thing. Let's go back to chapter three. We got this project come up and we need to start thinking about stakeholders. Let's go to chapter four, where we have a project and we want to structure how the planning process informs the technical process. Let's go to chapter five, and that's why I wanted it to be structured that way that it's a resource that sits right under your NACTO design guidelines. You know, as you are having these conversations about, you know different projects that you might be working on.

Stephanie: 8:23

I think a great point is, while it is called inclusive transportation, it's coming at it from a transportation perspective. I think all of these approaches can really be applied to any sort of planning process. Whether you're working on a downtown master plan or a comprehensive plan. I think the engagement techniques and everything really cross over well.

Jennifer: 8:41

I know I actually took the book to my office and have it just sitting with a bunch of other resources that I'll definitely start using. Well, and that was the hope and in.

Veronica: 8:50

While the target audience are those of us in the transportation engineering and planning world, there's also the secondary audience of journalists and how they write about these things. And then you have all of the advocacy groups and you know how they tackle and really chapter six you know kind of my playbook to the advocates of this world of this is really a long term. I don't want to say struggle because that sounds negative, but this is really a long term item that we will need to tackle in order to get better decision making when it comes to transportation.

Stephanie: 9:26

So, speaking of decision making, in your preface you talk about how you shifted from observer to decision maker as you sold your company and moved to Houston to become the director of transportation and drainage. Did your perspective or any sections of this book change as a result of your shift from the private to the public sector?

Veronica: 9:46

Absolutely, and so I am the director of transportation drainage for the city of Houston, so I do need to give my legal caveat that my views do not reflect the city of Houston. I'm here talking as Veronica oh Davis, but absolutely less that my perspective change and the realization that I'm accountable for my own thoughts. And it is very challenging because there's a lot of things that I wish we could do better. And it's the frustration of well, we're not moving fast enough to do better about whether it's public engagement or whether it's about getting things done quicker. However, I will say we are getting things done a lot faster than I have seen in other cities, and it is the and I talk a little bit about the fear that I'm going to be at a public meeting and someone's going to throw my words right back in my face, but I think it's also the realization that where we are today has been decades and decades and decades of decision making, and so there's a anxiousness, if you will, of having someone like me in the city of okay, veronica is going to show up and all of a sudden, magically, everything is going to be better.

Veronica: 10:57

And it's not that simple. It is. It has taken us decades to get to where we are, whether it's the lack of sidewalks, whether it's the high injury network that every city has. This is decades, and so now we are billions in the hole in order to begin to fix this. You know we talk about black girl magic, but I'm also not a magical being that I can snap my fingers and everything is magically fixed.

Veronica: 11:21

But I will say, as a decision maker and this is where I've been talking to a few advocates about the book it you realize I have to do the long game, and so the long game is there may be short term things that people feel like I could be doing faster, but the long game is what are the decisions I can make now that will affect the long term? And so whether that is going after federal money, so that we can have money in the CIP and that money can't be reprogrammed, and so therefore, no matter what the administration is, these projects will continue to move forward. It's about putting in the effort to change the design guidelines, because if we can attack the design guidelines, you could fix a lot of things moving forward, because that is what the engineers will refer to, and so it can feel as a decision making I'm not moving fast enough, but it really is about fixing these structural things, that even if I'm not in the seat, it's moving forward and so the next person will live with that decision, good or bad.

Jennifer: 12:23

On a personal note, stephanie and I both work for the same city and we are actually trying to get a pedestrian crossing at one of our major intersections into a park and the design guidelines are causing a problem. We know that there's desire and need, but, understanding that our engineers have to follow their policies as well, it's been a little frustrating.

Veronica: 12:48

Just to follow up on that point of policies and everything, particularly for the advocates and particularly for those of you, many people working for cities if you can get the policy change, you can achieve a lot of your goals. I know a couple of people will ask me city of Houston, a couple others don't have a formal Department of Transportation. I don't think Philadelphia has a formal Department of Transportation and so you'll get advocates that say, well, would we get better this if we had a Department of Transportation? It all depends At the end of the day, if you can have the policies, the design guidelines. That sets the structure.

