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Brand
Upway
Upway is a company that sells e-bikes. They say they check and tune the bikes, offer a warranty, and deliver them to your home.
Term
e-bikes
An e-bike is a regular bike with a motor that helps you pedal. It can make commuting easier and faster than a bike without power.
Term
year warranty
A one-year warranty means the company will help cover repairs for problems that happen within the first year. What’s covered depends on the warranty terms.
Term
Skilled Mechanics
This means trained bike technicians inspect and adjust the e-bike before you buy it. The point is that someone knowledgeable checks the bike first.
Place
belt line
The BeltLine is a big Atlanta project that turns an old corridor into space for people to walk and bike. The hosts say it helped cycling, but it also changed neighborhoods in ways that hurt some residents.
Concept
gentrification and displacement
Gentrification is when a neighborhood gets “upgraded” with new shops and higher-income residents. Displacement means long-time residents can end up being forced to leave because it becomes too expensive.
Place
Piedmont Park
Piedmont Park is a big park in Atlanta. In the episode, it’s mentioned as one of the places the bike route connects to.
Term
protected bike lanes
Protected bike lanes are bike lanes that are physically separated from cars. That makes it safer to ride because you’re not sharing the same space with traffic.
Term
transportation corridor
A transportation corridor is a main route built to help people get around more easily. It can include more than just cars—like bikes and walking paths too.
Term
recreation corridor
A recreation corridor is a long, connected outdoor space for fun activities like walking or biking. The idea is that it can also help people travel without needing a car.
Topic
Atlanta Bike Bus
The Atlanta Bike Bus is a group bike ride. The hosts use it as an example of how people can get to events without driving.
Brand
Atlanta United
Atlanta United is the local pro soccer team in Atlanta. They’re mentioned because the group ride was to a soccer game.
Term
valet parking
Valet parking is a service where an attendant parks your car for you and later retrieves it. In this segment, it’s mentioned as part of the stadium experience, contrasting with the sustainability discussion about commuting without using a car.
Place
Mercedes-Benz stadium
Mercedes-Benz Stadium is a big sports arena in Atlanta. In this story, it’s where the speaker heard about commuting habits and sustainability efforts.
Term
Marta
MARTA is the public transportation system around Atlanta. The point is that you can get to the stadium using transit instead of driving.
Car
Chrysler Fifth Avenue
The Chrysler Fifth Avenue is a luxury sedan made by Chrysler. Its name comes from Fifth Avenue in New York, which is known for being a high-end area. It’s mentioned because it connects the car to that “luxury city” idea.
Concept
ordinance
An ordinance is a city law. In this case, Cambridge’s 2019 ordinance requires bike lanes or other bike facilities to be included when roads are repaired—unless the city has a reason not to.
Place
Cambridge
Cambridge (in Massachusetts) is used as an example of a city that made biking easier by changing the rules for road repairs. The hosts say that helped cycling spread quickly.
Concept
protected bicycle infrastructure
Protected bike infrastructure means bike lanes are separated from cars—so riders aren’t sharing the same space. The hosts are saying Cambridge’s rules help make biking easy and safe across the city.
Concept
bike share system
A bike share system is a service where you can grab a bike for a short trip, usually through stations or an app. They’re saying it makes it convenient to bike around the city.
Place
Boston side of the Charles River
They’re talking about the part of the Charles River area that’s on the Boston side. They’re using it to explain that politics and public opinion can vary by neighborhood, even within the same broader region.
Place
Orlando
Orlando is mentioned as another place where cycling advocates are active. The host says they were there with an Orlando bicycle coalition.
Person
Beth Resta
Beth Resta is mentioned as someone involved with a local cycling group in Orlando. The host is giving her a shout-out in the context of bike advocacy.
Person
Mike
Mike is mentioned as part of the Orlando cycling group the host is thanking. The name is used to credit people doing bike advocacy locally.
Car
Chrysler New Yorker
The Chrysler New Yorker is a large, comfortable luxury car made by Chrysler. It was designed to feel upscale and roomy, like a traditional “big sedan.” People bring it up when talking about older luxury cars and the kind of cars that were common in big-city life.
Place
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is a city in Denmark known for being very bike-friendly. The speaker compares it to other places to show what good cycling design looks like.
Term
bike infrastructure
Bike infrastructure means the things a city builds for cyclists—like safe bike paths and crossings. Better infrastructure makes it easier and safer to ride.
Place
Utrecht
Utrecht is a city in the Netherlands that the speaker says is doing a lot of impressive work for cyclists. It’s mentioned as an example of ongoing upgrades.
Term
helmet use
Helmet use refers to how often cyclists wear helmets while riding. The speaker notes a shift in helmet behavior as a sign of changing attitudes toward safety and cycling culture.
LIVE
The War on Cars is supported by Upway.
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If one of these cars comes up onto the sidewalk, I'm dead.
And then literally 20 yards later I came upon one of those fairly large cable or phone equipment
switch boxes that had been just destroyed clearly within the previous 24 hours because
there were still lots of car debris everywhere and it was like, oh yeah, that happened.
This is the War on Cars.
I'm Sarah Goodyear and I'm here in the studio with my co-host Doug Gordon.
Hello and welcome home.
Yes, welcome home to the oven that is New York City at the moment.
It's pretty humid.
It's pretty bad.
It's pretty bad.
I'm so glad to be home and honestly we have been on tour for months and months.
We were on tour for about seven months and we've been home for about five weeks now.
Well you've been home longer than I have.
I got home a week and a half ago from two big conferences, which I guess we'll talk
about maybe towards the end of this episode, but I think I calculated that over the course
of seven months I was home for no more than about 45 to 50 days total.
That's about what I came up with and I will say that it is so great to be here in New
York City.
In the greatest city in the world.
Yeah, I just, I have a renewed appreciation and love for my home and it feels great to
be home.
Nixon 5, baby.
Nixon 5.
We'll talk about it.
Yeah.
Anyway, so we are going to get into all of the good and the bad of what we saw when we
were out there on the road in North America, but first a little business.
You can find us on Patreon at patreon.com slash the war on cars pod and of course you
can order our new book, Life After Cars, freeing ourselves from the tyranny of the automobile
wherever books are sold and you can find out more at lifeaftercars.com.
All right, so basically we're going to keep traveling.
We're going to keep doing appearances out there, but the book tour as a book tour is
wrapped.
Pretty much.
It's done.
Yeah.
So we've got a bunch of cities that we want to talk about that we saw on the tour and
there's a lot to say.
Yeah, we spent three whole days in each of these cities, so we are experts on all of
them.
That's right.
No, I think it's, you know, it was a really good way to see a lot of the country in a
short amount of time, sometimes to go to cities that I don't think we necessarily would have
gone to on our own with our limited money and vacation time and we really got a flavor
for what's out there.
