Taking the Transportation Fight to Congress from NY-7

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I try to find a way to really connect with people and not look at them as like, oh, you're

car crazy, you're terrible people.

It's like, no, I get you have a perspective, you grew up with this car culture, I get it.

To break that down, I need to connect in a certain way and that's the strategy that

I used.

People are really looking for real community in their lives.

They're looking for places to be in community with their neighbors.

And so I think public opinion on this is changing a little bit.

I think there's much more interest in advancing a vision of New York City where more space

is available to the public and taken away from private vehicle traffic so people can

get out and experience our beautiful city.

What we simply mean by a lifetime of care, our main platform, is that from the moment

you're born until the day that you die, that the government has a responsibility to take

care of you, especially when you're most vulnerable.

So when you're too young to work, too sick to work, or too old to work.

And that includes transportation because I don't think the oligarchs or the powers

that be right now really understand what fast, reliable transportation means to all of us.

This is the War on Cars.

I'm Sarah Goodyear.

With me here in the studio is my co-host, Doug Gordon.

Hello.

This is going to be a fun episode.

It's something that we have never done before.

The War on Cars becomes Meet the Press.

Exactly.

I mean, this kind of fits with what we've experienced out on the road on the tour, which

is that pretty much every stop, there has been an elected official who was on the stage

with us and talking about how bad cars are for their communities.

Yeah.

We've had city council people, we've had state senators and other state reps.

It's pretty remarkable when you consider that not that long ago, anytime we would try to

reach out to an elected official, with some exceptions, they didn't want to touch something

called the War on Cars.

So this is a really neat evolution in the podcast.

So for this episode, we are going to be talking to three candidates for Congress for the United

States House of Representatives.

I've heard of it.

Yes.

And they're going to be talking about their transportation policies.

But first, a little business.

That's right.

You can find us on Patreon at patreon.com, slash the War on Cars pod.

You can also order our new book, Life After Cars, freeing ourselves from the tyranny

of the automobile, wherever books are sold.

You can find out more and learn all about the book tour at lifeaftercars.com.

Okay.

So let's get to it.

We interviewed Antonio Renoso, Claire Valdez, and Julie Juan, all of whom are running in

the June 23 Democratic primary for New York 7.

That's the congressional seat that opened up when veteran Democratic politician Nidia

Velazquez announced she was retiring.

It's a traditionally progressive district covering neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens

that are part of the so-called Kami Corridor that elected Zoran Mamdani mayor.

Everyone in this primary identifies as progressive.

Why are we doing this at the War on Cars?

Well, that's a great question, because obviously this is going to be a little New York-centric.

But sort of like we were saying earlier, the fact that we have elected officials who are

willing to come on the show and people who are running for office, especially to make

the case directly to our listeners, some of whom live in this district, others, of course,

who live nowhere near this district, I think it shows how much these issues and the people

who support them, cyclists, transit advocates, safe streets advocates, are a constituency

now.

We have some amount of political power that these candidates want to talk directly to

them and not just have their transportation policies be one of many listed in an interview

on some other political podcast or the New York Times or something like that.

Yeah.

And this is of national importance because federal funding is incredibly vital for transit

and active transportation projects.

And it is under a really terrible assault right now under this administration, which

is made it very clear that they prioritize car transport over everything.

And so who we sent to Congress and whether or not they're willing to take a stand on

these issues and to fight for this funding is really important.

Yeah.

I mean, think about, I have my issues, of course, with Chuck Schumer, but think about

all he's done for New York in terms of transit funding and active transportation or Amtrak

Joe, Joe Biden, and the fact that he rode the train was part of why he was such a big

supporter of train funding.

So it's great that we have this new generation of people who get around by bike or by transit

or by walking are not so car focused or they're going to bring that perspective to Congress.

And potentially the midterms might see a new generation of politicians coming into power

that does get it on a very visceral level that transit, walking and biking are important.

But will these people have the political will to stick to their principles once they're

in Washington?

