Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:24:28
Ryan Russo
You know the early editions of the guide 2012 2014. They were inspiring. And they were they were sort of very visual. They had photographs and and renderings. It's amazing that, you know, ten, 12 years later, how, data, they started to look, and, and and now that you can compare them to the visuals that you see in this guide, it's really just multiple levels ahead.

00:00:24:28 - 00:00:52:23
Ryan Russo
So great to combine great technical information with really clear, inspiring visuals. You know, these, sort of acts on a metric views that you have here will line up with a plan view in its in its color scheme and layout that really kind of walk you through and on. And so bring you from a vision of what you could have to how to get there.

00:00:52:23 - 00:01:17:17
Ryan Russo
And that's really, you know, so what we've been saying about this guide that prior versions might have been like a kit of parts. Here's the elements of your bike lanes that you might have, you know, widths and stencils and things. This new one is really a how to guide, right? It also provides the steps in the recipe, not just the elements in the ingredients.

00:01:17:23 - 00:01:27:27
Ryan Russo
So that that up leveling that you see visually and content is what, excites me.

00:01:27:29 - 00:01:49:25
John Simmerman
Hey everyone, welcome to the Active Towns Channel. My name is John Simmerman and that is Ryan Russo, director of NACTO, the National Association for City Transportation Officials. We're going to be talking a little bit about NACTO and the organization and what that is all about. But we're also going to be introducing the brand new, bicycle design guide, the Urban Design Guide, right here.

00:01:49:27 - 00:02:06:27
John Simmerman
It's wonderful to have this out. This is the third edition of the Bicycle Design Guide. But before we get right into that, I just want to say, if you're enjoying this content here on the Active Towns Channel, please consider supporting my efforts by becoming an Active Towns Ambassador. Super easy to do. Just navigate over to active towns.org.

00:02:07:01 - 00:02:16:27
John Simmerman
Click on the support tab at the top of the page. Okay, let's get right to it with Ryan.

00:02:16:29 - 00:02:21:08
John Simmerman
Ryan Russo, so wonderful to have you on the Active Towns podcast. Welcome.

00:02:21:10 - 00:02:25:14
Ryan Russo
Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's really, really exciting to be here.

00:02:25:16 - 00:02:42:14
John Simmerman
I've been wanting to do this for some time. Karen and I had been working and scheming on on getting her on before she, stepped down and moved on. But, I was delighted when I heard that you came on board, to the helm of NATO. And we're going to talk a little bit about NATO in just a bit.

00:02:42:17 - 00:02:49:27
John Simmerman
But I want to pause just for a moment and give you an opportunity to introduce yourself. So who the heck is Ryan Russo?

00:02:50:00 - 00:03:15:09
Ryan Russo
Thanks, John. I'm. I'm Ryan russo. I'm the executive director of NATO, the National Association of City Transportation Officials, which we'll talk about. But, I'm an urban planner by background. And I spent most of my career at NATO agencies, nearly 14 years at the New York City Department of Transportation, and then five years leading a new Department of Transportation in the city of Oakland, California, known as Odot.

00:03:15:11 - 00:03:37:27
Ryan Russo
And so, most of my career and work has been focused on redesigning the rights of way the, the public property between the property lines, streets and sidewalks for the benefit of people trying to prevent traffic collisions, trying to develop more equitable communities, and trying to make our transportation system and cities more sustainable and more connected.

00:03:37:29 - 00:03:52:12
John Simmerman
Fantastic. What was kind of the origin story for you in terms of what got you, you know, kind of inspired, to like, dive deep into this, you know, kind of portion of, of this world.

00:03:52:15 - 00:04:18:02
Ryan Russo
Oh, well, I guess a number of things I could, I could go quickly through. One is that I did grow up in a, in a really walkable mainline rail suburb, on Long Island in New York. And I could travel around in my neighborhood, but it turned out all my friends were on the other side of a very large arterial named Jericho Turnpike, and I was not allowed to cross that street.

00:04:18:09 - 00:04:37:02
Ryan Russo
And so while I could bike around and walk around my neighborhood, I actually had no one to connect with and play with because they were all on the other side of that arterial. So that's that's a sort of, inner child sort of origin story, but really it picked up when, I had my first job out of college in New York City.

00:04:37:02 - 00:04:59:18
Ryan Russo
I was living in Manhattan, and I started to get, exposed to urban transportation issues. The advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, saw their newsletter. I signed up for a couple of charity bike rides. Actually started rollerblading from the Upper East Side to Midtown Manhattan, down an avenue with no bike lanes to get to work. I like that.

00:04:59:19 - 00:05:02:17
John Simmerman
That's that's great.

00:05:02:20 - 00:05:56:18
Ryan Russo
And, so I was just sort of rolling around and living a twentysomething life in New York City and fell in love with kind of the urbanism of it, and then started to get exposed to urban history and saw I started to learn that, there was some intentional policies that hadn't been done that had really hurt our cities and hurt our communities suburbanization, redlining, highway, highway development, eminent domain, and that we had segregated ourselves, separated ourselves, exacerbated inequality, and that there was basically like a profession that was ostensibly part of the solution that could work to make cities the reverse connected, equitable, sustainable, vibrant.

00:05:56:21 - 00:06:05:08
Ryan Russo
And once I found out that that could be an actual career, I was like, I could I could do this for work. I was off and running.

00:06:05:11 - 00:06:30:21
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I can tell just by the way you answer that too. It's like, you know, the passion of, like, this is all starting to connect together and it's like, this is cool. This is really an interesting, fascinating area. And, and you had the good fortune of being there in New York City during one of the most exciting times for the city, at least, you know, from, from this perspective of urbanism and active transportation.

00:06:30:24 - 00:06:35:17
John Simmerman
You know, talk about being in the right place at the right time.

00:06:35:19 - 00:06:59:23
Ryan Russo
It's funny, I've actually, I've started to answer this question a couple times that I'm, I feel like a bit of the Forrest Gump of urban planning. I was sort of in the the room where it happened, sort of randomly. Yeah. I joined the New York City Department of Transportation with a real kind of biped focus, focusing on a, a rezoning plan for downtown Brooklyn in 2003.

00:06:59:25 - 00:07:41:24
Ryan Russo
And the the agency had a very strong reputation for being pretty, like, you know, many dots around the country focusing on the throughput of motor vehicles as its priority. But there were some great people inside, and we started to do some great work. But then in 2007, with the release of plan, like under the leadership of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the appointment of Janette Cytokine as the New York City Dot Transportation Commissioner, I was sort of already there for a couple of years doing this kind of work, when the leadership sort of charted a course for that kind of 180 degree turn to where the vision had to be for a transportation

00:07:41:24 - 00:08:09:09
Ryan Russo
system that was much more, multimodal and, really placed right of way management and street management in the framework of New York City rebuilding from the nine over 11 terrorist attacks and a vision for, transportation management in the context of public space, public investment, economic development and overall, growth. It was, plan like was a sustainability plan.

