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Dispatches from Book Tour
About this episode
Doug Gordon and Sarah Goodyear reflect on their extensive book tour across North American cities, sharing fresh insights on urban transportation, bike infrastructure, and community advocacy. They discuss highlights and challenges from San Francisco's evolving bike lanes and driverless cars to Vancouver's freeway-free planning and Portland's bike culture. They also touch on the persistent issues of housing crises and car dominance, emphasizing the vibrant advocacy communities they met. Alongside urbanism, they share personal experiences with local food, transit, and memorable encounters, painting a nuanced picture of each city's unique vibe and ongoing struggles.
Topics:
urban transportation
bike infrastructure
driverless cars
public transit
housing crisis
advocacy communities
city comparisons
train travel
urban planning
right turn on red
The last few weeks have been a whirlwind as we hit the road (not in a car) to promote our new book, Life After Cars, in some of the greatest cities of North America including San Francisco, Washington, DC, Seattle, Vancouver, BC, Nanaimo, BC, Portland, OR, San Diego, and Los Angeles (as well as our home base of NYC, of course). Getting to visit all these cities in person, often walking and riding the streets accompanied by local advocates and elected officials, was a real joy and a privilege. We saw a lot! And maybe not surprisingly for a couple of podcasters, we had some thoughts about all of it—from excellent bike lanes and public spaces to transit service that left a lot to be desired and the horror that is Interstate 5.
Our tour continues! Find out where we'll be next at lifeaftercars.com.
Our upcoming schedule:
Support The War on Cars on Patreon and receive exclusive access to ad-free versions of regular episodes, Patreon-only bonus content, Discord access, invitations to live events, merch discounts and free stickers!
Thanks to Cleverhood for sponsoring this episode. Listen to this episode for the latest discount code and get the best rain gear for walking and cycling.
Order our new book, Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile, out now from Thesis, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
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This is the War on Cars, broadcasting not quite live from downtown Los Angeles.
I'm Doug Gordon, and I am here in the studio with Sarah Goodyear.
Hey, Doug.
How are you doing?
I'm good.
We are now done with the first big leg of our book tour, which is why we are here
in Los Angeles, about to go our separate ways for the Thanksgiving break.
Yeah, and it's been just an incredible tour, and we had a great show in LA last
night.
But I think that we should start at the beginning.
But first, we have some business to get out of the way.
We always have some business to get out of the way.
We are on Patreon at patreon.com slash the War on Cars pod.
So please become a member.
You'll get access to exclusive bonus episodes, stickers, early access to live shows, and
we have a lot of those coming up still.
And also, the whole reason we're out here right now is because of our book, Life
After Cars, you can go to lifeaftercars.com and order the book there if you haven't
and find out about all of our book events.
So what we're going to do in this episode, it's going to be pretty casual.
We're really just chatting.
We're both pretty wiped out from being on the road for three weeks.
And so this is going to be just us kind of downloading what we've seen and done
over the last three weeks because it's been hectic.
Yeah, but it's been a great way to see different cities and see what is working,
what isn't working, other things we liked or didn't like about the cities we've visited.
We've learned so much from being on the ground, talking to advocates,
talking to regular transit users and cyclists and government officials.
It's been awesome.
So I think what's going to be kind of funny about this is that in some cases,
we only went to some of these cities for two days, four days.
So take this for what it is worth.
It is two New Yorkers offering their opinions on cities they barely got to scratch the surface of.
Right, but maybe because we came to them fresh in a lot of cases,
sometimes you can see things about another person's place that you can't see about your own.
So I hope we have some insights to offer and yeah, it's been amazing.
So we did do shows in New York, but you all have heard enough about it.
We've lived in New York long enough to know what is good and bad about that city.
Yeah, I mean, New York gets enough coverage.
So we were not going to talk about that.
Yeah, so I think like I've been joking about what this episode might be.
And kids, if you're listening, cover your ears for a moment.
This could be a kind of like fuck Mary kill of cities that we've been to.
Like what what did we like?
What didn't we like?
You know, we had to leave New York.
What would we move to any of these particular cities, etc.?
Yeah, I actually thought of it as kind of like speed dating cities.
So I like that.
Yeah, and like, you know, you'd go to one of the cities and you'd be like,
oh, this city is kind of cute.
And then you go to the next city and be like, oh, but this city is really cute.
Yeah, which city ghosted us is the question for the kids who are dating these days.
No, no, let's let's not none of the cities ghosted us.
All of these cities were very respectful, enthusiastic and enthusiastic.
So, yeah, Vancouver, you got to stop texting us.
No, I'm kidding.
It's going to push this dating analogy as far as it will go until it breaks.
The first of these cities was the great city of San Francisco, California,
where I used to live actually.
So this is this is the one city that I've that I broke up with at one point.
But we love San Francisco and we had a couple of really great events there.
Yeah, we were at the Litquake Literary Festival and then we did an event with
UMB Action.
So those were fun.
San Francisco is an amazing town.
What did you see, Doug, that you really liked about it?
Well, I did a 20 mile run because I'm training for a marathon.
Because you're insane.
I'm insane.
But it was a really great way to see a lot of the city, of course.
So I ran along the Embarcadero, the Presidio.
I ran over the Golden Gate Bridge and back, made up a little more time
because I had to go visit the Yoda statue.
So I kind of detoured into there because I'm a Star Wars nerd.
I hadn't been to San Francisco in a very long time, like 10 or 15 years.
And that's true of a couple of the cities that we'll be talking about as well.
So the last time I was there, there weren't a lot of bike lanes.
There was no bike share or anything like that.
The thing that stuck out in my mind was San Francisco was the first
time I'd ever taken Waymo.
You've taken it before.
Yeah, that's right.
So this was my first Waymo experience and I got to admit it was really cool.
You know, because Waymo still has the form of a car and you're seeing
the steering wheel move in front of an empty driver's seat, it obviously
feels like a ghost is driving the car.
That was cool.
It did stop at every stoplight.
It never went over the speed limit, as far as I could tell.
It took turns very safely.
It did things like navigate potholes very slowly, go around
a few construction sites.
It rode alongside a cyclist for a little bit and you could see it on the display
and kept its distance.
So as far as the safety argument goes for driverless vehicles, I'm totally down
with it.
OK.
So it sounds like you liked it.
I liked it.
I think the novelty would wear off very quickly if I took it more than I took
it twice.
