Jay Blazek Crossley

Three 11 year olds standing right in front of a small kei truck in a parking lot.

The opposite of those truck bloat danger pictures.

Everyone must go see Katy Perry Candy Darling Mary Magdelene at MATCHouston by March 7th.

matchouston.org/events/2026/...

If we are considering high speed rail in the Texas Triangle, all of these same questions apply, but on an even grander scale, and with the added crucial element of stations needing to be tied directly into the heart of effective local transit grid networks in each metro region.

TIL that "squeek" is actually spelled "squeak," and it just seemed really fun – just like a nice little tune up for my little brain engine.

You gotta take the wins you can get, I suppose.

Cold ground in the yard in front of a house with grass on the yard but a white channel of snow where the sidewalk should be.

Cold ground in the yard in front of a house with grass on the yard but a white channel of snow where the sidewalk should be.

Cold ground in the yard in front of a house with grass on the yard but a white channel of snow where the sidewalk should be.

I live in a state (Texas) w/ horribly mismanaged transportation spending that’s left us with a worthless pedestrian transportation system.

The rare snow and sleet accumulation on the ground in Austin yields a sneckdown kind of effect showing the desire lines where people walk on missing sidewalks.

It was explained to me in Cincinnati that they uniquely didn’t have the funds to demolish during the periods that American cities were demolishing urbanism.

Even Houston had dense urbanism like that in the 40s, to some extent, but much of it was demolished.

YouTube video by Streetsblog NYC Mayor Mamdani commits to ending traffic violence across NYC on third day in office #safestreets

"I'm so sorry that we could not have done this earlier...to have saved the loved ones in your life. But I thank you fopr the work that you have done...to ensure that this pain not be felt by others who call this same city home." — Mayor Mamdani at McGuinness Blvd. presser youtube.com/shorts/uwAYI...

The cat bus from My Neighbor Totoro

A pile of books on a dresser next to an old picture of my wife, son, and I. The books from top to bottom are: Unsafe at Any Speed by Ralph Nader, Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar, Trains, Buses, People by Christof Spieler, Key to the City by Sara Bronin, Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor, Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships by Dr. Temple Grandin and Sean Barron, Spark by John Ratey, No Straight Road Takes You There by Rebecca Solnit, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Killed by a Traffic Engineer by Wes Marshall, Walkable City by Jeff Speck, Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, and Urban Transportation Planning in the United States by Edward Weiner.

Here’s my current pile of books I want to dig into. I’m in a particularly book heavy phase right now. We’ll see how far I get into the books in this pile.

There’s some other ones in the pile still on my desk at the office to get into next year.

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge
Carlos Casteneda
Started day before my birthday.
Finished June 22.

The Art of Procrastination
John Perry
Started Saturday 1/4/25.
Finished just after midnight the next night.

Hate The Game
Daryl Rose Fairweather
Trying to finish before YIMBYtown. Done! One day before YIMBYtown 9/13

The Black Jocobins: Toussant Louverture and the San Domingo Revolution
C.L.R. James
Started June 25. Finished December 9, 2025, then I finally read the appendix essay right before Christmas.

Men Explain Things to Me
Rebecca Solnit
Upon recommendation of ChatGPT that I write in a similar style.
Started 10/26 on plane to DC. Finished 11/7

The Art of Community:
Seven Principles of Belonging
Charles H. Vogl
Kevin Williams sent to me 10/7. Finished 10/25 one day before talking to Joe&Kevin.

The Power Broker
Robert Caro
Audiobook started 11/18/25

The Yellow House
Sarah M. Broom
Started 11/11/25

Transportation for the Abundant Society
Gregory H. Shill and Jonathan Levine
Long journal article that Sara Bronin told me about at YIMBYtown. Finished 11/7/25

Books I’m reading or read this year

The Triumph of the City
Edward Glaeser
Started during Thanksgiving break

Arbitrary Lines
Nolan M. Gray
Started 12/5/25 at Arturo’s underground

Phenomenology of Spirit
Hegel
Reading selected passages. Nov/Dec 2025

Join our Cloud HD Video Meeting Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise cloud communications.