And I think, you know, the overall message I might want to send, I'm sort of like wrapping
up the episode before I even start, is there's a lot of good stuff happening out there and
we'll talk about some of the bad stuff that we saw, but I kept saying at every show that
we did that doing this tour filled my cup, you know, like every place we went, somebody
is working on something amazing or there is a really great elected official who totally
gets it and is moving the ball forward.
Not that there aren't major headwinds everywhere, but it was really, the only reason I'm sad
for tour to be over is like that ends now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the other thing that really struck me as we were out there, we went to so many different
kinds of cities and what struck me is that no matter what kind of city it is, there are
people doing this work and there's a model for pretty much any kind of place that you
might be in, in the cities that we've seen, you're going to find some echo of your own
place in one of these cities out of those 32 or so that we went to.
I mean, I think when you go to a lot of public meetings or whatever, or you hear elected officials
talk, they say, well, there's no one size fits all solution.
And I'm kind of of the opinion that there sort of is like most of these tools work in
most cities.
They'll have their own little flavors, their own different textures, but you know, we don't
have to reinvent the wheel in every city, like whether it's transit or bike lanes or
public space, like generally the tools are the same.
Yeah.
So let's start with, we did do a bonus a few months back where we talked about some cities
that we went to over the winter and I want to just quickly bring people up to speed
on those.
Right.
So we went to Miami, Pittsburgh, Toronto and Phoenix and we covered that in the bonus,
all of those cities.
And you know, again, each of those cities had something pretty amazing about them.
Miami had the underline, which is a really cool reverse highline, really enjoyed it.
I had some issues with it here and there in terms of some of the connections to it are
still in Miami, let's say, you know, like lots of big busy roads with big trucks and
big cars, but we had a great time there.
Pittsburgh, unfortunately it was covered with snow when we were there, however, like Pittsburgh,
Scott Brooker, shout out to him, showed us a good time.
We got a great walking tour of downtown, lots of good stuff going on there.
If they can just start to plow their bike lanes, then I think they'd be a year around
cycling city.
Yeah.
And also really impressed by the bus network and the reliance of people on the buses there.
That's really something to build on.
Then we were in Toronto, which of course, one of the great cities of North America and
engaged in a years long battle to try to maintain its bike infrastructure that, you know, they
are winning that battle, but it's a tough one.
Well, the premier Doug Ford of Ontario is not a fan of bike lanes as we all know, but
Cycle Toronto is doing some really admirable work to push back against that.
And I do think like in a lot of cities, the outsized attention that a hater like Doug
Ford is putting on bike lanes is causing people to say, Hey, wait a minute, this is what you're
spending your time on.
People just getting around safely.
So obviously a lot of challenges, there are too many cars in Toronto.
And one of those cities where it's just kind of impossible to get from the airport to the
downtown via transit, correct me if I'm wrong listeners, but it took me a solid hour and
a half in a car, yes, in a car to get from the airport to the hotel.
It was payback.
I was, I came by train, so I didn't have that problem, but I did have a problem going back
to the train because I was leaving on a Sunday morning and there was no metro at my metro
station until 8.27 in the morning and my train left at 8am.
So look, other than you, no one needs to get around in Toronto on a Sunday morning.
Everybody's, you know, resting and then sort of like in many ways, the opposite kind of
place from Toronto, Phoenix.
Although interestingly, very easy to get to and from the airport via transit.
It's true, it's true.
That was a sky train and the metro system there, the, yeah, the light rail.
That was really nice.
But Phoenix, you know, it's a challenged city, no surprise.
It's a big sprawling Sunbelt city that could, that actually has some, some really nice transit
in it and we took that down to the NBA arena and saw what it's like on a game night and
that area is really great.
So a challenged city, but a city again, where people are trying to make change and where
there is the potential for some really good work to be done.
So if you want to hear more about all of those, you can go back to a bonus from earlier in
the spring and find out more about it, but we're going to get to the cities that we haven't
talked about yet.
And the first one of those is Atlanta, Georgia.
Yeah.
So when we've been talking about tour or have been interviewed about different cities,
everyone always asks, was there a city that surprised you and both of us without hesitation
for different reasons, say Atlanta, I live there briefly after college.
You hadn't been in a very long time and it only really seen kind of the downtown convention area.
Atlanta is doing so much in the downtown core and obviously the belt line, which we're going
to talk about is a major driver of that.
What I found really interesting about Atlanta is that what I remember from way back is there
was no bike culture to speak of.
You know, I'm sure there were delivery cyclists and messengers and things like that, but there
wasn't really like a culture of cycling in the city.
And now there is and because it came up really, I think in the last, let's say 567
years, it's coincided with the rise of e-bikes.
So I don't think I've seen a city where e-bikes were as central to cycling as Atlanta.
It's hot, it's hilly, that's part of it, of course, but I think so much of it is because
it just all happened in the last, like I said, five to seven years.
And the belt line being a major driver of cycling has been really remarkable.
Now the belt line has its problems.
Oh yeah, it definitely does.
And I just want to fully acknowledge those problems, which is it's been a huge success
when it's completed a 22 mile ring road, essentially bicycle road around the city of Atlanta.
And it's going to be an amazing thing and it already is an amazing thing.
There's been a lot of development that has happened along parts of the belt line that,
unfortunately, has not been done in the most mindful way in terms of displacing
existing residents in the area.
And as we so often see, some of this infrastructure is coming as part of a package that includes
gentrification and displacement.
In the Virginia Highland area, close to where we were staying, you really felt this,
all of the businesses were catering to a specific clientele.
You had the pop-up bagels place and more of the TikTok viral ice cream places and a
Patagonia store or whatever it was.
And a lot of development along there, I don't really know how much or if any of it is affordable.
And in that area, the belt line was functionally obsolete as a transportation corridor.
I don't even think you could go for a run there because it was just so crowded.
Certainly not at certain times.
Certainly granted it was St. Patrick's Day weekend while we were there.
But what we were told by folks who live there is that it's pretty crowded on a nice day,
on a weekend, on a weekend evening, and you really can't bike through there.
We had a hard time.
It's so crowded, nobody goes there anymore.
Exactly.
Yeah, but I mean, there's a lot to celebrate even in that, right?
It is like obviously the demand is so huge.
And I saw so much joy and so much fun intergenerational interaction and just people having like a
really good time.
Atlanta knows how to party.
Atlanta knows how to have a good time.
To be outside.
And you just saw that it was just, it was fun to be out in it.
But I then also talked to a young woman who used to live near there and can't afford to
live near there anymore.
So that's really a real problem.
And that's something that the city needs to reckon with.
There's also debates going on over transit that was supposed to be part of the Beltline
development and that the city is now dragging its feet on and reversing some of its intentions.
Not just dragging its feet, but like powerful interests are shooting it down.
Yeah.