00:08:09:09 - 00:08:36:21
Ryan Russo
It envisioned a million more New Yorkers by 2030 and said, if we're going to have a million more New Yorkers, it didn't make sense to move each one of them around in a single occupant vehicle. So I was there when that sort of big policy and leadership and vision shift happened and got tapped to help execute it. And so, I was incredibly lucky to be you know, the person who when they said, hey, let's try to do 200 miles of bike lanes in three years.

00:08:36:27 - 00:08:49:00
Ryan Russo
Let's try to do the first, parking protected bike lanes in North America. It was sort of, my team's responsibility to try to get those things done. So. Felt very lucky at that time.

00:08:49:02 - 00:09:14:12
John Simmerman
Yeah, I love it. That's that's so cool to hear that. Yeah. You were there already. Then they kind of came in and like really, you know, was able to put some wind underneath your wings and be able to really, do some pretty cool stuff and really, I'm sure helped propel you to that next opportunity to be the first, director of the Department of Transportation for the City of Oakland.

00:09:14:12 - 00:09:23:18
John Simmerman
I'm assuming that prior to there being a D.O.T. there, it probably all just fit under like a generalized Public Works Department. Is that correct?

00:09:23:21 - 00:10:00:10
Ryan Russo
That that's that's exactly correct. You know, New York City, city of 8.5 million cities like Chicago, LA often have these dots in which, you know, traffic signals, striping, you know, stop signs, the sort of these right of way management functions are in a dedicated agency in more medium sized cities, like in Oakland, 440,000 people, you'll frequently have that the right of way manage within a public works department that is also working to build and maintain public parks, libraries, police stations, firehouses.

00:10:00:12 - 00:10:02:05
John Simmerman
Sewer systems.

00:10:02:08 - 00:10:35:22
Ryan Russo
Yeah. And city owned assets. So in, 20 2017, the newly elected Oakland mayor, Libby Schaaf, had the vision and leadership and wanted to, basically kind of join the narco community, the movement of cities that saw right of way management, as, you know, a way to pursue a community's values, to say, like if, if safety, equity, sustainability, community, trust are lead values, like this is 30% of the land in the city.

00:10:35:25 - 00:11:07:10
Ryan Russo
So let's not just think of the streets and sidewalks as something we maintain, but let's think of it as, something that can advance those values. How can we save money for residents as they get to work and school? How can we keep them safe? How can we repair from past harms? That policy has created inequities. And so, in Oakland, there was a reorganization to create that dedicated department of managing the right of way.

00:11:07:13 - 00:11:19:09
Ryan Russo
It it was a dot we we named it Oak Dot. And yeah, I was tapped, you know, again, incredibly fortunate to be tapped to be, the first permanent director of, okay.

00:11:19:12 - 00:11:42:16
John Simmerman
Yeah. You know, very similar story, of course, here to, in Austin, where I believe it was just, right around 2014 when, the same thing happened as a move forward to create a Department of Transportation and kind of, had it merge away from, Public Works. As time has gone on, they've kind of come back together again.

00:11:42:18 - 00:12:02:29
John Simmerman
And so now it's, public works and, transportation. But yeah, it is interesting to see how that happens because there is to you and you you said it quite eloquently there you when you're sort of like piling all of this stuff, including the water systems and, and, you know, sewer and all these other functions that are typically under public works.

00:12:02:29 - 00:12:31:11
John Simmerman
It's nice to be able to, to have, you know, a dedicated department that's really thinking through transportation and mobility issues. And then really, you know, some of the stuff that we'll we'll talk about to later on here is also looking at building out systems and programs that help reverse car dependency. And so that that's a big part, I think, of what we're seeing when we look at the new generation of what these cities are doing.

00:12:31:13 - 00:12:56:05
John Simmerman
And you, you sort of channeled it earlier of talking about the nafta's cities. And you know, how these organizations, these cities use, municipalities are coming together and under, you know, kind of this, this umbrella of the National Association of City Transportation Officials and being able to try to understand best, best practices from a mobility perspective. So it's really good.

00:12:56:08 - 00:13:23:28
John Simmerman
I do want to point out, because I, now that I have the wide view of your camera here, we've got Ryan's slow streets. Sign in the background there. Which does bacon date back to, your time in Oakland, obviously. And it also dates back to the other reality of your tenure there is you showed up and were probably on the job just a couple of years or so, and then all of a sudden the pandemic happens.

00:13:23:28 - 00:13:29:23
John Simmerman
And I'll let you take it from there. In terms of explaining, Ryan slow streets it.

00:13:29:25 - 00:14:03:06
Ryan Russo
Yeah, that's a, a really lovely parting gift from my team in Oakland. Yeah. So we're pretty much exactly talking today, marked by March 6th, 2025, five years from when, you know, the news was trickling in about Covid 19. You know, shutdowns really began second or third week of March 2020. And, you know, cities were really struggling with kind of what actions to potentially take to protect their communities.

00:14:03:06 - 00:14:40:25
Ryan Russo
We started to see people in Oakland literally as they approached one another on sidewalks right across mid-block from one sidewalk to the other. So to try to avoid the spread of Covid 19, there was a lot of talk that, maybe there should be, you know, major kind of sick air style street closures where, you know, prominent streets would be pedestrianized as a way to provide kind of safe, socially distant, space for gathering but not being close to one another.

00:14:40:25 - 00:15:03:11
Ryan Russo
And the health, the health officials in all of our cities were like, that's actually an attractive nuisance. You don't want to have these kind of events where everyone comes to the same place, right? So while we wanted to find this opportunity to create that space, we it needed to you either needed to be big or not, not do it at all.

00:15:03:11 - 00:15:32:06
Ryan Russo
And so, under, Mayor Shaft's leadership in Oakland, you know, we announced a plan to basically take our recently developed bike plan, the neighborhood bike routes, and to to aggressively restrict, to local traffic only, a whole series of streets. We eventually did, 21 miles of, of streets were restricted to through traffic and invite joggers, walkers, dog walkers, little kids on micro scooters.

00:15:32:06 - 00:15:53:10
Ryan Russo
Hopscotch was into the roadway for what we call the Oakland Oakland slow streets. And, we happened to be one of the first to make it that big of a move in the country. And, really helped catalyze kind of the way that Joe does a number of tailored applications of the of these ideas to cities around the country.