Veronica: 13:26

So it doesn't really matter at that point what you call the department, the agency or whatever. Those are to me ancillary things that make you feel good. But you have to focus on fixing the policies and fixing the design guidelines, especially when you're dealing with engineers, because engineers some of my engineering brethren and sister-in are very black and white, and so if black and white says this thing needs to be 10 feet, I'm going to do it exactly 10 feet. And although there's always space for engineering judgment, if you say it's supposed to be 10 feet and I do 10 feet and something goes wrong, it doesn't matter, I can say I followed the guideline.

Jennifer: 14:05

That leads perfectly into my next question. Actually, you hold advanced degrees in both planning and transportation engineering and I believe you received your transportation engineering education first. How did that order of education shape your views on creating transportation systems? Because, yeah, sometimes the engineers and the planners we've got heads.

Veronica: 14:27

So one I tell pretty much any civil engineer that works in the transportation space at this point, you know, in this world it's almost like you have to have an advanced degree to survive a lot of jobs. And so my big push for all engineers is to go get a planning degree and even if you don't get the degree, at least take some courses. So for me, my undergrad was just strictly designed. It was strictly hardcore civil engineering roadway design, go from point A to point B. Design the road. Don't get creative, use your design guidelines and that's it. And that's what I was trained on. My planning degree actually was land use and environmental and that's where I was like, okay, so there's these things that happen. And then I have a you know my engineering degree as well, but I really didn't learn transportation planning until after I worked at the federal government. So I get to the federal government and I'm like, working on these, like long range plans, and that's when I was like, wait a minute. So you decided 20 years ago, 30 years ago, that we're going to build a road from point A to point B. But we haven't reevaluated in the current if this road is needed, but because 20 years ago we made this decision. Now we're committed to making this decision, to build this road, and so I went back for briefly, for a PhD in civil engineering. I didn't finish but I took some coursework towards it and that's actually when I learned about the specifics of transportation planning, the modeling and you know, origin, destination. That's when I truly learned about that stuff.

Veronica: 15:59

And then I didn't get the PhD because I'm like I got what I need. Now I can keep it moving and as a planner. I've worked both as a civil engineer and as a planner. But working in a planning department for a city and doing long range planning, that's when it's like, oh hey, I get to now set what the long term plan is and I'm going to link the transportation with the land use and we did a lot of engagement. It was a little bit too much people for my taste, so that's why I left the city. God bless, god bless even some of the staff that worked for me that are on the front lines. It's tough, but that's really when I learned to put these things together and then realizing that we have to make decisions a little bit faster, because what the world was 20 years ago and what it is today is very different, and what made sense 20 years ago may not make sense today.

Stephanie: 16:51

Gammaverse. I did a planning degree and now I feel like I need to go back and get some more education in the civil engineering side to be able to speak to the engineers that I'm working with day to day. We'll see if that ever happens. But you start off laying the foundations in the book for equity. Can you describe your approach to talking about equity and how it was shaped? And I say approach and not definition, because you give an example in Montgomery County where the community never actually defined what equity was to them, but they were able to really create meaningful goals and achieve the same end.

Veronica: 17:24

So chapter three was one of my favorite to write. So, fun fact, chapter three and four were my two favorite. I actually wrote chapter four first, but chapter three, you know, really tackling it was a two or two chapter two talking about equity. Part of equity is, you know, for every city and I know that we have the graphic, so I reference the baseball graphic of people attempting to watch the baseball game and you know, the thing about equity is it's everyone gets what they need.