And saying we should replace this with autonomous vehicles, some kind of Elon Musk-esque fantasy
of autonomous vehicles shuttling people back and forth in an efficient way.
It's not going to happen, folks.
I will say the good thing about the Beltline, what I really liked about it was that it shows
that building decent infrastructure accelerates the demand for more infrastructure.
So I was able to piece together a pretty decent run that connected from the Beltline
to Piedmont Park to other parts of the city.
And I was running alongside protected bike lanes.
I rode a bike through different parts.
We got a really nice tour from the folks at Propel, ATL.
And in some of the less demand intensive parts of the Beltline, we saw all these great little
spurs coming off of it with protected bike lanes and really safe connections.
And so when you build something like that, that is meant to be a transportation corridor
and a recreation corridor, you're going to spur demand so that people don't have to drive to it.
So they can just take their e-bikes and bike half a mile to the trail and then get where
they're going.
So I think if Atlanta leans into that and can take some of the pressure off of the Beltline
in terms of transportation and recreation, let people have their fun in the gentrified
areas and let it just be a nightmare of time square on a Saturday afternoon, that's fine.
But the solution to crowding on the Beltline is going to be more places where people can
just bike and walk without cars because clearly Atlanta has the demand is there.
Yeah.
And I just want to say that the demand for non-car transportation is clearly there.
And we had a wonderful experience riding with the Atlanta Bike Bus to an Atlanta United
soccer game in the big stadium downtown.
It's also the NFL stadium.
And we rode with these kids through the streets and it was great.
And we got there and they had valet parking and the woman who was the head of the sustainability
program at this enormous stadium.
The Mercedes-Benz stadium.
The Mercedes-Benz stadium.
So she was saying that she has been commuting by e-bike for I think about a year now and she
said, I go in the rain.
She's like anything not to get in my car.
And there's a lot of that in Atlanta.
And what was exciting about her story was she was a car to e-bike person.
She was not a bike to e-bike.
She made the transition from a car.
It was a replacement for car trips.
And I think you really are seeing that in Atlanta.
And that's really exciting because driving in Atlanta sucks so badly.
We've seen some cities where driving doesn't suck enough to really get people out of their cars.
Well Atlanta, it sucks about as badly as it can.
And so what an opportunity to give people more choices.
Yeah.
I think the joke is that Atlanta is 45 minutes from Atlanta.
By car.
So I think that's right.
And we also went to a Hawks Nets game and two terrible teams.
Yeah.
Had a great time.
But you know, the stadium is accessible by Marta.
We took Marta and bus connections there.
There's a little bit of a bleak environment around there.
That's the challenge is the walkability around there.
It is technically walkable.
But the walkability and the pleasantness of the walk is a really different story.
But you know, I think Atlanta, if it really leans into cycling and e-biking and you know.
Public transit.
Public transit and those connections, like it's the city to watch.
Yeah.
Love you Atlanta.
From there, we went just a little short hop to the city of Memphis, Tennessee.
And really a huge, huge hop in terms of where this city is in its infrastructure in general.
And its position in its state because Memphis is being systematically
starved of resources and stripped of representation.
Let's just say it's because of racism.
We can say that.
Memphis has incredible bones.
The downtown is one of the nicest.
Gorgeous.
You'll find in the Southeast, if not anywhere in the United States,
it's really got some beautiful old buildings and walkable streets.
Obviously the history, the blues, civil rights.
We went to the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel.
The river is right there.
Like there's so much to speak of there.
But it's one of those cities that clearly has not recovered from COVID.
The downtown was pretty empty in the evening, even during the day.
Beale Street was busy-ish.
Of course, we weren't there at like a peak time.
Do you remember how cold it was?
Yeah, well actually it was hot when we got there.
And then this enormous weather system moved through and there was a tornado warning.
So we had to stay in our hotel.
And then it was like 20 degrees the next day.
It dropped like, I think the temperature dropped 40 or 50 degrees in one day.
But there's so much potential in Memphis because the downtown bones are just incredible.
But of course, there isn't much of a bus system to speak of.
The bus system that exists, the frequencies are completely unreliable.
We heard story after story of people who would wait for the bus and then have to give up
and get in a car because the bus just didn't show up.
After dark, it essentially stops running.
Like it's just not reliable.
I think it stops at seven.
Yeah.
And our show there, which was at a bookstore in Strip Mall, that was the only show that we've
done where every person but one drove to the show.
Yeah. So if you haven't been to one of our shows, we do an audience survey to find out
how people get there.
We sort of play it as a joke because usually the majority of people, even in Atlanta,
bike, walk or take transit, and then we sort of joke when like inevitably five people
say that they drove there of like, okay, you can leave.
We make a joke about that.
This time we didn't want to joke about that because we had a feeling that the majority
of people would drive.
But I think even we were surprised that like 99% of the people there,
literally because there were 100 people in the room, 99% of the people drove.
And one guy who tried to take the bus was sitting at the bus stop for so long that
eventually a friend of his was driving by and said, hey, do you want to ride because,
and he took the ride because-
Yeah, not a great bus system when it relies on people feeling bad for you, giving you rights.
Yeah.
But the bright spot in Memphis was so bright, and that was Kelsey Hughes who is known as
Memphis Urbanism on the platforms.
And she is so enthusiastic about that city.
She is so out there and involved in everything.
She is riding her bike all over the place and she showed us such a good time.
And I want to give a special shout out to Coffee Black, which is a fantastic coffee
house and community center out on a little bike lane.
Yeah, so Coffee Black was incredible, independently owned.
So good.
Great drinks, really good.
Talk to the owner for a little bit.
It is on the corner of Bowen Avenue and National Street.
And National Street was a big wide road and they've put a bike lane down the middle,
public seating, some plants, grassy areas.
So it's become a real community hub and it connects two bike paths, basically,
two recreational paths.
It's just a short little stretch.
It's not very long, but it shows that even in a place like Memphis, there is demand.
And if you build it, they will come.
We saw people using it.
We used it.
It was pretty cold there while we were biking around, but it can be done there.
And Memphis, again, has its challenges, lots of sprawled out streets.
I think technically the most dangerous city for pedestrians in the United States.
Florida is the most dangerous state, but I think that Memphis might be the most dangerous city.
But people are making improvements there.
And I think what's really cool about National Street and Coffee Black is,
Contra the Beltline example in Atlanta, this is done with some real intentionality
to make sure that the businesses there and the community there are brought along
and it doesn't just become a vehicle for gentrification.
So I was really impressed by that.
We saw some other cool things there as well.
Former Sears building that has been turned into a community hub with library, university space,
food hall, that kind of stuff.
So that was really great.
A nonprofit that helps people get the financial resources and training to purchase and use
mopeds for getting to work and doing their business.
That was really innovative.
And to me, that is the thing that these are the kinds of things that Memphis has
that are exceptional and can be built on.
