Culture Study Podcast - Finally a Conversation About a Car-Less Future That Won't Make You Feel Like Crap

00:00:00.000 This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne-Helen Peterson.

00:00:10.500 I'm Sarah Goodyear. I'm a journalist.

00:00:13.040 And I'm Doug Gordon. I'm an advocate. And along with Sarah, I am the co-host of the War on Cars

00:00:17.980 podcast and the co-author of the book, Life After Cars, Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the

00:00:24.680 automobile. So in the introduction to the book, you say, at this point, we are not driving cars,

00:00:31.340 cars are driving us, and we're headed for an existential crash. How did you arrive at this

00:00:36.680 thesis for your book? Well, I'd have to say it has been through long and painful observation

00:00:43.880 of all of the ways that cars are hurting us and hurting our society and our environment.

00:00:51.580 and I've been covering cars and transportation policy as a journalist since about 2006 and

00:01:00.460 really looking at it carefully. And what I've seen is just really dismaying in terms of the

00:01:08.000 harms done and the damages done. And what seems existential to me about it is the way, as with so

00:01:16.120 many other systemic problems in our society that we aren't able to attend to it, we aren't able to

00:01:22.140 see it, and we aren't able to cope with it, therefore. And the reason that we can't look at

00:01:27.720 it a lot of the times is because it's so all enveloping. And so I do think it's something

00:01:33.820 that is a fundamental challenge to the future of our species, of our societies, and we need to look

00:01:43.900 at it face on it strikes me as something that's been so ideologically normalized much in the same

00:01:49.980 way that like uh in american society like taking your husband's name there are all these very very

00:01:55.680 good arguments even to people like who are ready to receive those arguments who are on board with 0.85

00:02:01.540 those arguments and yet there are still like the argument that i always get from feminists is like 1.00

00:02:06.560 oh but it's so much easier at preschool pickup when we all have the same last name

00:02:11.240 And so the convenience like rolls over all of these other things that are trying to underline that like, yeah, it's weird that we use these massive vehicles to get everywhere and that it has not always been this way.

00:02:26.800 And that there are it's also not necessarily like this march towards progress is like more and more cars.

00:02:32.860 Like I think sometimes that's part of the argument as well.

00:02:35.840 Well, I think getting back to your original question about the intro to our book, this idea of this inevitable march towards progress, that might have been true at the beginning of the 20th century or the middle of the 20th century. 0.52

00:02:50.860 But now we're seeing Americans are sitting in crushing traffic everywhere they live. It doesn't matter if it's Los Angeles, Chicago, or Milwaukee, or a small town. Just to do anything takes a very long time.

00:03:05.840 The financial side of this, you know, the fact that a new car costs $50,000 or more, car insurance rates are higher than ever for a variety of reasons.

00:03:15.180 Oh, my gosh. Yes.

00:03:16.780 And so that's part of the existential crisis, too.

00:03:19.340 Like, it's one thing if you're spending 10% to 15% of your take-home pay on transportation.

00:03:23.980 And it's another thing if you're spending 30 percent, not to mention the housing costs that are associated with a sprawled out built environment where you either have to spend a ton of your money to live in the middle of a nice city or spend a ton of your money on a car to live in an affordable house.

00:03:43.620 Yeah. You know, this audience, I think, is one that is very receptive to these arguments. And one thing I really appreciate about the book is at the very beginning, you're like, this is a book for people who are already firmly on board. This is a book for people who are skeptical. This is a book for people who like, listen to the arguments and agree with them, but then always come up with like their version of like, but it's so much easier at preschool pickup.

00:04:11.660 and I think like what our progressive audience really appreciates is an invitation to not just

00:04:21.520 think about this on a theoretical level to not just be like yeah we know cars are bad right but

00:04:26.980 to be like okay what would that world actually look like we're looking for like practical answers

00:04:32.180 in terms of what's happening now that sort of thing have you felt that like as you have done

00:04:38.240 events around the book tour and the reception to the podcast and the reception specifically to this

00:04:43.640 book. Have you felt that eagerness like over the last, I don't know, 10 years to actually like,

00:04:49.760 let's figure this out? Yeah, 100%. 100%. I think both Sarah and I have been doing

00:04:55.160 some version of this for a long time. Sarah is a journalist, myself more as an advocate.

00:05:00.920 And when we began, there was a much more defensive posture that both we and the people

00:05:07.620 we were talking to would take on when we would talk about this we might be a little reluctant

00:05:12.940 even to say what we were doing and then if we did bring it up it was the immediate like you're

00:05:17.880 never going to change anything yeah um now even the people who live in car dependent places people

00:05:24.380 who love their cars let's say yeah do recognize that this like we said is unsustainable unpleasant

00:05:31.380 at best. You know, I always say that even drivers hate driving, the type of driving that most

00:05:38.360 drivers do stinks, like getting stuck in traffic or at the school drop off line, you know, for 20 0.92

00:05:44.460 minutes, driving in New York sucks. Just like, yeah, yeah. So we have seen more people open to 0.97

00:05:53.320 the argument and a larger group of people who are advocates themselves, or who are advocates in

00:06:00.400 spaces related to these issues like the the bicycle safety advocacy world used to be very

00:06:07.760 siloed from the housing advocacy space right the climate space and environmental space was seen as

00:06:14.740 sort of maybe related to the bicycle space but not deeply integrated into it yeah all of these

00:06:20.100 things now there's a much more holistic approach to how car-centric design increases housing

00:06:25.500 cost to how it's aggravating the climate crisis, to how it's making us more socially and politically

00:06:32.340 isolated. So that has been a dramatic shift, even in just the time since 2018, when we started the

00:06:38.960 podcast. Yeah. And I think that what we've seen on the book tour, we've gone to 18 cities so far,

00:06:46.040 we've got another eight or 10 that we're going to be going to. And they've been really diverse

00:06:50.260 cities like we've been to seattle and portland where these issues are front of mind and there's

00:06:55.600 a lot of action on them and we've been to phoenix and we've been to houston and what's been really

00:07:02.000 exciting has been to see that in every one of these places including the like deeply deeply

00:07:08.260 car dependent places there are these really vibrant activated advocacy communities that

00:07:16.220 and elected officials as well, who are actively engaged in making change. And it's not just

00:07:26.120 marginal change. It's not just a bike lane here or there. It's attitude changing. And it's really

00:07:35.280 bringing the challenge to the halls of power and saying, this system doesn't work for the people

00:07:42.440 of this city, including, as I say, like a place like Houston, which is about as car centric as

00:07:47.660 it gets. We met a guy there who drives an F-350 truck and lives in the suburbs and is sort of

00:07:55.640 exactly the kind of person that you would think wouldn't care about this at all. And he is

00:08:01.400 actively involved in Bike Houston and went with us on a bike tour of downtown, you know,

00:08:09.640 and and talked the whole way about how he wants his life and his children's lives

00:08:15.560 to be different and less car dependent and that stuff has just been so exciting for us to get

00:08:23.640 out on the on the road yeah and and see it yeah no i i think of it as like almost this broadly