Right.
I still believe very firmly that no city is going to be improved
with lots of driverless cars.
There's no part of my experience in San Francisco thinking, oh, you know,
it'd be great about the Embarcadero and make it better if there were just
more driverless cars.
No, what's nice is the water is on one side and there's a walking
and cycling path.
And all of the other people who are walking and cycling are what make
it fun and interesting to be on.
So, no, I didn't think that this was a solution for much more than
the safety problem.
And so what did you see that you didn't like so much?
This is going to be a theme, I think, throughout all the cities
that we visited.
The downtown is struggling.
You know, we take for granted.
I think that Midtown Manhattan is doing more or less OK.
Office vacancy is still not at a great level, but the street life
is really not that bad in Manhattan.
And in San Francisco, the middle of downtown feels pretty rough.
Lots of vacant storefronts, not a whole lot of foot traffic
in some places.
That's not true in other neighborhoods that I went to
and ran through.
But the downtown, especially at night, it needs help.
And I think obviously the solution, and we're going to talk
about this, I think, in one of the cities that we went to,
is we just need more people living in our downtowns.
Like the affordable housing crisis needs to be solved in part
by filling in, where we can, downtowns.
Some of that might be with office conversions,
which is a whole other episode, because it's not that simple.
Some of it is with infill development.
But there just isn't San Francisco struggling,
and a lot of cities are.
Yeah.
I mean, that was something that troubled me as well.
But one thing that I really loved downtown
is Market Street, which used to be open to cars,
and now it is not.
And it's a transit corridor, and it's a bike path.
And it is so heavily used as a bike corridor.
And that was just really exciting to see as somebody who
used to live and commute by bike.
In San Francisco, I never dreamed
that Market Street would be a major bike corridor.
And it totally makes sense.
It cuts through the city in a certain way
that gives you access to a lot of different destinations.
And it's flat.
And it's just a natural route.
What I don't like is that I think that they just
approved that now ride-hail vehicles and taxis
can get back onto Market Street.
And Waymo's, I guess.
And Waymo's.
And that's not great.
I also saw a lot of other bike infrastructure,
new bike lanes that were really terrific.
But again, the flip side is some of the backlash
that's happening.
And another thing that was happening there
that I didn't like is they just
had a member of the board of supervisors
recalled basically over the decision
to turn the oceanfront highway.
The Great Highway.
The Great Highway, so-called, into a park and a waterfront
park.
And that was very controversial among the people
in the Sunset neighborhood where that's located.
Although we did talk to people who said nature
is going to have the final vote there,
because they do have to spend a lot of money and time
removing sand from those roadways, which
is part of why they justified shutting it down to cars.
Yeah, so I mean, I think there's the things that I saw
are great new infrastructure, opening up
new places for people.
But that backlash, backlash thing happening is troubling.
And so in a city that really should
be leading on so many of these issues,
a very progressive city always has
been depressing that that is still a dynamic there.
I will say one thing I really liked about San Francisco.
I have made a point of trying to do
multiple forms of transportation in every city
that we've gone to.
And so in San Francisco, we took the BART from the airport.
I took the cable car, because that's
what one does in San Francisco, took the street car.
You know, they have all the vintage street cars running
along a couple lines, took the Bay Wheels bike
share, which was unfortunately very expensive.
That's a big issue with corporate control of bike share
systems.
It's really expensive just to go a short distance on bike share.
Took the bus.
The bus is great in San Francisco, actually.
And I think that's also going to be a theme
throughout this.
The bus needs a lot more love in every city,
because it's generally pretty good in most West Coast
cities that we experienced.
It just needs to be a little better.
So I was glad that we are in San Francisco.
It's really, it's a great city overall.
Yeah.
I mean, I love it very much.
And what's one non-urbanism thing about San Francisco?
Because we're only talking about that.
I think we should sort of, what did you
love even as someone who knows the city very well?
We went to Chinatown and just had like really good Cantonese
style food, which is something that in New York,
you know, it's just the Chinese food
that you get in San Francisco is a certain style.
And this was a really old school place,
and they were so friendly and sweet.
Yeah, I really liked that place.
OK, so the next city was Washington, DC.
We were only there overnight.
But I think both Doug and I have been to Washington
quite a bit over the years.
So I would have to say that for me,
the thing that I just really was struck by
was the quality of the bike infrastructure.
Especially we were staying over by the NOMA Gallaudet
metro station.
There's a lot of new construction there, a lot of transit
oriented development, which is also a great thing
that Washington is doing pretty well, I think.
And the streets were just designed with such care
to incorporate a bike lane.
There were plantings and bioswales to help with runoff.
It was all very, very beautifully done.
The sidewalks were nice and wide.
The roadway was relatively narrow.
And there was a lot of ground floor retail and life
at the ground floor.
So those new streets, those new developments that sometimes
can feel kind of blank or sterile,
we've encountered that in some other cities we've been to.
I felt like Washington was really
doing a great job of giving texture to the place.
Yeah, I thought the ground floor retail environment wasn't bad.
I think a big issue I have with a lot of that development
is because it's also new, it's a lot of chain stores
at the ground level.
Even if they are smaller, it's still
like a Starbucks, a Pete's Coffee, or a bank,
or something like that.
So it'll be interesting to see how that kind of new
development ages and how new businesses follow
the chains as they turn over.
But yeah.
What did you see that you didn't like?
I've been to DC a lot.
And we didn't have a lot of time to explore
beyond sort of our immediate area and where the venue was.
It's still really car dominated.
And just because of the layout of that city,
you just have these super wide streets
that can take multiple signal sequences to cross.
So I think that needs to be fixed there.
OK, the thing that bothered me that I saw
was the National Guard.
And the militarization of the enforcement on the street,
the militarization of the street, that was something
that we saw almost right away when we got there.
Like right out of the metro station,
there were two or three National Guards people
standing around, which is just, I think my reaction at the time
was like, this is just ridiculous.
Yeah, it's absurd.
I mean, we know that the city itself didn't ask for that.
And so I hope Washington can get free of that soon.
Yeah.
This is going to be such a funny episode,
because one of my favorite onion headlines
is a woman who quote unquote loves Brazil,
has seen only four square miles of it.
And it's about a woman who's gone to a resort
and thinks that that stands in for all of Brazil.
I feel like there's a danger with this episode
where we're going to make some sort of sweeping judgment
about just, and DC, even though we've been there many times,
both of us, we were only there overnight for the show.
