Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited 00:00:00:02 - 00:00:30:00 Sarah Goodyear These ideas are increasingly mainstream, and my fondest hope for the book is that this book can help to bring these ideas into the mainstream. And what I say is, if you have somebody in your life who's a smart, thoughtful person, who is a busy person and doesn't have time to think about these things, put this book in their hands and say, just, just read it. 00:00:30:05 - 00:00:32:00 Sarah Goodyear Just just take a look. 00:00:32:03 - 00:00:57:04 Doug Gordon We're just really excited. I mean, this is a chance for our issues to hopefully reach people who are outside the urban bubble, let's say. You know, I, I always joke on the show and I've talked about this with Sarah many times that like my ideal listener for the podcast and reader for the book, is my mother in law, who lives in suburban Chicago and drives a convertible and has always wanted this car. 00:00:57:05 - 00:01:16:01 Doug Gordon She loves it. I, again, don't expect her to throw her car keys or, you know, into the into Lake Michigan. I just want her to see that this is something worth changing. And we want people to understand that, like, okay, they might put a bike lane on your street or, you know, put a new bus route through your community. 00:01:16:04 - 00:01:24:18 Doug Gordon You don't have to. We don't really care if you're never going to ride a bike or never ride the bus. We just want you to understand why this stuff is happening. 00:01:24:26 - 00:01:43:18 John Simmerman Hey everyone, welcome to the Active Towns channel. My name is John Simmerman and that is Doug Gordon and Sarah Goodyear. And we are going to be talking about their brand new book, Life After Cars. It is a good one, but it is a long one, so we're going to get right to it with Doug and Sarah. 00:01:43:21 - 00:01:47:13 John Simmerman Sarah and Doug, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast. Welcome. 00:01:47:15 - 00:01:49:07 Sarah Goodyear Thank you so much for having us. 00:01:49:08 - 00:01:51:05 Doug Gordon We're really glad to be here. 00:01:51:08 - 00:01:59:03 John Simmerman So, for those people who there might be a handful of them don't know who the heck you are. Really quick introductions. Sarah. 00:01:59:03 - 00:02:20:24 Sarah Goodyear Start off. So. Yeah. I am a journalist. I've covered the sort of urbanism transportation policy beat for about 20 years now. Astonishingly. And, and, yeah, now I'm, pretty much full time doing the War on Cars podcast with Doug Gordon. 00:02:20:26 - 00:02:35:13 Doug Gordon Yeah. And I'm Doug Gordon, and I'm, Safe Streets advocate. I've worked in television and yeah, I am one half now of the podcast The War on Cars and, coauthor of Life After Cars, I guess, which is a new thing to be saying. 00:02:35:18 - 00:02:43:05 Sarah Goodyear Yeah, coauthor of Life After Cars, which is going to be published this fall. And excited to talk about that, too. 00:02:43:07 - 00:03:07:25 John Simmerman Yeah. And we'll, we'll bring up, the, the, the cover photo for Life After Cars. In just a moment. Fabulous book I just mentioned before we hit the record button that I've just finished reading it. I loved the way that you blended in the themes and stories, from the War on Cars, podcast. And we have to give, Erin a little bit of love, one of your, co-founders to the to to the War on Cars. 00:03:07:25 - 00:03:23:28 John Simmerman I know he's, since moved on, and is really focusing on other things, including family life and stuff like that. So, but, yeah, you want to say a quick, word about your, your your third, musketeer in terms of, getting the podcast started. 00:03:24:00 - 00:03:50:03 Doug Gordon Yeah. I mean, we all came together in 2018 because we decided that there wasn't really a news outlet or podcast or anything like that covering the car as a sort of fundamental issue in American society, North American society, global society. And so we talked about it for a long time. I mean, we've talked we talked a little bit in the book about the naming of the podcast. 00:03:50:03 - 00:04:11:16 Doug Gordon And, you know, we had all of these kind of wonky names like streets, pod and all that kind of stuff. And, it was it was Sarah who said, you know, this is sort of the podcast about the war on cars, which I think a lot of your listeners or your viewers would know is sort of the thing people cry every time you take a parking space and turn it into a bike lane or a bus stop or something like that. 00:04:11:19 - 00:04:15:06 Doug Gordon And so, yeah, we, you know, we started in 2018 and we're we're still going strong. 00:04:15:09 - 00:04:57:14 Sarah Goodyear Yeah. And I, I think that that for, for all of us coming from different sides, advocacy journalism, combinations of both of those things. It was an opportunity to to talk about these things in a way that more traditional journalistic outlets or advocacy outlets weren't necessarily making space for at that time. And so the ability to reach outside of the bubble by doing a podcast that was intentionally, often humorous, you know, kind of dealt with pop culture. 00:04:57:17 - 00:05:33:00 Sarah Goodyear This was never, ever, ever supposed to be a wonky let's interview a planner for for 45 minutes about what that planner did in this city. I mean, that's great. And we've done some of that, but we really wanted to show that the issues we talk about are issues that every single person in society deals with on a daily basis, and they're life altering, life changing issues, and they're invisible to many people. 00:05:33:00 - 00:05:46:00 Sarah Goodyear And so a big part of what we try to do at the War on Cars is to make those things visible to people who may never have thought about them in that particular way. So that's like a big part of the mandate of the podcast. 00:05:46:00 - 00:06:10:03 John Simmerman Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And as you mentioned, you do, address the title, in the naming of the podcast in the early part of the book. And I like to talk about here on the Active Towns channel, all the time that the themes that we're talking about here on the channel are, trying to create, you know, safer, more inviting, people oriented places. 00:06:10:03 - 00:06:38:01 John Simmerman It's not, per se, a war on cars. You guys got the, you know, the name kind of became part of the, the culture war narrative, based on, you know, an actual event. Please go ahead and share. Either of you, you know, that that actual event that when that that terminology the war on cars first started to get into the general consciousness. 00:06:38:03 - 00:07:01:20 Doug Gordon Yeah, we talk about it in the book, way back in the 19 tens, 1920s. This idea of a war on cars was actually something that, like, we should actually be familiar with today in terms of what we're trying to do. You had, farmers and other people in rural areas. This is the sort of Peter Norton history that a lot of your viewers would be familiar with, that we talk about in the book. 00:07:01:23 - 00:07:29:25 Doug Gordon We, quote a researcher, Paul Ferry, who found all of these examples from back then of, yeah, people in rural areas essentially waging a war on cars coming from the city on Joyrides and laying down gravel in the roads to slow them down. This assault from the city, on the suburbs, on the rural areas by drivers. Flash forward to, you know, the 90s, let's say the early 2000. 00:07:29:25 - 00:07:52:06 Doug Gordon And that's been totally reversed because cars have won. And, there are lots of, people and politicians who have used the phrase war on cars over the decades. But the one that we talked about and really was the inspiration for the title of the podcast was Rob Ford, the former mayor of Toronto, when he was running, he was really against it was a reversal. 00:07:52:06 - 00:08:12:26 Doug Gordon It was the, the, the suburbs waging a war on the city. It was drivers coming into the city not liking the bike lanes and the transit lines and all of those things that were, from their perspective, slowing them down. So he, when he was elected, said, ladies and gentlemen, the war on the car is over. And this became a big part of his time in office. 00:08:13:02 - 00:08:50:12 Doug Gordon All right. Rob Ford, but, so when we were trying to name the podcast and Sarah said, well, you know, it's sort of the podcast about this war on cars that everyone's talking about. We realized sort of in the tradition of a lot of social movements, you sometimes reclaim words and phrases for your own movement and you know, it also, I think, to Sarah's point, reflected the tone we wanted in the podcast, and the title reflected this idea of like, this is not just the policy that we're going to be talking about, not just the the planning that we're talking about. 00:08:50:19 - 00:09:15:12 Doug Gordon This is the culture. You know, there is no part of your life that is not defined somehow by cars. Even if you never drive. You know, the shape of housing, the shape of your streets, the design of all of these things, how far apart things are from each other, the cost of goods and services. What we see on the news and how we consume, information, our politics. 00:09:15:15 - 00:09:22:27 Doug Gordon It's all wrapped up in this. So we felt a kind of culture war angle for the podcast was entirely appropriate. 00:09:22:29 - 00:09:47:24 John Simmerman Yeah, yeah. And, one of the interesting things, too, about, you know, this, this whole dynamic of of it being sort of co-opted in a way, or really adopted in a way as a culture war issue, is that, you know, when you are part of the status quo, any change or threat to the status quo becomes a threat. 00:09:47:27 - 00:09:53:27 John Simmerman And you guys address a little bit of this in, in, in the book as well. Do you want to expand upon that a little bit? Sarah. 00:09:54:00 - 00:10:19:18 Sarah Goodyear Yeah. If, if you're if you're a person with with privilege, any mention of that privilege is, is perceived to be an attack on your existence. And I think that that it's not just all the other things that Doug just mentioned, but it's literally the air we breathe. It's the it's the sounds that were subjected to all the time. 00:10:19:21 - 00:11:09:16 Sarah Goodyear And we write about this a lot in the book that there's this sort of ambient, this negative ambiance that's created by cars, that we're all struggling against all the time without even realizing that we're struggling against it. And yeah, I think that for us to, to to take the, the war on cars is a name. It was a signal that this is a radical perspective in, in that it is asking people to fundamentally reassess things that they take for granted and to understand that the thing about cars is that there's nobody left that has a living memory of life before cars, right. 00:11:09:16 - 00:11:37:13 Sarah Goodyear So in the book, we're trying to help people imagine what a life after cars would be like. And that has to be something that's powered by imagination. And because we just don't have that. And I think a lot about the internet, I and I think you and Doug remember life before the internet. We're one of the last generations that will ever know that. 00:11:37:13 - 00:12:06:15 Sarah Goodyear And I think it's a really important thing to understand that when these massive technological shifts happen, the preservation of culture and memory is actually one of the really, really crucial things that you have to focus on because it will be lost 2 or 3 generations. It's lost. That's why Peter Norton's work is so essential, because he takes that stuff from this sort of just vanishing living memory. 