00:08:32.420 intersectional fix for a lot of what ails us and you break this down in the book like all of the

00:08:38.880 ways like i want to get the the table of contents i have it right here um the table of contents is

00:08:45.760 like and you also do not shy from statistics which i appreciate like the actual number of

00:08:51.920 like people who die we had to really you know it had to be more than like a polemical argument it

00:08:56.560 really had to be yes like a well researched because we are aware that people can approach

00:09:02.420 this you know and be approached by this and say no way no how you're never taking my car away from

00:09:08.240 me like we we had to be more than just like two radicals right yeah yeah and like the part two of

00:09:14.100 the book is cars how cars ruin everything and but it's really convincing it's such a compelling

00:09:20.140 argument it's like cars ruin childhood cars ruin nature cars are killing us cars ruin society cars

00:09:26.140 are unjust and all of these things like i buy all of these arguments and talk about them in different

00:09:31.440 ways all the time in my work like especially with community the amount of ways like the the struggle

00:09:37.180 that people have in order to maintain friendships or in order to like be integrated parts of each

00:09:42.540 other's lives take the car out of that and it actually solves a lot of problems but it might

00:09:49.580 not be apparent because I think sometimes people look at the immediate solution of like well if I

00:09:54.320 have a car I can go hang out with my friends which is kind of predicated on like a 15 year

00:09:58.880 old's logic like when I was 15 I grew up in Idaho so we got our licenses when we were 15 and like

00:10:04.780 getting a car was a way to hang out with your friends, but it doesn't have to be that way now.

00:10:10.040 Yeah. I mean, I follow your work about friendship and the importance of friendship really closely.

00:10:15.440 And one of the studies that we cite in the book is Donald Appleyard's work on the way that traffic

00:10:23.580 affects our relationships with people who live on the same streets that we live on. And if you live

00:10:30.280 on a light traffic street, you're three times more likely to have friends on that street than

00:10:36.780 if you live on a heavy traffic street. So this idea that we have to travel to find our friends

00:10:43.940 and that they're friends that we already met some other way is also really interesting. I mean,

00:10:50.380 I just started a friendship with a woman who lives around the corner from me in Brooklyn,

00:10:55.880 and we do live on a low traffic street. And the way that we met was we saw her walking her dog.

00:11:05.260 And we started talking about the fact that our dog had recently died unexpectedly and how sad

00:11:11.080 that made us. And she was like, well, you can babysit my dog when I go away. And then that's

00:11:17.280 turned into a real friendship in six months, because we had that contact. And it's somebody

00:11:24.100 that I actually have a lot in common with. And I'm really hopeful that we're actually going to

00:11:28.020 really be real friends. And so I think there's so much to be gained socially, even if it's not

00:11:35.080 deep friendships, but it's that kind of incidental contact that, yeah, that keeps you kind of alive,

00:11:44.320 you know, that keeps your soul alive. And cars just deaden that. And so that's like

00:11:50.880 a super important part of it for me. Yeah, we, we talk in the book about the former surgeon

00:11:58.260 general's report on the loneliness epidemic. Yep. And how if you search for the word car or traffic

00:12:04.420 or sprawl or anything like that, you won't find it. Yeah. And yet, that is absolutely a major

00:12:11.740 driving force, pun intended, I guess, of, of our loneliness epidemic is that, you know, people are

00:12:18.800 especially the baby boomer generation, are stuck in places where they don't have many

00:12:23.980 acquaintances and they don't get the little dopamine hits that you get from like recognizing

00:12:29.680 your dry cleaner or your pharmacist and not just seeing them as a person with whom you have a

00:12:34.980 transaction in the store, but maybe a neighbor, someone who walks down the same sidewalk as you

00:12:41.100 on their way to or from where they're going. And I think that's a really, like Sarah was saying,

00:12:45.220 Not just the deep friendships that you might strike up if you meet someone at the schoolyard or on the corner, but truly the like, oh, I recognize you because I just see you every day.

00:12:56.040 Those are lovely things to have in your life.

00:12:58.560 And you don't have them with cars.

00:13:00.680 You have to be much more intentional about building relationships when you live in a car-dependent place.

00:13:05.960 I'm going to go more into this when we answer the questions.

00:13:08.680 But I live on an island that you take car ferry to get on and off of it.

00:13:12.560 three weeks out of the year the car ferry goes out for what's called dry dock and so sometimes

00:13:18.700 people leave cars on the other side which means they don't have a car on this side which means

00:13:22.680 a lot of people are essentially hitching rides and like everyone on the island like it's kind

00:13:27.520 of annoying to stock up for three weeks whatever but it becomes a time where individuals are

00:13:33.480 forced together in ways that they aren't usually in really like lovely ways whether that's on the

00:13:40.240 boat like everyone is sitting together hanging out together saying hi it only lasts eight minutes

00:13:44.940 but it's like a lovely little time or figuring out how to get transport like it forces interaction

00:13:50.400 and it forces intimacy and I understand some people are like I just don't want to

00:13:54.780 fucking talk to anyone ever and like you can and I know this from riding the subway you can

00:14:01.080 indicate with your eyes that you don't want to talk to anyone ever or you can walk like 0.99

00:14:06.140 there are options. But that's just kind of a micro, a forced experiment and how it breeds

00:14:12.940 this sort of intimacy. Okay, so we need to get to the listener questions because they're very good.

00:14:16.860 Yes, they really are. We're going to start with one from Fiona. And this one's a little long,

00:14:21.600 but I think it really lays out what's going to, what goes through a lot of minds when they think

00:14:26.220 about life without cars. I have a small secondhand car with low kilometers, because I always catch

00:14:32.420 public transport to work and I cycle and walk when I can. I fully support increased public

00:14:38.100 transport options, truly. However, I still consider it a privilege to have a car and to be able to

00:14:45.040 drive. Having the option to drive gives me freedom and choices I wouldn't have if I had to rely on

00:14:51.440 public transport. As a woman, it provides me with autonomy and in some situations safety. For

00:14:57.760 example, can I enroll my child at the school that suits them best that is a 10-minute drive but

00:15:02.640 inaccessible by public transport? Can I take that job I really want on the other side of town and

00:15:07.900 still get my kid to after-school soccer? Can I shop at the cheaper fruit and veg shop I'd need to

00:15:13.240 drive to? I just feel like every time I hear people talk about a wonderful carless life,

00:15:18.900 either it's a big city with amazing public transport or a small town where you can afford

00:15:23.920 to live walking distance to everything or the person is privileged in where they live and what

00:15:28.680 work they do. And I feel like it's usually the woman giving up the opportunity to get some things 0.97

00:15:33.940 done quickly and easily by car and instead spending ages on public transport and putting up with less 0.70

00:15:40.120 choice and freedom. Do you genuinely think it's possible to be carless in a small spread out city

00:15:46.100 like mine without restricting your job options, reducing your capacity to visit spread out family

00:15:52.220 and friends, and limiting choices in you and your family's education, leisure, shopping,

00:15:57.640 et cetera.