Yeah.
Take all of this for what you will.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right, next city.
Next city was Seattle, Washington.
And what a city it is.
What a gem.
I mean, really one of the most beautiful cities in the world,
I think, for just its geographic situation.
I mean, it's just stunning everywhere you turn.
You see natural beauty.
You see mountains.
You see water.
It's just an incredible place.
And there's a ton of beautiful, beautiful architecture
there, too, dating from the 19th and 20th centuries,
as well as some really good new architecture.
So, I mean, Seattle is incredible.
And again, the downtown bike lanes,
I have to say, we're stunning.
We joked a lot on this tour about the fact
that so many cities that we went to had concrete curb protection
for bike lanes, which is a technology that's
unavailable in New York City.
Yeah, we only have a few places where
they have concrete separated, low curb bike lanes.
So pay attention, New York City DOT.
Step it up.
Seattle, to me, I kept describing
as one of North America's cycling, myth-busting cities.
It's hilly.
It's rainy.
It's gloomy a lot of the year.
And they have one of the best downtown bike lane networks
I've seen in a North American city.
Obviously, the Alaskan Way.
Viaduct being replaced and torn down.
And that waterfront being turned into a pedestrian esplanade
and some of the cycling infrastructure there
is really good.
Cascade Bicycle Club took us on a tour
of some really good bike infrastructure
along industrial areas in West Seattle, where
they're starting to build out some stuff.
So despite how car-centric Seattle still remains,
and I-5 will be a recurring character in this episode,
I-5 blasts right through the middle of the city.
And you're never not with an earshot of it there,
which is a real shame.
It is relatively easy to get around car-free.
We took the link a lot.
That was great.
I took the monorail, the one stop that it goes.
As a Disney fan, that was fun.
And I also took a long run there, despite the hills,
and got to see a lot.
So yeah, I think urbanism-wise, it
did feel like one of the few cities where you could live
mostly car-free, depending on where you live in the city.
Yeah, but then the car infrastructure, I-5,
in particular, sort of spreads its noise
like a stain over so much of the really beautiful part of Seattle,
the downtown, and the neighborhoods.
And it's a city that is fragmented by water already.
And so then the further fragmentation
by freeways and off-ramps and on-ramps,
it can make it a little daunting
to navigate by public transit.
Some of the transit times are just way longer
than they should be.
And so that was something that was troubling to me.
I did have the fun experience of being there on election night,
on a night when several progressive council
members and a progressive city attorney were elected.
I was at that party.
And that was just super cool to see
that these were people who really care about our issues.
And they got in.
And the mayoral election was too close to call that night.
But over the next several days, when the votes were counted,
Katie Wilson.
It did not get decided until long after we were gone.
Yeah, but Katie Wilson, who is a champion of the Transit
Riders Union, was elected mayor and someone
who doesn't own a car.
And that's really inspiring.
So I think the politics there were really inspiring
and give great hope for the city's future.
And continuing my theme of multiple forms of transportation,
we biked, took the link, took the bus, and took a ferry.
So that's right.
And I also took the modern rail.
So I got a lot of transportation in.
So what was like a non-urbanism thing that you enjoyed there?
I think a lot of this is going to come down to food,
probably.
Yeah, what was the best food that I eat?
It was a place in Capitol Hill
that I went on a very rainy day.
And I was walking around.
And I needed something warm and cozy.
And I had one of the best bowls of ramen
I have ever had in my life at a place called Rondo
in Capitol Hill.
And it was, I believe, the black garlic, Tantan ramen.
And it was so good.
I mean, really, it was as good as ramen
that I've had in Japan.
So yeah.
By the way, I feel like this episode,
I apologize to some of our listeners,
because I feel like this is, you and I
are both old enough to remember when your neighbors would
come back from vacation and she'll like a slideshow.
So we're trying to make this interesting.
But we did really want to do a wrap up of each city,
because there's just so many cool things.
But yeah, this is two New Yorkers
talking about eating bowls of ramen and riding transit.
What did you like?
What was your non-urbanism thing in Seattle?
I like a lot of the parks in Seattle.
I think there's some really nice ones.
I, again, went on a good long run.
And so the waterfront run, you can just go.
The trail system there is very good.
And you can go for a really long distance
without crossing a street or having to interact with cars.
And a lot of the folks that I spoke to who, by commute,
they will say, once I get to a trail, it's like seven miles
and I never have to interact with a car.
And I had that experience running.
That was really great.
So we left Seattle on a train, which is always a great way
to enter or leave a city.
And we took Amtrak to Vancouver, British Columbia.
And I think we both kind of, if we're
going to go back to the dating analogy,
we both kind of fell in love a little bit.
Oh, gosh, the train, the romance of riding the train.
Oh, no, the romance of Vancouver.
Oh, I was going to talk about just
like how nice it was to take the train
and how busy it was and how the views were beautiful.
But yes, we got to Vancouver.
And I do think it's talk about a real highlight
of urbanism alone.
As soon as you enter the city on the train,
you can see one of the characteristics of Vancouver
is that the freeways and highways don't go into it.
That was a decision that the city planners made a long time
ago.
And it has preserved this beautiful city in a way
that so many cities in North America
have not been preserved.
And so all the subsequent development,
which has been enormous, I mean, there's just
a tremendous amount of density.
There are a lot of tall towers.
But all of that development, I feel like,
is informed by the fact that the freeways don't go through.
And so that was one of my favorite things about Vancouver.
But I think also what I really admired
and Brent Toderian, who used to be the city planner for Vancouver,
took us on a tour that was super informative.
And one of the things I really, really loved
was the style of building that they have there that
brings density to the downtown is like a podium
at the first four or five floors
and then a deeply setback tower coming up from that.
And that allows the density of the towers.
But from the street, you're not feeling
like the building is looming over you.
And then you don't get the urban canyon effect
or wind tunnels down the avenues.
Right.
And then you have views in between the towers,
which is really important because every direction
you look in the city of Vancouver
is another stunning vista of mountains or sea.
Yeah.
Vancouver was interesting to me
because San Francisco, of course,
you've got the Transamerica Pyramid, the Golden Gate Bridge.
As New Yorkers, we have city icons.
But Vancouver, to me, didn't have an icon.
The setting is sort of what stands out about the city.
It has obviously some recognizable landmarks
and things like that.
That was great.