Veronica: 17:54

But the reality is, in every city, county, state, the people, the funding, the time is finite, and so we can't meet everyone's needs. As I mentioned earlier. You know, even as we think about sidewalks, the average city probably has hundreds of millions, if not billions, in you know, need to just even repair sidewalks. So we can't meet everyone's needs. And so part of looking at equity in a framework, it's really about prioritization, because as long as we focus on giving everyone what they need, what then tends to happen is people who know the system to get their needs addressed continue to get their needs addressed and people who don't continue to get left out. And so having a framework of prioritization and that's what we worked with Montgomery County was to like put on paper.

Veronica: 18:44

How are we going to prioritize this funding? And so we came up with a framework similar to an ER. If we all go to the ER, it doesn't matter who we are. Yeah, it might be first come, first serve, but the minute someone comes in that is more critical they move to the front of the line to get addressed and get stabilized. At least before then everyone else is seen, and so will we eventually get to all community needs? Maybe, but it really is about taking the time to prioritize the communities that are just constantly being, you know that don't see the investment that is needed at all.

Jennifer: 19:20

Another of the key themes that you discussed throughout your book is that transportation is personal. In fact, you actually ask your readers to think about their transportation story and reflect on how that story shaped their views. I had never considered this before. I'm not I don't really work in the transportation world, stephanie does. I work in development, so I found it really impactful. How has this simple tool helped on projects that you've worked on so far?

Veronica: 19:50

One thing about it is the more you understand yourself, the easier it is to relate to others, regardless of what your story is. You know, in my case it was my family lost their homes to highway, so that's a connection point with certain communities. Or you know just the decisions that I make every day in order to move around. Those are all things that are connection points to the communities, and I think it is important to bring yourself to the work that you do every day. I think that sometimes, particularly as practitioners, we can get so focused on the day to day or the project that we also forget there's people involved. And particularly when you're talking about Black Brown and you know sometimes even low income neighborhoods, you're talking about communities that have either had something happen to them, whether it's being divided by a highway or any type of thinking like that.

Veronica: 20:44

So there's this long memory. Part of it is inviting the reader to think about those things, particularly a couple others have shared. You know their transportation story and you realize how much it then can help with, you know, even just advocating for certain things. So one engineer shared that. You know, hey, when my great grandfather was killed in a traffic crash when my parent was young, and those are all things that are becoming impactful, but it's also things that can make you relatable to the different communities that we're working in For someone that maybe doesn't have any sort of unique transportation story or any of the connections that you've described.

Stephanie: 21:27

how can you better relate to the people that you're trying to engage when you don't have that kind of firsthand experience of understanding their story? But you might have empathy, understanding what had happened?

Veronica: 21:39

I still think that empathy starts with the individual, and you have to know where you stand in order to have the empathy for others. And so, even if a transportation story isn't something that's tragic per se, there's still a story. Every day people make decisions on how they move. So why are you making that decision? What influenced that decision?

Veronica: 22:00

You know there are people who grew up in the Midwest who made active decisions to move to more urbanized areas because, you know, they remember as a child having to just drive everywhere and not having the freedom to go. And so they move to urban areas and maybe choose to raise families in urban areas to have the freedom to be able to walk to parks. So it doesn't always have to be a tragic understanding of the story. At the end of the day, you grew up one way, whether it is you got driven to school or, you know, as the old folks say, I walked the school one mile each direction, uphill, in the snow. All of those things still formulate your identity and your relationship to the road and to movement and to the street, and so it's still just important to have the understanding of who you are and what shapes your view today for how you, as an individual, choose to move and therefore it still opens up the door to empathy, to how others are making decisions to move.

Stephanie: 23:02

One of your sections, you talk about paper tigers, which is a term that I'd never heard before but I really enjoy because I work in the world of federal view processes like NEPA that are major paper tigers, and so, for listeners that may not have heard this term before, it's essentially a process that has plenty of documentation, analysis, but poor results. How can we, as planners or citizen activists, take these mandated and thorough processes that are set up and make them more meaningful and productive?