00:15:53:12 - 00:16:19:17
John Simmerman
Yeah. And in fact, I'm glad you mentioned that, too, that, you know, kind of enact has started, as well as a couple of other organizations started really paying attention to what other cities were doing globally. In response to that. And then a lot of the learnings that came from that, you know, are part of the playbook now of like, you know, how can you move lighter, quicker, cheaper to do some interim strategies and then be able to go to the next step?

00:16:19:19 - 00:16:40:13
John Simmerman
Because, you know, that's kind of the legacy of what we saw happen. You know, some of those slow streets here, it was called Healthy Streets. Some of them have lived on. And so, you know, that's that's one of the kind of like, positive sides of what was a very traumatic and a very negative experience going through a global pandemic.

00:16:40:15 - 00:16:41:15
John Simmerman
So.

00:16:41:17 - 00:16:42:22
Ryan Russo
Yeah.

00:16:42:25 - 00:16:50:17
John Simmerman
Yeah, it's funny too. Yeah. Five years from now, literally five years from like this week. It's is. That's crazy.

00:16:50:20 - 00:16:51:09
Ryan Russo
Well, that seems.

00:16:51:09 - 00:16:54:24
John Simmerman
Like it's so long ago, but it's, it's so you know, it's like it feels like it was just.

00:16:54:24 - 00:17:19:27
Ryan Russo
Yesterday. What is time. It's it's it's either. Yeah. Forever ago and yesterday. Who who knows. But yeah. Just to just sort of bring it back a bit to Nadeau. That's, that's the accelerant that Nacho is. We compile those best practices, those leading practices because we've created community among the people doing that same job in cities around the country.

00:17:20:00 - 00:17:47:08
Ryan Russo
They share their best practices with one another, and Nadeau can compile it and put it, put it out as best practice guidance, which will then sort of goes back to those cities and members and helps accelerate the adoption. And it also helps, accelerate the acceptance in, guidance and policy and in standard making, so that these things that were once seen as kind of wacky and out there become, standard best practice almost.

00:17:47:08 - 00:17:48:07
Ryan Russo
Ho hum.

00:17:48:09 - 00:18:09:07
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And for folks, if you're interested in learning more about that experience, the the Oakland experience and what went on, I did have the opportunity to, to actually interview, Warren Logan, a couple of years ago was back in 2022, for this episode that would have been episode one, number one, 58 and season four.

00:18:09:09 - 00:18:31:20
John Simmerman
And so I encourage you to go that, you know, Warren was your partner in crime there of of trying to bring those forward. And, in Warren and I ended up talking quite a bit about some of the learning experiences that you guys had. And the fact that, you know, we were all kind of, you know, monitoring what's going on and the fact that you guys were one of the fast movers got some stuff going.

00:18:31:27 - 00:18:52:09
John Simmerman
And then that really prompted a lot of other cities to feel bold enough to dip their toe in the water. And, and, you know, very soon after, you know, our city council did a resolution to the city staff to do the same, you know, follow suit, do figure something out. And I think they ended up doing like five different installations at various locations around the city.

00:18:52:09 - 00:18:57:22
John Simmerman
And, we won't we don't need to get into the details of all of that, but,

00:18:57:25 - 00:19:10:26
Ryan Russo
Yeah, I will jump in just to say he was a partner, not a partner in crime, because while we were aggressive, we made sure everything was, was, was was legal. And, and and appropriate. Yeah, yeah.

00:19:10:28 - 00:19:15:03
John Simmerman
Especially for the international audience. We don't mean literally a partner.

00:19:15:06 - 00:19:16:29
Ryan Russo
That's all right.

00:19:17:02 - 00:19:40:17
John Simmerman
But really, we're here to talk about Nadeau and the organization for he for those people who are especially tuning in internationally that maybe like natto. What is this? So, Ryan, what is this? What is NAFTA really? And bring us back to the beginning, because you talked a little bit about the the origins of your career in there at, at in New York City, D.O.T. and, and working there.

00:19:40:17 - 00:19:52:03
John Simmerman
And you referred to it as a nacho city. Was it a nacho city at the time, or is Nacho something that came about after, you know, your tenure there?

00:19:52:06 - 00:20:18:07
Ryan Russo
Yeah. So, Nacho, the National Association of City Transportation Officials, it's existed in some form since the mid mid 90s. But really this moment of change and leadership that you saw in cities like New York City, Chicago, Washington, DC, in the sort of mid aughts was when NAFTA, the NAFTA, we know today really started to come to be.

00:20:18:07 - 00:21:04:06
Ryan Russo
It was really formed to make sure cities had a voice in, for example, federal transportation policy when the reauthorization bill would come up every four years. But it really evolved in this sort of 2007 and 2012 period to be this place where, community was formed among those people fighting those same fights and doing trying those, those same tools, like protected bike lanes, like street redesigns, road diets where we could share best practices with one another, get them compiled and get them out there and then get them accepted by the powers that be, whether that be state, Dot's or federal officials, and adopted into either putting out our own design guidance in comparison

00:21:04:06 - 00:21:13:06
Ryan Russo
to the existing design guidance or, fighting to get some of the principles and ideas that are in that design guidance in officially accepted policy.

00:21:13:08 - 00:21:39:21
John Simmerman
Yeah. You know, and I think that's when I really started to, see of bubbling up in my, sort of radar, was the urban street design guide and really starting to understand that the very first version of the the design guide that we're going to be talking about here, I kind of reached out and grab it, this one here, which we've been, also super, super excited to see.

00:21:39:23 - 00:22:08:29
John Simmerman
And I think that it was really very refreshing to start to see somebody, some organization coming up with, urban street design guidance. That's something other than just, you know, bowing down to the the God of Los, of moving as many vehicles as possible through a city chief. Maybe we want people to, like, be able to enjoy the street and maybe stay a while.

00:22:09:01 - 00:22:28:17
Ryan Russo
Yeah. No, that that the guidance that was out there was not very city friendly and that didn't allow for creativity and context, although there was a lot of gray areas in those design guidance. I had to work a lot with the Mut. The manual on uniform traffic control devices and cities could basically there were two ways to go.

00:22:28:17 - 00:23:00:10
Ryan Russo
If it wasn't in there, it wasn't allowed, or if it wasn't in there, you could maybe do it since it didn't explicitly say you can't do it. So it's kind of like they had to choose and depending on, you know, the comfort level of maybe your your chief legal officer or your chief traffic engineer, you, you would be stuck with one either being very conservative or willing to try new things and what not good design guidance allowed for was to be like, oh look, another city does it.

00:23:00:10 - 00:23:09:07
Ryan Russo
Here's a picture of it in another city. And then here's in print in ink how you could do it and why it makes sense to do it.