In terms of transportation, so we took the Sky Train, which
is the driverless train.
I think it's made by the same folks who make the Air
Train, the JFK.
We took the Hello Ferry to Nanaimo,
which we'll talk about in a moment.
We took a bus.
We took the bus.
Yep.
We took Moby Bikes.
That was pretty great.
And we did a lot of walking, of course.
Yeah, it was just really, really stunning.
And I will say that it was striking, especially coming
from Seattle and other United States cities,
the downtown was really hopping at night.
Yeah.
Well, I think that's a function of the fact
that they have so much residential interspersed
throughout the city.
And there isn't as clear cut a division
between downtown, the business and financial center,
and the employment center, and downtown,
the residential center.
I mean, there are exceptions to that there.
Again, we didn't see every piece of it.
But yeah, everywhere we walked, even late at night,
there were other people about early in the morning.
There were people walking dogs or pushing strollers.
So it did feel like having that dense housing
interspersed with your office towers,
that's the secret sauce to the vitality of your downtown,
for sure.
We did see bad things in Vancouver.
The advocates who brought us their Vision Zero Vancouver
took us to the worst intersection, the winner
of their worst intersection.
King Street, and I forget the cross-strait.
The cross-strait, is that a thing?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh my god, it was so bad.
It's six roads feeding into one intersection or something?
Yeah, and I think it can take up to five minutes to cross it
if you're going by the crosswalks, which are not
necessarily in the places where they ought to be.
And apparently, it's really dangerous.
There have been a lot of crashes there.
It was terrible.
And sometimes, when you see a terrible intersection
like that in a city where you expect a lot of terrible
infrastructure, it's depressing, it's sad.
But you're like, well, yep, the whole place is like this.
But when you see intersections like that in a city like Vancouver,
it hits different because it's like, come on, man,
you guys know how to do this stuff.
Why is this part not good?
And it really makes you, that was outside of the downtown
where a lot of the wealthier residents can be found.
And so what we heard from advocates
was that the quality of the infrastructure
really deteriorates as you.
The bike infrastructure was outstanding in the downtown.
But yes, it gets a little fewer and farther between and less
safe and less good as you move out.
My non-urbanism thing there was
I had the best sashimi I've ever had.
It was so cheap.
My entire meal was like $24 Canadian,
which at the current exchange rates
is like 25 cents American, apparently.
It was the best sashimi I've ever had.
Melted in my mouth.
Again, it's all going to be food related.
I know, I'm afraid that mine is food also, which is I
got a falafel from a cart for, I think, like $7 Canadian,
which actually is, they were paying me.
And it was, I mean, I have to say, I love falafel.
I eat a lot of falafel.
There's a lot of good falafel in New York.
But this may have been the best falafel I've ever eaten.
And it was just, I ate it in a park outside.
And man, I would go back for that any day.
All right, so then we went to, just for the day,
to Nanaimo, about an hour ferry ride from Vancouver.
Right, and we were brought there
by the local Strong Towns chapter.
And that was really cool because Nanaimo is a small city.
It's only about 100,000 people, I think.
And they had a big crowd there who were interested in talking
about these issues.
And it just, to me, this may have been my favorite thing
about Nanaimo was the enthusiasm
that we saw there for these ideas in a place where
I think your average person who's familiar with British
Columbia, if you said to them, Nanaimo is a place
that is hungry to talk about urbanism and bike ability
and walk ability and human-scale development.
I don't think that most people would say, oh yeah,
like Nanaimo, that's a no-brainer.
But there was just a huge appetite for it there.
And that was really moving and great.
That was my favorite thing, the people there.
And of course the Nanaimo bar that we had.
Thank you, Laney, for purchasing those for us.
They were very good.
Yeah, and we took bike share.
They have a dockless bike share system
that you can pick up right outside the ferry terminal.
So that was great.
It's hilly.
And there were some really high quality bike lanes
from the ferry terminal up to the downtown.
And also a newly installed and not yet quite finished
shared street in the downtown.
We sat outside.
A few cars were coming by at a very slow speed,
but it was pedestrian friendly.
And a very nice little walkable downtown, it was great.
Yeah, and my non-urbanism thing is not
going to be food this time.
I walked to the waterfront where the Marina is,
and they have a lot of plaques there.
And I'm a plaque reader, not surprisingly.
I listened to a 99% invisible, and one of their rules
is always read the plaque.
Always read the plaque.
Yeah.
So I did read the plaques.
And one of them was about the indigenous people
of that region and the fact that they were dog lovers
and really loved their dogs.
And it said on the plaque that they
had these little, small, long-haired dogs
that they treated like children, that they really treasured them,
and that they also made things out of their hair.
They wove their hair.
And so that is my favorite thing about Nanaimo.
Very cool.
So then we went back to Vancouver.
Went to a Canucks game.
Oh, yes.
How could I forget?
That was really my favorite thing.
I got to it.
Oh, man.
That's true.
That was so much fun.
It was such a good mood, man.
Like, is the mood just better in Canada?
I think so.
I think so.
I wonder why.
More health insurance, fewer guns.
But to tie it into urbanism, what a great stadium complex.
So the Rogers Arena right there,
we just walked from the ferry terminal
the entire way over to the arena.
And then when we finished, we
were just with the wave of people going up to the SkyTrain.
And the frequency, we saw one and two minute headways
on the SkyTrain, something we have not experienced
in any North American city.
So getting back to the hotel from the game was a breeze.
Yeah.
And let's just say those headways are on the trains.
And they also have really frequent headways on the buses.
And, you know.
I can hear someone from Vancouver typing in saying,
actually, I experienced a 12 minute headway.
But our experience being there for 36 hours
was that the headways were excellent.
Yeah.
And so Vancouver, we definitely were quite smitten with you.
In the F. Mary kill, it's Mary.
Oh, that's a Mary for sure.
And then we got on the train again.
Yes.
And we took the epic train ride.
Yeah.
Eight hours down from Vancouver to Portland, Oregon,
a beautiful, beautiful train ride.
Yeah.
It's really quite lovely.
And you ask yourself every time you're
on one of these trains, which are always
full of people, how it is that the United States of America
can't figure out that that's something
that we should be investing in more
and putting more resources into.
People love it.
Yeah.
It's wild when we've had a couple of interviews where
people say, oh, don't you understand
people love their cars?
And first of all, we understand that,
that we've been doing this for a long time.