00:15:58.560 Do you not end up stuck with what's closest or on the train line?

00:16:02.920 That seems to be what happens to my friends that have no car.

00:16:06.200 So this has always been a huge selling point for cars, right?

00:16:09.220 Freedom?

00:16:10.320 Yeah, freedom.

00:16:10.940 It's a great question. 0.90

00:16:12.060 It's a great question, and for women in particular. 1.00

00:16:15.200 Historically, cars have provided autonomy, and certainly in the early days of cars, a

00:16:21.640 lot of women really felt empowered by them. So I don't want to discount that. And I don't want

00:16:30.160 to discount the very real lives of people who live in cities and towns that have been designed

00:16:38.280 for the car, where things are spread out. Absolutely. You don't have as many options

00:16:44.900 in a lot of these places. And you might want a car to access those options for sure. And

00:16:53.340 first of all, I think that if you can live with fewer cars, if you can have one car in your

00:17:00.980 family instead of two or three or four, that's really great. And I think that, you know, is

00:17:07.940 something that we completely, you know, recognize as a great solution relative to everybody having

00:17:16.440 a car. But this kind of gets to something that I say a lot, which is that in North America right

00:17:23.880 now, and particularly in the United States of America, living in a walkable, transit-rich

00:17:30.540 environment has become a luxury good. And that's unacceptable to me. I don't think that it should

00:17:39.500 be only for privileged people to live as I do in a place where I have all of the opportunities I

00:17:47.820 want, all of the different kinds of shopping I would ever want to do, every kind of school that

00:17:52.580 I might want for my child is all accessible by walking or public transportation or bicycling.

00:17:58.580 All of that is accessible to me. Why do I get that? Because I'm privileged enough to live in Brooklyn, New York, and people in 98% of the communities in our country don't get that. I think that's fundamentally unjust. And that's part of what we're fighting for.

00:18:19.400 In the meantime, I think being real about the limitations of our systems is great. And there's no shame here. Like, we're not into shaming people for having to use cars and for wanting to use cars for the things that they can access.

00:18:38.460 But for someone like Fiona, I think it sounds like she's already doing a great job of, you know, giving herself more choices and more freedom.

00:18:49.520 That's the choices and freedom that we want our government and our planners to give us when they're designing our communities and when they're fixing our communities.

00:19:02.060 because we have a system now that is broken

00:19:06.160 and that is sick and we need to heal it.

00:19:11.620 And when we're doing that work of healing and repair,

00:19:14.800 I think we need to keep physical proximity

00:19:19.460 and all of the stuff that it enables at front of mind.

00:19:24.420 Yeah, and I would say,

00:19:26.140 I think Fiona is almost like a poster child

00:19:28.220 for our argument in many ways,

00:19:29.780 is that we are not saying life with no cars.

00:19:34.860 We are saying, you know, in a weird way,

00:19:36.820 life with fewer cars, as Sarah said,

00:19:39.360 like life with maybe one car instead of multiple.

00:19:42.300 And Fiona sounds like she's sort of doing

00:19:44.100 the like heuristics of, in this case,

00:19:47.160 to access this thing,

00:19:48.840 the car is the best tool for me to get home late at night

00:19:54.360 if I'm a woman and I don't feel safe 0.88

00:19:56.180 or access the cheaper grocery store

00:19:58.340 or better educational opportunities for my child.

00:20:01.120 The argument that we make is exactly that.

00:20:03.680 A car is a tool. 0.96

00:20:05.900 Now, if Fiona lived in a place, as I think even more Americans do, 1.00

00:20:09.480 where there wasn't even the option for her to walk to a park 1.00

00:20:13.260 or walk to a closer but maybe more expensive grocery store,

00:20:18.680 and she had to default to using a car for every last trip,

00:20:22.900 that would be the opposite of our argument. 0.88

00:20:25.520 That would be the opposite of freedom as we see it.

00:20:28.340 And so it sounds like she's sort of living a sort of life after cars in the way that's possible for her right now. And that's great. That's fine.

00:20:36.100 But the thing that it makes me think of this part at the end where it's like, you know, you reduce your options when you reduce essentially like your parameters of your travel capacity.

00:20:49.880 And again, sorry to come back to living on an island, but because we live on a short ferry ride away from a midsize city, it's like a 25 minute drive into town.

00:21:01.940 because of that proximity by car the fact that you can get to the city by car there are fewer

00:21:08.320 options on our island this wasn't the case even 50 years ago when fewer people had cars fewer

00:21:16.440 people went off island more people worked on the island there were more options to eat dinner to

00:21:21.800 have like a little store like just there were more services and like there was an auto repair shop

00:21:27.040 that sort of thing, an auto repair shop, which is funny, on the island.

00:21:31.320 Everyone needs a walking distance auto repair shop, for sure.

00:21:35.180 Actually, that's...

00:21:36.260 You would, you would.

00:21:37.380 You kind of do.

00:21:38.620 When your car breaks down, what do you need?

00:21:40.780 But the islands in the San Juans that are much further afield,

00:21:45.800 it's more like an hour, an hour and a half long ferry ride,

00:21:48.260 they have, by necessity, developed a more robust infrastructure in so many ways,

00:21:54.580 It's not just like doctors, but also like maybe two grocery stores, that sort of thing, right?

00:21:59.340 Like, so sometimes that delimited space means there are more options near you instead, like creates neighborhoods.

00:22:10.640 And I know this is part of like the walkable city argument, right?

00:22:13.380 Is that you are creating many neighborhoods within the larger city instead of, oh, everyone get in their car and drive to the big box row, which is an incredibly crammed and horrible experience.

00:22:24.580 in the car as you try to exit on these like strodes can you define a strode for us so that

00:22:31.240 yeah yeah so a strode is i think it comes from chuck marone of strong towns and the idea is

00:22:39.620 that it is a road that is neither a highway nor a local street but tries to function as both yes

00:22:48.380 and and we all have examples of that in our communities including in new york

00:22:53.140 where it is where the big box stores are often located,

00:22:56.700 the bigger auto zones and that kind of stuff,

00:22:59.780 where maybe there are sidewalks, maybe there are not.

00:23:02.820 Maybe.

00:23:03.320 But there are a lot of driveways, but then also high speed limits.

00:23:08.000 And it sort of doesn't work and is usually not safe for anybody.

00:23:13.100 Incredibly high mortality rate.

00:23:14.880 Yeah, short definition.

00:23:16.280 Yeah.

00:23:17.000 Right.