00:12:06:16 - 00:12:36:20 Sarah Goodyear You know, the things that happened in the 1920s and 30s that my grandmother would have remembered, my great grandmother would have remembered. But those things are are slipping away and the river of time. Right. And Peter reclaims that. And I think that we need that historical context in order to imagine life after cars, which I think is essential if we're going to have a habitable planet and a healthy society. 00:12:36:22 - 00:12:45:18 John Simmerman Yeah. And you answered my next follow up question was how did you settle on the title for for this book of life After Cars? 00:12:45:18 - 00:13:08:02 Doug Gordon Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So yeah, when we sold the book to Penguin Random House, it was sold as the War on Cars book, essentially, and all the way through the writing process. It was the War on Cars book. And then pretty late in the game, we had a conversation with our publisher, and we've loved everybody at Penguin Random House, a thesis where we are. 00:13:08:06 - 00:13:31:14 Doug Gordon They've just our our editor, Megan McCormick, has been incredible. And we got this call basically saying, hey, you know, we want to talk about the title. We're not 100% sure that it's going to land with all potential readers. So we talked about it and the the argument on the side of the publisher, which we agreed with was, excuse me. 00:13:31:16 - 00:13:51:15 Doug Gordon Okay. So on one side, you might have people strolling by in a bookstore or scrolling on Amazon or whatever, and see The War on Cars as a title on think this is a book by someone on the right, you know, a Bill O'Reilly, let's say, who is saying there's a war on cars? They're coming for your car keys. 00:13:51:18 - 00:14:08:06 Doug Gordon This is how we need to fight back. So we didn't want people to have that impression. We also didn't want to have people think, oh, this is a book for people on the left. And I have nothing to learn from it. I love my car. I'm never going to give it up. Why is that? Have to be a war on cars. 00:14:08:09 - 00:14:32:17 Doug Gordon And so, like Sarah was saying, this idea of a forward thinking, like life after cars, we can maybe not see that change right now, but we can imagine it later. It felt like a very positive and inclusive way of framing the subject. You know, we don't expect people living in the most car dominant places of the country to read this book, close it and throw their car keys out tomorrow. 00:14:32:17 - 00:14:50:12 Doug Gordon That's that. You know, obviously that would be great if some people did that, but that's not going to happen. What we want them to do, like Sarah was saying, is at least start to see the problem and hear the problem of cars. And to say this system, it doesn't really even work for me. And I love driving, right? 00:14:50:17 - 00:15:08:14 Doug Gordon You know, if you if you love the time you have on your way to the office, or you love the Sunday drive or the camping trip, the road trip, you know, getting out of your city kind of sucks. Getting to work sucks. Having to drive for every last thing you do to go get milk to take your kids to school. 00:15:08:16 - 00:15:25:06 Doug Gordon It just sucks. And what if there was a life after all of this where? Oh, I could drive every now and then if I need to, but I can send my kids on their way to soccer practice or to grab the milk on their way home from school. So we felt, I mean, we didn't brainstorm for all that long. 00:15:25:06 - 00:15:39:08 Doug Gordon We had booked all of this time to come up with a title. And just that someone threw out. Well, you know, it's it was sort of like a similar conversation we have, we name the podcast. So it was like, well, you know, the book sort of imagines a life after cars and we're like, oh yeah, that's that's it. 00:15:39:15 - 00:16:05:18 Sarah Goodyear Yeah. So like, we can we can end the meeting now, you know. But yeah. And then the, the cover illustration, you know, I think also captured for us just this, this idea, this kind of whimsical opening of what if. And and that's, that's where we want to get people. We want to get people to say like yeah, this does suck. 00:16:05:21 - 00:16:23:15 Sarah Goodyear And then we tell them, you know, how much it sucks, which they might not realize. And then very quickly and, and throughout the book, we want to show them we don't have to live like this. Actually, there are there are ways to get out of it. 00:16:23:17 - 00:16:45:14 Doug Gordon I should also say the subtitle Freeing Ourselves from the tyranny of the automobile. That word tyranny was really important to us to get in there, because if you think about it, what tyranny is or what a tyrant is, when you live under tyranny, you are never not thinking about the tyrant that we're sort of living that right now, where you every day wake up and think, well, what did he say next? 00:16:45:14 - 00:17:03:20 Doug Gordon What did he do next? And so that's what cars are, right? Every day you think, how much gas do I have? How much is that repair bill going to do you check the traffic report or even if you're just listening to the radio, if people still do that, the traffic report comes to you. There's no escaping cars. 00:17:03:20 - 00:17:15:18 Doug Gordon Even if you don't drive, even if you're not driving that day, there's no escaping cars. So that was really important to us to get that word tyranny somehow into onto the cover of the book. 00:17:15:20 - 00:17:39:12 John Simmerman Yeah. And you know, usually when I, you know, sort of paraphrase and in reference, you know, hey, you know, what we're talking about here is not truly a war on cars is sort of a battle against car dependency. That tagline, you know, the subtitle also sort of, you know, is, is similar to freeing ourselves from the tyranny of the automobile. 00:17:39:15 - 00:18:19:15 John Simmerman I really emphasize the fact that what we're what I'm striving for enact of towns and the map to towns movement is to create mobility choices, authentic, safe and inviting overlaying of mobility choices so that if somebody chooses they want to drive, they can totally drive. I mean, you know, Doug, you and I were we're in Europe, you know, last summer for the Velocity Conference and a big part of the theme there in Kent is, you know, the fact that, you know, they went through those pains and you talk a little bit about this in the book as well, of trying to reimagine what the city would be like and decreasing the amount of car 00:18:19:15 - 00:18:47:10 John Simmerman dependency, decreasing the tyranny of the automobiles by creating that traffic circulation plan. There. Again, it's very similar to the traffic circulation plan that was implemented in 1977. And car again, and so again, it gets back to the point that, you know, we're really not advocating for automobiles to be completely eliminated from our lives. I think that would be, that wouldn't happen anyways. 00:18:47:17 - 00:18:56:19 John Simmerman But at the same time, we want to try to put an end to the dependency, the addiction to the automobile being the only way to get around. 00:18:56:21 - 00:19:20:19 Sarah Goodyear Yeah. And and it really is about freedom, you know, and, and I emphasize this to people all the time who so many people say to me when they find out what I do, I'm sorry, I own a car. And I'm like, of course you own a car. You live in the United States of America. I mean, you know, I hope you own a car to get it right. 00:19:20:20 - 00:19:49:06 Sarah Goodyear I mean, you know, in most places you really need that to be a fully enfranchised member of society. And not owning a car has become a luxury good in the United States of America. It's actually because living in a walkable neighborhood like the one that I live in, in Brooklyn is is out of reach for most people. And the only neighborhoods that are within even the remotest kind of affordability are car dependent. 00:19:49:08 - 00:20:35:18 Sarah Goodyear It's almost, you know, it. And so I don't think that the right to move your body through space on your, on your own two legs, on a bicycle, in a bus, a subway. I don't think that should be a luxury. Good. You know, and so when people say, oh, I'm sorry, I don't you apologize. We have built a society that requires you to have a car, and we very much want to meet people where they are inside of this systemic injustice is just like any other systemic injustice that exists in this country right now, which, you know, I'm not going to go on for the next ten minutes listing those, but we all live 00:20:35:18 - 00:20:55:10 Sarah Goodyear inside these systems. The point is to try to understand that it is a system that can be questioned, is a system that was put into place by human beings and is a system that can be modified and, and in some cases completely altered, by human beings. 00:20:55:13 - 00:21:28:02 John Simmerman Yeah. And I think a big part, one of the overriding themes that, you know, is talked about in the book and, and I end up, you know, touching upon all the time here is exactly what you said there, Sarah, is that that ability to have the freedom and the independence, for mobility, choice, an overlay to that is, you know, the unfortunate consequence of our system that has really taken away freedoms and mobility options. 00:21:28:02 - 00:21:58:09 John Simmerman And, you know, childhood independence. And, you know, this is way back from 2012. Sarah, you had written about this. Is that. Yeah. I mean, when you're a backseat kid, you you don't even know where you're at. I mean, it it's it's such a sad indictment of that experience to talk a little bit more about this. Sarah. And I know you're passionate about this, but, yeah, a lot of people may not even understand this. 00:21:58:09 - 00:22:20:16 John Simmerman And and hopefully these messages, hopefully my my messages and your messages on the War on Cars podcast, hopefully this is starting to permeate in outside of our urbanism and active transportation bubbles. In safer streets, bubbles into the general populace, and they may not have any idea that this is a thing that kids. 00:22:20:19 - 00:22:48:09 Sarah Goodyear Yeah, right. And and you know, we have a whole chapter about the effect on kids. And we talk about this research which was done by Bruce Appleyard, who's the son of Donald Appleyard, one of the great urbanist theorists, of the of the late 20th century. But this research, I actually wrote this article when when my own son was ten years old, growing up in a walkable neighborhood, I knew how well he understood. 00:22:48:17 - 00:23:17:03 Sarah Goodyear He walked to and from school. I know how well he knew that street and everything along it. And what this research that I wrote about shows is that when children get driven someplace, what? We've all experienced it as adults. Right? It let's say you go and visit a friend in a place you've never been before, and they're driving you around and then they say to you like, oh, why don't you just take the car and go to the supermarket? 00:23:17:04 - 00:23:51:18 Sarah Goodyear And and you're like, I have no idea. We have to use GPS. Say, you know, like we are not oriented in space when we drive around as passengers and cars. And for children, that has a really fundamental, effect on their their ability not just to know where they are, but to learn how to navigate space, how to navigate new spaces, to learn a sort of set of practices about how to orient themselves with landmarks, how to, you know, sort of experience, how long distance, what distance means. 