But my response has been anywhere there
is a train in North America, it's busy.
People like taking trains.
And if we had more of them, I think
we would have more people taking trains.
It was just a lovely way to get
through the Pacific Northwest.
It was amazing.
And then we arrived at Portland Union Station.
Which is beautiful.
Gorgeous station.
Yeah, we should talk about that for a moment because Seattle's
train station, beautiful.
Vancouver's train station, also very nice.
Portland Union Station, absolutely gorgeous.
Really incredible.
Return, return.
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
These are stations that were built
when we gave transit riders and train riders
the respect and dignity they deserved.
And we built things that were welcoming,
that had amenities, that were lovely just in their own right.
Because we used to believe that people
who rode these modes deserved respect.
So we could go back to that.
That would be cool.
All right, so Portland, we did take many forms
of transportation.
We took the bus frequently.
We took the max, the light rail.
I did the bike town, bike share.
Although I call it bikey town because that
is what it should be called because it's sponsored by Nike.
It's very cringy.
Great though, mostly electric.
And I hadn't been back to Portland in a long time.
The time I was there last, the telecom crossing
was not yet open.
It was built, but nothing was running across it.
You couldn't walk or bike across it.
Did take it this time multiple times.
I did a loop running around the waterfront.
That was great.
I biked back and forth over the Hawthorne Bridge, which
was really amazing.
The Steel Bridge, Portland is just Bridge City, USA,
like Pittsburgh in that sense.
And so the river crossings are great.
The thing I don't like about Portland
is that on the east side of the river, the Esplanade there,
you are just under the highway.
And even on the west side of the river, all you can hear
is the roar of the highways and the cars going
over the different bridges.
And it's a crime.
And it's a shame because you're literally
sitting by one of the most spectacular river
settings of any city.
And all you can hear is not the birds, is not the water,
but the traffic sewer running alongside the multiple traffic
sewers.
It does have also the highway on the other side of the city.
And when I walked that way, that was not pleasant.
But man, a constant theme throughout this entire trip
is the noise of I-5, for example,
and the other highways that we experienced.
The other constant theme for me is,
let's talk about headways again.
And the contrast of going from Vancouver,
where you just go up to the platform
and you can pretty much be sure that you're
going to be getting onto a train within the next four
minutes or wait for a bus and have a similar experience.
In Portland, the headways were ridiculous.
Especially on the bus.
And so tragically, I found myself a couple of times
we had to get across town to do.
We did an appearance on a local TV show
or meet somebody for a meeting.
And I miscalculated or got misinformation
from Google Maps about when a bus was going to be arriving.
And then I would realize I am just not going to make it
because the next bus doesn't come for 23 minutes
or something, which is just it's
not a usable headway in the middle of the day in a city
where there's a river in the middle of it
and people have to cross those bridges regularly
to get to many things that they do.
It's not a huge division in many ways between the city.
Like, people are going back and forth all the time.
And it's just ridiculous, the headways.
And so we ended up having to take ride
hail some of the time that it just shouldn't
have been necessary.
And that was really, especially, I think,
because we had just come from a place that did that
so differently.
And indeed, I understand that they
want to take more money away from the transit system
in Portland and make it even less useful.
And that's just wrong.
And Portland has a well-deserved reputation
as a bikeable city, as the capital of US bike culture.
But what I heard from a lot of folks there
and what we experienced is that driving
is way too easy in that city.
There isn't a lot of traffic, so defaulting to a car,
there's not a whole lot of price to be paid
for getting in the car.
So that was a problem for me.
I did really like the new bike infrastructure,
as we talked about with Jonathan Moss of Bike Portland
and at the Bike Happy Hour, which was amazing.
The people there are just incredible.
A lot of Portland's reputation as a bike city
historically was built on culture.
And they have an incredible bike culture,
just some of the best bike advocates,
the naked bike ride, bike appaloosa,
all of these incredible events as well.
The fact that Jonathan could turn out
so many people for Bike Happy Hour every week.
But there's a real danger when your city
is based on culture and not infrastructure
leading the culture.
And the neighborhood greenway system,
which we experienced, is great.
But as I remarked at the time,
all it takes is like one dude in a Ford F-150
speeding down that street
and you're gonna feel pretty uncomfortable in the future.
Highlight of that trip, however,
speaking of the greenway,
was meeting up with Sam Balto
and the Alameda Bike Bus,
which we talk about in the book.
That was maybe the highlight of the trip, I think,
just riding with those kids.
That was amazing.
I have to say that my non-urbanist highlight,
although it is urbanist in a way,
was going to a really great day spa
called the Everett Community Healing Center
over in northeast.
And it was just this incredibly beautiful sauna,
jacuzzi, steam room,
set up with a garden where you could sit out.
It was all clothing optional,
which I really like and is hard to,
I said to somebody from Portland,
I was like, oh, she said,
did you know it was clothing optional?
I was like, yeah, no, I like that.
It's hard to find.
She's like, not an Oregonanism.
So I guess that's the thing there.
Very Portland, I guess.
Yeah, but it was just really, really pleasant
and it was Veterans Day.
It was a holiday.
There were a lot of people there,
a lot of young people
and it was like a great third place.
So there is sort of that urbanist feeling of like,
here's a place where people can come
and be in community with each other
in this beautiful neighborhood
with leafy streets and whatever
and then you go into this spa
and it was pretty ideal.
I love that place.
And this is all urbanist related and not at the same time.
I had not spent a lot of time previously
in northwest Portland.
I'd been to the east side of the river
and to the neighborhoods over there quite a lot
but I hadn't spent a lot of time
in downtown and northwest.
And so I walked around Knob Hill
which is sort of one of the original walkable neighborhoods,
streetcar neighborhoods there and that was great.
I went to Ken's Artisan Bakery, which is great.
I mean, Portland is an incredible food town.
Another thing that we both remarked about Portland,
a great clothing shopping city.
Yes, for sure.
Some of the best men's clothing I've seen out there
and not that expensive
and randomly like in just a part of downtown,
not too far from Powell's where we were,
where there just was a high concentration of these stores.
I think it's partly, you know,
Portland has that maker culture.
There was that too.
Yeah, I mean, and the people there really do dress well
and that was quite noticeable
that people have a lot of personal style.
It's, I'm gonna say Portland's a very sexy city,
could be the F.
They dress well and they have clothing optional spots.
