Fans of The War On Cars podcast won’t want to miss this episode! We’re covering their book Life After Cars, and one of the authors Doug Gordon joins us on the episode.
Links
Attributions
Our theme song is Tanz den Dobberstein, and our interstitial song is Puck’s Blues. Both tracks used by permission of their creator, Erik Brandt. Find out more about his band, The Urban Hillbilly Quartet, on their website.
This episode was produced by Parker Seaman aka Strongthany, hosted by Ian R Buck, and was edited and transcribed by Stina Neel. Many thanks to Doug Gordon for coming on the show! We’re always looking to feature new voices on the show, so if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [email protected].
Transcript
[00:00:02] Ian: Welcome to the Streets.MN Podcast, the show where we highlight how transportation and land use can make our communities better places. Coming to you from beautiful uptown Minneapolis, Minnesota, I am your host, Ian R. Buck It’s time for another book club episode. This time, producer Parker Seaman chose
The Life After Cars by Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon, and Aaron Naparstek. And Gordon was available to join us for this episode. Take it away, Parker.
[00:00:35] Parker: Doug, you wanna say hello?
[00:00:36] Doug: Hi. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:38] Parker: Yeah, we’re, uh, really excited to have you here. Our previous book was Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow, which he did tell me to tell you that he says hello. Uh, and he likes this-
[00:00:47] Doug: Oh, we love Cory. He’s, uh, you know, such a nice, smart guy, and, um, one of the best writers on sort of just tech and social issues you can imagine. So that’s very nice of him.
[00:00:58] Parker: Certainly.
[00:00:59] Ian: He insisted that we, uh, make sure that we say the line, “Geometry hates cars,” at least once on the episode.
[00:01:06] Doug: That is a… I ha- I often say cars in cities are not a technology problem, they’re a geometry problem.
[00:01:14] Ian: Yeah.
[00:01:14] Doug: But Cory being Cory has just a better way of saying things in shorter, better language. So “geometry hates cars,” uh, like we could do an entire episode just on that phrase. Um, and he- he’s so smart, and I love that he has sort of brought that coinage into, into the lexicon.
[00:01:30] Ian: As somebody who, like, reads his blog and listens to most of the podcast appearances that he makes, like, I hear him say the same, uh, sound bites many, many times, and I get to hear them, like, as he tweaks them ever so slightly to get to that crystal, you know, in the end. Yeah. Um, and I’m, and I’m really glad that we got to talk to him about a three-year-old book so that, like, the stuff that he was talking about with us was totally different from what I’ve been hearing him talk about, you know, over the last four months.
[00:02:02] Doug: Yeah, it actually might be interesting for us to do a round of publicity for Life After Cars in two or three years- Yeah. and see what, if anything, has changed. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:02:11] Parker: Mm-hmm. Well, um, before we get too much into the questions, tell us a little bit about the book. Like, what was the, what was the process writing it like? Just, you know, give, give us some, uh-
[00:02:21] Ian: And why write a book when you’ve got, you know, the podcast that’s been going for so long? And, you know, what… like, what, what need did it fill that the podcast wasn’t filling?
[00:02:29] Doug: Yeah, I’ll take that first. Um, you know, we had sort of
thought about writing a book. A book is just a different medium, you know? It’s a different way to reach different people. The podcast, especially being called The War on Cars, attracts, like, one type of listener, consumer, right? Whereas a book still has, first of all, a little bit of a cachet. I mean, I, I find it kind of funny that you can have a podcast that reaches, you know, tens, hundreds of thousands, millions of people, but somehow writing a book, even if it reaches fewer people overall, if you have- Hmm … like, you know, a podcast that gets a million downloads in the first day, right? There’s something, like, important about a book. You can hold it in your hand, you can deal with it at your- Leisure, you know, sometimes people listen to podcasts over the course of a couple days. But, you know, a book you can read in one sitting, you can read it over the course of a month, you can go back to it and find that one passage that you found to be very important or meaningful for you, use it as a reference book, whatever you want. And so we felt like it was just a new way to reach a new audience. And, and because the title is Life After Cars and not the more combative The War on Cars, it’s more of an invitation to imagine a different way of living, of ordering our society or your lives so that it’s not as focused around, you know, this two or three ton death machine that we require everyone to have just to be a fully enfranchised member of society. So, you know, writing the book felt important in that sense. And then, you know, the process was a combination of different things. Some of it is material that we collected over the course of many, many podcast episodes. You know, we were pulling stuff from transcripts and quoting guests that we had. Some of it was new material. I went to the city of Ghent in Belgium originally with the intent of doing that as a podcast episode, but we found that it worked better As a chapter in the book. And so that was sort of… It, it was a mix of, like, pulling a- all this old stuff that we have, but doing a whole lot of new research. You know, sometimes on a podcast you, you can just talk, and if you throw in a few facts, great. The book really has to be, you’ll… If you read it, if you… And you’ve read it, you’ll notice we have a very extensive bibliography and end notes. A ton of end notes, because we really wanted to make this, like, very tight case for why cars are, are bad or at least why forced car dependency is bad. Um, and it was a great process. It was a real fun learning process, but a ton of work at the same time.
[00:05:00] Ian: Like, what, what are the major goals of the book? You said, you know, “We’re bringing in a new audience.” Like, what should people expect to get out of the book when they, when they pick it up?