00:23:51:20 - 00:24:18:26 Sarah Goodyear All of those things are robbed. Our children are robbed of that. And and it's it's really tragic, like, and and this is all happening in the context of a society where children are increasingly treated as, you know, these precious objects that we have to protect them from, from this and that and this harm. And they have to have organic, you know, how many parents, feed their children? 00:24:18:26 - 00:24:43:16 Sarah Goodyear Only organic foods because they're terrified of them being exposed to something? And then those same parents every morning, take that child and strap them into a vehicle that not only is, you know, a part of a system that is one of the primary causes of death and injury for children in this country. They do it routinely because they have to. 00:24:43:22 - 00:25:15:07 Sarah Goodyear But but it also robs their children of a kind of cognitive development that is something that until 50 or 60 years ago was a universal experience for, for human beings and hominids and going back millions of years. So it's it's a pretty profound thing to, to, to it's a pretty profound way to limit our children's ability to, to develop. 00:25:15:09 - 00:25:36:18 Doug Gordon Yeah. I it's funny because in the book, I talk about a conversation I had with my daughter a couple of years ago, probably three years ago now, every summer she spends a little bit of time with my in-laws who live in suburban Chicago. And we live in we live in Brooklyn, you know, small apartment. And there was one summer where she called me and said, you know, pop up, I think we should move. 00:25:36:25 - 00:25:53:04 Doug Gordon And I said, why? She said, I want my own room. You know, she shares a room with her brother because we live in a two bedroom apartment, because that's what sometimes you have to do in New York City. And I, you know, I kind of let it go, but I was like, look, you know, you have a lot of freedom to walk around and do stuff that your friends don't have. 00:25:53:06 - 00:26:17:13 Doug Gordon And she pushed back, I want my own room. The next summer she called me and said, Papa, I think I understand why I like living in Brooklyn. And I said, okay, you know, tell me what's going on. And I talk about this in the book is that she said, every time I want to do something while I'm here in suburban Chicago visiting her camp friends, and anytime we want to go somewhere the movies, the mall, all the things that kids want to do. 00:26:17:15 - 00:26:35:21 Doug Gordon My friends end up fighting with their parents over who will drive them because inevitably they say, hey, I want to go to the movies. It's no, I'm not getting home from work until 7:00, or I'm busy, or I have to take your brother to soccer practice first. I won't be able to take three more kids in the car, etc., my daughter said. 00:26:35:21 - 00:26:53:18 Doug Gordon I realized any time I want to go to the movies or I want to go, you know, walk around Soho with my friends or whatever it is, I just tell you where I'd like to go or ask you and you say, sure, just tell me when you'll be back. And she said, look, I fight with my daughter. She's a teenager. 00:26:53:18 - 00:27:10:13 Doug Gordon We have disagreements, but we never, we never fight over that. And she was like, that's pretty cool that we never have a disagreement over where I can go and what I can do. And that's been true. Sort of like Sarah was saying since she was 10 or 11 years old and in most of the rest of the country. 00:27:10:15 - 00:27:32:21 Doug Gordon That's not true until they're 16 or 17. And even then you have, of course, you have the worry of like a car crash or what if you can't afford, third car in your family. So, that freedom argument works both ways, because the reason they have those fights in the suburbs between parents and children is because the parents are busy. 00:27:32:23 - 00:27:47:21 Doug Gordon You know, I wasn't feeling that well this morning, so I slept in. When I woke up, my daughter was gone. She was on her way to school already. Imagine if I had to wake up and was feeling terrible and had to drive her. So, you know, I think that freedom argument is something we want to talk about throughout. 00:27:47:26 - 00:28:03:22 Doug Gordon It's not just for little kids who get the freedom, sort of like, you know, Bruce is talking about in his study, where kids have this freedom to notice things in their neighborhood and really take in where things are. It's parents and adults get freedom as well. Yeah. 00:28:03:24 - 00:28:23:13 John Simmerman Yeah. And and I really emphasize too, that what we're talking about is all ages and all abilities. And so, you know, if if it's an environment like Tim Gill, a recent, guest on the podcast, you know, emphasized if it works for children, it's going to work for everyone across the, you know, the entire spectrum, a life span. 00:28:23:13 - 00:28:54:22 John Simmerman And so if it's working for that eight year old, it's going to work for that 88 year old as well. And I'm really I was so delighted to see that, the Apple Yard's work, both, Donald, and, and his son, Bruce, you work was profiled in your book. Because one of the things in this is this is the cover of, Bruce's book, Livable Streets 2.0, channeling the most iconic image from his father. 00:28:54:22 - 00:29:14:09 John Simmerman Donald's a book, which came out, I think, in 1982. I know the work that he was doing in San Francisco. You guys talk about it in the book. I think it was, you know, started out in the 60s and 70s and all that. It's iconic stuff because this is also bringing in an additional concept of sociability. 00:29:14:09 - 00:29:39:24 John Simmerman And these this is really emphasizing, and I think you you may have mentioned this as well, Sarah, is that, you know, this the connectivity of your neighbors and the difference, you know, that, that happens with the the level of motor vehicle traffic, high speed traffic and volumes of traffic really, really quickly. Would either of you like to, like, kind of walk us through what these, diagrams mean on the top of this book? 00:29:39:27 - 00:30:24:27 Sarah Goodyear Yeah. Well, Donald Appleyard, was, at UC Berkeley at the time, and he got involved in doing this research as part of the city of San Francisco's planning process. And they looked at what they called a heavy street, heavy traffic street, medium traffic street and light traffic street. And they looked at a variety of things that were happening on those streets socially, including how many friends people had on the street, how people felt about leaving their apartments, how people felt about the noise and the, traffic as it was passing. 00:30:24:27 - 00:31:06:17 Sarah Goodyear But it was really the, the social aspect that that is most striking about the studies which have since been replicated, including in the United Kingdom, that people who live on heavy traffic streets don't have as many friends on the street. They don't have pretty much any friends who live across the street. Whereas on a light traffic street, people know their neighbors, and they might even know people who are on the other side of the street, and they just have an idea of their street as being a social place, a place in which there are human connections and and networks. 00:31:06:19 - 00:31:42:18 Sarah Goodyear And it's a very elegant way of looking at it. It's it it really shows that one of the things that they found was that families, even people who had grown up on a street, as traffic got heavier on the street, they might move away from that street because they didn't want to raise their children on it. So there is another breaking of a generational connection that lends depth and richness and health to people's lives, and that many of the people who ended up living on the on the highly trafficked street were people who kind of got left behind. 00:31:42:24 - 00:32:22:12 Sarah Goodyear There were a lot of older women who were, you know, maybe widows. And then their isolation was even deeper because as the traffic got more and more, they just retreat into their apartments. And the isolation is real. And this is just something, again, getting back to this idea that we sometimes don't have the living memory to help inform us, you know, that that the prevalence of cars and the exponential growth in that vehicle, miles traveled in the United States has separated us from each other socially. 00:32:22:18 - 00:32:43:07 Sarah Goodyear It is a fundamental part, and we talk about this a lot in the book, and I think it's super important, is a fundamental part of the isolation and division that we are suffering through right now. And I don't want to discount the role of social media, the internet and all of that. But this was happening before the internet. 00:32:43:09 - 00:32:48:00 Sarah Goodyear This this was happening already, and a lot of it is because of cars. 00:32:48:00 - 00:33:00:29 Doug Gordon In fact, we say that cars were the original move fast and break things, right? Yeah, because they went faster than any technology that had come before them. And they broke a lot of people and they and they of course, broke a lot of communities and society. 00:33:01:03 - 00:33:25:23 Sarah Goodyear And they really broke the social contract in a way. Because because the idea that you should have like, for instance, think about a family walking down a street like the one that I live close to, the walk my kid took to school, took his past several small businesses along a nice little corridor. The storekeepers would wave at us and they'd be out sweeping the sidewalk. 00:33:25:23 - 00:33:43:20 Sarah Goodyear It was like Sesame Street, and it was like that building of connection. When you drive your kid to school, everyone you see is is an adversary, not an ally. Those are people who are competing for the space that you want. Those are people who are getting in your way. There are people who are irritating you and you're irritating them. 00:33:43:23 - 00:33:54:19 Sarah Goodyear There's no chance to build this kind of community that just happens. Incidentally and organically in a place where cars don't dominate. 00:33:54:21 - 00:34:33:26 John Simmerman Right? Yeah. And and again, I I'll say it again, you the book is just chock full of wonderful insights and stories, pointing to the fact that, you know, so much of what we are dealing with is, we're all standing on the shoulders of people who have been doing this work for, for many, many decades. And in referencing all the way back to, to Donald Apple yards that were followed up by, his son Bruce, and then also referencing we referenced it earlier, you know, the time we were in Ghent for velocity there. 00:34:33:28 - 00:34:36:24 John Simmerman The only person missing in this is you, Sarah. 00:34:36:27 - 00:34:42:14 Sarah Goodyear Yeah, right. I'm going to I'm going to guidance for velocity. This this is good for me. 00:34:42:17 - 00:35:00:16 Doug Gordon Yes. It is funny because, you know, you're right. So Janette cytokine is right there. She she looms large over this book, as she should. Sam. Balto. In the childhood chapter, we talk about the bike bus as one of those things like, you know, this is the life after cars that we're talking about, that the people doing the work to help people. 00:35:00:16 - 00:35:31:09 Doug Gordon One of the most important things, I think, that Sam does with the bike bus is he helps people imagine a life after cars, like, we're not going to get like individual families going out riding their bicycles to the point where anyone's going to notice that. But 70 kids, 150 kids, where all of these bike busses are happening not just in Portland, but elsewhere, they become very visible and they take up space, which is such a huge part of any social movement taking up space in public. 