Veronica: 23:32

The paper tiger term came from my professor at Cornell and so part of it is. Even if we think about NEPA, there are sometimes we can have a goal of something, but the process doesn't necessarily get us to that goal. So NEPA in National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, part of it was to prevent the things like highways going through neighborhoods, and so it's a very defined, you know, big picture process that communities should be involved and the impact should be considered. But a very key word in NEPA is the impacts are considered. I can consider the impacts as a person going through the process and still make a decision that impacts neighborhoods. There was nothing in NEPA really to prevent the impact. Now there are other things in place, whether it's Title Six and all those other items, but even still it's all about the wording. You know even Title Six is it can't be a disproportionate impact, but you can still build a highway that proportionately impacts everyone. That still requires the taking of homes, the taking of properties. So that's the overall challenge of NEPA. It just it makes a very expensive, long process but doesn't necessarily get to better decision making and particularly with NEPA it is you're only really required to consider that mode. So if I'm trying to do a project, I'm really only required to consider the alternatives that look at, I could widen the road, I can make the road narrower, I can move the road this way, move the road that way, but nothing says, oh, one of my alternatives is to do high speed rail down the middle, or one of my alternatives is to have less rapid transit things. That then get to the issue of capacity. No one's really required to look at that because the modes are considered separately.

Veronica: 25:25

But I think what advocates can do and this goes back to kind of the earlier point is to truly get change. We have to continue to advocate and continue to push for better policies that get us to the decisions that we have today. And so, as Federal Highway goes through the updating of there's been Safety, loo and T-21 and MAP-21 and all the different iterations of the highway bill, the transportation bill, that's the time that advocates need to be at the table to say, hey, we want a transportation bill, but we want, under the environmental process, that you have to consider multimodal alternatives before moving forward with a project. And so it's a long term view, because you may not get it the next cycle, you may not get it the cycle after that. But it's about doing it over and over again, and so I know we talk about. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results. But sometimes you need a little bit of insanity in order to get to the results.

Veronica: 26:26

When you think about the Civil Rights Movement and we look at Rosa Parks and we talk about Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat, that wasn't the first time. There were years and years and multiple other people that had done this action, so it was very focused action. We're going to keep doing this thing and keep doing this thing and keep doing this thing and eventually you get the change that you need. Ironically, transportation being at the center of the Civil Rights Movement. And so, for all advocates, we have to take the long view.

Veronica: 26:56

Right now, because of the advocacy of the community, the manual of uniform traffic control devices is being re-looked at. Now that it's being re-looked at again, even though there was a draft ready to go, it's the advocacy, the people who push to say no, this is not good enough, this needs to be better, and here's where these things need to be better. So now we're back in it, we're back to the drawing board to attempt to make this document better, but it's that type of thinking that we need to focus on. Otherwise, if we keep just spending our energy on these little battles, we're gonna wear ourselves out. We really need to focus on the policies, the design guidelines and having long view of how we make them better and coalition building so that we can attack them as groups.

Jennifer: 27:43

I appreciated your triage analogy for how cities can ultimately rethink how they approach their transportation networks. Can you discuss this and how you see it working?

Veronica: 27:53

So the triage analogy is when you go to an ER, they're just trying to triage you, they're trying to get you as stable as possible and if you don't need to stay the night, they will send you on your merry way and they will almost always give you a recommendation to follow up with your primary care physician that person that can give you longer term solutions or a longer term process. And when you think about the high injury network, we are still killing people every day in America by motor vehicles use and the pedestrian deaths are increasing. People on bikes are increasing. People in vehicles every day is increasing. We haven't packed this and I read the stat I think and don't quote me on it, but I believe now that motor vehicle crashes is like the number two cause of death for children.

