Dispatches from Book Tour

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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.

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 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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About this episode

Original notes