00:35:31:11 - 00:35:50:12 Doug Gordon And so he is really helping people understand that. Also, he's helping people understand not just that kids have this right to independent mobility, but as we talk about in the book and we we quote some kids, I went to Montclair, new Jersey, to the bike bus there. The kids themselves say, I feel better when I get to school. 00:35:50:12 - 00:36:11:09 Doug Gordon I'm ready to learn. They're doing better in school. They get to see friends. You know, in the Montclair bike bus, we have, they have, bike busses that will split. And then one goes to one school and one goes to another. Well, in a lot of places, if you're if your good buddy from preschool goes to a different elementary school, you got to make a real effort. 00:36:11:11 - 00:36:31:03 Doug Gordon Your family has to make a real effort for you guys to see each other. But thanks to the Montclair Bike Bus, these kids get to see each other every morning that they do the bike bus and they remain friends. These social connections that they forged when maybe they were four years old, stay with them when they're ten, 12 through middle school. 00:36:31:06 - 00:36:54:27 Doug Gordon So yes, we talk a lot about the bike bus because, you know, the other thing is we didn't want every chapter to just be like, here's why cars suck. There's a lot of that. But we really wanted to make sure that when we understand what cars are doing to ourselves, we're pointing towards a way forward. So in the In the childhood chapter, yeah, we talk about what living on a high traffic neighborhood or community does to children. 00:36:55:03 - 00:37:04:29 Doug Gordon But then we talk about the people in the places that are seeking to repair damage and point a way forward. And Sam, Balto is a very good example of someone doing exactly that. 00:37:05:02 - 00:37:37:09 John Simmerman Yeah, I like to to emphasize to the, you know, activities like bike busses and, and walking school busses and, activities that are trying to in enhance awareness and and really we see the same thing with open streets events and seek love is, is giving people the ability to imagine what life would be if our streets weren't completely dominated by cars and if people actually felt welcome in those environments. 00:37:37:12 - 00:38:12:07 John Simmerman And, you know, Sam and I have talked about this extensively where, you know, he'd he'd love for bike, bus, not even have to exist, that it's just the fact that, you know, the streets, you know, are safe and inviting and the kids do simultaneously their own bike busses, you know, like we see in in the Netherlands and increasingly in other places, like, you know, here in, in Kent and, you know, creating an opportunity for, people to feel like all ages and abilities feel like they have freedom of movement. 00:38:12:07 - 00:38:37:25 John Simmerman There's that word again. And you're you're not being threatened. Now in the book, you start to shift at the end of the book, you start to shift towards, you know, strategies for moving forward and some success stories. And one of the success stories, as we alluded to earlier, was in fact, the traffic circulation plan in Kent. And, Philip, you know, was was, identified and, you know, kind of talk about that. 00:38:37:27 - 00:38:58:09 John Simmerman Who would you like to talk a little bit about that? You know, that story of, of Kent and, and not only the success story, but, you know, the rough patches because it wasn't just all roses and everything, because anytime, anything we try to do anything, there's resistance, there's challenges. 00:38:58:12 - 00:39:20:19 Doug Gordon Yeah. So we have a chapter in the book on political leadership. And it's one of the things that it takes to change cities. And the city of Kent is one of the examples. Paris is another example. Sarah was there and did some reporting on that. And Emeryville, California, with John Potter. Sarah also had interviewed, Mayor John Borders, then Mayor John Borders. 00:39:20:21 - 00:39:46:28 Doug Gordon But yeah, so I was in Kent for the velocity, conference, and it was just wonderful. So, you know, it's a really interesting city because like a lot of European cities, we we tend to think as Americans. Oh, these cities always were walkable, always were faithful and sure, you know, in their medieval era, they were. But in the 20th century, they, went down this path of accommodating cars just like everybody, everybody else. 00:39:47:01 - 00:40:14:24 Doug Gordon They built a highway through them, you know, basically the middle of the city. And, cars were flooding every last corner of the city that you can imagine. And there was a small pedestrianized center, the historic center. And in the 90s, they had tried to, you know, make this permanent. And at the time, it was so controversial that the the mayor at the time got a bullet in the mail. 00:40:14:26 - 00:40:28:23 Doug Gordon Turned out it was a, ironically, a shoe store owner who felt that, pedestrian izing the center of the city would hurt his business. So some sweet irony there. But they went ahead, and they were very. 00:40:28:29 - 00:40:31:23 John Simmerman They must not have been very comfortable shoes for walking. 00:40:31:25 - 00:40:58:14 Doug Gordon I guess. I guess maybe formal dress shoes. Right. So, they went ahead with it and it was a big success. You know, cut to 20 years later and ten, 20 years later, things are starting to regress. Traffic is filling up again. Kent is a very, economically successful city over the last many years, they've got two universities that are quite big and none of this was working. 00:40:58:21 - 00:41:22:26 Doug Gordon So yeah, Philip Matteo, who's the deputy mayor for mobility, says, you know, we need to take this pedestrianized center and we need to expand it. And not only that, we really need to figure out a way to kick out the cars that don't really have a reason to be here. They found that a huge percentage of the drivers who are accessing the city, we're just cutting through, get the surrounded by this big ring road. 00:41:22:26 - 00:41:44:12 Doug Gordon And so people to avoid traffic are going the long way. We're just cut through. Well right there that's a trip that you don't want in the middle of your city. And every city has this cut through traffic. People not shopping, not visiting family, people who don't live there. Truly the tyranny of a car, right? Imposing all of these costs on other people. 00:41:44:14 - 00:42:20:03 Doug Gordon So they came up with, inspired by Groningen in the Netherlands, which you had mentioned, which, like Ghent small was surrounded by this sort of external ring road, didn't have a lot of space for traditional bike lanes and carving out space just for bikes, just for pedestrians, narrow streets. They, studied that plan. And what Philip Mateo said, basically, I want my city to be a cycling city, not because it's good for bikers, but it's because it's also good for everybody, even if they'll never get on a bike. 00:42:20:05 - 00:42:42:19 Doug Gordon So, you heard the story while you were there. They spent years developing this plan. They had lots of community meetings and, all the kinds of stuff that you would see in any city when you're doing something this big. He also got death threats, Philip Mateo, and he was under 24 hour police protection for six weeks. That's how heated things got. 00:42:42:21 - 00:43:10:27 Doug Gordon He was going to ruin the city. It was going to destroy business. And eventually they did it. And what they did was, as you can see from the picture, they didn't add a whole lot of bike infrastructure, although there is great bike infrastructure in parts of Kent. They changed the direction of some streets. They cut off access for drivers at some points where, you know, you used to be able to just drive in, cut across, now you'd have to take a sort of circuitous path through different zones. 00:43:11:00 - 00:43:30:12 Doug Gordon You if you were in one zone of the city and wanted to get to the one next to it, you'd have to go out around and then, which would mean then that you would only make that car trip if you really had to. Otherwise you take the bus, walk or bike. And, you know, it took years of planning, but it the change actually happened overnight. 00:43:30:15 - 00:44:01:16 Doug Gordon We talk about it in the book of like a, almost like a Army campaign with like, surgical precision. They went in thousands of signs new, you know, they painted new markings on the street. And he sort of basically said, like one night things were one way, and the next morning everything changed. And the best part about the story, and he told this to me directly, and I think you probably heard this when he was speaking in Kent, was he went out for a bike ride with a journalist from one of the big Belgian newspapers. 00:44:01:18 - 00:44:25:01 Doug Gordon He thought that was a suicide mission. He thought he was going to run around on this bike with a journalist and have people heckling him and screaming at him, you've ruined the city. And that the headlines would be, you know, controversial new plan, a failure, say residents. The opposite happened everywhere he went. People said, why didn't we do this earlier? 00:44:25:04 - 00:44:49:06 Doug Gordon How come it hasn't been this way forever? One person called him the best composer the city has ever seen. And if you know anything about Ghent and its, history of music and classical music, that is maybe the highest compliment he could possibly receive. Because they said that, where once you could hear just cars, you could hear birds, you could hear children walking and laughing and playing. 00:44:49:13 - 00:45:10:19 Doug Gordon You could hear just you literally can stand on a street and hear, like the world of bicycle gears and, and chains and, you know, you were there. It's remarkable. It's a really lively city. I was there. I was there during, at the very end. We were there, I think, during the World Cup. And like, the people weren't filling up the streets, but, but it was just like it was still quiet. 00:45:10:19 - 00:45:28:01 Doug Gordon It was like, so amazing. So, you know, Ghent is a really good example of we tend to think of these fights as you're going to put a bike lane on the street, you're going to do that. No, you just need to. Our friends Chris and Melissa Brunt, let's say you know the best, any good bike plan really is a car plan. 00:45:28:01 - 00:45:50:20 Doug Gordon It's it's reducing the number of cars in the city, slowing the traffic speeds, making sure they don't have unfettered access to every last corner of the city. And then boom. And yeah, when you ride around Ghent, it's it's amazing. I would purposely go out at rush hour just to see it, or the middle of the afternoon when school was getting out and it was lovely. 00:45:50:20 - 00:45:54:02 Doug Gordon It was really wonderful. So that's that's a big part of that chapter of the book. 00:45:54:04 - 00:46:22:22 John Simmerman Yeah. Now, Sarah, I was really glad that the the Paris story was also addressed in here because when we think about political will, that is one of the great success stories that we come to. And I, like many other people, have sort of defaulted to the the Cliff notes version of we need cities with and leaders with political will like Mayor Doggo in Paris. 