00:23:09:09 - 00:23:47:23
John Simmerman
Yeah. Well in and I know that you weren't with the organization back in those early days when, you know, the, the first iterations of, of, of these guys were coming out, this is the third edition of it. But when I had the conversation with Bill Schultz talking about, the Astro, bike Design guide, Bicycle Facilities Design guide that just recently came out, you know, we had that discussion of the fact that NATO really was pushing the envelope and really forcing them to up their game and get with it, because it was kind of embarrassing, you know, in 2012 when they, you know, pushed theirs out.

00:23:47:23 - 00:24:23:01
John Simmerman
And, and the second edition of the Octo Guy came out and yours was way more innovative and much more in line with best in practice, guidance that we see in Europe. So good on you guys for for being there. And again, this, this particular edition of it is even better than what came out in 2012. So we're really we're starting to incrementally and slowly catch up to especially what the Dutch have known and the CRO manual that they have in terms of bicycle facilities design guidance.

00:24:23:03 - 00:24:32:15
John Simmerman
We're we're getting there. This is the first step or the second step. The next step is we need to actually get it on the ground.

00:24:32:17 - 00:24:58:22
Ryan Russo
Yeah, absolutely. And I'll just say that, you know, just to I might not have been on staff at Moco, but the the the it's worth mentioning the development model that NATO uses. Cities innovate. And I was at, you know, an innovative city under the leadership of Janette Sadiq Khan. Other cities were innovating and we participated in the compiling of these best practices, which then Nexo kind of published and championed.

00:24:58:24 - 00:25:31:23
Ryan Russo
And the way that processes work now, that gave the permission slip. And we now have over 100 cities who've done, for example, protected bike lanes in North America. And but in doing that, over the last ten years since that first guide came out, they've all learned from that those attempts of what what is what is good from a design perspective also what is what is what are the constraints and, what what are the capacity constraints or what's the leadership you need?

00:25:31:29 - 00:25:57:09
Ryan Russo
What's the support on staffing, on community engagement, on what are the best practices for planning and what we've done now with this new third edition of the Bike Gate Guide is again compiled, that all of those learnings from putting the last edition of The Bike Guide to work and putting it out on the street, all those learnings now come in and get gleaned and put out in this new third edition.

00:25:57:11 - 00:26:30:11
John Simmerman
Yeah, and just to be clear, too, I mean, it's one thing to be able to, create design guides and have the guidance in place, but we have to put this in the context of understanding that we basically have 80 years, 100 years, almost of of history, of really the designing and the guidance that have been put in place that have been created through, transportation and traffic engineering have really been all about, you know, cars and movement of cars.

00:26:30:13 - 00:26:56:17
John Simmerman
And, the West Marshall, Professor West Marshall and I, you know, had this conversation because he in his most recent book, killed by a traffic engineer, he dives deep into the history of understanding. Well, how the heck did we get where we're at right now, where everything is. So, you know, my, you know, the brain is so car focused and, the very first thing that we have on, on screen here, item here says reimagining the city streets.

00:26:56:17 - 00:27:22:10
John Simmerman
It's like, what what do we have to do to actually start reimagining what these city streets are? And, you know, you see my my coffee mug? You know, my opinion is that streets are for people and we need to really start reversing some of that damage of the 80 years, 80 plus years of the guidance that has been in place from the engineers and from the designers to to basically serve the one thing, moving as many cars through as quickly as possible.

00:27:22:10 - 00:27:25:02
John Simmerman
As we mentioned earlier.

00:27:25:05 - 00:27:51:14
Ryan Russo
Yeah, absolutely. Like the recognition that this, this work need is a reflection of our values, right. And our leaders ostensibly to glean the values from the voters. And then they sort of tell the the technocrats and the engineers and planners to sort of implement those values. So what are what are our values? And, and, and the streets are in essence, a manifestation of those.

00:27:51:14 - 00:28:15:10
Ryan Russo
And is it, is it connection, is it safety? Is it access and opportunity. And fairness or is it individuality? Is it just focused on, you know, the efficiency of moving metal boxes from A to B? And ultimately, you know, the engineers are going to kind of going to do what they're asked to do, by their leaders.

00:28:15:10 - 00:28:38:21
Ryan Russo
And that's why I just want to sort of highlight that, that, that when you look, one of the essential ingredients of successful cities that have put a lot of these things to work is, is that leadership and vision that you get from from mayors, from city council people from from elected officials who sort of articulate this, this vision and are willing to put some resources to help, make it happen.

00:28:38:29 - 00:28:58:15
John Simmerman
I'm really glad you framed it that way, too, because one of the things that I try to emphasize here on the channel is that we can help our leaders out by really, you know, bringing our voice up and speaking up and coming together within as, in, in community groups at weather, whatever, to speak up and let them know.

00:28:58:15 - 00:29:42:03
John Simmerman
Because if, if we just leave it to the loudest voices that, you know, speak up when there's change out on streets, you know, our leaders, our city leaders, they end up just hearing from the people who want the status quo of drive everywhere for everything. So it's an imperative for communities, community members to understand, educate themselves about this and then come together en masse and and let the elected officials let our leaders know that this is really important to us because they can't send the marching orders to the Dot directors like you were, unless, you know, you have a sense that the the community is there with you because this is, you know, this is

00:29:42:03 - 00:29:55:20
John Simmerman
a democracy. You know, ultimately, we the leaders just can't say from on high, this is what we're doing. There's no discussion about it. I mean, there has to be a lot of community engagement and the more engaged community members, the better.

00:29:55:24 - 00:30:22:14
Ryan Russo
Yeah, absolutely. And and yeah, that's why this work is so fascinating. Because it is. It's a mix of both. It's not or and it is and instead of or. Yes design standards and and traffic engineering has had, you know, an incredible limiting factor on what we could achieve with our streets. But that in many ways happened because it was sort of popular.

00:30:22:20 - 00:31:05:02
Ryan Russo
It was allowed for by leadership. It was thought that this was potentially the best way to serve the public, that this kind of way built form and way of getting around would lead to the best outcomes. But I think what we've really learned and what we need to do is keep learning and adjusting. What we've learned is that the disconnection the car dependance, the expense, the cost, the the costs of maintaining the infrastructure, the cost in terms of people's time, the inability to actually address traffic congestion with more and wider roads, that we need to kind of learn what we lost in building that way and set a new course forward and a more

00:31:05:02 - 00:31:28:22
Ryan Russo
multi-modal transportation system in which people have options of walking, biking, using public transit in addition to driving is ultimately good for the entire community. Even those who do drive, because the last thing you want is every single person down to a junior in high school has a job at Starbucks to have to drive their own car to their job or their school for everything that they do.