00:23:17.360 Right. And, and also just really, they, they take up a huge amount of space and, and that space is

00:23:25.820 wasteland. Yeah. It's just space to move through. And I sometimes, and this sort of goes to your

00:23:31.420 point of, if we have smaller neighborhoods that we cultivate and that have smaller amenities that

00:23:41.480 serve the people who are in that catchment area, the space itself becomes more textured and richer

00:23:51.080 and more of a sort of, if you think of it in an ecosystem sense, it's more diverse. It's more

00:23:58.480 like biodiversity, right? And so if we foster that, then our spaces become more rich and

00:24:08.080 interesting, but also so does our time and our time that is spent going to do the things that

00:24:16.100 we have to do. And I, I often say that cars, you know, they create all this waste space. We see

00:24:22.000 that we see the, the, the space alongside the highway that is really just, you know, like when

00:24:28.260 you're taking an exit ramp and there's a grassy area there, that, that, that area is nothing,

00:24:34.740 right it's we've just created nothing there but also your time moving through that space

00:24:41.740 yeah is also a wasteland that is that is often nothingness okay maybe you're listening to the

00:24:48.360 radio to a podcast to music that's great maybe you're having a conversation with a friend

00:24:52.200 that's great but essentially we've created a system where we're always moving through

00:24:58.260 space and time to get to the stuff we want. And we're not thinking about just how nice and rich

00:25:08.520 and more rewarding it would be to be moving through space and time that hasn't been blasted

00:25:13.900 to smithereens by cars. Right. Yeah. And I think also like the ability to travel long distances

00:25:21.520 is I understand it as a privilege, but I also think that it's like overhyped. Like there is

00:25:27.800 there are there are real benefits to say not leaving the island for three weeks yeah yeah

00:25:34.040 yeah um there's there's a great quote from andre gorse a french philosopher who says that the car

00:25:40.260 wastes more time than it saves and creates more distance than it overcomes and he argues you can

00:25:45.740 get yourself of course you can get yourself to work doing 60 miles an hour but that's because

00:25:49.960 you live 30 miles from your job and are willing to give yourself a half hour just to go the last

00:25:54.800 six miles. And I think about in the context of what Sarah was saying, I don't consider a 45-minute

00:26:01.260 subway ride much of a waste because I can read. If I choose to talk to another person, I can. I can

00:26:07.420 also, like you said, send those signals that I don't want to talk to anyone and pop the headphones

00:26:11.520 on. A walk through a beautiful neighborhood to go get my groceries does not feel like a waste.

00:26:16.660 I might bump into a friend or notice a new business that I want to go to the next time that

00:26:22.400 I'm out, um, or lament the loss of a favorite business, you know, that has gone out of business,

00:26:27.860 the kind of things you just can't see or notice or experience when you're driving. Cause it's just,

00:26:32.080 it's wasted time. Yeah. And the thing that I'll say to anyone who's listening to this and like,

00:26:36.120 is coming up with objections in their head, like, Oh, well I would like to live near my,

00:26:41.260 where I work, but like, there's no affordable housing there. Like, absolutely. The thing that

00:26:45.800 I owe in conversations like this, it's not, Oh, let's only fix the car thing. It's like,

00:26:51.280 let's fix the car thing and like we were gesturing to before let's also fix the affordable housing

00:26:56.380 piece of the problem as well like a hundred percent absolutely i mean that's that's all

00:27:01.520 part of it and again it's it is like i think thinking of it as an ecosystem can be really

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00:30:41.820 you. Okay, next question builds on this and Melody's going to read it. It comes from Anne.

00:30:51.220 Are there examples of places where cars have been eliminated or lessened in an effective way?

00:30:56.100 I can't imagine my community without cars. And also, I would love it. Does it all need to be

00:31:01.320 torn down or can we readjust? You can 100% readjust. In the book, we talk about the

00:31:08.420 Belgian city of Ghent, which like a lot of European cities in the 1960s and the post-war period,

00:31:15.440 really experimented with car-centric design and cramming cars in every last nook and cranny of

00:31:20.320 the city. It was the wave of the future. And they found that by the 90s, this was creating tons and

00:31:26.080 tons of problems and so they pedestrianized the the immediate center of the city the historic core

00:31:31.180 there was a lot of objection to this the mayor at the time got a bullet in the mail um ironically

00:31:37.420 from they later found out from the owner of a shoe store who thought that who thought that this would

00:31:42.900 um hurt his business and other businesses um and then by the time you got to the early 2010s

00:31:49.420 they were experiencing the same sort of problems just further out.

00:31:53.740 We spoke to a man named Philippe Watteau, who's the mobility minister there, the kind of director of transportation.

00:32:01.340 And they decided to see, like, how can we reduce the number of cars that are circulating through our city?

00:32:08.740 Because a number of the cars, and this is true, I think, in lots of American cities, had no real business in the city.

00:32:15.420 You know, they were just using the city as a shortcut, going from one side to the other.

00:32:20.780 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:32:21.760 So and this is true, I think, of there have been studies that show this in New York and

00:32:26.300 other places.

00:32:27.160 And so what they did was they spent many years devising a plan, a traffic circulation plan,

00:32:32.840 where they would reverse some of the direction of the streets, they would ban cars from other

00:32:37.300 places where they felt they wanted to raise the rates of cycling, for example, or make

00:32:42.200 it easier for public transportation to get through in traffic-free streets. And Ghent is circled by

00:32:48.460 a ring road. And what they did was they basically said, we're going to divide the city into six

00:32:52.740 portions. And if you want to drive from, let's say, section one to section three, you can't just

00:32:59.220 drive straight across. You have to go out, drive around. I'm making a lot of hand motions, which I

00:33:04.440 know will not probably help with your podcast listening audience. But you have to drive out,

00:33:08.700 drive around and come back in and what that did was number one it cut the number of people just

00:33:15.020 using the city as a cut through people who didn't live there work there or who weren't shopping

00:33:20.540 there anything like that number two if you lived in the city and you thought oh i need to go see

00:33:25.160 my friend who lives in section six let's say yeah you might think to yourself it's gonna take

00:33:30.580 honestly it's gonna take 30 to 40 minutes to drive just across town because i have to go out

00:33:35.700 and come back around, the bus walking or biking will be faster.

00:33:40.300 And so they did this with a very, I think it only cost about 5.8 million euros, which

00:33:46.240 is a very inexpensive amount of money.

00:33:48.460 And they instituted it after years of planning, literally over one weekend in 2017.

00:33:54.820 And it immediately resulted in a huge drop in the amount of cars coming through the city.

00:34:00.800 They met their 2030 goals for cycling rates within two years.

00:34:05.700 Um, they nitrous oxide levels went way down. And the interesting thing, I think the most surprising and probably important thing is that time and the experience for drivers was improved.

00:34:19.800 So because what ended up happening is that if you absolutely needed to drive within Ghent, you were no longer stuck behind the person who was just cutting through.

00:34:30.140 You were no longer stuck behind the person who just decided to use the car to go get groceries.

00:34:36.660 You, the person doing whatever you felt was important and necessary by car, were now suddenly experiencing more traffic-free streets.

00:34:44.680 And even though the distance for drivers increased to get places within the city, the time it took them to get places went down.

00:34:52.740 So I think Ghent is one of the best examples of low cost, high impact, and it's not all or nothing.

00:34:59.140 You can still drive.

00:35:00.400 It's just that they introduce a little friction into the decision making about whether or not you're going to drive.

00:35:06.760 It's a great example.