Where are your nice clothes to the spot
and then take them off?
Exactly.
Also, we ate at Ken's Artisan Pizza
on the other side of the river
and I knew that it was gonna be good
because I make bread and have his cookbook.
It was very good.
Yeah, fantastic.
All right, and then from there,
what did we do, Doug?
Oh right, we had to go to the airport,
which was sad and we had to get on an airplane.
But Portland also punches above its weight
because we had tons of luggage
and we took max to the airport
and it could not have been easier.
Yeah, that platform level roll on
with your huge suitcase full of stuff.
And yeah, so it's very easy getting to the airport.
The airport is stunning.
Can we talk though about the airport food experience
because this is like a very funny thing
because you match up Portland's artisan maker culture
with I need to catch a flight
and getting coffee at the airport
and getting something to eat.
It was like all the handcrafted care
that goes into making your latte or whatever.
I'm like, no, I just need coffee now.
My flight's leaving soon.
I gotta get to the gate.
That was a kind of funny Portland experience.
That was funny.
I got an avocado toast and I ordered it
and I was sort of standing near the counter
and after about two or three minutes,
the woman I had ordered from looked at me and she said,
it's gonna be about 15 minutes.
A thing you'd wanna know before you order
at an airport for sure.
Anyway, so heads up on that,
but a stunning building
and really a pleasant experience overall.
And then we got an airplane
and we flew to San Diego, California.
Okay, before we talk about San Diego,
we need to talk about the weather
because we had the best weather possible
in the Pacific Northwest.
We only had one day of intense rain in Seattle.
We had generally very good weather in Vancouver.
I ran around Stanley Park, which was spectacular
and the weather was great.
We only had one night of rain there
when we went to the hockey game.
Portland, we barely had any rain.
Showers, yeah.
That was it.
We were able to walk around, bike around, no problem.
And I joked with you ahead of time.
I said, wouldn't it be ironic
if we got to Southern California
and the weather was terrible?
And sure enough, they got a lot of rain
while we were in San Diego.
Yeah, it was like pouring rain.
I had brought rain pants with me
in anticipation of because the Cascade Bicycle Club
in Seattle had said they were gonna take us
on a ride rain or shine and I knew they meant it.
So I was like, I had my full rain kit
and I think I used it for about two hours in Seattle
and that was it in the Pacific Northwest.
And then I spent a whole day
in that rain kit in San Diego.
Yeah, it's amazing.
So San Diego, transportation-wise,
we did take a lift from the airport
because we had a lot of luggage.
There is a decent bus system,
but it doesn't go everywhere
and the frequency leaves a lot to be desired.
We stayed in Pacific Beach.
We had to get to Balboa Park.
We had to get to the Normal Heights neighborhood
for our live show with Bike SD
and the San Diego Bicycle Coalition.
And the timing and the frequency and the connections
just did not work for most of the trips we needed to make.
Yeah, if we had not been staying at the beach,
if we had been staying downtown,
I think that we would have found
that it was easier to do those things.
But here we are, we're two New Yorkers,
we're in Southern California,
not just Southern California, but San Diego,
one of the great beach cities in the world.
We wanted to stay on the beach,
is that so wrong?
No.
So, you know, like we wanted to stay on the beach,
we stayed on the beach
and the price that we paid was that,
yeah, we had to take lifts a lot of the time
and it sort of felt like,
I mean, we did take some public transit,
but it felt-
Well, we took the bus to the trolley,
which is their light rail streetcar.
Yeah.
And that was pretty good for some trips.
Yeah, I mean, it worked as far as it worked,
but it took a long time
and you could really feel the strain of it.
Like it was like,
it was not something that you could have done
if you were,
like a lot of these trips were not trips
that you would reasonably have made
if you were just living there
and living your everyday life.
It was just,
so that feeling of like being forced into the car,
basically by circumstance was really there.
And you know, it's,
there's a lot of great bike infrastructure.
The downtown especially,
I hadn't been to San Diego in a very long time
and I was very impressed by the protected
and separated bicycle infrastructure,
including a lot of concrete protection,
very wide bicycle lanes.
You know, the rest of the city,
this is a vehicular cycling capital in North America
and there are a lot of kind of super-sharrows
on high-speed stroads,
which no one in their right mind was gonna use.
So that was discouraging to see outside the downtown core,
but inside the downtown core,
I mean, I took the bus
from the Hillcrest neighborhood to downtown
because I wanted to go to Padres,
to Pekko Stadium or Pekko Park,
and it was a very easy trip on the bus
and it was great and the bus was packed.
So a lot of people are using the bus.
It just needs to be more frequent.
Yeah, and what one of our hosts
and who lives in normal heights was saying
was that in that neighborhood,
if you just stay basically in that neighborhood,
which is really cool, it's an old street car node
and really nice shops and walkable
and feels very neighborly and homey,
like a Brooklyn neighborhood really,
that if you just stay in that neighborhood,
you can be very comfortable without a car,
but it's that if you do wanna go and do other things,
it can be really limiting.
And so that was tough about San Diego and...
And Balboa Park we should talk about
because we met Andrew Bowen of the podcast
Freeway Exit from KPBS.
We've had a episode in our feed of that.
Everyone should check it out.
He took us around Balboa Park and we met
and the State Highway 163
goes through the bottom of that ravine.
And so no matter where you are in that park,
especially because of the shape of the ravine,
all you hear is the noise of traffic.
Yeah, I mean, what I said about San Diego
is that it sort of is like a collision
of good intentions and bad habits.
Like there's all sorts of great stuff happening.
Advocacy movement seems really, really strong.
There's some good bike stuff happening.
There's real energy behind making a better
pedestrian environment,
but the ingrained habit of driving
and of just seeing the cars as a solution to everything
just keeps bumping up against those intentions.
And it's a tough thing,
but boy the advocacy community there
just such incredible energy and really,
it gave me faith that San Diego is gonna keep improving.
Yeah, I was talking with Ray Delahanti, city nerd
and he also had a very similar experience
in terms of the advocacy community there
and being so impressed.
And I often find, and Ray and I talked about this,
that it's like the rust belt and the sun belt
are where you find some of the best advocates.
I mean, I love the advocacy community
across North America and the world.
There's so many great cities,
including our own of New York
where just there are incredible advocates.
But in the cities that really feel like
they have something to prove,
San Diego could be paradise.