Which is that because it is an under-resourced city that is not getting a lot of attention,
it's also a place where there's a lot of freedom to do more DIY and gorilla stuff.
And the community spirit there is just incredible.
And sorry, LeBron James, but it's a great city and it's not going to be a better city
if the Memphis Grizzlies leave and if rich people say they don't like staying in hotels there,
look it up if you don't know what I'm talking about.
But I was so impressed by the people we met there and it's a really cool place.
And like I said, the civil rights history alone is worth just the trip.
It's incredible.
Yeah, so much love to Memphis.
And so then we took a little break after Memphis and our next stop was the great city of Chicago,
Illinois.
And I had essentially never been to Chicago.
I had been through it on a train.
I had walked around a couple of neighborhoods.
I had never spent the night in Chicago before.
And I am just going to say I am in love with the city of Chicago.
What a place.
Yeah, I've spent a lot of time there because my wife and her family are from the suburbs.
What did you love about it?
I loved its attitude.
I loved its swagger.
I loved the architecture, the sense of importance.
And what I said was this is a city that's in a flat swamp in a prairie.
And you would never know that you're in a flat place with the incredible architecture that has
been built over the last 100 plus years.
They have created a city that has its own topography that is really just a majestic
urban topography.
And there's so much to look at and see.
The food was great.
The people were great.
The transit was great.
I had such a great time.
Yeah, my big issue with Chicago and I love it because there's just so much to do.
I think it's like one, I think when we got there, we joked and said like,
ah, it's good to be in like one of the real cities in America.
I did a half marathon on the lakeshore and spent some time there biking as well.
And I take for granted that when you're in Central Park or in Prospect Park,
you cannot hear cars.
You cannot see them and you definitely cannot hear them.
But there was almost no part of the lakeshore where you couldn't hear Lakeshore Drive.
And there are even some parts where it's right there and you think, oh my god,
one car comes off of that at high speed, I'm dead.
And I know there are plans to rethink Lakeshore Drive.
I think the city should pretty much ban cars from at least half of it.
If not all of it, it's way over capacity for most of the time saved for rush hours.
But you've got this gem of a park.
It's a really beautiful park and there's just parking everywhere and high speed highway
right next to it and you just hear it.
And even with my headphones in, I had to turn them way up.
So that, it's sort of like we always say, cities aren't loud, cars are loud.
There's no better example than just like being in this beautiful park along Lake Michigan with
lovely views of the skyline and the lake and all you can hear are cars.
Yeah. And actually I went out to Wicker Park because everybody said this is a great
neighborhood to get a sense of what one type of neighborhood is like in Chicago.
So I went out there and it was beautiful.
The residential streets are so lovely and great transit.
And then what was disturbing to me was the streets that have stores and restaurants on them,
the commercial streets are huge four to six lane, two way traffic sewers.
And you have these cute little boutiques and restaurants and bars and whatnot.
But a lot of the time they're right next to these really big scary roads.
And it just, again, you're just, it just degrades the quality of the experience pretty
dramatically of like, you know, trying to be sort of like browsing along a street.
But there's high speed traffic going in both directions right next to you.
It just doesn't feel relaxing.
And at one point I was walking along this one street, I forget which one.
And I was like, man, if one of, just like you say, if one of these cars comes up onto the
sidewalk, I'm dead.
And they were all going really fast.
And there was no sense of protection from them in any way.
And then literally 20 yards later, I came upon one of those fairly large cable or, you know,
phone equipment switch boxes that had been just destroyed clearly within the previous 24 hours
because there were still lots of car debris everywhere.
And it was like, oh yeah, that happened.
That car came up onto the sidewalk.
And so, yeah, there's way too many cars in Chicago.
Yeah.
And Michigan Avenue, for example, major tourist destination makes Fifth Avenue in New York
look like a village street.
You know, it's super wide.
There's just far too many cars.
Like some of the sidewalks are wide, but not wide enough.
You know, every city thinks they don't have enough space for bike lanes and bus lanes and
more pedestrian space, but Chicago has plenty.
And if we get out of our federal nightmare, I think Chicago should be the next candidate
city for congestion pricing because it really could use fewer cars.
The transit coverage, the L is pretty great.
You know, I know it could be better, but, you know, great bus service, great train service.
Overall, we had the acting president of the CTA, Nora Leersen as a guest at our show.
And then, remember, we were running for the bus to get back to our hotel after the show
and guess who was on it?
Nora Leersen.
So she walks the walk and buses the bus.
She buses the bus, yeah.
And we rode back with her.
She spoke to the bus operator and like really makes a point of riding transit.
So what Chicago has going for it also, just great people.
She is an incredible leader.
And, you know, she really cares about transit and making it better and understands that the L
is what makes Chicago possible.
It's what makes Chicago, Chicago the same way that the subway makes New York, New York.
So Chicago is just, it's a great city.
I love it.
Yeah.
But it needs to dial back on the car situation pretty dramatically.
And yes, congestion pricing will come there.
And then we went up the lake just a little bit to Evanston, which is, you know, a suburb of Chicago.
I got there on the L. It was really a cool place to be.
And there the lakefront is not cut off by a big road.
And you can just sort of walk through a neighborhood up to the lake, which is a spectacular thing to be able to do.
And the Northwestern campus.
So we went to the Transportation Library, which if you do not follow Rachel Cole on social media,
you should.
She is the head of the Northwestern University Transportation Library.
She posts all of these random like catalogs and studies with incredible artwork on their covers
from a period of time in American transportation history when not everything was digital.
And look up the watermelon truck.
Yeah, we saw some great stuff.
She really rolled out the red carpet force and put out some great like New York related
transportation stuff.
She was working on a really cool thing about airlines and first class menus and things like that.
So like an incredible resource.
If you're ever there working on a project or writing a book or just curious, you should try to go.
It's a really great place.
And Rachel is amazing, has one of the coolest library jobs I can imagine in the country.
That was a really special, special moment.
But Evanston is great, you know, like it is covered by the L. It is covered by Metro,
which is the commuter rail.
And of course it has Northwestern there.
So, you know, it has that college campus vibe with like lots of people walking,
lots of people biking, but they have built some really good infrastructure and it kind
of shows what a midsize city and even a kind of more suburban feel place can do with cycling
and good transit service.
So, you know, not everything has to be New York, Chicago, even Atlanta.
It can be like a good old streetcar suburb like Evanston.
And we should lean back into that kind of stuff.
So then after that, we went, we fled the country briefly and went to Montreal.
And Montreal, I'm going to just say it, is probably my favorite city.
Greatest city in North America.
That I went to, except for New York.
Well, yeah, exactly.
I don't consider New York a city, it's just home.
Yeah, so yeah, exactly.
I haven't been to Mexico City either, so I got to hedge that.
But yeah, Montreal, just what a dreamy city.