[00:05:11] Doug: Yeah. I think, you know, the… We tried to design the book so that if you are a person who knows everything about the subject, you’re an advocate, you ride to work, you are a member of your local advocacy organization, you consume all of the books, all of the podcasts, all of the material about the subject, we tried to make the book so that the… there would be something in there for you. At the same time, we were really trying to reach new audiences, like I said, and speak to the person who knows nothing about the subject or very little and is just a little curious. Like, “Oh, yeah, they’re starting to put bike lanes in my city. I wonder what that’s all about,” or, “I read something about congestion pricing in New York, and why are they going after cars? I’m curious about that.” That’s always been the trick with the podcast. Like, we know the people who are tuning in to listen are a combination of those two groups, the people who know everything about the subject, the people who know very little. And when I say people who know very little, I don’t mean, like, they’re dumb. You know, I don’t mean they’re, like, they’re unintelligent. I just mean they’re busy people who’ve never- Yeah … given much thought to this. Maybe they’re really into some other issue, right? And so that’s really was the goal with the book is number one, to equip the experienced advocates with a little new information that they might need the next time they go to a community meeting or go to a rally or call their elected official to make the case for why they should put a bike lane on their street or invest in new transit, um, to help them with language. You know, a lot of this is really related to how do we talk about this stuff in the public sphere, on social media, in a public meeting? And then for the uninitiated, just to make the case of, like, here is this massive force in your life, cars, that you have never probably given all that much thought to because no one’s ever forced you to. It’s, it’s all around us. As we write in the book, it’s the water we’re swimming in. None of us have known any different. N- none of us alive today have known a life before cars. So just getting people to see that cars are a problem that can be solved. Um, and that should be solved, that, that’s our goal. I, I don’t wanna spoil anything for
folks who haven’t read the book, but w- when you get to the end and we offer some solutions or advice on what to do, we tried not to be too big. We, we really tried to say, like, “Here are the achievable things you can do,” because we didn’t want someone who’s new to this to read it and be like, “Okay, cars sound terrible. What can I do? Oh, crap. Like, I cannot defund the US Department of Transportation- … and have them reallocate all their resources to bike lanes and transit. I can’t, you know, demolish a highway in my city.” So we wanted to give some, like, real practical stuff that everyday people could do.
[00:07:50] Ian: As, as one of the, like, jaded foot soldiers in the war on cars, you know, uh, when I came to the book, you’re right, there’s a lot of information in there that, like, I had, I hadn’t heard a lot of these specific stories before. And, and, and yet I still was like, “Well, I know the ending of this is gonna be, ‘Well, it’s all, it’s all cars’ fault. And, uh, and cars suck.’ And, you know, here’s another way that, like… I just assumed, like, already, like, oh yeah, it’s, cars are just the worst.”
[00:08:20] Doug: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I think, you know, we all understand, especially if we’re cyclists or, you know, advocates for public transportation and walking, like, we understand the health aspects and the safety- Yeah aspects. The fact that, you know, 40,000-plus Americans die every year. We understand the connections to climate change and pollution and things like that. But we might not have as big an understanding about things like noise pollution- Mm-hmm … or the effect on animals. Uh, non-human animals, I should say. Um, and so that, those are some of the things we wanted to include in the book.
[00:08:51] Ian: Yeah. And, and a lot of those are, like, kind of important for people to be able to reference, you know, as, like, uh, electric cars become a bigger and bigger, you know, uh, piece of conversation. And, like, family members are gonna be like, you know, “Oh, hey,” like, “what do you think about, you know, switching out the combustion engine car for an electric car? That solves all the problems, right?” And it’s like, well, if, you know, if, if you- If you don’t have those talking points ready, then like, you know, you’re not gonna be prepared for that, for that conversation. But, um, yeah, the, the book brings up a lot of like different scenarios where it’s like, okay, if I can keep all these things in mind, then I can be more, more ready for those kinds of conversations.
[00:09:30] Doug: Yeah. To get back to the point that Cory Doctorow made about geometry hates cars, like electric cars have their place, right? And yeah, you are gonna hear from those relatives who say, “Look at me and look at what I’m doing. I, I bought a Tesla. I bought an electric SUV.” But you know, as we write in the book, if I’m hit while riding my bike- by an electric car, I don’t look up to the heavens as I, you know, as I’m breathing in my last breaths on this earth and say, “Thank God, you know, it was an electric car. How wonderful that is for the environment.” You know, cars take up space. They’re dangerous. Um, you know, we also know that electric cars aggravate some of the problems that we see with cars. Uh, you know, they’re heavier, so there’s more wear and tear on the roads. They shed more tire particles, which go into our water supply, and we breathe them in when they are kicked up as dust. Um, they’re very resource-intensive in term- but they’re just a different kind of resource-intensive. You know, that being said, like we should electrify every vehicle that is out there on the road today, but we have to move towards fewer cars, not different cars.
[00:10:36] Parker: It’s a, it’s a frustrating predicament because you have to say, in a certain sense, yes, I guess electric cars do improve one aspect of the myriad of problems that cars cause. And also, we already have a lot of solutions out there to fix the other problems that cars ha- have, including density and toxic w- uh, waste in various forms, and all these other sort- sort of things. So, like, just going for electric cars doesn’t necessarily remove those problems. It just transforms it into one that looks better, but isn’t really an improvement necessarily.
[00:11:13] Doug: Yeah, and there’s the whole Jevons or Jevons paradox, right? Like, if, if I’m not worried about gas prices and filling up at the pump, am I driving more, right? Uh, you know, because I’m charging my, my Tesla or whatever via solar panels on my roof. Mm. And so therefore, you know, the cost to me to drive is negligible, after I’ve paid for the car, of course. But, you know, so I think that’s a thing we have to consider with electric cars. And the other thing is, um, it’s a point my co-host, Sarah Goodyear, likes to make. You’ll hear a lot of people talk about electric vehicles when they- what they mean is electric cars.
[00:11:50] Ian: Right.
[00:11:50] Doug: Because an e-bike is an electric vehicle. An electric bus is an electric vehicle. A train that runs on electricity, that’s an electric vehicle. Those are the kind of EVs that society should be doubling down and tripling down on.
[00:12:04] Ian: And no matter how many headlines we get about, like, um, you know, electric bikes are, uh, mitigating way more carbon dioxide emissions than, than, you know, electric cars, like, the, the grand majority of people still aren’t thinking about that, right? As, like, the same category of, like, oh, this can, like, this can fit a slot in your life.
[00:12:26] Doug: Exactly. They, yeah, they, you know, and, and look, if you are buying an electric vehicle, electric car because that’s what works for you and your budget, like great. Like, I’d rather if you’re
driving a car it be electric. But it’s not the be all, end all to our mobility and environmental and social problems.