00:31:28:24 - 00:31:57:25
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I want to skip through a few of the things that you guys have under, our, our work tab to really kind of look at the types of things that you guys are working on, there, and how you're supporting the, the official Naxos cities. And why don't you address that? Why don't you talk about what is an official Naxos city and, and what are unofficial NATO cities, and how can they become official NATO cities?

00:31:57:27 - 00:32:29:27
Ryan Russo
Oh, yeah, I love that question. So, a member agency pays annual dues to NATO and becomes a member. So typical members are the New York City Department of Transportation, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. We also have some transit agency members. We have nearly 100 members. And once an agency is a member, anyone working in that government agency are sort of part of an active community and part of the active members.

00:32:29:27 - 00:32:59:10
Ryan Russo
And so we have tools that can connect them on topic areas to one another. They can easily send an email that is received. If you're the bike planner in Long Beach, California, you can send an email and the bike planner at the other 99 agencies can read that. And if they have the answer to that question, they can share that we convene those groups, what we call peer networks, on a quarterly basis.

00:32:59:10 - 00:33:23:03
Ryan Russo
We get them together on zoom so that they can, share what what the, the most pressing issue is for them that they're facing and, and get presentations on what the latest, best practices are. So the Acto membership, you know, we're really developing this collaboration and this connection among among the membership. And we put on an annual conference every year, the Designing Cities conference.

00:33:23:08 - 00:33:45:00
Ryan Russo
The first one was in in 2012, in New York. It's at a different member city, every year. And the, you know, that is a place where rather than on zoom, all of those members come together and connect with one another and learn what the best practices are. So, you know, our website, which was recently redesigned and acto.org, has a section on membership.

00:33:45:00 - 00:34:14:24
Ryan Russo
We have a membership brochure, pretty much, you know, any government, you know, a city agency in charge of its streets or rent operating as public transit can look into into joining, joining acto. But really we're looking for places that want to sort of share this vision for a safer, more sustainable, more equitable transportation system that is not focused on the single occupant vehicle and auto dependency.

00:34:14:29 - 00:34:27:29
Ryan Russo
And so if you want your city to be that way, you should really join the and you're joining gets that has that acceleration capability by getting access to that technical assistance and knowledge that exists in the whole macro community.

00:34:28:01 - 00:34:47:29
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. No. In the beginning it seemed as if it was it was literally just like a who's who of the largest cities in the nation. But then I started seeing some smaller city names, you know, as like, is it sort of like an adjunct member or something like that, or or.

00:34:47:29 - 00:34:48:18
Ryan Russo
Affiliated.

00:34:48:25 - 00:35:05:14
John Simmerman
Affiliate? Yeah. Talk a little bit about that. Because, you know, I used to live in, in like Boulder, Colorado, you know, 130,000 people. It's probably not, you know, that level of of your typical, you know, member city. How does that all work?

00:35:05:16 - 00:35:24:15
Ryan Russo
Yeah. So, you're right in in the beginnings, it was the larger cities sort of coming together as a smaller community. But as the interest level grew, there were, smaller cities that that were interested in in joining. So we just had we have a tiered, system in which the dues are adjusted based on, on your size.

00:35:24:15 - 00:35:49:04
Ryan Russo
And, so the full member cities happened to be the they're the cities with populations of over 400,000. They're central to their region, and they're in a region of about of 2 million or more. The affiliates are all the other members, in in that don't meet that criteria, including our transit agencies. And we do have five international affiliates, that are in Canada.

00:35:49:06 - 00:36:07:16
John Simmerman
Fantastic. That's great. Okay. With all that stage being said, I want to go back to the work that you guys are doing so that people know what they're getting their money for when they do become a member. City is again reimagining the city streets. We talked a little bit about that, successful, you know, supporting the successful agencies.

00:36:07:18 - 00:36:42:09
John Simmerman
You had mentioned this earlier of like, that practitioner collaboration, the fact that you're able to have sort of that listserv, sort of environment and feeling like you have a cohort of other professionals. I want to linger on this one right now because, it's topical and in the news right now with, with, with federal policy stuff going on, I know that you just had a, major, release or announcement just in the last couple of days talking a little bit about, stuff along this line.

00:36:42:11 - 00:36:56:27
John Simmerman
Why don't you kind of set the stage for the work that you guys are doing right now in sort of the reality of, a great deal of uncertainty in terms of, you know, especially at the federal level with policy.

00:36:57:00 - 00:37:29:23
Ryan Russo
Yeah. So, so NATO again convenes its members and, and identifies the roadblocks to successful multimodal transportation systems with their streets. And there's sort of two elements of that. One is cities through at the bottom of the food chain in the transportation funding scheme, the federal government with, you know, going back to the creation of the interstate system with its 90% match for the building of this 70,000 mile interstate system is a major funder.

00:37:29:25 - 00:37:49:27
Ryan Russo
That funding trickles primarily state dots. And then somewhat to the MPOs, the regional planning and associations, and then down to cities. So Ngakoue has been a champion for more funding for cities to, for cities to get from this, this system.

00:37:50:00 - 00:38:07:17
John Simmerman
Now to before you go on on that, I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying. I think I remember the the post is really encouraging those federal dollars to, to be able to get a more streamlined and more directly to the cities that need the money. Is that am I hearing you correctly on that?

00:38:07:19 - 00:38:31:25
Ryan Russo
Yeah, I think in an ideal world there could be direct support the way sort of other policy areas like the Community Development Block Grant, in the housing world goes money straight to cities, but instead there's money that's got goes by formula to, to states and then hopefully makes it way down to cities. Now remember, cities often have the most right of way to manage, you know, all the local streets.

00:38:31:25 - 00:39:10:13
Ryan Russo
So all the sidewalks. So when you see crumbling sidewalks, lots of potholes on streets, but then you have a freeway system that is like, you know, glistening and well-maintained, and you never hit a pothole on the freeway system. That's an element of that's a reflection of the funding system. So what we have seen, in the prior administration and, and, and building on some prior administrations is the development of, grant programs, competitive grant programs where there were certain goals and criteria of those grant programs, whether that was, reconnecting communities or safe streets and roads for all in which cities could compete and get that money directly from the federal government.

00:39:10:13 - 00:39:32:06
Ryan Russo
And what we've highlighted is the benefits of that. There's been a lot of great projects that have moved forward thanks to those, those programs. So the the one plank is you the overall sort of funding concerns and hoping to continue some of the progress that we saw in the prior administration of programs that got money directly to cities.

00:39:32:13 - 00:40:01:06
Ryan Russo
But the second is around design flexibility. This, this issue of that, the, the, the policies that are out there and at the federal level tie the hands of cities who have much more complicated contexts to deal with than sort of what the blank piece of paper that sort of standards deal with. So we've been quite effective in being a voice for reforming and improving things like the OECD.