And we were invited by some professors at McGill University who really rolled out the
red carpet for us there.
And we got to meet and talk with a lot of really interesting people who are doing
work at McGill, research at McGill.
Future planners of North America for sure.
Yeah, really cool.
And then we did a great Q&A with Velo Quebec at a local cafe that was really cute and fun.
And we went out for drinks afterward.
And it's just a joyful place to be.
It's got incredible street life.
It's got so many cool places to hang out.
The park is incredible.
I went up to the top of the mountain and sat there and it's completely quiet.
And it's just, wow, what an incredible city.
Yeah, and I hadn't been there in about 12 years.
And the last time I was there, the bike infrastructure was very good.
But some of it was rolled up during the winter.
And now they're not doing that.
And so I saw a lot of new permanent bike lanes in Mile End and elsewhere in the plateau.
It's a 365-day year cycling city, even though it gets very cold and very snowy, obviously.
And of course, when we were there, it was just on the shoulder season of the seasons
and the cold.
There was still a little snow.
I saw tons of kids biking, tons of families.
And it's great.
So again, another one of those myth-busting cities where it's hilly, it's cold, or rainy,
or snowy, and people are getting around and they just know what to do.
And yeah, it has the best of European attitudes and they're Canadian, so they're nice.
So I like that part as well.
Big shout out.
I think we need to mention Paku who gave us these wonderful illustrations.
We might put something up on social media about all the stuff people gave us along the way.
But I just wanted to shout that out because you made these beautiful illustrations for both of us.
Yeah.
And I also want to say that they're dealing with some real reactionary stuff there in Montreal,
not unlike some of the things they're dealing with in Toronto.
It's not as extreme, but the current mayor is not as pro-bike as...
No, the former mayor of Alplant got a lot of credit for advancing cycling and part of the
reason those bike lanes are there now year-round is because of her and her team and a lot of
the people that we met while we were there.
I guess the best you can say for Montreal right now is that as reactionary as the current
government is, they at least recognize rolling stuff back would be very bad politics.
So they might not be going forward as quickly as they were before,
but I think we've turned a corner in terms of most of the politics where people understand that
removing stuff and being actively anti-bike lane in a city like Montreal is bad politics.
Yeah. And the advocates there are extremely on it and extremely organized.
Well, it's all these folks who used to work for Alplant or with Croix Montreal,
who are all rock stars and now they are sort of like scattered into...
Like they're like the Rebel Alliance.
Yes.
You know, they sort of like scattered to the different systems in the galaxy
and are working on little things here and there and they're all brilliant.
And that's sort of what you need.
While the golden age of Montreal cycling may be a little bit behind us,
I believe that there will be a new golden age that will come in the future.
And also we saw an incredible hockey game there.
I don't want to not say.
We had an incredible time watching the Montreal Canadians.
And we saw Cole Caulfield, who's one of the Canadian's stars, score his 50th goal of the
season and the joy in the building probably could be felt for hundreds of miles around.
It was rocking so hard.
I've never experienced a louder arena for any type of sport in my life.
It was incredible. I was instantly turned into a Habs fan.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was great.
Go Habs, go.
And go Montreal, go because all the good things are going to come to you.
I have a special guest back with me in the studio.
This is your third or fourth appearance on the podcast?
Probably, yeah.
What's your name?
Zeb Gordon.
Oh, I should know that because you're my son.
How old are you now?
I'm 13.
It's kind of wild that you've been doing this since 2018, since you were really little.
Yeah.
Okay, so we're here to talk about cleverhood.
We both took our cleverhood rover rain capes.
Do you remember where?
Disney World.
To Disney World because we were traveling together because I've been on book tour
and what does a guilty father do?
They take you to Disney World.
Yeah, they take you to Disney World when they've been away.
What I remember about that trip was it really only rained like once while we were there.
I had my like park bag because I'm a Disney adult.
You're shaking your head.
Why are you shaking your head?
Because you have the gear.
I have the gear.
I did take our cleverhoods because the cool thing about them was that they stuffed
down so small into that bag that we could walk around all day.
And you probably didn't even know I had them until I pulled it out.
Pulled them out.
Yeah.
What do you like about the cleverhood?
They're good for biking.
Like when we did the Fibro.
Right.
When it was raining a lot.
We did the Fibro bike tour and it started raining towards the tail.
Yeah.
It really started.
And what would we do?
And we just put them on and they were really good with the stuff for the thumb.
Right.
They have thumb loops so that when you're holding your handlebars the cape doesn't fly around.
And the hood fits right under your helmet so it doesn't fly away.
So that's good.
And what color was yours?
Yellow.
I think I said this the last time you were here.
Part of podcasting is asking questions you know the answer to.
And I feel like that's similar to parenting.
Don't you agree?
I'm always asking questions and you're like...
You know that.
You know.
So would you recommend the clever hood to other kids?
Yeah.
And to parents?
Yeah.
For traveling?
Yeah.
For riding bikes?
They're good.
They're comfortable.
They're good for everything.
You're a lot less talkative than you were when you were little.
Does that happen when you turn 13?
I don't know.
I've been 13 for like four months.
All right.
Well you'll tell me at the end of your time as a 13 year old.
Maybe when you're 14 you'll talk more.
Who knows?
But did you know, Zeb, that listeners of the War on Cars can save 15% off of the best
rain gear for cycling and walking and traveling and riding the fiber bike tour
and going to Disney World with code travel with me now through the end of June.
Did you know that?
I did not.
You didn't know that because you were sitting here while I was recording the rest of this episode.
I didn't know that until then.
Why?
Because you had your earbuds in and you were just playing on your tablet.
Okay.
Well go to cleverhood.com slash war on cars and enter code travel with me and you'll save 15%.
I don't think we really need to save 15% off on cleverhoods.
We have so many.
Oh we don't need to save 15% off because Susan very nicely sent you one or two.
Yes.
But everybody else can go to cleverhood.com slash war on cars.
We should briefly mention Cambridge.
We weren't there for very long.
We were at the Harvard Graduate School of Design for a presentation and that was great.
Cambridge very famously they have this 2019 ordinance where anytime a street is repaved or
dug up for utility work when it goes back they the city has to protect a bicycle infrastructure
or some type of bicycle infrastructure and if they don't they have to justify why not which
is a real reversal of usually how it works where you have to justify the bike infrastructure and
its need to exist and as a result you can bike pretty much everywhere.
It's probably the most transformed city in the last four or five years that I've experienced.
I was there another time visiting family as well and you really can bike everywhere and with the
blue bikes the bike share system it's pretty easy to get around.
You know I know on the Boston side of the Charles River people are not so thrilled with Michelle
woo right now feels like things are stagnating there for various political reasons but there's
a lot going on and again I just think like the politics have changed so much because the infrastructure
has changed and you know I think if you want to change the culture of cycling you have to
change the infrastructure and Cambridge is a really good example of how that's happened.