Veronica: 28:41

Part of that triage is it's hard. These projects take a long time. Rebuilding a road takes a long time and a lot of money. So we need to think about what can we do. That may be a band-aid fix and it may not be the prettiest fix, but it's something. And so some cities have gone to using pylons or some type of a delineator to do bulb outs right. So yes, eventually we'll come back and do the bigger project. But right now at least we've done something and so it is trying to get to that.

Veronica: 29:11

How do we just triage to prevent people from dying and then we can come back and do the better, more aesthetically pleasing project? But every day people are dying and every city has their high-endry network and typically it's the same type of road. It's a six lane, eight lane road which is very fast, and even things like trying to get mid-block crossings, which I know it's not necessarily an easy fix because it can take a lot. It takes time and money to install mid-block traffic signals, but just even things like well, do we need to move where the bus stop is so that it's near a crosswalk? So it's just trying to get to. How can we do faster things and then think about the longer-term solution?

Stephanie: 29:53

I really like that and we're getting there in our transportation department. For the longest time they didn't wanna do the quick build because they thought it would give a false sense that we would come back and do something permanent. But I think approaching it is we're at least doing something. We're doing something to fix the problem versus just doing nothing because we don't want them to think, oh, something permanent's happening if we don't have the funds.

Veronica: 30:16

Part of having the quick build. It also gives you the opportunity to adjust without making a huge investment. I've worked in cities where we've done the bulb out quick build and you get a chance to see oh, this isn't quite working, it's just a matter of moving a $20, maybe $100 if you got real fancy pylon out the way, versus imagine if you had put in concrete and all the accoutrements and then having to rip that out. So the other thing about quick build it gives us an opportunity. It engineers. We do a lot of as built and adjusting in the field, but it allows you to do that before making a large capital investment.

Stephanie: 30:55

So I really enjoy chapter five, which detailed the engagement process, and a lot of what you touch on. I think recently has become more embedded into our engagement practices, but you include some of these really small steps that I think can be really impactful to residents engaging in the process, one of those being telling the residents how the transportation decision was made, which to my knowledge is pretty unusual. I haven't seen that in any communities that I've worked in. How can we get our engineers to change their approach and be more transparent about the process?

Veronica: 31:26

I think it's engineers, but it's even also the leader of the transportation agency. I think there's a sense that sometimes people don't wanna own the decision, and it needs to be clear who owns the decision. And ultimately, for those of us over transportation agencies, it's being able to support the transportation engineers and planners in the decision that they're making, and so that's where kind of the lack of transparency can come in. I don't wanna be the person to get yelled at and then I am completely unsupported by my leadership, whether that be agency leadership or city leadership, and that's where I'm very clear of you have to elect better leaders, you know, and have people who are bold, who are in these decision-making powers, but then also, too, having the transparency of this is what the process is, and this is why we are doing this.

Veronica: 32:19

I think we can get the engineers there. It'll take a little bit of time, but I think it's important that it's okay to say that we are doing this. Like a great example of sidewalks you would be surprised at how hard it is to get a sidewalk in, and this is any city that I've ever worked in. Sidewalks are like the single hardest project to get done, even though they are small in scale and I've dealt with this in every city I've had. You know, back when I lived in DC, I remember my old neighbors, you know, laid in front of a bulldozer because over my dead body.

Veronica: 32:50

So, for whatever reason, sidewalks are very emotional for people and we can't give a false sense of community engagement of you know. So we're here to talk about sidewalks. Tell me what you want. That's a false engagement and that's where the confidence starts to erode. Versus by policy again attacking policy by policy. There needs to be a sidewalk here. So we're gonna do a sidewalk. Here are the options for your sidewalk. We could do it a little wider than standard. We could do you know, or we could do this, we could add a tree, but we're putting in the sidewalk, and so I think that part of having that honesty, it makes it easier to get these projects done, versus, if people feel like they have an option, they're gonna continue to push against something.