00:40:01:08 - 00:40:45:09
Ryan Russo
The Manual on Uniform Control Devices. So we helped win a number of improvements to the CD, which is a complicated document that was revised, that there was a new 11th edition and that came out in December of 2023. And what we do kind of at the federal level is we're also helping people understand what that change language means and how that could lead to, for example, speed limits being set in a manner in which the fastest drivers don't set the speed limit, but instead reflect the context of their being schools and churches and and businesses on a corridor that give communities the flexibility to put in crossing treatments where prior they would cite this.

00:40:45:09 - 00:41:00:05
Ryan Russo
These design standards say, well, the manual doesn't let me add a crosswalk here or provide a safe crossing. So that's really those are the two thrusts that we work on, on sort of a national policy. Level. Yeah.

00:41:00:08 - 00:41:38:07
John Simmerman
And, you know, I clicked on through to the policy priorities of the organization, and we see these, enumerated right here of the top seven of those policy principles and priorities. We're recording this on on March 6th. This episode is going to be released next Friday on March 14th. We're in the midst of a lot of uncertainty as I mentioned earlier, as an organization, kind of share with us what you are, you know, kind of doing because I'm sure you're hearing a lot, you know, from your member cities of a lot of programs to feel like they just they don't know what's going.

00:41:38:07 - 00:41:47:20
John Simmerman
And I'm sure you don't have a crystal ball, but, please do share with the audience, what you can say that you and what you do know what you guys are working on?

00:41:47:22 - 00:42:07:05
Ryan Russo
Yeah. Well, first, I just want to say I spent most of my career as a public servant and didn't think I would it be a public servant working in government. You know that those first years in New York City, I was in finance and, you know, a lot of people with almost a foreign idea of like working for for government.

00:42:07:05 - 00:42:30:28
Ryan Russo
And what we're seeing right now is sort of a tack on just this concept of public service. And, it's incredibly damaging and disheartening, frankly. And, you know, Naco is, we want to be part of the coalition of groups saying, like public service, like we need public goods, we need public servants, and we need public services in order to sort of survive as a community.

00:42:30:28 - 00:42:52:23
Ryan Russo
And it's amazing that these things that are seem obvious have to be restated and so broadly that that's what we're we're seeing in terms of the, you know, the specifics, like you said, it's very much a moving target. And what we're doing is convening our members and making sure we're listening so everybody knows. Did you have a signed grant agreement from this program?

00:42:52:27 - 00:43:21:10
Ryan Russo
Is the money showing up? Has your grants been canceled? And or or there's there's a new round of grant applications. Are the grants being awarded or are the claims being processed for your existing grants? You know, it's very uncertain when you don't know if the colleague you work with in the regional office is, is, is still going to be there when you send your next up update email.

00:43:21:12 - 00:43:46:03
Ryan Russo
So you know, we want to be make sure we have a real time understanding of kind of what conditions are so that we before so that we can react accordingly. Unfortunately, those real time conditions are are very unclear. You'll you'll see something in the news and they'll be, you know, something around a court case that says, you know, that's not actually happening.

00:43:46:06 - 00:44:18:08
Ryan Russo
But I do want to emphasize here that a lot of what you've seen, the exciting work you've seen in cities around the country, that the things you see pictures of in our Urban Bikeway design guide, version three, they're not dependent on federal funding, and they didn't necessarily get funded by federal funding in a lot of ways. The most creative things, you wouldn't want federal funding attached to it because there's a lot more eyeballs on it and sort of hoops and paperwork that it has to go through for it to get on the ground.

00:44:18:14 - 00:44:21:14
John Simmerman
So it's a lot harder.

00:44:21:17 - 00:44:45:16
Ryan Russo
So, you know, we're also focused on supporting our cities because they have to show up and do the work every day, regardless of what's happening in Washington, DC. They have to find a way to repair the sidewalks, fill the potholes, stripe the crosswalks, put pick up the down stop signs that a car crashes into, you know, make sure the traffic signals are still flashing red, yellow, green.

00:44:45:18 - 00:45:09:22
Ryan Russo
And so they have to do that work, and we have to support them and help them figure out a way to to keep that work going. And and they really are bulwarks against this idea that government can't do anything right, because local government is the thing that people see every day. You know, whether the trash is picked up with a pothole is filled, whether, like I said, the crosswalk has faded or been been striped.

00:45:09:25 - 00:45:21:02
Ryan Russo
So, you know, we can we can be part of the sort of the hopefully the pendulum swinging into this in this other direction of trust in, in public services, public servants and public goods.

00:45:21:04 - 00:45:43:04
John Simmerman
Yeah. I'm really glad you framed it that way, too, because I, I come back to this frequently is one of the core tenants, here on the channel is talking about the fact that, as we mentioned earlier, is as community members, you know, getting together, speaking up, letting your, your, your, your leaders know that this is a value for you, that you want safer streets, that you want more people oriented places.

00:45:43:06 - 00:46:07:18
John Simmerman
And what kind of goes along with that, and to your point is that the cities that I've been documenting over the years that are making the the most ground in terms of transform their environment, they're also dipping into their own pockets. They're agreeing to support the bond measures at the local election level. The same thing that's happened here in in Austin.

00:46:07:21 - 00:46:35:26
John Simmerman
I had Ted Siff on, who has been involved here in, in, in Austin since the 1980s of pulling bonds together. And he tallied them all up and said that it's it's close to $2 billion worth of bonds for trails and pathways and bikeways and, and those types of, of active mobility facilities that the city voters have approved, isn't dating back to the 1990s.

00:46:35:26 - 00:47:04:03
John Simmerman
And so I do want to I want to reemphasize what you're saying and say. Absolutely. It's it's not that the grants are helpful and the federal money isn't helpful, but it is much more cumbersome. It's more difficult to get going. It obviously gets all the attention and helps out tremendously on really, really big projects. But, you know, the bread and butter types of things are the nuts and bolts, oftentimes is actually funded at the local level.

00:47:04:06 - 00:47:27:23
Ryan Russo
That's right, that's right. And if I could, you know, build on that. People think that in Oakland. Oh forming a dot reorganizing, sometimes you'll see advocates just champing for that reorganization. But the reorganization people said, oh, we formed a dot. And look, the streets got paved and there were bike lanes striped and traffic circles. But the forming of the dot also came with a bond measure.

00:47:27:23 - 00:47:58:18
Ryan Russo
It said, this is going to be important organizationally, so we'll have organizational focus on it. But it also needs to come with resources and yeah, to to bring it back a little bit to fact, we do have, you know, resources like, structured for success that look at kind of agency structures and means and methods for helping cities succeed in creating the outcomes that they're looking, to make.