Yeah I think it's a real model that that people could look to because it does
once you get past the initial political hurdle of getting the ordinance passed
then it takes politics out of infrastructure and politics shouldn't be in infrastructure it shouldn't
be a political battle to make infrastructure safe that should just be the norm.
Yeah they're treating safe infrastructure like running water sewage electricity like it's just
another utility essentially that and and like you said it takes the politics out some of the
elected officials we spoke to who are at our show basically said like it allows them to just focus
on other stuff and then when people call and complain they can say well this is the law this
is what we're doing we're following the law that's what you do. So you were in Orlando as well.
Yes Orlando bicycle coalition shout out to Beth Resta and Mike down there I was down for another
one of my Disney races and did a little side trip for an event into Orlando at a brewery
and it was great we had a nice crowd at a brewery there and I want to shout out Anna Escamani
she's running for Orlando mayor hopefully will be the next Orlando mayor the fact that for example
she showed up to an event for a book called life after cars is a good sign that Orlando is moving
in the right direction obviously it has its challenges with the highway cutting right through
the middle of the city and all the other big roads but that you know I never really spent a lot of
time in downtown Orlando and I got there early before the event so I was able to walk around
went to coffee shop like biked around a little bit they've got lime and all of the different
dockless stuff and they're building some really good bike infrastructure there and it's a really
nice downtown with some historic neighborhoods brick streets the tree cover in some of those
neighborhoods with these is really beautiful it's got that old sort of like southern vibe
and it's great you know and they are building more infill housing in the downtown so more people
will be living there Orlando has a lot going for it obviously as you get out of the city
and far you know farther out you just get into just Florida sprawl and that's terrible
but you know I think again if Orlando really leans into what made the city really nice to
begin with and what will make it nice density more walkability it's great so yeah we had a
really nice time there are good good group of people came out both for Anna Eskamani for mayor
okay and so our next big stop on the tour was another one of these places that I didn't really
know what to expect it was a place I hadn't been to before and sort of a counterintuitive
place maybe for the war on cars life after cars but they really did a great job of bringing
us out there and that was Columbus Ohio yeah I love Columbus I want to give a shout out to
transit Columbus we were originally supposed to go there in January and and they had done this
incredible series of memes leading up to our appearance and then it had to get moved because
there was a big snowstorm and we couldn't go and then we went in April and they did another series
of just absolutely fantastic memes transit Columbus so creative such a great organization
Stevie Passamante just one of the people that that really stood out for us on on this tour and
so Columbus like I just think you know generic midwestern city that doesn't at being the person
that I am I don't have a lot of experience with those kinds of places we're going to sound very
like New York snobbies here but I don't want to sound snobby I really am but I love saying that
I'm ignorant yeah I'm confessing my own ignorance that's good that's good yeah it's exactly the
opposite like I'm like I'm a dumb New Yorker exactly um yeah Columbus again like it has a
lot going for it you know the bus system could be better everybody complained about it but we
actually didn't have a bad experience on it uh the bus kept showing up within like a minute or
two of us arriving at stops we really had to be staying on a major bus route right we were just
down from Ohio State shout out to Harvey Miller there yeah for also showing us good time and hosting
us at the Ohio State University yeah and you know the downtown to Ohio State it's a pretty easy trip
I took a pretty nice bike ride around they've got like their sports arena area where the
soccer stadium is the minor league baseball team is and where the blue jackets play as well for the
NHL so like that's all a sort of campus area that's being built out and actually I will say it was
one of the few downtowns that felt active like there were a lot of people you know it's it's the
capital so you have state government you have the university so you have education two
recession-proof industries I think there's a lot of care is big there as well insurance is big there
so I really liked Columbus a lot they've we got to see a tour of the downtown and some of the plans
for the next five to ten years they are building new protected bicycle infrastructure in the downtown
there wasn't much it was maybe the shallow capital of our tour as far as when we got there but they
are building some new protected infrastructure the area along the river was really beautiful
and filled in and like turned into a beautiful park so you know one of the more livable
cities I felt that we visited I went to German village oh yeah German village area beautiful
yeah one of the nicer neighborhoods that I experienced although I hear that they have some
problems with a little nimbyism there but you know what what really struck me about Columbus
especially in contrast to a couple of the other cities that we've talked about
is that it is a rapidly growing city it is a booming city and there's a lot of investment
going into the city right now and what's exciting to me about it is that there are people who seem
to have the ear of the powerful folks in town who are fighting to make sure that as this wave of
growth hits Columbus that active transportation and transit are part of the plan and we were
invited to speak to the Columbus Metropolitan Club which was I would say the most sort of traditional
and sort of like a chamber of commerce business based organization yeah cultural organization as
well and we had a very receptive audience there of business leaders and and elected officials
and community leaders and it really felt like a city where there is and this is my New Yorker
positive stereotype of the Midwest that there's sort of a civic pride and an organized civic spirit
that is trying to make this a better place in a very earnest kind of way and I was really moved
by that and and really felt like the combination of growing prosperity smart people and this really
organized approach to development might mean that Columbus could really make some huge strides in
the next 10 years yeah the challenge with Columbus is that if you look at it on a map it's
incredibly sprawled out it's huge we experienced a small slice of it but it's sort of like if you
took a jigsaw puzzle and just threw the pieces on a floor that's a map of the city of Columbus
and sort of like you were saying before it's it's one of those cities where it's too easy to drive
and so the incentives to make things better are a little more challenging because people don't see
oh I could turn a 45 minute drive into a 25 minute bike commute or I could get on the bus
and it would be faster and easier so you know like they're just the urgency isn't there like it is
in Atlanta or other places but like you said the movement to move things forward is there and
because unlike a lot of Midwestern cities or just cities in general the population is growing
there's a real opportunity to make it so much better and it's got yeah it's got all these great
beautiful neighborhoods we were in the short north which is a really cool area easy for walking
around lots of things to see and do Italian village Italian village beautiful homes lots of nice
little parks the german village bookstore that we were in that was one of the best bookstores it was
like a something out of a like I don't know harry potter story sorry I mean you know the good
parts harry potter yeah just you know there's just a lot going for it and again being a university
town like there's demand for cycling and walking yeah yeah it's a cool place from there we did a
quick stop in jersey city new jersey right across the river that was a day trip for us that was
pretty easy yeah took the path yeah and you know what a wonderful place jersey city is turning into
and a real vision zero city they've not had a death on city operated roads I think in five
or six years yeah and the adjacent city hoboken which we also toured on bike also vision zero and
I think they've gotten even longer without without a traffic death so these are some of the most densely
populated places in the United States of America and there is a really conscious effort to
make a better environment for people on bicycles we pedestrianized streets and other amenities and
obviously a great transit network that deserves to be greater and New York City DOT if you're