[00:12:42] Parker: on the note of mentioning, uh, Jevons Paradox, ’cause I- this sounded familiar. There was a research paper that I saw somebody post on BlueSky. The claim that the paper makes is that with every 1% increase in fuel efficiency is associated with a 1.2% increase of vehicle miles traveled.
[00:13:03] Doug: Right. Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. I, I’d be really curious to see the research, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that is en- entirely true because yeah, you know, if, if, especially now, I mean, you know, we’re essentially at war, and gas prices just today as we record this have spiked by like 50 cents.
[00:13:20] Parker: Mm.
[00:13:20] Doug: If you’ve got an electric vehicle and you’re charging in some way where you’re not affected by volatility in energy prices, then yeah, like you’re not gonna change your habits. And in fact, you might change your habits in the way we don’t want you to, which is to drive more.
[00:13:36] Parker: Which then I think there’s a positive corollary, converse, I’m not a scientist, to that in that, well, like we were talking about at the start of the episode, it, the weather’s really nice out and I’m seeing a bunch of more people bicycle. You add more, uh, infrastructure for riding bike or making transit accessible, then people will start using it. There’s… No, that’s induced demand. That’s not the paradox. Never mind.
[00:13:58] Doug: Well, no, but like I think it’s a good one. I was about to say, you know, induced demand is we tend to associate that with, uh, highway widenings and it being a bad thing, that you can never widen a highway and alleviate traffic ’cause it just leads to more traffic. More people fill up the empty road space, and eventually you’re back to where you started. But induced demand can work in good ways, like building a bicycle lane, a high quality bicycle network,
or yeah, providing more frequent and reliable transit service. And you create this virtuous cycle where exactly, more people say, “Hey, more people are biking. More people are taking transit. It feels safer.” There’s the safety in numbers effect we know with cycling, even in, in the absence of good bike infrastructure where you are safer if there are more cyclists on the road. So, you know, we, we just want the good kind of induced demand. Yeah.
00:14:48
Not the bad.
[00:14:49] Parker: So going back to the book a little bit, ’cause you mentioned earlier the, the story when you’re, uh, abroad not working on the podcast and instead going into the book. And there’s a, a lot of stories and different, uh, angles you take in the book. So talk a little bit what the process for sourcing those stories were. Given that you’re a podcast and do interviews, I imagine you’re calling on a lot of previous experience, but like what was the process for like deciding what gets put in there like?
[00:15:15] Doug: Yeah, I mean, I think like a lot of writers and a lot of- people who author books, the process of writing the book was almost a process more of unwriting and editing more than a process of, uh, writing. Uh, it just, you know- The many drafts that we went through. The book is about 60,000 plus words, so about 6,000 words per chapter, and there are some chapters, you know, that I took on, such as the chil- childhood chapter, that I think were three or four times that amount when I just got everything out because the subject is so big, so diffuse, it changes so quickly all the time. So that, that process was really like we sort of sat down and mapped it all out, and we’re just like, “All right. First we have to make the case for why cars are bad before we make the case for w- you know, what can change and how it can change.” Yeah, so, you know, you- if you notice, the first part of the book is really, like, how cars ruin everything. Like, that’s, that’s it, and then we had to break that down into things like cars ruin childhood and all the effects that we’ve seen. You know, the fact that in the late 1960s about 40% of kids biked or walked to school, and
now that’s down to 11% or less. You know, and why that happened and how that happened and, and the places that are, like the bike bus movement, that are trying to turn, turn that around. You know, cars ruin nature in all the ways in which we were mentioning before, like particulate matter, especially from tires, is getting into our, uh, you know, water supply and streams and killing salmon. Cars ruin society. We’ve seen, you know, cities, um, you know, especially you all being in the Twin Cities, right, and everything that’s been going on, the ways in which cities become these, um, bulwarks against fascism and f- and for and protectors of democracy and how that’s different when you live in a place where everything is sprawled out and you don’t know your neighbors as well and community is defined more by who you already know than the proximity to people unlike you. Like, one of the things I love about Minneapolis, right, is it’s, like, all of these different people, immigrant communities, people who’ve been in this country for generations, and everybody in between, like, coming together to support each other, and I think that happens in part not, not just because Minnesota is a special place, but I do think it happens a little bit because of the built form of Minneapolis. I, I think that’s really true. So, you know, not to take away from what’s special about Minnesota. But, like, if the fact that you have a city that’s, like, relatively easy to get around and has made improvements in that and has neighborhoods where, like, the houses are not that far apart and there are apartment buildings mixed in, you know, like, that’s… We felt was really important to say, like, cars have an effect on democracy and society, so we wanted to put that in. And then, yeah, we pivoted later to, like, here are the places that are doing it right. Here are some design concepts that work, um, you know, and, and can be applied to your city even if it is a big sprawling place. So, yeah.
[00:18:19] Ian: How… Do you think that this book would have happened if the podcast, you know, hadn’t already happened? Like, you know, if you didn’t have that history
[00:18:27] Doug: Uh, probably not. I mean, the thing about the publishing industry, you know, being what it is, and we had nothing but a good experience with Penguin Random House, our publisher, and our editor, Megan McCormick, was wonderful. Like, it’s a cliche, you know, of just, like, all of her notes, um, improved the book so much, and it’s really true. Um, but obviously part of what attracted her and Penguin Random House and our agents to the idea of a book was that we had this platform. We had a built-in audience for the book, uh, that we had built up on the podcast since 2018, and so we knew that, like, that core group of people would probably be interested in purchasing the book and that it would help us then branch out and get more publicity elsewhere. So it is true, like, having a platform, especially in a nonfiction t- uh, environment for publishing, really does help a lot.
[00:19:21] Parker: Given that we all, you know, given the audience here and, and on your podcast, we all agree cars are bad. Um, so how do you decide what other forms of transportation fit well into the book that are worth discussing?