00:47:58:18 - 00:48:34:00
Ryan Russo
And, you know, ultimately, you know, the local government is just a exercise in the prioritization of limited resources. And, you know, how are you going to where are you going to devote those? Where are you going to devote them geographically? How are you going to what are you going to prioritize in so many ways? So, you know, we really want to be lifting up when we see cities leading and making bold, courageous, innovative choices in how they do that work of prioritizing limited resources.

00:48:34:02 - 00:49:00:17
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. When speaking about the funding and, shifting over back to the the urban, bikeway design guide that just came out. One of the things that I loved about the book, you know, going through it is from a funding perspective, you make the point of making sure to reinforce it with cities. You got to fund the maintenance and upkeep of these things as well.

00:49:00:17 - 00:49:25:12
John Simmerman
It's not just about having a nice design guide and building it. You actually have to be thinking about the structure of your funding sources of your your dot's and of your public works departments and, of your bikeway programs and pedestrian programs to actually upkeep and maintain and keep them moving. That's what I was super excited to see that addressed in the manual in the design guide.

00:49:25:15 - 00:49:35:21
John Simmerman
What are you super excited about? What what really, when you look at this image and, you know, you start smile is like what gets you really excited about this addition?

00:49:35:23 - 00:50:05:05
Ryan Russo
There's there's a lot, but I'll say the earlier edition was often sort of was really inspiring. And sometimes advocates would then bring it to like a city council person and a mayor who would then come to an agency and say, hey, can you do this? Which is great. There's what this clearing one of the having that leadership of having a mayor or city council person say, can we have these kinds of bike lanes or bike facilities in our community is a great thing.

00:50:05:05 - 00:50:33:18
Ryan Russo
As someone who's in an agency to to hear, we have that in this addition. But but it goes it now goes in both directions. There is content in this guide that says to said mayor, said community advocate said city council person that says how can you set up your agency for success? What are the ingredients it needs in order to rapidly develop in all ages and abilities?

00:50:33:20 - 00:51:00:13
Ryan Russo
Bike network to to develop safe streets that are truly equitable and accessible. And, so, you know, there's a there's a, in essence, a board game, you know, there's a page where you can assess yourself. What level are you at in terms of the people in your agency, what level of policy are you at, what level of your skill and community engagement, your ability to plan, your ability to design and deliver?

00:51:00:13 - 00:51:26:17
Ryan Russo
Do you have the contracts in place to do all the striping? The how capable are you in project evaluation? And so when you see, well, if you want to build in ten years a true all ages and abilities bike network, well then you better get your department to level three on all of those things. You can assess yourself and say, well, we don't have enough staff or we don't have enough contracts, we don't have enough.

00:51:26:20 - 00:51:44:19
Ryan Russo
We don't have the policy in place, the supportive policy or and so that element of, those ingredients that you could really look at and, and kind of assess the city and sort of identify what you're truly missing. Right. Excites me.

00:51:44:21 - 00:52:07:29
John Simmerman
Yeah. You know, the, the other kind of fun thing that, that I loved seeing because I spent a lot of time over in Europe and, and a lot of time in the Netherlands, was the integration of, and this is getting a little bit wonky and kind of in the weeds of it, but is just seeing it is, is just makes me smile.

00:52:08:02 - 00:52:33:21
John Simmerman
Is the detailed guidance on building protected bike lanes into roundabouts? It's like, finally someone in North America is like realizing the potential that has there, because I think some cities, you know, start to understand roundabouts when they start to do them. You know, you've got Mayor Brainard over in Carmel, Indiana, who, you know, built over 100 roundabouts, but they were all roundabouts that were so car brained.

00:52:33:24 - 00:53:01:03
John Simmerman
They're just that the dimensions are wrong. And but it was wonderful to see, you know, in the manual, in the design guide, starting I think it was like 260 something pages in, is like going through, the roundabout. So that's that for me, I think was one of the neat things to be. I was actually surprised to see it, and delightfully surprised that it was there.

00:53:01:03 - 00:53:06:27
John Simmerman
So, any other things that, you know, really? Have you sort of stoked like that? So.

00:53:06:29 - 00:53:34:09
Ryan Russo
Yeah. We have a section on advisory bike lanes, you know, which you don't see, you know, in lots of cities, but we have some cities that are doing it and we provide, you know, I think really strong guidance that could help other places adopt, advisory bike lanes. And, you know, and then the other just stepping back, you mentioned kind of the visuals like, like a couple things.

00:53:34:11 - 00:54:02:22
Ryan Russo
Well, one of the things that, you know, the early editions of the guide, 2012, 2014, they were inspiring and they were they were sort of very visual. They had photographs and and renderings. It's amazing that, you know, ten, 12 years later, how, data they started to look, and, and and now that you can compare them to the visuals that you see in this guide, it's really just multiple levels ahead.

00:54:02:22 - 00:54:30:16
Ryan Russo
So great to combine great technical information with really clear, inspiring visuals. You know, these, sort of acts on a metric views that you have here will line up with a plan view, and it's in its color scheme and layout that really kind of walk you through and on. And so bring you from a vision of what you could have to how to get there.

00:54:30:16 - 00:54:55:11
Ryan Russo
And that's really, you know, so what we've been saying about this guide that prior versions might have been like, kind of parts. Here's the elements of your bike lanes that you might have, you know, widths and stencils and things. This new one is really a how to guide, right? It also provides the steps in the recipe, not just the elements and the ingredients.

00:54:55:16 - 00:55:05:16
Ryan Russo
So that that up leveling that you see visually and content is what excites me.

00:55:05:19 - 00:55:26:07
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And I'm glad you mentioned the advisory bike lanes as well. Also, they go under the name of Edge Lane Roads. And, for folks that have been following the channel for a while, you know, I did an entire episode, with Michael Williams on that. Who is the the North American Edge Lane road expert?

00:55:26:09 - 00:55:51:26
John Simmerman
So self-proclaimed. But, he probably has more knowledge on them than anybody. So if you're really interested in understanding what the advisory, lanes are and the edge lane roads, be sure to go check out that, episode. I'll leave the link in the show notes below. To kind of wrap us up, I want to bring us full circle back to, the designing Cities conference that's coming up.

00:55:51:26 - 00:56:10:03
John Simmerman
So it's coming up in May. You sort of alluded to it. It's it's it moves around from city to city to city. I believe back in it must have been 2015, I think it was in San Francisco. And then, I think the next year it was where was it in 2014?

00:56:10:03 - 00:56:12:09
Ryan Russo
Was San Francisco in 15? Was you in Austin?