We’ll start broadcasting on the webinar just before 4pm central time. Here’s the link to get in:

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Passcode:694106

6pm Woozyhelmet*
5pm David Israel
4pm Colin Swietek and the One Tough Customer

*Featuring informative powerpoint presentations

Merry Woozyhelmet Eve, everybody!

Flyer for a show with a drawing of a cat wrapped up in a roll of toilet paper and it says “Sat Dec 20th @Knomad, 1213 Carona, 6pm Woozyhelmet, 5pm David Israel, 4pm Colin Swietek and the One Tough Customer. Doors at 3pm” with a note at the bottom “*featuring informative PowerPoint presentations”

When your punk band is over 25 years old, it’s important to play at least one show a year.

I’ll be doing that tomorrow 12/20/25.

We — Woozyhelmet — play at 6pm. Free. Kids welcome. It’s a dive bar and we’ll be loud, but also there will be informative short PowerPoints. (This is in Austin)

Large tortoise who has slid off of his warming mat, upside down into his burrow

Mondays, ammirite?

Collin County Connects Committee members dissent against alternative options proposed Plano’s 4C wraps up without making a recommendation

Collin County Connects Committee members dissent against alternative options proposed

The Texas legislature passed a bill on this issue that we supported in 2023. HB 3558 by Rep. Perez and Sen. Alvarado clarifies that you have to stop properly and exactly where, removing perceived ambiguity with the old text of the law.

capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/H...

We have some of the best work in the nation on investing efficiently in solutions that nudge significantly better behavior from most drivers, right here in Austin.

bsky.app/profile/jayc...

I have a close old friend who lives in McMinnville who is a progressive & loving person who stands up for what she believes & helps people, but isn’t one of us urbanist nerds.

So it’s funny to wonder what you were up to there & whether she got entangled with NIMBYs or helped you do something good.

Austin would have had public fiber internet infrastructure connecting every building in the city in the 1990s (allowing private & public entities to provide services), but the same people who kept Austin from building a great transit system around that time (led by Mike Levy) killed that plan.

On a survey, there is a hand written answer to the question: “30. If there was ONE thing you could share with the City’s leadership (any comment, suggestion, etc.), what would it be?” I wrote “Please relax all limitations on dense development to achieve an expected zoning capacity sufficient to allow for the possibility of at least half of the metro region’s population at our mid-century peak having the option to live in dense, mixed-use, mixed-income walkable urban places connected to other walkable urban places by frequent transit.”

I was asked (in a mail survey) to speak to my city’s leadership and took that opportunity to suggest a regional equitable transit-oriented development strategy.

“Texans can and should demand that all elected officials work honestly and collaboratively … to keep us safe when we are riding in cars and trucks, riding on bicycles, walking or using a wheelchair, or riding in transit,” Crossley said.

“While there are of course disagreements about how to save lives and many examples of the us-vs.-them wars on bicycles and cars, Houston appears to be the only large government that I am aware of that has publicly shifted away from the safe systems approach to ending traffic deaths.”

“Every single level of government can and should do what the people of Texas overwhelmingly support, which is to work hard to reduce the number of people dying from traffic deaths.”

Houston’s roads are still among deadliest in Texas despite a drop in crashes Houston is on track for fewer fatalities and serious injuries in 2025, but continues to lag behind the rest of Texas on road safety measures.

“Too many families in Houston have lost a loved one to a violent, unexpected event just trying to use the transportation system,” said Jay Crossley, executive director of the nonprofit Farm & City who has worked statewide on traffic safety improvements.

www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston...

Exactly.

Is all the evidence of this preference in the revealed preference camp?

In Houston, statistically valid surveys of 7.5 million residents of the region shows 3.5 million want urbanism, 3.5 million want sprawl, & some aren’t sure. But only about 1.5 million people worth of urban units are available.