listening daylighting a lot of the success in hoboken and jersey city has come from
daylighting intersections with little more than paint and plastic in most places and that has
really made things a lot safer so it can be done and you know as we were riding around we did a
fairly big ride around and saw a lot of different parts of Jersey City in Hoboken I will say the
driver culture in New Jersey is not good drivers are not great and that's something of course that
we experience every day here in New York so many times when you have a bad experience with a driver
in the city of New York I'm just going to say it you look down and it's jersey plates I actually
on my way to meet everybody I was with a couple of the guys who were showing us around and we got
harassed by a driver who rolled down so we were on a one lane street and we were taking the lane
there were three or four of us and this driver was really angry behind us like to the point where
we're like this this could get violent fast and at the intersection at the red light he rolled
down his window and started yelling at us and started saying things like you guys are ruining
the city go back something like go back to where you come from now my grandfather was born in Jersey
City so that's what I told him never never mind that I don't actually live in Jersey City I just
was like oh my grandfather was born here so thanks and I don't normally confront drivers but this
guy was just like it was too much and I was with other people so I was like it's a really a good
dunk yeah oh no wait the best part was he was like oh look at these like Mickey Mouse Club
losers or something like that and I had my um I have like a sling bag yeah has a Mickey Mouse
pattern on it I was like yep you got me man total Disney adult right here yeah
so I was just sort of like yes ending this guy but yeah so um yes Jersey drivers in Jersey
it's it's just it's tough and you know and that is something that I do think that over time
infrastructure helps but it's a very challenging environment it's a dense and
hotly contested environment it's it's challenging in different ways than someplace like Phoenix where
there's just so much space and drivers are just going eight trillion miles an hour all the time
it's a different thing where drivers often are stuck and angry and and jealous because the bikes
can go because right because we're having more fun than they are but anyway thank you Jersey City
that was a really fun night all right and then speaking of out of state plates that you often see
in New York City we were in Philadelphia yes uh gotta say one of the best cities in the United
States by a country mile I mean it is it is just so much fun and we had the great joy and privilege
of going on one of the Wednesday night bike rides yeah Wednesday night rides uh amazing oh my god
we had beautiful weather that certainly helped but the crowd there was really great at a certain
point it met up with like other rides that were happening along this google river and we got to
experience some of the new infrastructure and the the running and biking path over there but you
know center city of course and other neighborhoods like it's pretty dense and very walkable and very
bikeable so even in places where there weren't bike lanes like it felt okay now I know that some of
the bike lanes that they have in center city were put in because people died like so I don't want to
sugarcoat it but talk about a city with perhaps the most potential to be the most bikeable city
in the country it's Philly yeah and what really struck me was on some of the
narrow residential streets that we traveled through you know there aren't bike lanes but
it's more of kind of a bike boulevard potential feeling where or bike street kind of potential
because these are narrow streets they don't see a lot of car traffic and there are a lot of people
out on the street we saw a lot of kids riding bikes for recreation just in their neighborhoods
and obviously a big university town with lots of different colleges I will say also that I found
drivers there to be pretty respectful a lot of the time that would be news to all the people
listening in Philly I would imagine but yeah when we were going through like four-way stops in some
of these residential neighborhoods and we were taking a while to get through because there
was a lot of people there was no honking yelling sense of pressure from
the drivers I just want to I do want to push back against the stereotype of Philadelphia being like
a sort of a place where everything is so tough and whatever okay yes it's very tough I'm certainly
not going to contest that but they're having a good time there you know but there's also a lot of
kindness on the street and a lot of warmth it is it is a warm it has a warm feeling to it yeah I
really liked Philly obviously SEPTA is having its challenges from within and without certainly the
legislature is pretty hostile to public transit in the state in general and exactly and we did
take it you know it's a really easy way to get around and you know look I think like much like
Chicago smoking is a big issue there smoking cigarettes it's very interesting because it's
not a big issue in New York City in the subway I mean every now and then but to the degree of like
in Chicago and Philly you would get on trains and even if someone wasn't smoking you smelled
cigarette smoke yeah I don't experience that here in the city in New York yeah I really like Philly
a lot and obviously the history there is just incredible then I made I guess what is sort of
the last official book tour kind of journeys up to the state of Maine where I lived for eight years
and that was a great trip down memory lane for me I was invited by the build main conference
which is a really interesting conference that's been going on for a few years
that is dedicated to really just building Maine and and trying to make a Maine that is liveable
Portland has become unaffordable for most Mainers and it's talk about gentrification it's really
gentrification of an entire city where people who grew up in that city are being forced out
the rents are just insane especially as someone who used to live there I was hearing
you know rents for like on Congress Street downtown where you used to be able to rent an
apartment for $500 a month and now costs like three to 4000 dollars a month you don't
earn those salaries in Maine that's for people who are digital nomads or other kinds of people
exactly and and it's a real problem however Portland is looking really good in a lot of ways
and there there is a great movement to make the streets safer there are you know there's not
really protected bike infrastructure that much but there is a strong movement trying to create a
bike culture that is safer and more inclusive they've also had a great victory in stopping
highway expansion near the city and so you know I think that it's early days in Maine
they're really just trying to get more housing is a huge huge issue for the state of Maine for
Portland then I went up to the Build Maine conference was actually in Skowhegan, Maine
which is the smallest place that we've been on book tour it's a town of about 8600 people
it's a logging town mill town on the Kennebec River it's a spectacular location there these
beautiful gorges these beautiful steep stone gorges with falls and they're going to be developing
that whole area as a water park like a canoeing and kayaking extreme sport outdoor area that's
really cool but I talked to people there about something that we frequently get asked on the
podcast which is what about rural areas what about small towns and especially rural areas and I spoke
to advocates there who are doing really interesting things with shared transportation for people in
rural areas ways to have people be able to help their neighbors to get to medical appointments
or whatever because a lot of the towns in Maine Maine is also one of the oldest states if not the
oldest state in the nation and so there are a lot of people who are stranded in rural areas without
good transportation it's very dangerous driving in the winter and you know there need to be creative
solutions and there are advocates on the ground there trying to figure out how to get people
where they're going in creative ways and yeah that includes carpooling with neighbors or
very micro transit solutions for people that will get them to health care that will get them to
the city and all of that is really happening and and I have to say I was really impressed
by the amount of energy there was in Maine to improve a place that is incredibly car dependent
that's what radicalized me is moving to Maine because for the first time in my life I couldn't
do anything without a car and so it's really exciting to me to see that there are people
who are working hard to create options and freedom for people living there because
it's a great state it's one of the great states in the country in terms of natural beauty and
unspoiled natural resources and the way to keep those natural resources unspoiled is to
do dense development in the areas of the state that have already been developed and not allow