00:46:22:24 - 00:46:45:11 John Simmerman But you do you know when you kind of expand upon this, there's a lot more subtleties to this. And again, it's yes, she won reelection and all that, but it was a lot closer than what we give things credit for. I mean, you know, it's history has a way of doing that. You know, Doug, you had mentioned Karen again, in the circulation plan that we're now pointing to. 00:46:45:11 - 00:46:58:09 John Simmerman I mentioned that was way back in 1977. I think if I remember right, it only passed by like one vote. You know, these are like contentious things expand upon the success story. Sarah. 00:46:58:12 - 00:47:34:18 Sarah Goodyear Well, I spoke I think it was back in 2019. Maybe it was. It was pre-pandemic. I spoke with Christophe Najdorf, ski, who was the a deputy mayor for Green Space, in Paris at the time. And the city had just successfully defended themselves against a lawsuit, that a motorists group had brought, contesting the idea of turning the banks of the sand from a road into a park. 00:47:34:21 - 00:47:59:13 Sarah Goodyear And the city had that mayor Hidalgo, under whom Najdorf ski was serving at the time, that the city had, you know, they had run on that platform. They had said, this is what we want to do. And then when they got in this very powerful motorist group, you know, mounted a really serious challenge that that looked like it might derail everything. 00:47:59:13 - 00:48:31:17 Sarah Goodyear And I think that in the United States so often, you see politicians, then say, oh, well, let's, let's sort of swim back to the center and, and give concessions and happened here in New York with Mayor Eric Adams, pushing back and and and halting, the McGuinness Boulevard changes that were, that were fought for in response to a lot of terrible traffic, violence, including a fatality of a beloved local teacher. 00:48:31:19 - 00:48:55:28 Sarah Goodyear And and Adams was just like, well, let's let's modify the plan and make it less, radical. So let's let's throw some bones to these people who say that it's upsetting. The opposite happened in Paris. The administration just said, look, we were elected on this platform and we're going to enact it. And they stood up in court and they won that case. 00:48:56:01 - 00:49:25:26 Sarah Goodyear And I don't know if you've been to Paris recently, but, I go pretty often because I have family there. The, the banks of the sand are now just a completely accepted public park. It would be bizarre to say, let's put cars back in, then the school streets, green spaces. Paris is a is a place that doesn't have a lot of green space in central Paris. 00:49:25:26 - 00:49:58:07 Sarah Goodyear It's they have a couple of big parks there, but they don't have a lot inside the city. And yeah, these, these school streets are creating that. The, the bike routes everywhere. And bicycling has become just a hugely popular form of transportation in the city, where it makes a ton of sense in so many different ways. But it really required the mayor and her team to take a lot of crap over it. 00:49:58:07 - 00:50:24:03 Sarah Goodyear And like, I don't know how well, you know, French culture, but French people like to complain. They like to find fault. They like to argue. Argument is very much a part of the ethos of French culture. And there were a lot of complaints. There was a hashtag Sakai Paris, which, you know, basically means that the the sack of Paris, the demolition of Paris. 00:50:24:03 - 00:50:31:21 Sarah Goodyear And that's what some people were calling these, these bike lanes and school streets and public spaces and green spaces. There's that. 00:50:31:21 - 00:50:32:17 Doug Gordon War language. 00:50:32:20 - 00:51:04:27 Sarah Goodyear Yeah, exactly, exactly. And and so, you know, but the administration stood firm and yeah, the electoral margins were, were thin sometimes. And I you know, I sometimes like to say like hard times are actually hard, hard things. You know, if, if you say something is hard to do, it's hard. And like I think in the United States sometimes we're like, we think, oh, we'll just say, yeah, we can, we can get through these hard times. 00:51:04:27 - 00:51:26:00 Sarah Goodyear But then when the times actually get hard that we're not prepared, we we thought that was just something that like we would gesture to or there was some kind of, you know, that was just a thing that you say instead of actually living through sometimes you have to actually live through it and, and you have to put yourself on the line. 00:51:26:00 - 00:51:57:18 Sarah Goodyear And that's what that's what political leadership is. It's not someone who stays in power at all costs by pandering to whoever spoke to them last. That's not political leadership. Political leadership is having the courage of your convictions and being willing to lose on the courage of those convictions. And the stakes are very, very high. But I don't think and, I mean, we could talk about this, in the United States context ad infinitum. 00:51:57:20 - 00:52:22:11 Sarah Goodyear Accommodation is, doesn't work when it comes to really serious policy decisions. You need to you need to believe in what you're doing, and then you need to do it. And you need to be willing to take the consequences and take the heat. And if you're really delivering policy that is really good for people, people will see it. 00:52:22:11 - 00:52:44:23 Sarah Goodyear And I would just like to say congestion pricing. I think there's a brand new poll out on congestion pricing here in New York, and that's a great example. Public opinion has swung by something like 20 points since in New York State. Not just the city in New York City. Now that that the policy is above water, more people approving than disapproving. 00:52:44:25 - 00:53:05:03 Sarah Goodyear But in New York State, I believe there was a 20 points swing. It was down 22 points. And now it's basically even, of whether people think it's a good policy or not. Why? Because it has delivered on every single promise that was going to be made. The air quality is better, the traffic is less, people can drive more quickly. 00:53:05:03 - 00:53:28:28 Sarah Goodyear Kids are getting to school earlier because school busses are able to get through traffic. You know, it's fatalities and injuries are down. I mean, you could go on and on. And so I think if you do implement these policies and you have the courage to stand by them and you don't just cave, the first time somebody pokes at you and you're delivering really good policy results, guess what? 00:53:28:28 - 00:53:49:01 Sarah Goodyear People notice that. And and it makes a difference. And anyway, Paris is amazing. If for those of you who haven't gotten there in a long time, you will find. I mean, I've been going there my whole life because like I say, I have family there. The transformation in the last 15, 20 years and even the last five years has been nothing short of a revolution. 00:53:49:01 - 00:53:57:20 Sarah Goodyear And it's made, you know, one of the world's great cities into, just a showcase for what we could all be doing if we just had the guts to do it. 00:53:57:20 - 00:54:15:01 Doug Gordon And that's the point that Philip Mateo makes, too, is that, you know, you are elected to do things, and they, they they didn't make a secret of their plans when they when his, you know, administration when the mayor was running, they said, this is what we want to do now. We're going to bring the community along. We're going to listen to people. 00:54:15:01 - 00:54:32:10 Doug Gordon That was sort of the beauty of the traffic circulation plan. It was low cost materials. If one street didn't work out, they could just move some stuff and it would go back to normal. But he also realized as well that, like the people who are motivated to send a bullet in the mail to the mayor, you know, they're motivated to do it. 00:54:32:10 - 00:54:55:04 Doug Gordon Loss aversion is a real factor in the work that we do. But when you show people what's possible, then they say, whoa, I never believed or understood that it could be like this. Congestion pricing is really, to me, the best example of all of that. But the traffic circulation plan in, in Kent is an excellent example that we thought we had to include in the book. 00:54:55:06 - 00:55:13:02 Doug Gordon The people have something to lose. I always have a reason to stand up, and it's not until you show people what's possible that they start to say, and then they say, why wasn't it always like this, where we're seeing that with congestion pricing and people saying, why did it take so long? Well, that's a whole other episode of your show that we could do. 00:55:13:09 - 00:55:34:17 Doug Gordon But, it just it takes a long time because the politics are messy. But, you know, it's funny, I think when we started the show, there was probably this question like, Will this stuff continue? Is it will it be successful? Will it be popular? Now we sort of feel like all we're missing are like those right political leaders who will stand up and say, no, no, no, people want this. 00:55:34:17 - 00:55:39:00 Doug Gordon I think people are seeing, you know, this, that life after cars could be okay. 00:55:39:02 - 00:56:17:10 John Simmerman Right? Yeah. So I'm wearing my 15 minute city, you know, shirt here from, a recent one from from Tom. I'm going to zoom in on his his, shirt here so folks can see that in and and again, it's as is it says here, you know, it's it's not really a conspiracy. I'm just lazy. I just want to be able to have, meaningful destinations within easy walking distance to, you know, from where I'm at and the point that that I want to bring up here with the bringing up the 15 minute City, it's not a conspiracy, is that that's kind of what we saw. 00:56:17:10 - 00:56:40:08 John Simmerman Spin up is like in certain cities or you know, around the globe when they try to emulate what we saw in Karen again and in Kent, you know, it it sort of gets framed as, oh, you're trying to take our cars away, or you're trying to confine us to only 15 minutes. We can't we can't actually get out and things get really any. 00:56:40:08 - 00:57:09:22 John Simmerman You're laughing there, Doug. You're smiling. There's Sarah. It's like. Yeah, it's it's almost mind. It's like really we're going there. But yes, really we're going there. Just just like, that knee jerk reaction of of, oh, this is just a war on cars. What you guys are trying to do. You touch upon this in the book a little bit about how things do get spun up into these conspiracies and things of that nature. 00:57:09:24 - 00:57:13:07 John Simmerman Would either of you like to expand upon that more? 00:57:13:09 - 00:57:41:00 Sarah Goodyear Well, I would just like to say, whenever there is this kind of conspiracy theory or this kind of culture war attack, ask yourself who that benefits. Ask yourself, who might want us to not move away from car dependance, to not move away from dependance on oil and gas, and, and other fossil fuels? 00:57:41:03 - 00:57:44:12 Doug Gordon And are you saying there's a conspiracy to keep us locked in our cars? 00:57:44:16 - 00:58:16:13 Sarah Goodyear I'm just saying that nothing like this, nothing like this just comes up out of nowhere, right? There are huge, huge global forces behind this that are economic. They're not a bunch of dirty hippies sitting around in some cave somewhere trying to deprive everyone of their freedom. They are well known, major corporations that are subsidized by every single government on this planet. 00:58:16:20 - 00:58:34:14 Sarah Goodyear And and yeah. So I, I really that's that's the first thing I think of who's who's benefiting. What why would somebody want everyone to think that this 15 minute city thing is a can is a conspiracy to rob them of their freedom? 