00:35:07.660 Did they already have a super robust bus system or did they add more funding to that bus system so that it would?

00:35:13.920 because I love this example of like and I think about it all the time when when I was in New York

00:35:18.360 like oftentimes you would put a location into Google Maps and it would tell you okay if you

00:35:22.800 take the subway it's this long if you walk it's this long if it's the same amount of time then

00:35:26.460 I'm going to freaking walk right but so like if you see okay if I take the bus it's this much if

00:35:32.300 I drive it's this much I'm going to take the bus but that only works if the bus system is super

00:35:36.120 robust right yeah I mean they you know it's Europe so obviously like there are some differences they

00:35:40.500 had some good public transit, good streetcars. They were able to increase service on some of

00:35:45.360 the existing lines. They added some bike infrastructure. But the thing that also

00:35:50.960 happened is they didn't need to actually add all that much bike infrastructure. I often say that

00:35:56.680 every city has bike lanes. It's just all the cars are parked on them. Like if you just remove the

00:36:01.060 cars and turn those streets into bicycle priority streets, lower the speed limit, put in some

00:36:06.480 traffic calming that's what they did um so it really helped and this has been this was done

00:36:12.880 in Groningen in the Netherlands it's been done in some other places you know obviously congestion

00:36:17.780 pricing here in New York just introducing the nine dollar fee to come into 59th Street and

00:36:24.820 below in Manhattan has decreased the amount of cars and it has in effect improved bus service

00:36:31.300 by increasing the speeds of buses,

00:36:34.660 so much so that they sometimes run ahead of schedule.

00:36:37.600 So it's been really remarkable.

00:36:39.960 But I can hear people thinking,

00:36:42.880 I think I can hear people thinking,

00:36:44.900 well, that's Europe.

00:36:46.520 I know, I know, always.

00:36:48.200 Always, yeah.

00:36:49.080 And for sure, a lot of European cities,

00:36:52.400 including Ghent, were first planned

00:36:55.280 long before the automobile.

00:36:58.040 And have that natural,

00:37:00.060 like because they were often have like they were reinforced cities like they were.

00:37:06.780 Yeah. So they had the natural wall.

00:37:08.740 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

00:37:10.580 So so I'd just like to talk about a North American city that has made some choices.

00:37:17.000 And it's a new city and it's not far from you.

00:37:20.540 It's Vancouver, British Columbia.

00:37:22.640 Yeah.

00:37:23.160 And Vancouver, British Columbia is a very modern city, is obviously a relatively new city,

00:37:29.060 You know, white settlers got there and started building it on the same timeline as a lot of our North American cities doesn't have a medieval center.

00:37:37.960 But what it does have and has had are a series of city planners and leaders who have actively chosen, and sometimes because of community activism, which was very strong, and a lot of it was women saying, don't destroy our neighborhoods to create highways.

00:38:00.300 But they've made a series of very intentional decisions about how to build, where to build, and what to build that have made Vancouver's downtown an incredibly vibrant and easy place to get around by foot, by bike, by transit.

00:38:20.020 And, you know, I think everybody who says, well, you know, it's only old European cities that can be like this.

00:38:26.080 That's not true.

00:38:26.800 We got a tour of downtown Vancouver from Brent Toteron, who used to be the chief planner there.

00:38:33.140 He was there during the Olympics that they had there.

00:38:38.160 And there was a lot of construction that happened.

00:38:41.580 And what they decided to do was build a lot of really beautiful housing, multi-unit, some of it quite high rise, and then to be very thoughtful about what goes in on the ground floor.

00:38:55.440 And what there is is there's big supermarkets, there's pharmacies, there's dry cleaners, there's a Costco in the middle of downtown Vancouver that people go to with little wheeled bags to bring their stuff home.

00:39:15.240 And so I think it's really important to not get caught in this thing of thinking, well, because these cities were designed after the advent of the automobile, they're just a lost cause.

00:39:24.380 They're not. There's lots that you can do. And, you know, we were just in Phoenix. You know, Phoenix is a city that has a great street grid and a lot of empty space. It has a lot of parking lots that could be buildings that have services in them that people would go to.

00:39:47.120 You know, all of these things are things that if you're thoughtful about them, you can make better communities wherever you are.

00:39:55.660 And land use is a big part of that.

00:39:59.220 Yeah.

00:40:00.480 First of all, I think Austin all the time, like there are so many opportunities to make that into an incredibly far, far more alternate transit heavy city.

00:40:09.780 And I lived there for four years when I was a grad student, and I rarely used my car because it's actually fairly easy to be a student in Austin.

00:40:20.220 There are a lot of ways for people in various parts of the city to get to the college, to the university.

00:40:27.880 It is not easy if you are not trying to get to the college.

00:40:32.740 The other thing that this makes me think of is Waco.

00:40:34.920 Do you know the history of Waco at all?

00:40:36.720 No.

00:40:36.960 No, not really.

00:40:37.820 It's so interesting because there was a massive tornado that went through, I think I'm getting this right, in the 1950s.

00:40:45.420 And they, before that, had like a very typical mid-sized city downtown.

00:40:50.700 And that tornado raised almost all of their big buildings.

00:40:54.680 And the cheapest thing to do, and this was also at the same time that the freeway, that 35, they were building 35 that would take people from Austin through Waco up to Dallas.

00:41:05.220 So they're putting in the freeway.

00:41:06.720 They're like everywhere else. They're demolishing these historically black neighborhoods, historically like the that's where the freeway went. 1.00

00:41:14.900 And they're also realizing, OK, people are moving to these suburbs. No one wants to be downtown.

00:41:18.880 The easiest thing to do with all of these raised building lots is to turn them into parking.

00:41:23.200 So they have so much parking in downtown Waco, which has served them well for like the resurgence of Waco as a destination spot for Chip and Joanna Gaines and Magnolia.

00:41:34.500 but now they have like more parking than businesses and that was the case for much of like the 70s 80s

00:41:40.960 90s was it was over laden with parking and no development so when you become like when you

00:41:47.140 only do the thing that makes the cheapest sense to like turn something into a parking lot or turn

00:41:52.540 it into i think about the sides of freeways always turn them into storage units right like yeah i

00:41:58.980 mean if you think about it like the best places to visit or and the places where people sort of

00:42:04.420 sometimes fantasize about living are the worst places to drive you know yeah yeah and uh you

00:42:10.240 know you you can build a city where it's really easy to drive like you're talking about with

00:42:14.380 surface parking lots and wide freeways but what is there to drive to or even see um and so you

00:42:20.940 know no one no one fantasizes about going on vacation no offense to waco texas like if you

00:42:26.500 have a choice between paris france and waco texas if you love going to paris you go to waco texas

00:42:32.880 Yes, I hear you. You have to drive to get there.