[00:19:36] Doug: Well, obviously I come from a bike advocacy background. That was really my entry into this subject, so cycling features prominently in the book in the latter part, especially when we’re talking about the city of Ghent in Belgium and how they were able to increase cycling by so much. You know, I think talking about bus riders, you know, w- we lo- locally have been talking about buses a lot thanks to Zohran Mamdani and his campaign pledge to make buses fast and free. So that seemed really important. We didn’t want to be too prescriptive. Like, we wanted to basically say, “If you can figure out a way in your town to reduce the number of cars coursing through it, the benefits will be more than you can name.” Um, and what works in one place is not necessarily gonna work elsewhere, and the goals shouldn’t be the same everywhere, um, in terms of, like, types of bike lanes or transit systems or things like that. But rethinking our relationship with the automobile, that should be what we want to start with. Because in a lot of places in this country, um, even in places that where it is possible to live car-free or car-light, those people who do live that way are still in the minority. You know, even in New York, we still have huge fights over parking spaces. And you would think that car drivers were the majority here in Manhattan and Brooklyn when the opposite is true. So, you know, just getting people to see the problem and the outsized influence that cars have in our lives and our society, that’s the real mission of the book. And if there’s a follow-up book, then we maybe could get into even more, slightly more prescriptive solutions. But w- uh, the other thing is because we wanted the book to speak to so many people, we didn’t really want to get too prescriptive. As, as I mentioned before, we wanted the end of that book to feel like whether you lived in Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, or New York, or some tiny town in the middle of nowhere, that you could at least do the same things we all can do, which is call your elected officials, talk to your neighbors. Find that one person in town who shares your ideas and your beliefs about, hey, maybe it should be a little safer to walk or bike places. So we do talk about design changes, but, like, neck downs and bulb outs and protected bike lanes are gonna be a solution in some places, but not in every place. So we didn’t wanna really tell people, “This is what you should be doing.”
[00:22:08] Parker: Right. The, the incredible power of just showing up.
[00:22:11] Doug: Just showing up, exactly. Like, that, if those of us who really care about this issue or have sort of had that inkling that something’s not right with how we’ve designed all of this and what is required of us to participate in the world around us, if we just show up, then that is gonna change a lot and move the needle in ways that are gonna look different in rural America versus urban America versus suburban America versus exurban America and all the different ways we define suburbs, of course.
[00:22:42] Ian: It’s, it’s still, like- so easy to get paralyze- like when you’re first entering an advocacy space, to get paralyzed with the like, “Well, I don’t have all of the answers, so I don’t know if I should even say anything.” You know? Like, like when I was first getting introduced to the bike advocacy, you know, community here in the Twin Cities, like I was, I was coming from a place of like, “Oh my gosh, the city wants to know what I have to say about where to put painted bike lanes? That’s amazing. I love painted bike lanes.” And I had no idea that like the research had already moved on to, you know, hey, painted bike lanes like really do not help you at all. We, yeah, like we need to be doing curb protected or, you know, co- like parking protected. Like, you know, I, so like I didn’t have the kind of language to talk about the specifics, but I also like Bless my little heart, I didn’t know that I didn’t have the words to talk about it.
[00:23:42] Doug: Yeah, I mean, knowing what you know and don’t know is a really important part of being a responsible and good human being, but also a good advocate, you know? And entering the space saying, “I bet there are people who know more than I do”- Yeah … “and I should talk to them or read them or listen to them,” that’s a really important thing. I will say, just to channel my podcast researcher hat, painted bicycle lanes, as much as we all complain about them if we ride regularly, they do, they are better than nothing. Now, sharrows are a different story. There have been studies that show that they’re essentially worthless, if not worst, worse than worthless. But painted bicycle lanes, you know, you think about it, if you had, like, a 14-foot road and you put in, you know, a four-foot wide painted bicycle lane, now suddenly the drivers have a narrower, you know, lane, a narrow… Their visual field has changed, and there are studies that show that they do make things safer. Of course, like, we would rather have non-door zone bike lanes and have them be protected.
[00:24:45] Parker: Yeah.
[00:24:45] Doug: But, like, that’s, that’s… You know, that was part of the fun and the research of, like, challenging beliefs that I had or intuitions that I had of like, “Oh, this is not as simple as, like, I’d like it to be.” But, you know, I’ve been doing advocacy for a really long time, 16 years plus, and I’m still learning stuff, and I’m always open to being challenged about what I believe because the science changes, the knowledge changes, who’s in the conversation changes, all of those things.
[00:25:15] Ian: Yeah. And we can’t let, like, the fear of, of not getting it perfect prevent us from, like, doing good.
[00:25:20] Doug: Right. And sometimes, you know, this also boils down to politics. And so your DOT in your city, wherever you live, whether it’s Minneapolis or New York, they may look at you behind the scenes if you have a good relationship with some of the planners. They may look at you, as have, uh, people have said to me and say, “This is the best we can do right now. We agree with you. We kn-…” You know, these planners are smart. They’ve been to Amsterdam. They know all the, all the things. Um, but they may look at you and say, “If we try to put in a protected bicycle lane, it’ll get shot down, and then you’ll get nothing. And worse than that, the next project will be jeopardized, too.” Yeah. So sometimes you gotta play that game, and it sucks because people’s lives are at stake, right? And it’s not just people’s lives, but it’s like what kind of future we wanna build. It’s can kids ride? Can older people ride? Can less confident riders ride? So that’s, that’s the advocacy game. It’s like, it’s compromise.
[00:26:19] Ian: Before we continue, let’s take a quick break in the parklet. Today, we have an urbanist quick question from John: “Now that we have the Idaho Stop in Minnesota, do the stop signs at trail crossings not apply anymore?” So the way that the Minnesota version of the Idaho Stop works is that cyclists essentially treat stop signs the way that motorists treat yield signs. Aside, we didn’t pass the stoplight
part of the Idaho Stop, but in Minnesota we already had a law that cyclists can proceed through a red light if they have stopped and if they have a reasonable suspicion that the light isn’t going to change for them, and if there’s not any cross traffic coming. So we already sorta had that. All right. For the little stop signs facing towards trails that are crossing a road, they do still mean something. They inform the cyclists that the crossing traffic is not going to stop because, you know, there are some trail crossings where the cyclists have the right of way, there are some trail crossings where the, uh, motorists have the right of way. And in this case, you know, anywhere that you see a stop sign that is facing towards the trail, towards the cyclists who are crossing the road, that tells you, okay, the cross traffic is not going to stop. Uh, the cyclist is the one who is expected to stop if there is any cross traffic. But if there isn’t any cross traffic, then John is right that the cyclists don’t actually need to come to a complete stop. So realistically, all of those stop signs could just be yield signs. And there you go. What’s one story or, like, piece of research from the book that, that really sticks with you?