The best weather, largely flat,
obviously there are hills,
but like lots of flat areas
where you can get around by walking and cycling
if the infrastructure would allow it.
The advocates there understand how much better it could be.
So that was really great to see.
Non-urbanist, the best tacos we've had anywhere.
I mean, you know, New York,
it's kind of a cliche.
We have an incredible population of immigrants,
but like for some reason,
even among our Mexican immigrant communities,
we do not have as good Mexican food here.
I mean, we are, you know, right by the border.
I just want to say,
the Mexican food has improved in New York
dramatically over the last 15 years.
The best and best tacos I've had anywhere in a long time.
In San Diego, I literally, I lived on tacos.
I had four meals that were tacos when I was there.
And I had eight different tacos in those meals.
And I do not regret a single one of them.
They were just superb everyone.
I'm trying to count the number of tacos I had.
I think it was nine tacos in 36 hours.
Yeah, no, that was great.
And fish tacos and all the rest.
So good, you know, food is a constant theme.
And the Pacific Ocean, just, I mean,
in all of its glory and all the surfers
and there was a storm coming in when we were there.
And the swells were amazing.
The swells were, and everybody was out surfing.
And we talk about the micro mobility
that we saw at the beach.
And that's the other thing is like,
what gave me hope about a place like San Diego,
and this is true in other cities,
is that we are a very creative species
and people adapt to their circumstances.
So obviously there were the big trucks
and we saw a lot of lifted pickup trucks.
More so, I think I joked at the show outside,
more than you would see, you know,
anywhere outside of Texas, let's say.
But there were a lot of electric bikes
with surfboard attachments and carriers
and things like that parked at the beach.
Lots of golf carts with surfboard attachments
and trailers and things like that.
So people are getting creative.
It's just that when you get a block or two
off of the beach, the pedestrian
and cycling environment is garbage.
And it's just, it's terrible.
And here's where I'm gonna say,
this is something that we observed in every city
we saw, unfortunately, right turn on red.
And, you know, look.
Get rid of it everywhere.
Everywhere, everywhere, please.
I mean, really, like as New Yorkers,
we can tell you that you can live your whole life
and not even realize that anyone would think
that that was something that you should be able to do.
I had to retrain myself at every intersection
because I'm so used to seeing the light change
and thinking I can just go
and I would step out every now and then
and some drivers would not even come to a stop or a yield.
Yeah, San Diego was particularly bad for this.
They were just whipping around those corners.
And it's so dangerous
and lots of people actually die that way and stop it.
It was, you know, supposedly to help save gas
during the supposedly never, never worked.
And it's just, it's like, stop with that.
It has to be made illegal in every city
and the world, it just, it doesn't, it's bad.
Okay, so we then took the Pacific surf liner
to where we are now, Los Angeles,
which was of course a beautiful train ride.
That train line might not be long for this world
because we were mere inches in some spots from the ocean
and they are working to shore it up.
But yeah, it was beautiful.
I mean, it really, they call it the surf liner
and it literally sometimes seems like the surfers
are going to like surf into the train
as you're going by.
That's how close it is.
But it's stunning.
But also packed.
Yes, also packed.
People love that train.
It's very convenient.
And Santa Fe Depot in San Diego,
again, one of the most beautiful train stations
in North America.
Second, perhaps only to Union Station in Los Angeles,
which was gorgeous to get off at.
Yeah, and Los Angeles is a city that I think Doug
and I have both spent a fair amount of time in
and I love LA.
I used to have to come here as a teenager
when my dad was living here
and I had to spend the summers with him
and I couldn't drive and I felt incredibly isolated
and I developed that New Yorker hatred of LA,
which now I've spent many, many years shedding
and I now am like so fully loving LA
and I have to say we're staying in the downtown,
we're recording this in the downtown
and I just love downtown LA.
I love the buildings.
I love the streets.
I love the scale of it.
The streets are not as hugely wide as they are
in a lot of American cities, west of the Mississippi
and there's just so many stunning buildings
and not just the exteriors, but the interiors,
the lobbies and the elevators
and everything is just,
you can feel like you're Philip Marlowe
walking down these hallways
and there's just something to me very romantic
about downtown LA and I guess maybe it's because
where they used to shoot a lot of movies
back in the 30s and 40s,
but I just think it's got such great bones
and they are doing a lot of residential conversions here
and that's a terrific thing.
So I love, I just love the downtown of Los Angeles
and I love Los Angeles, I love you LA.
Yeah, I like LA a lot.
I've never spent any time in the downtown.
This is my first visit doing so and it slaps.
It's really great.
It's, you know, look, it has its challenges
like everywhere else and the number of unhoused people
and emotionally disturbed people.
And I think, you know, for me walking around these cities
and seeing the number of people
who are living on the streets
and you think about where we were,
San Francisco, home to the tech industry
and just tons of millionaires and billionaires,
Seattle, again, another part of the tech industry,
Amazon, Expedia, all of these companies
that are based there,
San Diego, home to some of the most expensive
real estate in the country.
And now here in Los Angeles, home to the film industry
and some of the most financially successful people
in American culture and American history,
it's inexcusable that we can't figure this out,
that we can't come up with a real housing first solution
to what the people who are living on the streets need.
And obviously a lot of the people who are living
on the streets need drug addiction counseling
and mental health counseling,
but so much of what they need is just a place to live
because those other problems are aggravated
by the cost of housing and the fact that,
I just can't even imagine the mental distress
of not being able to have a place to live.
And so walking around,
it's not the Sean Duffy right wing of downtowns
or war zones and all that,
it's just more this feeling of like,
this is the best we can do in the wealthiest nation
on earth, in the wealthiest cities in that nation,
it's inexcusable.
And there are easy solutions if we tax the right people.
Yeah, and the venue that we did our show in,
Dynasty Typewriter really super cool venue
here in Los Angeles is just a couple blocks
from MacArthur Park, which it should be a real gem
of a park and it has a lot of potential.
One of the problems with it is there is a road
running through it, there didn't used to be
and then they drove it on through.
And so we were talking about that
when we did our show and said,
well, there really shouldn't be a road
going through this park,
they should reunite the two halves of this park.
And somebody who lives in the neighborhood
came up to me afterward and said,
you know, I don't agree with you about that.
And I said, well, why?
And she said, because if there weren't a road there,
I wouldn't feel safe walking through the park
because the drug crisis is so bad
and we sure saw it firsthand
as we walked on the road through that park.