Jennifer: 33:33

I think that actually also ties well to your final paragraph, or technically two sentences. They say what do you owe the world? You owe the world your brilliance and your empathy. It can be really difficult sometimes for planners and advocates working to advance equity and inclusion and, honestly, even just some basic planning principles, to keep sharing. These things keep their little light shining. So how would you encourage someone who is struggling to continue to work in this space?

Veronica: 34:07

So one I will say you know, life is not. You know they say life is a marathon, life is not a marathon. I think that's a false sense, because a marathon means I'm sustaining this taste consistently. It's okay to have, you know, advocacy be more like a hit workout where you're gonna have periods where you are going to be giving your all and you need to have your periods of rest of where you were just trying to catch your breath. So I am team rest. I just was interviewed about work-life balance. I am team.

Veronica: 34:35

There are times you have to take care of yourself, you have to disconnect and give yourself the space to truly rest your mind and rest your body, because there are going to be periods where you're gonna have to give everything. You know when your state legislature or your city council is considering things, or your county commission, you know, whatever the structure of government, you have to be in the fight and that means that when you can take a break completely, take that break and take that time off and disconnect. And it is okay to do that because this is a long-term proposition and so that's the biggest thing I can offer to. You know many of the advocates that get tired, you get burnout because you're trying to sustain a pace that you cannot sustain.

Stephanie: 35:18

I really love that. I feel like you're giving me that advice directly. I have a tendency to be the marathoner and not the hit workout person.

Veronica: 35:26

I'm one of these people that, no matter where I've worked, I've always been the life struggle for vacation time because a minute I got enough in the bank, I'm out and that's just it for me. For me, it is I need to leave the country, I need to be by somebody's beach, I need the beach chair to hit my face, and that is my you know time to be away, to be completely disconnected, and I've always been that way, even when I own my own company. There were times I would leave for two weeks and just be. I don't know. Y'all figure it out. Don't break anything, I'll be back, you know. But one I think you know, particularly for leaders, it is Giving ourselves the permission. I was doing a meditation last night and one of the things that guided said like it's okay of priorities change.

Veronica: 36:11

You know, it's okay if for this week or this moment I need to prioritize this other thing. It's okay, it'll get done. And a really great Instagram that I love is the map ministry. But rest is resistance and sometimes we have to take those periods of rest.

Stephanie: 36:27

Well, that's a great way to wrap up our episode, but I also want to give you an opportunity if there's anything that we didn't cover or any important messages you want to leave our listeners with.

Veronica: 36:37

I think the biggest thing about this particular book is you know, I hope that one you're able to connect with it too. I hope it's that book that stays on your desk with dog ears and highlights and Understanding that each of us has power. We might have some, may have more than others, but understanding we each have at least a little bit of power and how we can use our power to get better projects. And I make no bones about it that I definitely come from a place that, moving forward, we have to be multimodal. We cannot continue forward as people in their own individual vehicle moving around. It's not sustainable.

Veronica: 37:17

But particularly as the earth changes and climate change and all these things is particularly now it's changing Particularly now it's triple digits in Texas, so we can't seem to get any release that we can't continue with these things. And so, as we look forward, we have to think multimodally. And so I will say that is my baseline assumption and if that's not your jam, you might not like the book, but that is my baseline belief and ideology. That is in the books. I do want to make sure that is clear and it's not that I don't think highways have their place. I don't think highways need to be as wide as they are, and I think they have a place in a multimodal world when they could be repurposed to move a lot of people differently.

Stephanie: 37:57

I love that and I really appreciate you writing the book and joining us on this episode. Thank you so much for taking the time today and thank you for having me. Yes, thank you. We hope you enjoyed this conversation with author Veronica Davis on her book Inclusive Transportation: A manifesto for repairing divided communities. You can get your own copy through the publisher at islandpress. org and check out the other great titles we've covered. While you're there, remember to subscribe to the show. Wherever you listen to podcasts, please rate, review and share the show. Thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time on Booked On Planning. Thank you.