00:58:34:16 - 00:58:58:24 Doug Gordon Yeah. I mean, we have a chapter in the book on, bike lash and, and culture and, you know, sort of like we're talking about this is the culture we're swimming in. Cars are everywhere. And anything that pokes at that, is going to, I don't know, provoke a reaction. Right. We sort of riff on the idea that, like, when you're accustomed to privilege, everything looks like oppression, right? 00:58:58:24 - 00:59:17:28 Doug Gordon Change looks like oppression. It's like, you know, when you're accustomed to free driving and free parking, but sharing the road feels like oppression. And, so people react very strongly and they tend to think, look very inward. And they have they have fears. How is this going to work for me? I think, you know, your the video you showed of Paris was really good. 00:59:17:28 - 00:59:53:09 Doug Gordon People often say, well, what about people with disabilities? It's like in that video you can see that there are designated parking spots for people with disabilities. It's just that they've gotten rid of most of the other cars. For people who could perhaps choose another way of getting around. So yeah, we talk about in the book, you know, I've been at the forefront of a lot of the bike last stuff here in New York for a long time, along with a lot of my fellow advocates and and that side of con and other folks who've borne the brunt of these conspiracy theories and the powerful forces from Murdoch owned media that claims that there's a 00:59:53:09 - 01:00:26:29 Doug Gordon war on cars. And yeah, I think you just have to push through that. I think to put a positive spin on it. Like if your city is provoking this sort of bike clash or conspiracy, I guess it means it's doing something good, right? So that, you know, we talked about it on an episode of the show, the 15 Minute City Conspiracy, really originating in Oxford with air traffic circulation plan, which is similar to running in against in terms of not adding a lot of infrastructure but limiting where cars can go. 01:00:27:01 - 01:00:47:04 Doug Gordon And I think it's one of those things where you just have to push again, you just have to push through, and the conspiracy theories end up looking pretty silly. It doesn't mean they go away. We sort of talk about reaction to change as being the sort of like Kubler-Ross five stages of grief, and it's not linear. 01:00:47:04 - 01:01:10:09 Doug Gordon Sometimes these feelings happen at once. The denial, the anger, the bargaining. We don't always get to acceptance by all people. But I think that's sort of a fallacy to this, the fallacy of consensus. You know, we all live in big cities and even small towns. You're never going to get everybody to agree on everything. You just have to push through, activate that latent minority, you know? 01:01:10:09 - 01:01:29:22 Doug Gordon Well, I would say latent majority sorry. That really does. If they saw these things we would like them. And then you're, you know, not set forever. We always see backlash continuing where we're seeing that New York with a lot of stuff. But yeah backlashes. It's a big part of it. These are big changes. This is a Sarah said. 01:01:29:23 - 01:01:57:20 Doug Gordon There's nobody alive today who hasn't known the street out front of their house. Looking the way it has looked for their entire lives. And now you're going to come along and take three parking spaces to put in a bikeshare station. You're going to take 100 parking spaces to put in a bus lane. That's big stuff. So you can see how people get really, you know, like no one wants to look at their neighbor or the media and say, I don't know, this just sucks for me. 01:01:57:20 - 01:02:07:09 Doug Gordon And change is hard. So they have to keep it at arm's length and say there's a conspiracy to get me out of my car. So it's an easier way, but we'll push through. 01:02:07:11 - 01:02:30:04 John Simmerman Yeah. And when you mentioned, you know, Bike Lash and you mentioned the, you know, the school streets video that I shot in in Paris last year and Sarah. Yeah. I've been documenting, Paris, since 2015. And it's been really encouraging to see that transformation. There's plenty of streets that are still just chock full of cars, and so there's still a lot, an awful lot of work to be done. 01:02:30:07 - 01:02:50:22 John Simmerman But on those side streets, on those quiet, streets in front of the schools and the school street implementation, it's fantastic. Doug, I'm really glad that you also sort of channeled, the I always talk about all ages and all abilities. So I'm really glad that you talked about all abilities, too. And this this photo right here. 01:02:50:24 - 01:03:15:20 John Simmerman I'm assuming this is in Japan. Kind of illustrates just what we're talking about here, because oftentimes with bike lash, there's that knee jerk reaction from the people who are putting up a fit. Is that, oh, this is just for those cyclists. It's just for those, you know, those dudes that are riding bikes. And I like to reframe and say, yeah, it's not about cyclists. 01:03:15:20 - 01:03:36:22 John Simmerman It's about people who are looking to get around either by walking or rolling. You know, it's there's there's many different ways that we can kind of approach this. And you mentioned the Oxford situation. And when we did sort of a debrief on that, we kind of looked at, well, maybe they kind of messed up with the framing and the way they were communicating. 01:03:36:22 - 01:03:58:02 John Simmerman And it kind of sounded like, you know, in it. Oh yeah, cringe a little bit. But this, this particular image that we have on screen. And, Sarah, I'll have you describe it for their listening only audience as well, I think really helps us reframe what we're talking about when we talk about all ages and all abilities and giving freedom of movement. 01:03:58:05 - 01:04:33:11 Sarah Goodyear Yeah, this is a picture I shot when I was in Tokyo, back in 2019. And it's, it's an older woman. I would say she's probably in her late 70s or 80s. She's she's certainly, certainly north of 75, I would say. And she is on a small trike type, tricycle type, vehicle, pedal vehicle with, there's a carrier in the back, for her shopping, which, she hasn't gotten yet. 01:04:33:13 - 01:05:03:20 Sarah Goodyear She's wearing a dress and, shirt and no helmet. It's just her gray hair and the in the breeze, and, And she's coming around the corner on a street. I think that's the Uno neighborhood of Tokyo. And, it's a lovely neighborhood. It's a it's a really calm and peaceful neighborhood that, is filled with people riding bicycles of all ages and all abilities. 01:05:03:22 - 01:05:33:06 Sarah Goodyear And this woman just looks like she's feeling pretty good. She's. She's just cycling along and and feeling like she's on her way to do her business. And. And you see this constantly in Tokyo, and other Japanese cities as well. There's just a lot of people and many older people who are using active transportation to get around and it's so inspiring. 01:05:33:06 - 01:05:59:13 Sarah Goodyear And my own mother is about the age that this woman in this picture is, and she's thinking of moving from the US to Italy and, and she's like, oh, how am I going to get around? I'm like, oh, well, you know, mom, you might want to think about riding a bike in some of these cities. And she just hasn't been on a bike in so long and it just makes me really sad that this kind of mobility is not available to older people in most of the United States. 01:05:59:13 - 01:06:24:01 Sarah Goodyear When I was in southern France, I saw I was in a town where a lot of people go for health treatments. Very, you know, a sort of middle of nowhere, spa town and there's lots of people who are quite ill there, and many of them were riding bicycles. And I saw a woman riding an e-bike through the downtown. 01:06:24:01 - 01:06:49:22 Sarah Goodyear And she had an oxygen cannula and, and, you know, she had a her oxygen was on the back of her e-bike. This is, you know, this could be us, right? This could be everywhere. And Tokyo is a complicated case because it doesn't have a lot of really solid bike infrastructure in the sort of the Dutch sense. What it does have is, cars. 01:06:49:26 - 01:07:12:09 Sarah Goodyear It has a very strict parking policy. And we talked about this in the book as well. It's sort of a legendary parking policy, which is that you can't buy a car in Japan unless you can prove that you have a place off the street to park it. And so that just limits what people do with their cars. So there's not on street parking in most of the city. 01:07:12:11 - 01:07:39:23 Sarah Goodyear And so you don't have people circling around looking for parking and just they're just fewer cars because it's just not, incentivized as a mode of transportation. And they have frighteningly good public transportation. I mean, it's just so good that you could literally go to Tokyo Station and say, you know what? I think I want to go to Hiroshima today and it's like, you can just sort of do that, like, and you're there and then whatever. 01:07:39:23 - 01:08:16:09 Sarah Goodyear So but they have arterial streets where there is heavy car traffic and people use cars a lot in Japan. They have highways and all that. But the side streets in the residential neighborhoods are just naturally quite calm, because there's not this sort of cars going in and seeking things. Cars just don't go in there very much. So you can have young people, old people, the mom Akari culture, which is the the mom Akari is a Japanese bicycle that moms mostly use. 01:08:16:09 - 01:08:54:11 Sarah Goodyear That basically, you can see women riding along with, you know, kids of every age from, you know, infancy to, you know, a ten year old kind of hanging off of different seats and parts of this bike. I mean, it can just and all the shopping and everything. And that's just routine. It's safe. You see all of these people doing this, and it's because the car has been deprioritized and, you know, it's because of other things in, in Japanese culture as well, which is a more communitarian kind of approach to what public spaces are for to what the world is for. 01:08:54:11 - 01:09:25:02 Sarah Goodyear It's not all about you, right? It's about us. And so that is a huge cultural condition that we cannot replicate in every country. I'm not saying that that's possible, but it's interesting to look at the components of what makes it possible for that woman, without question, to get on her trike and go do her shopping and not have a single fear about it, and nobody around her is looking at her going, oh, is that is she going to be okay? 01:09:25:05 - 01:09:53:23 Sarah Goodyear She's so empowered and in our country, what happens to to people who are her age? They're locked away. If they are able to stay in their own home, they're isolated in their own home. They can't go anywhere. If they lose the ability to drive, their entire life is over. It's done. And and they're just basically like, that's just like garbage to us is what their life is. 01:09:53:25 - 01:10:06:08 Sarah Goodyear And and it's just so sad. And anyway, I saw that woman. I just got that shot I like literally wasn't standing there looking for that. It just there she came and she she made me so happy. 01:10:06:10 - 01:10:28:16 John Simmerman Yeah. What's really, really great about that shot too is it's it's a great pairing shot for, what we were talking about earlier with regards to children and a cultural, of course, one of the other cultural aspects in Japan is the cultural, approach of of letting children be able to, to get out and wander and go places. 