There is a fentanyl problem that is very visible there.
And she said, I feel okay walking through on the road
because there's cars coming through and other people
but if there weren't that road there,
I don't think that I would walk across the park.
And that was tragic and I said to her,
but okay, but don't you agree that we really just need
to deal with the unhoused people situation
and the opioid crisis situation.
And then if we manage to get that somewhat under control,
we should take the road out of the park.
She said, absolutely.
So yeah, but that says-
It's so frustrating
because there's like so many compassionate solutions to this
that generally start with housing
and we've got the money floating around in our society
to deal with it.
It's just people need a place to live
and we should be doing better.
Yeah, and over and over again,
it happened again last night in LA
when they were talking about making improvements
to the streets here.
And like, well, we can't do that
because we don't have enough money
and tax the rich, I'm sorry.
That's just-
Tax the rich, yeah.
That's like people are like
where's the money gonna come from?
We have a couple hundred people sitting on piles of money
they couldn't spend if they lived for a thousand years.
So like let's tax the rich.
That's just as simple as I wanna make that.
Now, we had a couple of really interesting things happen.
One thing in particular that I wanna call out.
Yeah, so we were sitting under an umbrella at a table
in Balboa Park in San Diego
talking as we mentioned to Andrew Bowen of KPBS.
And this guy comes by on a bike
that's kind of loaded up with like camping stuff,
a touring bike, and I saw his jaw drop.
Yeah, and he said, Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon.
And I was like, yeah, who are you?
He was a listener, his name's Aiden.
He was biking across the country
from, he lives in Hudson County, New Jersey,
Jersey City, I believe.
And had biked across the country and was finishing
in San Diego about to head back.
I think he heads back the same day
that we're recording this via train
and just happened to be biking in Balboa Park
on a rainy day and saw us.
He had a war on cars water bottle on his bike.
And so we stopped and took a picture
and Aiden, hello, it was great to see you.
Congrats on your amazing cross country bike ride.
Yeah, you can see that picture on our Instagram.
Not the kind of thing that would have happened
had he done a cross country road trip.
And we had been sitting in a car doing the interview.
Yeah, but that was just,
that was a really beautiful coincidence.
He also rides a surly cross check,
which is the same bike that I ride,
which is another weird coincidence.
So yeah, so that encounter just was one
of many incredibly life affirming encounters
that we had on this trip.
Well, I think it stands in, Aiden stands in
for sort of everybody we met on this trip
because as much as we're talking about
these different cities and what we liked
and didn't like in the food we had,
the really most wonderful thing about it
is connecting with all of the people
at a dark time in our country
and in the world in general,
to be in rooms with people who care about their cities
and love them and see all the problems
that we're talking about and all of the potential
and all of the improvements.
You know, when we were in San Diego
and I was talking about how wonderful
the downtown bike lane network is,
I saw all the people nodding their heads,
you know, and snapping and everything.
And then when we talk about right turn on red
or all the surface parking, same thing.
Like everybody, every city is different
but all the problems are kind of the same
and all of the good things that we're working on
are the same as well.
And I was just so lifted up by everybody.
It's been an amazing experience.
Yeah, really, I have to say that every single person
that we spoke with as we signed books
or as we schmoozed with people,
people just had so many stories
about how becoming part of this movement
has changed their lives for the better
and how they've found community
and they've found a sense of purpose
and they don't feel alone
with the feelings that they have
about how our world is built
and the way that it is
and the way that it could be.
It was just so great seeing everybody come together
and to be able to be together with those people.
And I just wanna thank every single person
who came out to see us at every one of these stops.
And of course, all of the amazing organizations
that partnered with us to make this possible.
It just really is a privilege to be in solidarity
with the people in this movement
and it's changed my life.
Yeah, I always say, bike people are the best people
and I will extend that to housing people
and climate people and all of the-
Transit people.
And transit people because you are all people
who understand how much better your cities could be
with just slight changes
and how good they already are
because you're never going to invest in fixing a place
that you don't already love.
And that's what's shown through
in all of the different cities we went to.
It's just how much people love where they live
and that is such a wonderful thing to see.
Yeah, so if you wanna see more pictures from our trip and-
Come over to my house tomorrow.
I'll be doing a slide show.
I'll have some iced tea and cookies
and I'll fire up the old Kodak slide machine,
whatever those are.
Carousel.
Side carousel.
Now there's a name I've not heard.
Thank you so much for indulging us.
We sort of wanted to just download and decompress.
This is the first leg of multiple upcoming legs
of our tour so thank you all so much
to everyone who came out.
Yeah, and if you are wondering
if we're gonna come through your city,
just go to lifeaftercars.com
and you'll be able to see new dates being added all the time.
I hope we're gonna-
If your city is not on there,
chances are it will be or just reach out
and let us know and we'll let you know.
Okay, so that is it for this episode of the War on Cars.
Remember, you can support us
and get exclusive bonus content,
pre-sale access to live show tickets,
free stickers and more by signing up on Patreon
at patreon.com slash the War on Cars pod.
A big thanks to everyone who supports us
including our top contributors,
Charlie G of Human Powered Law in Portland, Oregon,
Mark Headland, Virginia Baker and Brandon DeCoster.
And please check out our new book,
Life After Cars, freeing ourselves
from the tyranny of the automobile.
It is out now from thesis
and imprint of Penguin Random House.
We've loved the response to it so far.
We've been doing a lot of press
and yeah, so go support your local bookstore
and pick it up.
Yeah, it might make a great Christmas gift
or Hanukkah gift.
Yes.
Or just a gift.
Yes.
Thanks also to our friends at Cleverhood.
Listeners of the War on Cars can save 15%
on everything in the Cleverhood store
now through the end of November
with code be a giver.
For the best gear for cycling and walking,
go to cleverhood.com slash War on Cars.
And Cleverhood is a really good thing
if you live in those very rainy cities
that we've been to like Los Angeles and San Diego.
Exactly.
The War on Cars is produced with the generous support
of the Helen and William Mazer Foundation.
This episode was edited by Samantha Gatzek.
It was recorded in Los Angeles at Ice Cream Sound
by Vincent Holloway.
Our theme music is by Nathaniel Goodyear.
Transcripts are by Russell Gregg
and our logo is by Danny Finkel.
I'm Doug Gordon.
And I'm Sarah Goodyear.
And this is the War on Cars.
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