[00:28:03] Doug: I’ve mentioned it a couple times with my, um, Ghent being one. You know, that is a city of about 240,000 people. It’s a big university town. Um, if you can kind of picture a smaller Amsterdam for folks who’ve been there, that’s what Ghent is a little bit like. And, you know, they did so much. I spoke to Filip Watteeuw, who’s the deputy mayor, essentially deputy mobility minister, sort of their transportation director, and they instituted a very famous traffic circulation plan to reduce the number of cars using the city as a cut-through. And they spent no more than 5.8 million euros to institute this program that after many years of Uh, planning and studying and community outreach they essentially implemented over one weekend in 2017. And it led to a huge drop in the number of crashes, it led to a huge drop in air pollution. They met their 2030 cycling goals within two or three years. It was pretty incredible. Um, that experience showed me that none of this has to be complicated, none of this has to be expensive. Many cities have an excellent bike lane network that exists already, it’s just all the cars are all over it. And if we could just reduce the number of cars, um, that would be a great way to do it. No special infrastructure required. That’s one. I think the other one for me that really sticks out is I rode, um, for the chapter on childhood, and I had done an episode on this. Um, my co-host Sarah had interviewed Sam Balto, who’s one of the big bike bus organizers, sort of like the godfather of the bike bus movement in this country. And I rode with the Montclair, New Jersey bike bus and, you know, riding with like couple hundred kids on their way to different schools, I, I will never forget that experience. And then interviewing those kids for the podcast and including some of their quotes in the book was great because if there’s one constituency that’s really left out of city planning, children certainly are towards the top of that list. They don’t, they don’t come to the meetings, you know- Yeah … to yell about parking. Yeah.
[00:30:07] Parker: Now, those were your favorite chapters from the book. Was there any notable stuff that got left on the cutting room floor or anything that got left out just for editing purposes or otherwise?
[00:30:16] Doug: Oh, well, I w- I won’t be able to pick my favorite chapters overall. Those are just chap- like, that I went out and reported, um, that I had an experience. I mean, um, I ha- s- I have other favorite chapters. Um, Sarah did a lot of the work on the Cars Ruin Nature episode. Mm-hmm. Uh, sorry, chapter. Um, she had done some episodes on this subject. And to me, when I remember reading some of the early drafts, I was like, “Holy moly, even I’m sort of surprised by this. I can only imagine what the average reader will think.” So it was really great to read that stuff. Stuff that got left on the cutting room floor, a lot. Like I said, you know, I think we probably all together wrote three times as much as we needed to fill the book. There were just so many stats from around the world in terms of, like, children’s mobility. I, I keep coming back to that in, um, in terms of what we wanted to put in. The bike last chapter was really hard to whittle down to 6,000 words because first of all, like, I started writing my old blog, Brooklyn Spoke, as sort of a clearing house for swatting down bad anti-bike arguments. And so I had all of this stuff that I could have thrown in there and tried to. Um, but it, it was just gonna become too much of a list of like when people say this, this is how you should respond. When people say that, this is what you should say. And we didn’t want it to be that. Like, it, that wouldn’t have been interesting to too many people outside of the hardcore advocates. So we fold… If you read the book, you’ll see how we folded the bike lash stuff and how people respond and what you should say and how to deal with it in l- in less of a like, if this then do that. Less of a how to. That originally, that chapter was gonna be like a how to respond chapter. Uh, instead it was more of like a psychological examination.
[00:32:06] Ian: Um, how much time did it take to research, write, and edit the whole thing?
[00:32:10] Doug: Well, I worked backwards. So we published the book. Our… It was a nine-month process of actual writing, of like really saying, “Okay, we are beginning the writing process,” to the point at which we had to deliver our, it was essentially our first draft, but we had actually submitted a lot of chapters to our editor. Uh, for a number of reasons, one of which is just like you wanna get stuff to your, uh, editor early because then we could figure out the kind of notes that she would give and then be able to preemptively address stuff going forward, and that helped us write a better book we hope. Um, so it was about nine months of actual writing. The research I couldn’t even tell you because some of this is the like cumulative research that we all did over our careers. You know, Sarah’s been covering this for 20-ish years as a journalist. I said I’ve been an advocate for about 15, 16 years. Some of the stuff we were drawing from like old things that she had written, stuff I had put on the blog and wanted to re- like reexamine. There was new reporting of course. Um, so it, you know, that, that’s like- If you total all that up, that would be years’ worth of research. But I mean, you know, I- you can sort of see behind me, like I just have an endless amount of books, uh, on the subject, and we have a very long bibliography in there. So yeah, so you know, the whole process was, it was a lot. And it was very intense. And in the final few months we were… I, I think I was working almost every day of the week to get it done. Yeah. But we felt a real sense of responsibility to get it right ’cause we felt like there have been books on this subject, but they’re usually geared, they have in the past been geared either to a specific slice of the subject, like, um, Henry Grabar’s book, Paved Paradise, which is phenomenal. Um, that is a great book, you know, but it’s solely about parking. And there are other books that are solely about another slice of, like, of just cycling or whatever. We felt a great responsibility ’cause we’re like, “This is gonna sort of be, like, the catch-all book.” Um, and we also, much like with the podcast, we just respect our audience a lot. Um, and we wanted to make sure we were delivering something good.
[00:34:24] Parker: But, um, as part of that work, what was the process for, or what was it like, um, for recording the audiobook version of it?
[00:34:32] Doug: Yeah. Sarah and I read the book. Um, it was split up evenly, not necessarily split up by, like, who wrote what. It was literally just like, you go, then you go, then you go, then I go, you know, et cetera. Um, we recorded that over the course of two days separately. Uh, and then there was another day where we came together to do… Like, we read the intro and the conclusion together, but, like, split up paragraphs.
[00:35:01] Parker: Hmm.