00:42:36.660 Right. And I think we talk about this a lot, that there is a revealed preference in where

00:42:41.300 people like to go on vacation. They like to go to a car-free beach resort. They like to go

00:42:48.020 to a European city and stroll around Paris or Amsterdam. They like to go to Disneyland and

00:42:54.520 walk around with their kids. Very few, except for the camping trip, right? Trips that we make

00:43:00.500 as vacationers tend to center around driving well and this always reminds me of like why do people

00:43:06.760 love disneyland because it's like a classic car free city like it's like the example is right

00:43:12.740 there as like at the heart of the american vacation imagination like what if we had a

00:43:17.960 version of disneyland like everywhere just the like commerce part you know yes exactly but with

00:43:24.000 but with the the messiness of a real city right like that's what yeah yeah yeah yeah not the

00:43:29.160 the Disneyfied version of it. Okay, next question, close to my heart as someone who lives in a very

00:43:35.560 rural area. This comes from Kate. What comes after cars in very rural areas? My parents live 30 minutes

00:43:43.920 from the Walmart. And we've lived in places one to two hours from the Walmart. I definitely want

00:43:50.220 a society without cars. The unique geography of the United States just adds in some extra

00:43:55.840 challenges. I'd love to hear how you and your guest imagine overcoming those challenges.

00:44:00.960 You know, I think in those places, cars are always going to be a part of the landscape. And

00:44:06.080 that's okay, right? Like, in some places in this country, you're going to need air conditioning

00:44:12.440 all the time, right? It would be a waste for me to have my air conditioning on right now in New

00:44:18.000 York City. And but it's okay that some people want to live in a place where they either have

00:44:22.140 to have their heat on a lot or their air conditioning a lot. And that's sort of how I

00:44:25.780 see cars of like, if you live in a rural area, and the nearest Walmart is, you know, 30 miles away

00:44:34.240 or 30 minutes away or whatever. Yeah, drive. It's the right tool for you to use for that job.

00:44:39.920 Absolutely. But if you live in those places, you should want then yeah, I think we're all

00:44:45.760 old enough to remember all the discussions of like peak oil that we were going to run out,

00:44:49.940 Right. Right. If you are worried about limited resources, you should want the people with the ability to live with fewer resources to be able to do that really easily so that you can use the resources you need to live your life.

00:45:02.980 And I think that's fine. If you and your family live up the side of a mountain in Vermont or on some ranch in Montana, in the San Juan Islands, far from somewhere, and this is the best way to get around, great. That's fine.

00:45:22.020 And that's part of our approach is that we're not trying to lecture anybody.

00:45:25.260 We're saying, let's start by fixing the places that should and can be fixed first,

00:45:30.980 and then start thinking about other ways.

00:45:34.040 You know, maybe it's electric cars in all of those places.

00:45:36.680 Maybe it's a bus that just runs on weekends so people can get to the big destinations.

00:45:42.960 There's lots of creative solutions, even in rural areas.

00:45:46.480 But if you need a car there, great, good, fine.

00:45:49.060 Yeah. But I want to jump in on the rural areas because I did spend many years of my life living

00:45:54.640 in rural Maine. I lived on the side of a mountain on a dirt road that, you know, didn't even get

00:46:01.980 plowed all the way through in the winter times. And there were things about some of, I lived in

00:46:08.840 two different small villages in Maine, and each of them had a town center that had a store,

00:46:15.960 and people would go and sit and have coffee there and it had a gas station and a little market and

00:46:25.660 all of those things I really think that and and when I was living there it was just during the

00:46:30.960 90s the Walmart was being built out on the state highway yeah and that changed a lot of things

00:46:39.400 for a lot of places I think that a lot of people in Maine in particular realized what they were

00:46:45.820 losing at the time and were trying really hard to fight some of that. And they were unsuccessful

00:46:51.640 in many cases. But I do think that, you know, in a lot of rural areas, though, as you were talking

00:46:59.540 about, Anne, you know, those places used to have these amenities. And I think that's something we

00:47:08.520 can rebuild and that we can encourage again with zoning, which is, you know, sort of a deadly

00:47:14.800 boring word, but it's a really important tool for how we repair our society. And so, yes,

00:47:23.820 certainly there are places where you're 100% going to make every trip by car. I've lived in

00:47:29.720 those places. But even then, if I could drive two miles down the road to the cozy store where I could

00:47:38.660 buy a sandwich and basic groceries and sit and have a coffee instead of driving 10 miles to the

00:47:45.380 Walmart, where I had to walk through a bleak parking lot to get to a big box store and then

00:47:51.260 just drive home without having had much interaction with people. I think those are choices that we can

00:47:56.840 make and that we can talk to our leaders about, you know, how can we make this town a better place

00:48:05.440 to be. And so, yeah, we're real about it. Like Doug says, you know, we just think that cars

00:48:13.020 should be put in their place to a certain extent. I'd also say that we're talking about

00:48:18.060 livability and proximity, but we should also in the case of rural communities, especially

00:48:22.800 talk about safety because you can live a completely car dependent life and you should

00:48:28.540 be able to live a completely car dependent life and not be at fear of dying just because you're

00:48:33.640 driving to the Walmart because of high speed limits or dangerous road conditions or dangerous

00:48:38.600 drivers with whom you share the road. So I think, you know, there are things that

00:48:43.600 smaller communities, more rural communities can do to make roads safer so that people are not

00:48:50.460 dying at these extreme rates that we see in the United States in all kinds of communities.

00:48:56.100 Can I insert, this is sort of a non-sweck order, but not, the part of I-5 that I travel whenever

00:49:02.520 I go into town so just around Bellingham the like 20 miles it's one of the deadliest parts of I-5

00:49:08.100 and they did these studies recently that to figure out why essentially like why are there so many

00:49:14.360 accidents so many fatalities do you want to know why it's so fascinating this area of town the way

00:49:21.020 that they um it was Bellingham was actually four different towns that then came together this is a

00:49:26.260 very common story for lots of places in the west right it's like four villages that come together

00:49:31.020 it's also coastal so it's very weird sort of similar to seattle in terms of like the grid

00:49:37.040 is fucked like i get lost all of the time and then i5 comes through and they snake it through town

00:49:45.560 in a way that's supposed to be very convenient right and the way that they did it created the 0.99

00:49:52.040 scenario where most people in order to go even like two miles you get on the freeway and then

00:49:59.600 you get off right so you have tons of people entering the freeway for a very short trip

00:50:05.140 and then getting off so many more entrances and exits so many more speed ups and slow downs

00:50:11.600 so many more people trying to merge than any other place like on i-5 wow and so they basically like

00:50:21.780 the freeway became too convenient yes and that is why there are so many accidents and um i just

00:50:28.700 think about that all the time like what would the alternative be and bellingham is also a city that

00:50:33.200 is trying so hard to become more bike friendly and it's really really difficult in part because

00:50:39.940 the grid is so weird there aren't a lot of like byways there are some but there aren't a ton

00:50:45.440 and then if you're in town you're often trying to get to the freeway and it reminds me of the

00:50:51.880 conversation about ghent like everyone is mad about the traffic and like all these people from

00:50:57.620 vancouver coming down to go to seattle and like they're coming to shop and go to costco like