00:56:12:16 - 00:56:20:01
John Simmerman
Fantastic. There you go. I just had the oh, that's right. It was literally when we were doing the move. That's right. So, so 14 I know we had a.

00:56:20:04 - 00:56:22:05
Ryan Russo
Team, the World Series.

00:56:22:07 - 00:57:02:10
John Simmerman
And we had a tornado during that to a conference here. So remember that. But share a little bit about the conference. I think it's one of the most important conferences that people should prioritize if you're in this world. I've been able to attend a couple of them. I was up at Toronto, as well, and, did some video work, and I've produced some, some videos of the workshops, on bike workshops and all that during, a couple of the different, conference conferences, but share a little bit about, the spirit of the conference and what we could look forward to here in Washington, DC in May.

00:57:02:13 - 00:57:28:16
Ryan Russo
Yeah. So it's called the Designing Cities Conference. People refer to it as the National Conference, but it's really the Design Cities Conference. And it's so it's a rare transportation conference that sees the bigger picture of what we're trying to serve, that we're serving people, serving cities, serving communities. It is, primarily attended by about 70% of the attendees are people who, serve at our member cities.

00:57:28:21 - 00:57:53:08
Ryan Russo
So it really has this, connection element where, again, you see, your doppelganger who has that same job, is you in, city on the other side of the country. You get to connect with that person and share, share stories, best practices and really connect and learn from one another and not. We just had such a fabulous team.

00:57:53:08 - 00:58:35:29
Ryan Russo
You know, I've been there since. Since June. So I inherited a very fabulous team that is so dedicated to making this, these, four days just so meaningful to the people to attend. It's as someone who attended the very first one in New York City in 2012 and has been a pretty much every single one. When you're at in your government job and in the city with getting 200 emails a day and so many requests and struggling with procurement and community pushback on your project, the ability to sort of remove yourself from that for a couple days and connect with other people who are doing that same work, is incredibly meaningful and can still the

00:58:35:29 - 00:59:02:20
Ryan Russo
vision is it fills your cup and keeps you motivated and inspired for the rest of the year until the conference comes around again. And you need that, that recharge. So just like our design guidance, we curate the events to make sure that the, you know, the latest best practices are highlighted and you're going to learn and be exposed to, you know, the most exciting things that are happening in cities around the country.

00:59:02:20 - 00:59:23:01
Ryan Russo
So this year's, conference is in Washington, DC. It's May 28th, two 31st. Like you're sharing there. The ability to to to register is, is it registrations open right now. So it's a good time if you're planning your your spring schedule to consider coming and checking out Designing Cities.

00:59:23:04 - 00:59:45:14
John Simmerman
Yeah, I like I said, I highly recommend it. I think the one in, in, in Toronto, some of the best parts of it are actually the workshops and getting out into the environment and, and seeing some of the stuff that's out there. I'll have to dig up those videos because I, I publish them, but they're not out on the YouTube channel now, so I may have to republish those one of these days.

00:59:45:14 - 00:59:46:01
John Simmerman
So.

00:59:46:04 - 01:00:08:01
Ryan Russo
Yeah. And that's I neglected to mention that a core element is I think a lot of conferences have developed, tours as part of their conference program. But from the beginning, almost 50% of the time you're spent, you're in our host city seeing things on the ground, learning from the people who figured out how to get it on the ground and why they made the choices that they made.

01:00:08:04 - 01:00:37:01
Ryan Russo
And so, we should have the trademark to the, to the term walk shop. But we have, you know, numerous walk shops that might be on foot, on bikes, sometimes on transit or even boat, to that you go out. So you learn both in the conference center and out in the, in the city that's hosting us. And we're excited that dot in Washington DC is, is our co-host, in 2025.

01:00:37:03 - 01:00:49:29
John Simmerman
For that very active towns of you. Let's get out and go for a walk or a bike ride I love it. Ryan, is there anything that we haven't yet covered that you want to leave the audience with?

01:00:50:02 - 01:01:09:20
Ryan Russo
Well, I would say that, you know, just to maybe step back. Maybe we didn't get to, like, you know, why this is important? Why I think people should have this text book called the Urban Bike Design Guide. You know why we're doing this work? It's like if if we do this work, if our communities succeed, our communities will be safer.

01:01:09:22 - 01:01:40:08
Ryan Russo
There'll be more accessible, there'll be more equitable, there'll be more sustainable, but they'll be healthier and happier, too. And like, we're not in a particularly happy time. The data is saying that. And, we've been disconnecting from one another. And we really this have this vision and think that this work is part of putting us back together, being connected, being healthier and happier.

01:01:40:10 - 01:02:03:11
John Simmerman
Yeah. And I did want to point out, too, we're mostly talking about the Urban Bikeway design guide today because it's the most recent one that's come out. But you guys have some amazing other guides I mentioned earlier, the Urban Street Design Guide, but you also have Designing Streets for kids, as well. And, and also the Transit street design guide, also out there in the city limits.

01:02:03:11 - 01:02:14:25
John Simmerman
So, folks here do check out the entire suite of the, NAFTA, design guides. I believe they're all published through Island Press. Is that correct?

01:02:14:28 - 01:02:38:09
Ryan Russo
Yes. Published through Island Press. And, you know, because we want this gospel, if you will, to spread you can find the content on our on our website, but not in the same form as the book. I strongly recommend that, the these the books, they're very affordable on an island. Preston's website. But they, they're really inspiring.

01:02:38:09 - 01:02:39:29
Ryan Russo
And,

01:02:40:01 - 01:02:59:27
John Simmerman
I was just going to mention that, too. I'm glad you said it is that, you know, these are very, very affordable, especially when you compare it to the astro, bikeways, facility design guide, which will be ten x the cost of what you can get these. So Island Press is a fantastic, publisher. They are a nonprofit, and they, they put out some great work.

01:02:59:27 - 01:03:07:09
John Simmerman
And, Ryan, this has been so much fun catching up with you here today. And I look forward to seeing you in Washington, DC for the conference.

01:03:07:11 - 01:03:16:06
Ryan Russo
Great. I really appreciate you having me and highlighting Nando in your podcast. And, yeah, see you in Washington.

01:03:16:08 - 01:03:30:23
John Simmerman
Hey, thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Ryan Russo. And if you did, please give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, be honored to have you subscribe to the channel. Just click on the subscription button down below and ring that notification bell.

01:03:30:28 - 01:03:52:21
John Simmerman
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01:03:52:24 - 01:04:12:12
John Simmerman
Well, until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers and a huge shout out to all my Active Towns ambassadors supporting the channel via YouTube. Super! Thanks! Buy me a coffee! Patreon. As well as making contributions to the nonprofit. I could not do this without you. Thank you all so very much.