[00:35:02] Doug: Um, or pages, right? So it was exhausting. I came back from the first day of recording, I think I finished at like 3:30 or 4:00 after starting in the morning, and like by the time I got to about 3:00, I could- the words didn’t make any sense anymore. Like, I didn’t know what I was reading. I don’t… People who do audiobooks for a living, people who do voiceover narration for documentary film or whatever, like I don’t know how you do it over day after day after
day and have the words make sense. Um, so at that point our producer, um, was like, “You got this. I know how much we have left. Go home, get some rest. We’ll pick it up tomorrow.” But it was a really fun way to do it because up until that point, I don’t think I had read the book in one sitting. You know?
00:35:50
Like you, I had read drafts of chapters,
I’d read this, I’d, you know, I’d looked at notes when we got the final
draft notes, um, but never really sat down and read it like a book. So it was fun.
[00:36:01] Ian: Yeah. So in, in a time, in, in, in a point in history where there’s a lot of pressing needs, how do you fit transportation advocacy, you know, i- as part of your work that you’re doing?
[00:36:13] Doug: It, it’s very hard. I mean, especially right now as we record this, it’s like we’re, you know, indiscriminately bombing another country illegally and, you know, and just immorally doing this. And, and all of the problems we see with the federal government, with democracy in shambles and all the rest, and so many other big issues, yeah, it can sort of feel like, well, why are we focused on bike lanes? It can seem so trivial or whatever. But I would make the case that our issues, number one Are really important because, you know, where are people the most progressive? Where are they the most in contact with immigrants and with trans people and with people who are just different from them in any way that you define that? Um, that’s in cities a lot of the time. And so in, in many ways what we’re seeing, as you know very well, is an attack on cities, right? Minneapolis and ,
you know, the Twin Cities were under assault and still are in many ways by the federal government. Why? Because they are places where democracy thrives. They are places where, like I said, different people interact into and form a common project of… You know, it doesn’t, it’s not always perfect, but it generally works. And that’s a threat to fascists. When different people stand up for each other, even, especially people who they don’t know, who aren’t technically part of their, quote unquote, “community”, that’s a threat. And so when you can build good public transit, good public spaces, safe bicycle lanes so kids can bike to school so, you know, delivery workers can do their job safely, like, th- these are good building blocks of democracy. So I, I see the war on cars and the bike advocacy movement, the pedestrian advocacy movement, the tran- advocacy m- movement as defenders, as a defense of democracy movement. I also see, you know, having been doing this for a long time where the movements were very siloed, you know- Mm-hmm … 10, 15 years ago. That’s not the case anymore. You know, the, the parking reform network has r- is really coming together, right? And understanding that housing prices are more expensive when we require parking from developers or, you know, how spread out things become when we have to build for the car first over the person. You know, we’re seeing the climate movement, the environmental movement, all of these movements that used to be very se- all wrapped up in one thing. So it’s hard to even separate what is the bike movement from the transit movement from all the rest. It’s all part of the same thing.
[00:38:48] Ian: Um- Right. Suddenly, suddenly we’re a constituency, right?
[00:38:52] Doug: You are a constituency for sure. And the other thing I would say is it is an achievable form of advocacy. There are others, but, you know, I can’t reform the Supreme Court. I can write letters, you know, to my senators saying, “If you’re ever in power again, Democrats, like, you better expand the Supreme Court.” But I can’t, like, politely knock on John Roberts’ office and say, like, “Hey, this, um, executive immunity stuff that you’ve granted to Trump, like, could you rethink that?” Um, but I can knock on the door of my city council member and call her and say, “You know, there’s a problem down the street from me. It’s a really dangerous street. We should do something about it.” So it’s really achievable, and I think in this day and age, we need people to pick something. Doesn’t have to be transportation related, of course, but, like, something that feels achievable. And if we all do that, like little drops in the ocean, right? We’ll, we’ll fill ev- we’ll fill all the available space and create something better. So that’s sort of how I see our movement as both, um, interconnected to everything else that’s important, you know, immigration, housing, climate, um, affordability, but also democracy and just community building.
[00:40:07] Parker: I, I think having transit be the center of all these sort of different needs and it growing into this constituency is kind of an inevitability. Not that the work to emphasize the w- the ways that they are connected is going to happen without advocacy. Uh, it’s rather that because of the way that they are all interconnected, it has made it apparent to people who are involved that they are all related, and all these sort of aspects of what it is being a person in a place touch on transit in one way or another, whether that’s environmentalism, uh, justice, just a- anything, it all intersects with transit. Not that that is always at the very center of it, but it is a aspect of it.
[00:40:56] Doug: Yeah. I, I think that’s 100% right.
[00:40:59] Ian: Yeah, and I think the, the inverse is true as well. Like, when I’m, when I’m looking at people who are running for local office I can usually pay attention to just their take on, like, transportation issues and have about a 90% hit rate on knowing exactly where they’re going to land on a bunch of other things that I care about even if they seem like they’re unrelated.
[00:41:25] Doug: Absolutely. Right, and that’s- I think that’s 100% true. I mean, there’s a, a very good quote, a Joe Biden quote where he says, you know, “Don’t tell me what your values are. Show me what your budget is, and I’ll tell you what your values are.” And I think that’s true about streets, you know? Who politicians listen to when it comes to streets, right? Are they listening to the drivers who just care about their parking, or are they listening to the families and the individuals who’ve lost loved ones to traffic violence? Are they listening to bus riders who are stuck in traffic on their way to minimum wage earning jobs? Who, who do they care about? And I think you’re right. Like, you know, the, the people who are really good on our issues, like transit and cycling, probably are gonna be really good on things like trans rights, immigrants ri- immigrant rights, affordable housing, um, you know, wages and, you know, having a, a, a minimum wage that actually can earn you a living. And I th- I, I think that’s a really good metric for it. It’s, it’s about power dynamics and who elected officials listen to. The thing that has gotten me kind of the most encouraged in many ways is we have had an elected official on stage with us at nearly every live show we’ve done. Uh, we had some really good ones- Mm. Mm-hmm … in, in Minneapolis when we were there in April. Uh, but since the book has launched we’ve been to Houston, Texas. Um, we’ve been to Austin, Texas. We’ve been to LA. We’ve been to Miami, and we’ve had some, you know, some of the most car-centric places in North America, and in each of them we’ve had elected officials who are, like, more, more to the left on some of these issues than I, I think I’ve ever been, which has just been great to see. Never did I think that that would happen. But that’s- … that’s how progress happens, so it’s good.