00:51:02.560 pack up the trader joe's parking lot like just the experience of driving in the city is so much

00:51:09.380 more elevated and angry than it should be well this is exactly my point that i was making earlier

00:51:14.840 it's like even drivers hate driving and they hate other drivers yes like we can all agree that other

00:51:19.620 drivers are the problem right and i think and then this gets deflected onto cyclists who are just

00:51:24.040 trying to like just trying to survive when really it's actually about the cars and the way that the

00:51:30.180 traffic is working yeah and that's the big thing is like the only solution to traffic is to give

00:51:35.680 people viable alternatives to driving that's it that's the only solution you can't widen highways

00:51:42.420 there isn't space in some cities to do it it wouldn't work even if you had the space the only

00:51:47.960 thing you can do i sometimes joke like if you want better traffic you should encourage all of

00:51:53.960 your neighbors to take public transportation yeah like that's that's what you should do yeah

00:51:58.680 well and i also sometimes do you get frustrated with like the easy fixes that are right there

00:52:04.280 that like just cannot happen like they refuse to time the bus that comes to our ferry terminal

00:52:10.880 to when the ferry is loading and unloading so so 17 minute wait i'm really curious what is

00:52:19.080 i mean i presume somebody has has talked to them about this like what is the rationale for that

00:52:25.240 there's not enough ridership but there's not enough ridership right yeah that's always the

00:52:30.180 case i mean it's you know there's an adage in our circles that like trying to gauge the you know the

00:52:36.800 necessity of a bike lane on a dangerous road by the number of cyclists on it is like trying to

00:52:41.660 gauge the necessity of a bridge over a river by the number of drivers crossing it like yeah you

00:52:48.040 know, you just have to provide the service and then people will use it, right?

00:52:57.400 Today's episode is brought to you by Ollie. So Melody, we had to disrupt our recording

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00:57:08.440 Okay, next question is about families in car culture. This is from Maggie.

00:57:14.220 We're a suburban one-car family with two school-aged kids that we often ferry by cargo

00:57:18.740 bike. So I have a lot of thoughts. But my main question is, what's the deal with toxic masculinity

00:57:24.240 and car brain? I noticed that people, men, are so defensive if you criticize their driving.

00:57:30.540 Failure to look for bikes, not signaling, dooring, etc. It makes me so mad because our safety is

00:57:36.080 actually at stake, especially when the offender is a large truck that's obviously for show.

00:57:40.860 Also, there was a bike lane that was put in that resulted in some reduced parking and people 1.00

00:57:45.480 absolutely lost their shit. How do we move past this kind of zero sum rhetoric? Is it uniquely 0.99

00:57:51.240 American? Love this question. I love this. Well, as the man here, let me allow me to explain to

00:57:59.100 you all. No, what is it with you guys? Yeah. It's funny, because I was gonna say, Sarah,

00:58:04.480 this is more your beat in terms of like, petro masculinity and all the rest. No, people do get

00:58:10.000 very territorial. And usually the people who get the most territorial are of the male species.

00:58:17.200 You know, so for a certain extent, it is zero sum, right? Like, the problem of cars in cities

00:58:24.420 is a geometry problem. And by necessity, if you're going to make a protected bike lane where

00:58:31.120 there was none, unless you have some amount of extra space on the road, like 14 foot wide lanes

00:58:37.700 that you can shave a couple of feet off of here and there,

00:58:40.160 you are by necessity going to have to take space away

00:58:43.160 from one mode and give it to another.

00:58:45.660 That is just, that's just geometry.

00:58:48.960 So people get very defensive.

00:58:52.540 It is very hard to explain.

00:58:55.000 This will be better for you, the driver,

00:58:57.080 if I, the mother or father with the two kids

00:59:00.860 are on our cargo bike instead of our Jeep Wagoneer.

00:59:04.720 You know, it is very hard to explain that stuff.

00:59:07.700 We all put a lot of pride in our cars when we have them.

00:59:12.260 You know, people spend a lot of money.

00:59:14.420 It's very precarious when you're driving them.

00:59:16.780 God forbid you so much as scratch it.

00:59:18.620 That could be $1,000 out of your pocket. 0.98

00:59:20.860 This is so funny to me because I could give two shits about my car.

00:59:24.100 I'm like, my Mazda CX-5 from 2017, it gets me where I need to go. 1.00

00:59:29.100 And it is like, I'm proud that it looks like shit. 0.99

00:59:31.780 That means I drive it. 0.99

00:59:33.080 You know what I mean?

00:59:34.080 Yeah.

00:59:34.460 And, you know, it would be great if more people saw their cars as just that.

00:59:37.380 is just like a means of conveyance, but people don't.

00:59:40.380 They see them as extensions of themselves and of their personalities.

00:59:44.820 But yeah, people get, there's a lot of fear involved with change.

00:59:47.760 I think there's a real, something I compare our movement to is,

00:59:52.200 remember the freak out over Obamacare in 2009, you know,

00:59:56.420 or early on when they were trying to introduce government healthcare.

01:00:02.360 It was like, you know, gosh.

01:00:03.640 Oh, you mean Medicare?

01:00:05.080 Right, right, exactly.

01:00:06.800 And then, you know, flash forward to many years later and the first Trump go around and it was like hands off my Obamacare.

01:00:13.180 Right. Like that to me is how a lot of this will play out.

01:00:16.280 It's like the early reaction is no way, no how, no one's going to use it.

01:00:21.920 I need my car. You know, we'll flash forward here in New York 10, 15 years after we started putting in some bike lanes.

01:00:29.360 People are defending the bike lanes that the last administration wanted to rip out.

01:00:32.900 So, you know, I think on the masculinity piece, we could probably do the entire episode just about that. Men, there is something about the consumption and the presentation, almost like the SUV has become the peacock's tail of mobility. It's it's lost all evolutionary function, all utility. And it's just for it's just for show. It's just for show.

01:00:55.900 It's also all that's available oftentimes, like not all, but like because of how few sedans are now being produced.

01:01:05.040 Absolutely.

01:01:05.860 Yes, there's that too.

01:01:07.200 But I think, you know, I think a lot about this and we do write about it in the book and we've talked about it on the podcast quite a bit, the toxic masculinity sort of Venn diagram with toxic driving.

01:01:20.080 And, you know, it's very real. And I do think that men in our society right now are fixated on demonstrating strength and power because they feel threatened in a lot of ways by the way that women have moved into the workforce and the educational system and proven themselves to be pretty good at work.

