The podcast this week is a conversation with David Levinson, a professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Minnesota Duluth. David is also a co-founder and regular writer here at streets.mn, and his work focuses on transportation networks and measurements efficiency for different road and transit systems.

We sat down last week in a very special place… in a pair of seats on the rear car of a brand new Green Line train.

We hit record right when we got on the train at Saint Paul’s Union Depot and hit stop as we exited in the new Interchange station by Target Field in Minneapolis. So not only did we have a great conversation all about David’s research, the pros and cons of the Green Line, and the future of transportation in the Twin Cities, but this podcast also has scientific value as a temporal measure of our trip.

Plus we got to have a random conversation with the pleasant fellow in front of us in the LRT car, who had taken Twin Cities’ “transit system” all the way from Apple Valley. At one point he asks us, “Have either of you two ever been to a city with a good public transit system?” So there’s that.

The link to the audio is here! Thanks for listening.