[00:43:13] Ian: Do you think that we’re making good progress in the war on cars or, like, you know, overall which, which direction are we headed? Are we tr- headed in a good direction or not?
[00:43:23] Doug: It depends how you measure it. Um, I think politically, obviously from a national point of view, we’re in terrible shape, right? USDOT sucks. Sean Duffy sucks. They’re canceling active transportation projects left and right. You know, if it isn’t a car, it, it doesn’t burn gasoline in that car, they’re not interested in it as a project. That’s bad. Transit is in a death spiral in a lot of states and cities. You know, we’d see… We saw what happened in Pennsylvania with SEPTA and different systems throughout Pennsylvania. You know, even New York City is under assault. Y- as we record this today, federal, uh, a judge just dismissed the federal government’s lawsuit to stop congestion pricing, so that’s good.
[00:44:08] Ian: Okay.
[00:44:09] Doug: But, you know, it would be better if we weren’t putting out fires all the time, and instead had a federal government that was interested in, like, making it safer and more efficient to get around without a car That’s the, that’s the political side of it and the governing side of it. I think culturally we are, we’ve never been in better shape. Like, the fact that this book, Life After Cars, exists when it might not have existed five, 10, 15 years ago, that’s a sign that something’s changed. Uh, we have done some real mainstream, uh, media in terms of like, you know, your Wake Up Seattle kind of morning shows, right? And we’ve had a really great time on them, and we’ve been surprised and delighted by the, the substance of the questions. We, we, we, we thought with a couple of them, “Oh, surely this is like suburban driver. That, that’s the audience- Mm-hmm… suburban drivers.” But the questions have been like, “Oh yeah, wouldn’t it be great if more people could like ride a bike to school or to, to work?” Um, so I think culturally, and you know, the fact there’s just a bigger constituency for all of these issues. You know, the fact that here in New York, Zohran won on fast and free buses, as we talked about a little earlier, and that’s just not just a New York thing. We’re seeing it, uh, we’re going to Atlanta and we have a young Democratic socialist, uh, city council member who’s joining us, and she is like out there talking about making it safer for people to get around without a car in Atlanta, another car-centric place. So I think culturally we’re, we’re winning, and, um, it’s just, it’s always the case. Janette Sadik-Khan, I think she has said that the people are always ahead of the politicians. And, um, I think you’re seeing that not just in our issues, but like look at Abolish ICE, right? That was like a radical or a leftist position mere months ago. Right. And now you’ve got like my moderate council, my moderate congressperson Dan Goldman saying, “Abolish ICE.” Like it’s kind of wild how much that’s changed. So, um, but I think it’s just like one of many examples of the people get it, we just gotta bring the elected officials along.
[00:46:15] Parker: And I think that’s a, an excellent point you make in the book too of this is a, a great time to be involved and start showing up and just being a presence at a place that you don’t have to know every aspect, you don’t have to be involved in everything. But if you go to these sort of events and make your voice heard, you can have an incredible amount of say in what the future of that looks like.
[00:46:38] Doug: Yeah, I mean, we’ve joked in some places, like we’ve had, like we, we were in an audience of 1,000 people in Seattle. When we came to Minneapolis, I think it was like 400 people in the audience. When’s the last time you went to a council meeting or a public meeting about bike lanes and there were more than 20 or 30 people there, right? So if there’s so much room for- five to 10 advocates or people who don’t even c- consider themselves to be advocates to come to a meeting and dramatically shift the tone and focus of the conversation. So I think that gives me hope. And, um, yeah. And also people are just so smart about these issues. Like, we’re, we’re finding so many folks in all the cities that we’re talking to, like people who are not planners, people who are not, you know, graduates of, like, architecture school or anything like that, who just have a high level of knowledge about that. That’s really changed in the last little bit. So it’s part of why I enjoy doing the podcast is I like to talk to people who are smarter than I am.
[00:47:38] Ian: That’s… I love to tell people that, like, my role as the host is to be the dumb one in the room so that I can ask the questions that, like, you know, so that the audience members don’t have to be the ones who are like, “I feel dumb for, for having to ask this question. No, Ian had this question as well”.
[00:47:57] Doug: Yeah. I, I never like to say, like, that I’m dumb. It’s more like I’m a stand-in for the audience. Right. Yes. I, I do my homework. I do my, I do my reading, you know. Sarah and I have this dynamic on some episodes where it’s, it’s fun where one of us knows, has done all the research- Mm-hmm and the other has done none. Because then the person who’s done none especially is the stand-in for the audience- Yeah, yeah … and is asking those questions or anticipating where things are going and, and there’s some satisfaction of that. But, like, no, that, that’s what really gives me-
[00:48:26] Ian: I, too, have fond memories of “yes, yes, no” on Reply All.
[00:48:29] Doug: Oh, right, right. Yep. Um, but yeah, no, we, we, we’ve just had… And we’ve, the questions we’re getting from audiences at our live shows are really great and thoughtful. And, um, it’s just fun. It’s, it’s, it’s really… This is a dark time, but it’s really encouraging to speak to people who… Uh, my friend Mike Lydon, who’s a planner, says, you know, like, we’re all sort of pushing this big giant boulder up a hill, and some of us are gonna be pushing it from different angles. Some of us are stronger than others. Others of us have a different way of thinking about, like, the levers we should be using to push that boulder up. So we’re all bringing our skills to bear and our perspective to bear on this big boulder of progress that we’re trying to move.
[00:49:12] Ian: That’s kind of beautiful and kind of a scary, scary visual.
[00:49:15] Doug: Yeah. Yeah. Well, but that’s- But exactly … you know, we do take, we do take some steps back. The boulder sometimes just slides back a little bit and you gotta start over. That happens.