sprawl to become a thing and that's a real problem with Portland because of the affordability on the
it's a place where we could cut that off before it fully happens and so I'm excited to see it
another thing about Maine for people who don't know that the main turnpike authority which is a
bad thing but the main turnpike does not allow billboards on it so when you're coming out of
the rest of New England and you enter Maine it's a really wonderful breath of fresh air
know when you've crossed the border from New Hampshire into Maine like just by the lack
of billboards I remember that as a kid yeah and it's just it's beautiful it's green it's a place
where people really know they have something special in the natural world and once again the
way we protect the natural world is by making our cities and towns denser and more affordable and
more livable and that's how you preserve those things which we need to preserve every inch that
we have that is green and beautiful like that so that would be a great place to wrap up this
episode which you know it's been a bit rambly but we should briefly mention that these were not
official book tour stops but I was at the velo city conference in Rimini Italy and we'll have a few
episodes coming out of that Rimini has been doing a lot they've doubled their mode share in 10 years
the mayor really has leaned into cycling it's a resort town it's kind of got this nightclub
vibe reputation I kind of described of like if the Hamptons and the Jersey Shore had an Italian
baby and it's a really cool place with a very beautiful historic medieval center it's got the
oldest triumphal arch in maybe all of Italy and the Tiberius bridge which is 2000 years old and
allowed cars on it until like 2018 which is crazy but like you know it had a really cool
cycling culture a lot of older people it's a much it's sort of like as Italian beach towns go it's
a little older demographically and but their mayor has really leaned into cycling and so yeah
we'll bring you some episodes from that conference and then I was in for that I was in Copenhagen
for the Copenhagen Cycling Summit last-minute invitation quick shout out to Henrik Lundorf
with the city of Copenhagen for inviting me I gotta say I love Copenhagen it is an amazing city and
of course is held up as like the place that is the model for a lot of American cities
North American cities other car dependent places because there's really wide streets
bike lanes I sense a butt coming yes I was last there about 13 years ago and the kind of disappointing
thing about going back to Copenhagen after all that time is I didn't see a lot of change
in all of that time so you go to the Netherlands and I know there's a real rivalry between these
two places and there's just constant iteration on the bike lanes and the bike infrastructure you
go to a city like Utrecht and they really are just building the most incredible stuff you'll
ever see I didn't see a whole lot of new infrastructure there are a couple bridges that
weren't there the last time I was there but in terms of the quality of the infrastructure
again I just want to say I would kill to have what they have in Copenhagen here in New York right
now but I hadn't I didn't see a lot that had changed and in fact New York City is building
wider bike lanes in midtown on 6th Avenue on 8th Avenue then I saw in some parts of Copenhagen
so I think Copenhagen is sort of stagnating a little bit I did talk to some folks in city
government who felt that that was correct and my assessment was correct that like they might be just
sort of resting on their laurels in fact cycling among children has actually gone down helmet use
is up I saw a lot more helmets there because there's a sense that it's getting a little more
dangerous which is unusual because Copenhagen like right like that's the big thing right it was
originally held up as this place we're like look at these people in their normal clothes and all
these attractive northern Europeans like biking around right yes and so again I don't want to
knock it because I again would kill right to have anything a tenth as good as what they have
going on in Copenhagen the amount of bikes parked everywhere the social trust you know a lot of
people just use their cafe locks the rear wheel locks and do not lock their bikes to something
so like there's a high level of social trust I did bike to the town of Hellerup which is north
of the city and took the long way back and it took me through some really sprawled out areas past
gas stations and sort of more strip mall single family home type developments and there were
wide bike lanes on the side of multi-lane arterial roads again would kill to have that right here in
the US but I was like huh you know like you got to keep moving forward and this work is never done
and so also being in Copenhagen during game four and game five of the next championship and then
during the parade the victory parade during the canyon of heroes which my son skipped school to
go see I I will say the FOMO was real it made me appreciate what we have going on here in New
York especially with our political leadership pushing things forward in the way that they're
doing and it made me this tour including the European leg we've we've joked in the very
first episode of this podcast I think we joked about Copenhagen syndrome that feeling where you
come back from a place that has functional transit and safe streets and you just my example was like
I took the Long Island railroad back from the airport and the seat was held together with
duct tape on that trip back in 2018 you get the sort of depression that doesn't go away for weeks
I didn't feel that this time I certainly felt energized to fix things after being in Copenhagen
and seeing how good things are but I was like oh we got a good thing going here in New York
it can be so much better but I think the big takeaway from this tour was every city that we
went to has something awesome every city has something redeeming about it whether it's the
people who are pushing to make it better or a piece of infrastructure or the food and the
culture or whatever it is we saw all of it but no city has everything except for New York and so
I'm going to be the New York snob that I think I sometimes accuse you of being but both of us are
that at different times I was like it made me really appreciate coming home and calling this
place home and I think it's a lesson for all of the cities that we're in as we face this like
horrible federal government America is worth fighting for it's a great place there are lots
of great cities like I said every city's got something great about it it's a big diverse
wonderful country made better by its big diversity and we got to lean into that we got to embrace it
and we got to fight for it I think we've talked about on the show before that at its heart the
war on cars is a defense of cities and what cities can be and do and what they represent
not just diversity but just democracy and kindness and community and that's what we
saw in every city so keep fighting America let's go that's a great way to end it that's it for this
episode of the war on cars remember you can support us and get exclusive bonus content
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the war on cars is produced with the generous support of the helen and william maser foundation
this episode was recorded at the brooklyn podcasting studio by josh wilcox it was edited by
samantha gatzik our theme music is by nathaniel goodyear transcripts are by russell grag our
logo is by danie finkel i'm sarah goodyear i'm doug gordon and this is the war on cars
About this episode
After months on tour, the hosts come home and stitch together what they learned across cities: e-bikes and protected bike infrastructure, transit tradeoffs, and the politics behind safer streets. They highlight Atlanta’s BeltLine—its bike success, crowding debates, and gentrification concerns—then contrast Memphis’s unreliable buses and pedestrian danger with intentional local mobility projects. Chicago’s lakefront noise leads to congestion-pricing talk, while Cambridge’s 2019 ordinance shows how policy can protect bike infrastructure during roadwork.
Original notes
Our final Life After Cars book tour roundup episode is here, with our reports from Atlanta, Memphis, Chicago, Montréal, Orlando, Portland, Maine, and many, many more great North American cities! We get into the good, the bad, and the ugly of everything we saw out there on the road. Plus a discussion of…Reverse Copenhagen Syndrome?
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Order our book, Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile, out now from Thesis, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
Save 20% on everything in our official merch store with code HOTBIKESUMMER.
Buy a certified, pre-owned e-bike from Upway or sell your own bike! Visit Upway.co to get rolling.
Thanks also to Cleverhood. Listen to this episode for the latest discount code and get 15% off the best rain gear for walking and cycling.
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