We will hear from Antonio, Claire, and Julie about why they are running and what they believe

they can accomplish in DC if they're elected.

This episode is going to run a little longer than most to give them all three time to outline

their positions.

Yeah, this is the director's cut of Lord of the Rings.

So we're going to start with the fellowship, the Twin Towers, and then Return of the King.

That's going to work.

Sounds good.

We'll start with Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Renoso.

Antonio Renoso was born and raised in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

He was elected to the New York City Council in 2013, representing Williamsburg and Bushwick

in Brooklyn and Ridgewood in Queens.

In 2021, he won the election to become Brooklyn Borough President.

And now he is running for Congress.

Antonio Renoso, welcome to the War on Cars.

Yes, thank you so much for having me.

Happy to be here.

Great to have you.

So we're going to just jump right in.

One of the top things in your transportation platform, you talk about how New York runs

on its transit system.

And there are 3000000 workers who are relying on the system to get to their jobs every day.

And that New York City alone, this I didn't know this exact figure.

It's amazing accounts for more than 40% of all public transit trips in the United States.

So it's super important.

We all know.

So what would you do specifically to get New York City more federal funds for transit

and for biking and pedestrian infrastructure?

It's a great question.

Right now, the Department of Transportation at the federal level in the United States

is very highway heavy.

We talk about car culture here in New York City, but outside of New York City, it is madness.

And naturally, the Department of Transportation is set up to help and grow the highway and

car culture that exists in this country.

But in our city, the highway culture is not king.

We move on public transportation, whether that's buses, subways.

We walk now city bike or we have our own bikes.

But there are so many alternatives to vehicle transportation that right now we're using.

We need to invest in that.

So we need a DOT that has a perspective of what I want to call like large dense cities that is

different from thinking that we just need money for new highways and bridges.

That what we actually need is not only infrastructure for public transportation is

operational dollars.

It's talking about that the operational portion of running a public transit system in itself

is something that should be very centered and primary to the goals of the Department of

Transportation. So that's something I want to fight for.

I want to change the way we think about transportation nationwide, but specifically in large cities

like New York, so they can help us also pay for the operations of how we move people.

Right, because not only do 80% of transportation dollars automatically go to highways, only 20%

going to transit and other things, but not only that.

But as you said, maybe you could explain a little bit more about that operations budget point.

Yeah, so we got to keep the trains moving and while infrastructure is deeply important,

our largest cost for our public transportation system is actually the workers.

It's the people that are running the show every single day.

You know, I want to be as respectful as we possibly can to the fact that they are humans,

but it's human capital that runs this city and we need to make sure that they're a part of the

conversation in what we're talking about.

You go to another state where they are heavy on highways.

Once you build the infrastructure, they kind of leave it at that and there's very little

maintenance, you know, cars are driving over it, but not here.

Once it's there, once the Second Avenue subway gets built, once, you know, we see

what happened in Moynihan Train Station, when Penn Station wants to get built,

there's a whole operation of a bunch of people that are making all that run and it gets more

and more expensive as time goes on for us, as also as we expand our network and we do more

and we need to be able to pay for that.

So we want to change the mindset today, just not being concrete, mortar, just capital costs that

are about building, but also about maintaining and operating, being a part of the budget that

we get from the Department of Transportation.

Speaking of transportation costs, there's a lot of talk in the U.S. about how expensive

our transportation construction costs are compared to peer nations.

Like if you think about Spain or France and the types of things that they're building,

you know, I think it's something like for every mile of train we're building,

they're building 10 or 20 or something like that.

They have unions, they have environmental laws, they have all those kinds of things that we have here.

The factors are very complex as to why things cost more here.

What role do you see Congress having in like figuring out those cost problems,

not to dismiss how much it costs to build a highway, but transportation, transit,

does really have this problem in this country?

Yeah, I was a city council member.

We tried to deal with procurement and just understanding the cost of things,

especially road for parks and libraries and schools that were so expensive.

And that includes transportation.

And we had a hard time really trying to nail down exactly how we're going to solve for this.