[00:49:24] Ian: Yep, yep.
[00:49:25] Parker: All right. Uh, favorite bus or train route in New York City.
[00:49:29] Doug: So I like the Q train in New York City, which gets you so many places very quickly. Um, it’s a little bit of a walk from where I live, but I can pick it up, uh, with a transfer, and it does this kind of fun
route that takes you… It also takes you through a lot of neighborhoods and communities where I used to live or work. So even though you’re below ground, it’s like, “Oh, there’s my old stop.” There’s…Whatever. It’s a great, it’s a great line. Um, that’s good. Um, the F train in New York City, it kinda has a reputation of, like, the F stands for forever, but it takes you… Like, along that line, you can go from n- my neighborhood to, like, deep into Queens and get some of the best South Asian food of dif- different South Asian co- countries and cultures, uh, probably anywhere in the US. You can get some of the best food. Um, so that’s… That… Those two would be my favorite. Not too many… N- not too much love for the F train, but I, I, I love where it takes me.
[00:50:23] Ian: Yeah. Have… Do you all… Do you actually have enough unique train lines to have used all of the letters A through Q?
[00:50:32] Doug: This is so funny ’cause this… My son is 13, and ever since I can remember, he’s been fascinated with which letters are used. And there’s actually, like, a children’s, um, musician who we love. Um, he… You should look him up on Spotify. It’s called City Stomp, and he has an ABCs of the trains, and he goes through all the letters. So, like, there’s no I train because it looks too much- Oh like a 1. Sure. I don’t… There’s no O train and no 0 train because they look too similar.
[00:51:01] Parker: Mm-hmm.
[00:51:01] Doug: Um, you know, stuff like that is kind of fun. Like, we go through why isn’t there this train, you know? There’s no U train that I can think of. Um, there, there are S trains, but they’re not the same line ’cause they’re different shuttles and things like that. So yes, but we’ve got almost every letter.
[00:51:18] Ian: Mm-hmm.
[00:51:19] Doug: But not all.
[00:51:20] Ian: Can we borrow your mayor just for a little bit?
[00:51:23] Doug: Yeah, you can, we’ll clone him. I’ll try to get a piece of his… If I- If security will get me close enough, let me get close enough, I’ll grab a strand of his hair and, uh, we’ll have our best scientists work on cloning him. But, um- Top of your head … yeah. You know, I, I know there’s been some, uh, interesting relationship with your mayor in Minneapolis, uh, to say the least, on some issues. Um, but you know, there’s some other good mayors out there. Katie Wilson in Seattle.
[00:51:49] Parker: Mm-hmm.
[00:51:49] Doug: You know, she’s a transit organizer and- Nice … and now she’s the mayor of, like, a pretty big and awesome city. So there’s some bright spots out there.
[00:51:57] Parker: Yeah, for sure.
[00:51:59] Doug: I mean, you know, I just want to extend my gratitude to everybody in the Twin Cities for doing what they’ve been doing. I, I just, I know it’s been really hard. I, I don’t even know the extent to which it’s been hard, but I’m in contact with, with friends and advocates and folks that I’ve met there. And, you know, the organizing they- we’ve seen is such an inspiration for the rest of the country, ’cause we know a lot of this is gonna come to the rest of the country, if it hasn’t already. And so, you know, seeing what people are doing there. My niece and nephew live in Minneapolis, and I have a lot of friends, uh, in the area. And so, um, I have occasion to visit now and then, and I just gotta say, I love a lot of cities in the US, but Minneapolis holds a very special place in my heart. It’s a good place.
[00:52:44] Ian: Yeah.
[00:52:45] Parker: Well, thank you.
[00:52:46] Ian: Um, and just for context for the audience who is going to be listening to this three months after we record it, uh, we’re recording this on March 3rd, so the ICE occupation of the Twin Cities is, uh, very fresh on our memory right now. Hopefully, uh, that will not be the most important thing on people’s minds come three months from now. Or some whatever comes up.
[00:53:10] Doug: You know, if there’s a city that deserves, like, a good, uh, stretch of nothing happening- … I would say it, it’s, it’s, it’s Minneapolis and it’s the Twin Cities, for sure.
[00:53:20] Ian: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you, Doug,
for coming on the show.
[00:53:25] Doug: this has been- Oh, it’s my pleasure. Thanks for reading the book.
[00:53:28] Ian: Yeah. Parker, is this the point, is this the part where you tell everybody what the next book is gonna be?
[00:53:33] Parker: Normally. I, uh, we got about halfway through this recording and I thought, “Ooh, I should probably think about what I want for the next book.” Um, and then you said Paved Paradise, and I went, “Yeah, that’s good enough.” So the next book-
[00:53:44] Doug: Paved Paradise is an excellent, excellent book. Henry Grabar, we’ve had him on the podcast I think twice. He is an outstanding writer. Um, I remember him saying, when he was writing the book and he was on the show, that, like, the War on Cars audience might be the only audience that hears a book about parking and doesn’t, like, have their eyes roll back in their head. But it is such an entertaining and informative book. I highly recommend it, if that’s what you pick.
[00:54:08] Parker: That, that is what we’re picking, so look forward to, to that.
[00:54:12] Ian: Nice.
[00:54:12] Doug: Yeah. Enjoy it.
[00:54:15] Parker: Well, wonderful. Thank you for being here, Doug.
[00:54:17] Doug: My pleasure. It was great to be here.
[00:54:20] Ian: And thank you for joining us for this episode of the Streets.MN podcast. The show is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Non-Derivative License. So feel free to republish the episode as long as you are not altering it and you are not profiting from it. The music in this episode is by Eric Brandt and the Urban Hillbilly Quartet. This episode was produced by Parker Seaman, edited and transcribed by Stina Neel, and was hosted by me, Ian R.Buck. We’re always looking to feature new voices on the Streets.MN podcast, so if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [email protected]. Streets.mn is a community publication and relies on contributions from audience members like you. If you can make a one-time or recurring donation, you can find more information about doing so at streets.mn/donate. Find other listeners and discuss this episode on your favorite social media platform using the hashtag #StreetsMNPodcast. Until next time, take care.