01:10:28:16 - 01:10:51:23 John Simmerman And again, leaning in on what you all talk about in the book where, yes, we've got the hardware aspect, but we've got to build our built environment to help decrease the car dependency and slow motor vehicle speeds down. And you, you referenced, Chris and Melissa Brundtland, you know, talking about the fact that we actually have to have a car management plan. 01:10:51:23 - 01:11:09:17 John Simmerman How are we doing this? And a big part of this is the hardware in the software and my terminology that I use when I think about activity assets, the activity assets within a city that are the hardware, we can put a pin in a map and say, we've got a protected bike lane over here, we've got a pool over here, we've got a park over here. 01:11:09:19 - 01:11:32:24 John Simmerman But this software activity, assets, the things that we think about that or, you know, the, the, the management plans, the policies, the things that we put in place and you reference, you know, Chris talking about. Yeah, we we can sometimes intellectualize what we mean by the carrots of being able to build, you know, in a system. And we've got the safe and inviting network. 01:11:32:26 - 01:12:07:28 John Simmerman But then, you know, the sticks part of it. What do you have to change human behavior that encourage people, to, to change. And you all are experiencing, you know, a little bit of the carrot and the stick right now with regards to congestion pricing. So I'll have you say just a quick word about that, because I think that fits well with what this narrative of, of, you know, the hardware in the software, the carrots and the sticks talk a little bit about, can congestion pricing or de congestion pricing, which is probably a better way to, phrase it. 01:12:08:00 - 01:12:22:16 John Simmerman And then, then I want to shift gears and we'll, we'll end with a little moto normativity and how cars bring out the worst in us. So but let's, let's talk a quick, bit on de congestion pricing in New York. 01:12:22:17 - 01:12:42:01 Doug Gordon Yeah. It ties back to everything Sara and I have been saying, and we talk about in the book about political will. And one of the things that Chris Brant lit, who, you know, I love, I've learned so much from following him and Melissa and reading their books. One of the things he says, and I totally agree with, is that a lot of elected officials will say, oh, we put in 100 miles of bike lanes last year. 01:12:42:01 - 01:12:57:27 Doug Gordon They'll do a ribbon cutting on a bike lane and pat themselves on the back and say, good job, everybody. And then a year or two later, nothing's really changed. The Mod share in their city hasn't changed. That's because it's not enough to just say, here are these nice things. Here's a bike share system. Here's a place to park your bike. 01:12:57:29 - 01:13:29:04 Doug Gordon You have to make it safe for people to ride, and that means taking on the car. That means really having a traffic circulation plan, a car management plan that says, what are the vehicles that we believe belong in our city? I liken it in the book to Richard Scaries Busy Town. If you remember those books from when you were a kid, you know, the milkman, the fire truck, the garbage truck, and other sanitation vehicles like other delivery trucks that the ambulance, things like that. 01:13:29:10 - 01:13:48:14 Doug Gordon Those are vehicles we want in our town. We should have those things. Services need to happen. Emergencies need to be responded to. But the person who's only just cutting through now, we don't really need that person cutting through my neighborhood. The person just parking their car on the street because they drive to their country home on the weekend. 01:13:48:14 - 01:14:15:19 Doug Gordon That's not that should not be your city's concern. Your city's concern should be getting people where they need to go efficiently and safely. And so congestion pricing is like this, you know, to use your software analogy, like this killer app for unlocking walking, cycling and better driving, it should be noted for everybody who lives in the city because we put in all the bike lanes. 01:14:15:19 - 01:14:38:22 Doug Gordon We have a huge bikeshare system with 100,000 or more trips per day. But up until the beginning of this year, we just had crushing, crushing traffic in New York City that made walking and cycling and driving unpleasant. Now you charge drivers $9 and they have to think like, I have to think when I take the subway or take a taxi, how much is this going to cost me? 01:14:38:24 - 01:15:08:26 Doug Gordon Is it really worth it for me to take this trip? Could I do it by another means? And we've seen all of the benefits that have been unlocked, and that took political courage. I mean, we don't have to get into all the stuff that Kathy Hochul did that led us to this moment, that we're not exactly the most politically current, courageous things to do, but finally doing it and sticking with it as it's under threat from the Trump administration does take political courage, and she should be celebrated and complimented for that. 01:15:08:29 - 01:15:32:10 Doug Gordon And that's part of the job of our advocates, is to know when to whine and complain, like the French or or like New Yorkers, but also to know when to say, hey, thanks. Like this is good. So that stick of congestion pricing combined with our pretty good, you know, look the subway gets a bad rap sometimes, but it's pretty amazing with our excellent bike share system with our growing bike lane network. 01:15:32:13 - 01:15:40:25 Doug Gordon Those carrots and those sticks have been, like I said, the sort of the killer app for unlocking a just a better, better city. 01:15:40:27 - 01:16:12:04 John Simmerman Yeah. To kind of close this out, I want to again end with, you know, giving a hat tip to, Ian Walker's work on Moto Normativity and, absolutely delighted to see that included in because we've been bantering around, for decades, you know, in this, this arena, you know, the windshield bias and carb rain. Kick it off. 01:16:12:06 - 01:16:43:04 John Simmerman What do you want to say about Moto normativity and and kind of that, I guess giving up of, like, we don't even realize for the most of it for for most of us in society how much the framing and the brainwashing has, has happened. And I'm always, baffled at, at how incredibly powerful it is. And it even slips into like our, our verbiage and our language wants to attack that. 01:16:43:07 - 01:17:35:28 Sarah Goodyear Yeah. I mean, Ian Walker's work is just so interesting, endlessly interesting and provocative. And he did this study with other researchers about, if you if you asked somebody their opinion about a certain action that a person was taking and you and you imagined that the action had something to do with cars, or that it didn't have something to do with cars, how quickly people would make excuses or, you know, see the the car centric activity as being okay, where they wouldn't have accepted it if the car weren't involved in the most sort of striking example was you know, would you think that it's okay for someone to smoke cigarets and have cigaret smoke, you know, 01:17:35:29 - 01:17:39:18 Sarah Goodyear blowing around in front of children? I think it is. 01:17:39:20 - 01:17:45:08 Doug Gordon Is it okay to smoke in a place where other people would have to breathe? Cigaret. 01:17:45:08 - 01:18:14:09 Sarah Goodyear Fumes? Right? Or is it okay to run your car engine in a place where people would have to breathe the car fumes and the answers for cigarets were like, no. Are you kidding? You know, a very high percentage of people or. No way. But the one with the automobile, they're like very, you know, a much lower percentage of people objected to that. 01:18:14:12 - 01:18:51:28 Sarah Goodyear And, and Ian's research really tries to get at the heart of what we are doing to ourselves. What kind of cognitive dissonance we're engaging in that we don't see, for instance, parking, putting an enormous, expensive personal possession into a public space and expecting that to be able to be free, you know, you wouldn't you wouldn't put a storage unit onto the street and expect that that would be okay to have your little storage pod there sitting forever, parked at the curb. 01:18:52:00 - 01:18:57:27 Sarah Goodyear So why is it okay if it's a $75,000 Range Rover? Because actually. 01:18:57:27 - 01:18:59:04 Doug Gordon That's because I'm important, sir. 01:18:59:07 - 01:19:25:12 Sarah Goodyear That's a car, right? It's probably a low price for a Range Rover these days also. But anyway, so I think that that this idea that we that we, our brains literally make excuses for cars automatically at this point and trying to help people see that is just so important. And that's why we love his work. I mean, it's just it's really good stuff. 01:19:25:12 - 01:19:48:22 Doug Gordon I would say that's what we're trying to do with the book is really to help people see not only like in Professor Walker's work, that they hold cars to a standard, that they don't hold anything else in their lives. But but the car affects you at a level that you don't. Of course, you understand that driving, affects what time you get to work. 01:19:48:24 - 01:20:26:07 Doug Gordon It affects where you live in relation to your office and other things. But I don't think we really see what cars do to our, our physiology, our our, our way of thinking, our, our politics, all of these ways in which this thing, the car, which really kind of ties it back to why we decided to do the podcast and name it what it is, but certainly what the book is about, that the car is this central figure in the 21st century and has been for the last hundred years, and it's never really gotten its due as this highly impactful thing that literally drives economies. 01:20:26:09 - 01:20:34:16 Doug Gordon I mean, think about how much the price of gas affects elections, right? In in very bad ways usually. 01:20:34:18 - 01:20:39:21 John Simmerman So speaking of drive, speaking of driving, Doug, apparently it drives you crazy too. 01:20:39:23 - 01:20:54:16 Doug Gordon Oh, I mean, my my wife old joke joke about it. I will literally, you know, I'm a person who walks and bikes around the city all the time and is under threat from drivers in many of those cases, I get into a car and my wife can set her watch to sort of when I'll be like, well, you get a load of this asshole. 01:20:54:16 - 01:21:02:01 Doug Gordon I don't know if I can swear on your show. Sorry. But like, Yeah. You brought up goofy there. There's this famous, 01:21:02:04 - 01:21:02:27 Sarah Goodyear Motor mania. 01:21:02:28 - 01:21:05:12 Doug Gordon Motor mania, Mr. Walker and, Mr.. 01:21:05:12 - 01:21:06:00 Sarah Goodyear Wheeler. 01:21:06:04 - 01:21:28:24 Doug Gordon Mr. Wheeler, it's the same. It's goofy. And in one, he's just a mild mannered neighbor living in his suburban place, gets behind the wheel of a car, and he turns into a total monster. That's true. Like Sarah said, you know, a really good example is, let's say, the school line. If you get there late, you're like, look at all these people in front of me. 01:21:28:27 - 01:21:48:00 Doug Gordon Yeah, those are parents of children in your classroom who your kid is probably friends with. And instead of having a lovely thing where you walk your kid or bike your kid to school and then talk. Hey, do you want to get coffee afterwards? With some of the parents? They're just enemies to you. They are in your way. They're your adversaries, like Sarah was saying. 