And I believe that the infrastructure that we're seeing, and let me use another word

instead of infrastructure, but like the foundational principles of how we pay for things in New York

are from a different time.

It's like Tammany Hall proof times.

The corruption is more difficult now.

Everything is on paper, everything is in computers.

There's like 20 layers of, I think we could lessen that a little bit, pull back,

have a different conversation, have faith in government in a way that we didn't have before.

We've grown a ton.

We have a department of investigations now.

We have so many things that protect us from corruption and losing money.

We should have a different conversation and not think that because we're trying to pull back

on these things that we're trying to steal money, that we're trying to be corrupt,

but instead trying to make things less expensive.

Because when they were stealing money, people felt that nothing was getting done.

But now nothing is getting done because it costs so much to make sure people don't steal money.

And it's just kind of a wash.

Let's find a balance.

Let's find something in between where we can make it a lot easier for people to do things,

cut some of these layers away, and have faith in our government not being corrupt in New York.

And I know that's saying a lot, but I believe in government.

I believe in our ability to oversee.

I think we got some great people that are smart and know how to get things around.

So I would say that that's something that we should think about.

And I don't know if they've had Tammany Hall style corruption in these other countries.

But I think that's what it is.

The other thing is competition.

We don't do a good job at building competition.

It's like one company in the entire world that builds our train cars.

And you put out an RFP, they're the only ones bidding.

So they know that they're the only ones bidding.

And they're like, we're going to give you a million dollar car,

even though it costs us $150,000 to make it, take it or leave it.

But if we would have been building in-house, talking about some smaller companies, some MWBEs,

and teaching them or building them up so that they eventually could compete for these RFPs,

then we would be able to lower costs.

But we don't do that in this city.

We do things easy instead of thinking long term.

Because this mayor doesn't care that the next mayor is going to get a discount on it, right?

They want to get, they want to, we are short-sighted and narrow-minded

in how we think about what we invest in right now.

And we very rarely think about the future.

I don't think that there's been any mayor that's really cared about what their,

you know, their successor is going to, how they're going to do on budget.

So those are two ideas that I have.

Okay. Well, I guess we'll have to see if this mayor that we, our fresh new mayor,

if he ends up being somebody who, who is willing to leave a legacy,

a positive legacy to his successor, we'll have to see this.

So when you talk about making these changes at the national level in the way that our

transportation dollars are allocated and the way they're thought about,

not just like making a change saying you can use federal money for operations,

not just for capital investment, are there other serving members of Congress that you look to

and say, okay, these people are doing the kind of thing that I want to be doing when I get there.

And when I get there, you know, if you are the one who's elected by the people,

are there seated members of Congress that you feel like, okay, I'm going to make common cause

with them because they too have this problem with urban centers that are being shortchanged

in this national transportation funding system.

The leaders that I see like people to judge is somebody that helped build out

the reconnecting communities grant that I thought was deeply important

in making it so that highways that split neighborhoods into two

especially important black and brown neighborhoods throughout this country

that we would do right and try to solve like fix those problems

that we've called that we caused in the past.

And I think that's a worthy initiative to take on.

But I don't know if anybody's thinking about what I'm thinking about with transportation

and maybe they are. I don't know them yet. I haven't heard it.

I'll do more research to see if they exist.

But I'm really trying to, I feel like when I got into the city council,

I was put there to make people uncomfortable, to change the conversation,

not just to sit there, make a lot of noise and keep it moving.

I wanted to actually affect meaningful change in people's lives.

So I wanted to be smart on how I brought people along,

on how I build coalitions, on how I passed legislation that was meaningful.

You know, and I wanted to get the person that doesn't bike ride,

you know, enthusiastic about, you know, cycling legislation

or somebody that doesn't use the public transportation system,

be excited about public transportation legislation.

That's what I wanted to do then.

When I go to Congress, I really want this to be normalized.

And it's going to be hard because all the large cities are democratic

and it's hard not to make it a political thing.