01:01:50.080 working and going to school and stuff like that. And I think that the petromasculinity is kind of

01:01:57.600 a reflection of that. It's I'm bigger, I'm stronger. And then when you see a woman riding

01:02:06.380 her kids in a cargo bike and she passes you because it's actually a more efficient form

01:02:12.740 of transportation, and you're stuck in your enormous truck idling as she goes to tootling

01:02:20.580 on by, I think that unfortunately, there are a lot of men who are threatened by that. And just

01:02:28.540 the same way that men are threatened about all other things like that women can play hockey,

01:02:34.120 for instance. So I just, I think it's part and parcel of all that. The sad thing is that in the

01:02:41.700 case of men feeling threatened about their vehicles, it perpetuates this system that

01:02:48.080 actually is, as we've mentioned a couple of times here, that kills people and that kills

01:02:55.120 their own families and that destroys our natural world. And we kind of have to find a way of

01:03:04.160 checking that and figuring out how to talk to men about that. But at the same time,

01:03:11.740 I don't think that we should be coddling them too much. I think we just have to try to build

01:03:18.020 healthier places for families and hope that men at some point recognize that building places where

01:03:28.080 women and children are comfortable is, is sort of part of their masculine duty, if they see that

01:03:35.580 they have a masculine duty, you know, isn't part of that creating safe spaces for growing families.

01:03:44.240 Yeah, you know, I think we need to figure out a way to talk about that.

01:03:47.100 Yeah. And I think we also have to define strength and power in the way that we mean it,

01:03:50.920 because it's not physical strength. It is dominance. Like that, that to me is like the

01:03:58.000 trump version the authoritarian version of it it is not we are smarter stronger and better it is as

01:04:05.540 sarah saying like an acknowledgement that we are none of those things and so i'm using the royal

01:04:10.540 we because i don't feel this way but um but like so so the car then becomes this way you know

01:04:16.200 it's a phallus it is a phallus absolutely absolutely prosthetic phallus

01:04:21.020 and it's it's more than that too because it's like a giant exoskeleton in so many different

01:04:26.560 ways, right? And so technically, that woman carrying the two children on her bike is probably 1.00

01:04:31.680 physically more capable of the dude sitting in his Ford F-350 or whatever. But he just feels

01:04:40.180 humiliated and emasculated by this woman one-upping him. But would never understand it that way

01:04:47.500 explicitly. It's like a feeling. And this is why she gestures to the fact that we ferry our kids

01:04:52.960 by cargo bike because a man could also be doing this and i see this all the time but that also

01:04:58.080 like you have to call that guy a cuck for driving his kids to school with his with his cargo bike

01:05:04.660 yeah exactly yes and it is perceived and men on bicycles and we did a whole episode about

01:05:09.200 the way that men on bicycles are portrayed in pop culture yeah um they are considered to be

01:05:16.580 less masculine which is so feminine in the united states so feminized and the the speed with which

01:05:25.340 people will use um homophobic slurs towards male presenting cyclists yep it's pretty remarkable

01:05:32.520 that there is that connection yeah okay this is a great connection we're gonna end on a question

01:05:37.500 that brings it all together and this one comes from sarah who's a huge fan i read your book and

01:05:42.960 we'll see you on your Columbus stop on your book tour. I love the points you brought up

01:05:47.200 about motor normativity and how people don't see the water that is cars and their place in our

01:05:51.960 world. Do you have any advice for how to help others see the water? Well, first, maybe we should

01:05:57.920 define motor normativity because I feel like some of your, a lot of your listeners would not know

01:06:02.400 that concept. So we talked to a researcher, Dr. Ian Walker. He did a study with his colleagues

01:06:10.720 that has been replicated in various scenarios

01:06:13.920 where they substituted different words

01:06:17.020 when they asked people questions about things.

01:06:21.660 For example, it is not okay to smoke

01:06:27.900 in places where other people have to breathe in cigarette fumes.

01:06:31.780 He then replaced that with it is not okay to drive

01:06:35.960 in places where other people have to breathe in car exhaust.

01:06:39.960 And in the first case about cigarettes, the overwhelming majority said, no, it's not OK to do that. In the second case with cars, it completely flipped. The overwhelming majority was like, yeah, that's OK. Now, you know, obviously there are some differences. Cars are necessary for transportation. A cigarette is not.

01:06:57.460 But so the idea being that we excuse behavior when a car is introduced into the conversation that we never would in any other scenario.

01:07:09.500 Like, it's okay for a driver to cut a few corners to save time and money.

01:07:15.600 People generally think that's okay.

01:07:17.400 It's okay for a forklift operator in a factory to cut a few corners to save time and money.

01:07:23.720 Nobody thinks that's okay.

01:07:24.900 Yeah, yeah.

01:07:25.940 And so that's the mononormativity piece. And getting people to see that, as the person's asking, is very challenging. And yeah, we do end the book with this idea of like, how do you get people to even see the problem? So I'll kind of hand it off to Sarah, because she can bring it home.

01:07:41.580 Well, yeah. I mean, I think that you do need to take opportunities as they arise to talk to people. And for instance, these snowstorms that we've been enduring on the East Coast, you can show people the soot on the snow once the cars start driving again and say, you know, that is what you and your kids are breathing.

01:08:08.940 and wouldn't it be great if we had fewer of those around similarly we didn't have as many cars

01:08:16.680 driving on the street for a few days wow it's so nice and peaceful and quiet that's because the

01:08:22.520 cars aren't driving so I feel like there is a certain way in which you have to take your friends

01:08:31.220 and loved ones and every now and then when you see an opening when they're complaining about

01:08:37.760 god gas is expensive i i just i went to the pump today and i had yeah it really is wouldn't it be

01:08:46.140 great to have choices about how to move around and you know or like if somebody has a parent

01:08:55.560 who's older and is aging out of driving you know and all the agony that that causes say to them

01:09:02.440 you know, wouldn't it be great if your parent were able to participate fully in the life of

01:09:09.600 this community without a vehicle? How could we make that possible? How could we change our

01:09:14.760 community so that when we get to be that age, we have those options? And so I think it's really a

01:09:20.360 question of opportunity and compassion and realizing that most people are just scared of

01:09:29.520 change and they get anxious when they think that their options and privileges are being taken away

01:09:39.100 and to try to reframe it as possibility and imagination of a better world. And I do think

01:09:48.000 we're reconsidering a lot of our systems right now because a lot of our systems are breaking down.

01:09:54.380 And I think that it's a unique opportunity, perhaps, for people to open their minds and imagine a better life and demand it.

01:10:07.420 I think that's a wonderful place for us to stop.

01:10:09.900 If people want to find more of you and your work, where can they find it?

01:10:13.740 Well, you can listen to the War on Cars podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

01:10:17.960 Our book is called Life After Cars.

01:10:19.840 pick it up at your local independent bookstore, preferably, or the library. And it's all at

01:10:25.980 lifeaftercars.com. Amazing. Thank you both so much. This was a real delight.

01:10:31.040 It was great. Thank you for such a wonderful conversation. Yeah, thanks a lot.

01:10:40.580 Thanks for listening to the Culture Study Podcast. Be sure to subscribe wherever you

01:10:44.400 get your podcasts because we have so many great episodes in the works, and I promise you don't

01:10:48.960 want to miss any of them. If you want to suggest a topic, ask a question about the culture that

01:10:53.540 surrounds you or submit a question for our subscriber only advice time segment, go to our

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Culture Study Podcast - March 11, 2026

Finally a Conversation About a Car-Less Future That Won't Make You Feel Like Crap

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