01:21:48:07 - 01:22:21:00 Doug Gordon And so, yes, this is, I actually think this is coming up on a major anniversary. So, like, don't get me started on the Disney stuff. That would be, again, like a whole other show, but like, that's what we're trying to do in the book, say like we you don't have to live like this. You don't have to live in a world where you don't know your neighbors as well, where your air is foul, where your planet is heating, where your kids can't walk to school, and where life is just a little worse because you have this albatross of car payments of the car itself and where to park it. 01:22:21:02 - 01:22:24:02 Doug Gordon And you don't have to become, you know. Yeah. Mr.. 01:22:24:04 - 01:22:24:16 Sarah Goodyear Mr.. 01:22:24:16 - 01:22:26:15 Doug Gordon Wheeler, like Jekyll and Hyde, basically. 01:22:26:15 - 01:22:55:19 Sarah Goodyear Yeah, yeah. And and yeah, I mean, this is what I wrote about in that article that you had this screenshot earlier. This happened this happened to me. You know, I, I used a car to do something that I actually needed a car for, and I just became so enraged and unhappy because there was terrible traffic that day, and, and I, I felt like I lost a whole afternoon of my life. 01:22:55:21 - 01:23:34:05 Sarah Goodyear But at least because I'm not car dependent most of the time, I could see it. I could, I could like, say, wow, I want to continue to avoid that. Most people don't have that choice. Most people are compelled by the society, by the infrastructure that we have consciously built. They are condemned to live this nightmare day after day after day, and that the toll that it takes on your psyche and on your body is not to be underestimated. 01:23:34:05 - 01:24:10:01 Sarah Goodyear I mean, cortisol levels, are a real thing that that they degrade your health in really concrete ways. They lead to cardiovascular disease, which is the leading cause of death, I believe, for people in this country. It's a major contributor. And we are creating situations for many people for 2 to 3 hours a day, have to be sitting in a base of stress hormones and growing to hate the people around them. 01:24:10:08 - 01:24:31:16 Sarah Goodyear I mean, the social costs and the physical costs are just incalculable. And and I mean, the thing about this motor mania is that that was made in the 1950s when, as you know, there were many people who had the living memory of what it was like to not have to do this so they could see it, and now it's vanished again. 01:24:31:16 - 01:24:58:15 Sarah Goodyear And we we have to do everything we can to help ourselves be conscious of this. We're intelligent animals. We're very intelligent animals. We're still animals. And so we suffer all of these physical consequences from the automobile that that nature suffers as well. But we are also intelligent enough to understand what we're doing. So let's use that intelligence for our own well-being. 01:24:58:15 - 01:25:27:08 Sarah Goodyear It's not for some abstract ideal. This is literally so that our lives and our bodies and our and our minds and our souls are, are better. Like, this is good for us to challenge automobiles hegemony. And so let's use our intelligence for good instead of for just inventing more ways to car. 01:25:27:10 - 01:25:48:26 Doug Gordon In more ways to car. Yeah. I mean, that's really and that's really one of the like final messages of the book is that like the problem of cars is not going to be solved with different cars, electric cars for all of the, their benefits and tailpipe emission reduction and all that kind of stuff. That's great. But it's still going to cause the same traffic jam. 01:25:48:26 - 01:26:08:21 Doug Gordon And if you're hit by one, it still causes the same death and injury. Flying cars are just not going to happen. Autonomous cars, you know, look, a thing I often say is nobody ever walks around the places. We've been talking about Ghent, Amsterdam, Disneyland, and says, you know what? Make this place better? Lots of robot cars. That would be awesome. 01:26:08:23 - 01:26:28:03 Doug Gordon So to Sarah's point of intelligence, like we intuit, I think even if you drive a lot, you intuitively understand that driving less or not at all is better. Yeah. You know, you know, you go to the Jersey shore or a walkable European city on vacation. You don't want to be in a car. You want to walk, you want to bike. 01:26:28:04 - 01:26:37:07 Doug Gordon You want to like, take a tourist bus. Maybe that's about as much as you want to do. So we get it. We just have to sort of get more people to see that there's a better way. 01:26:37:14 - 01:27:06:15 Sarah Goodyear Yeah. And as far as the effects of of cars, I do want to electric cars, I do want to put in a word for nature, which is actually the thing that makes it possible for us to be alive, and that we are actually part of is that electric cars and autonomous cars don't solve the problem of automobile infrastructure, which is in itself. 01:27:06:15 - 01:27:37:10 Sarah Goodyear And we get into this in the book, you know, one of the great destructors of animal habitat. You know, the number of animals in the world has gone down dramatically since I was a child. I think it's like 70% or something crazy like that. Fewer animals overall. And a lot of that is because of automobile infrastructure and the environmental impact of roads, not cars, but roads is catastrophic. 01:27:37:13 - 01:27:57:01 Sarah Goodyear And we we that's that's something that we can't lose sight of. And I totally want to see that electric transition, but it's it solves one small part of the bad things that cars do. 01:27:57:03 - 01:28:19:20 John Simmerman Yeah. And it's funny too, the opening segue sequence, of Motor Mania, of course, is, you know, he wouldn't even step on an ant. And of course, you do highlight the book traffic and, and, and and get deeper, deeper into those negative, externalities and consequences of our, automobile infrastructure. 01:28:19:23 - 01:28:37:14 Sarah Goodyear I also want to I also want to mention Crossings by Ben Goldfarb because, yes, his book, along with Traffic Nation by Paul Donald, those two books completely. As much as I knew about it, they blew my mind and and really, really important stuff. 01:28:37:16 - 01:29:02:09 John Simmerman Yeah. And as an LA kid myself, I'm a fourth generation, Angelino, you know, I, I have been following the story of you know, the archipelago, the island effect, and, you know, the mountain lion and and trying to reconnect that habitat. And I spent a fair amount of time, trail running up in the mountains, above, Los Angeles and above the Hollywood sign. 01:29:02:09 - 01:29:25:23 John Simmerman I used to do, mountain biking up there, too. And so it was really cool to see that story be part of this. Doug and Sarah, this has been such a joy catching up with you and and talking about and super excited about the book coming up. Final words, from each of you on the, the the launch that's coming out in just a few days of the book. 01:29:25:25 - 01:29:50:27 Doug Gordon We're just really excited. I mean, this is a chance for our issues to hopefully reach people who are outside the urban bubble. Let's say, you know, I, I always joke on the show and I've talked about this with Sarah many times that like my ideal listener for the podcast and reader for the book, is my mother in law, who lives in suburban Chicago and drives a convertible and has always wanted this car. 01:29:50:28 - 01:30:09:23 Doug Gordon She loves it. I, again, don't expect her to throw her car keys or, you know, into the into Lake Michigan. I just want her to see that this is something worth changing. And we want people to understand that, like, okay, they might put a bike lane on your street or, you know, put a, new bus route through your community. 01:30:09:26 - 01:30:27:16 Doug Gordon You don't have to. We don't really care if you're never going to ride a bike or never ride the bus. We just want you to understand why this stuff is happening, because there's some movement out there that wants it to happen. And for the sake of our our bodies, our planet, it should happen. And I'm just really excited. 01:30:27:16 - 01:30:44:21 Doug Gordon The when we announced the publication of the book, our listeners were just so excited. And the response online has been amazing. We're going to be doing a live tour all over North America, and we're really excited to just get this out there into the world. I don't think I can say much more than that. We're just really excited. 01:30:44:23 - 01:31:22:18 Sarah Goodyear Well, first of all, you could say life after Cars.com is where you'll find out about all of that. But I also want to say that I feel really hopeful about putting this book out into the world, partly because of what I've seen happen over the last 20 years that I've been covering these issues as a journalist. It's gone from being, well, here's a weird, quirky fringe thing that people are like, wow, bicycling for transportation, or, you know, caring about whether there's, you know, parking minimums. 01:31:22:20 - 01:31:53:12 Sarah Goodyear Now, these ideas are increasingly mainstream. And my fondest hope for the book is that this book can help to bring these ideas into the mainstream. And what I say is, if you have somebody in your life who's a smart, thoughtful person, who is a busy person and doesn't have time to think about these things, put this book in their hands and say, just, just read it. 01:31:53:14 - 01:32:28:28 Sarah Goodyear Just just take a look. And I think that you might be surprised. What I hope is that this is an approachable mechanism that that people can use to learn that maybe some of the things that they feel intuitively about their own lives not being satisfying, not being easy, not being convenient or comfortable. Maybe they'll see themselves there and then they'll be like, oh, we could live differently. 01:32:29:00 - 01:32:34:23 Sarah Goodyear And then they can become part of that conversation. That's that's what I hope for. 01:32:34:25 - 01:32:52:18 John Simmerman You know, and again, available this fall, you know, in a couple of days, also available out on my, bookshop here for the Active Towns podcast, Life After Cars. Doug Gordon, Sarah Goodyear, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast. 01:32:52:20 - 01:32:53:22 Doug Gordon Thanks, John. It was a pleasure. 01:32:53:24 - 01:32:55:05 Sarah Goodyear Thank you so much. 01:32:55:07 - 01:33:11:00 John Simmerman Hey everyone. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Doug and Sarah about their new book, Life After Cars. And if you did, please give it a thumbs up. We'll leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, I'd be honored to have you subscribe to the channel. Just click on the subscription button down below and ring that notification bell. 01:33:11:03 - 01:33:29:26 John Simmerman And if you're enjoying this content on the Active Towns Channel, please consider supporting my efforts by becoming an Active Towns Ambassador. Super easy to do. Just click on the join button right here on YouTube down below, or you can navigate over to Active Towns. Georgie. Click on the support tab at the top of the page, and there's several different options, including becoming a Patreon supporter. 01:33:30:00 - 01:33:48:26 John Simmerman Patrons do get early and have free access to all this video content. Okay, thank you so much for tuning in. I really do appreciate it. And until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers. And again, just want to send a huge thank you to all my Active Towns Ambassadors supporting your channel financially via YouTube memberships. 01:33:48:28 - 01:33:49:14 Sarah Goodyear YouTube. 01:33:49:14 - 01:33:59:07 John Simmerman Super! Thanks. As well as making contributions to the nonprofit and joining my Patreon. Every little bit adds up and is very much appreciated. Thank you all so much!