Because they're just going to say, oh, you guys are wasting money

and now you want to figure out a way to, you know, move money around

to pay for your overpaid workers that are union.

I could already see the fight. I want to bring that fight to Congress.

I want to have a real conversation with them about it.

I hate saying it, but I feel like I'm really good at bringing people together.

That's my, that's one of my things that I like to do.

I feel proud of.

I want Joe Borelli to sign on to a bill that I wrote

when I was in the city council.

Like that would make me really happy.

Republican from Staten Island for the folks who don't know.

Yeah, you know, and if I could get that done, man, that's like, that's big time.

And that's my goal. Did I ever get him to sign on to something?

No, but he listened every time.

And I want to do that in Congress.

I think that right now, Congress is very polarized and it's just like so political.

And it's like, God forbid you even try to work with a Republican if you're a Democrat.

And I get it. I want to fight.

I think that the Republicans are causing a lot of trouble.

I think the Democrats are not strong enough.

So I'm going to help be a part of that movement to make Democrats better

and push back against Republicans.

But I also think that we have to find common themes

that we can show this country is working for them.

Because I think people gave up on government across the board,

whether you're a Republican or Democrat.

And I want to re-inspire them read like, oh, the government can work for you.

Government does help us.

They make our lives easier.

They invest in us.

I want people to say that out loud and believe it.

So I got a lot of work to do.

But when it comes to the transportation stuff, I know I'm going to be

one of a very, very handful of people.

But I'm excited to take that challenge on.

I wonder, I have so many questions just out of that that I want to get to

a little bit about larger oversight issues, possible impeachment,

investigating all the fraud and corruption that we've seen

from this administration and Republicans in general.

But maybe we could roll it back.

Because I was on the founding board of Streets Pack.

We endorsed you in 2013 for your first go at city council.

You were part of that sort of young freshman class

of new and exciting leaders who really were vocal about

making New York City better for cycling, better for public transit users.

We were talking right before we started recording.

I would see you on the Manhattan Bridge, like biking in your suit.

And that was a weird and new thing to see at that time.

It was like you, one other city council member, Carlos Menchaca, and that was about it.

So I'm wondering, at the time that you got interested in these issues,

that was not a normal thing for a New York City council member to be interested in.

Like, what's your origin story?

How did you kind of see the light on these issues?

Enrique Peñalosa, the mayor of Bogota, Colombia.

So I just want to say my story before I got elected.

I drove an Infiniti G35 Coupe, 300 horsepower, loved my car.

My goodness, it was awesome.

It was a beautiful car.

I spent way too much on it.

I was way too young.

It was one of the dumbest purchases I've ever made.

But I was, you know, I'm in New York City.

That's what you do.

Then I went to Kids Ride Club.

It's something that we used to do with a woodhole hospital.

I used to take black and brown kids, get them on a bike ride,

and take them all over the city to see things we've never seen before, including me.

You know, I've never been to the Statue of Liberty.

I never went to Alice Island.

Cloisters never knew what those were.

They didn't go to the Empire State Building.

I was riding with these kids as a chaperone, but learning with them.

So it was awesome.

And that was something that was being done by Woodhole Hospital.

So I did that.

And then they had a youth summit for cycling.

And Enrique Peñalosa was the guest speaker.

And I sat down there with the kids.

And he just went over the transformation of Bogota, Colombia.

And what they did with their buses, what they did in towing vehicles off sidewalks

and really changing car culture in their transportation culture,

changing transportation culture in Bogota, Colombia.

And he said that he mandated, and I don't, it's not a hundred percent,

just what I'm trying to recall, you know, this 19 years ago.

And he said he wanted the buses to go 90 miles an hour.

And that was the minimum speed that they can go.

They need to go 90 miles an hour or we failed.

And he had them bus protected.

And I mean, protected lanes, I mean, with concrete on either side.

So you can't get in if you're a car.

And he said, what I wanted to do is have these cars sitting in traffic,

not even see the buses, let them be a blur.

So the next day they're like, wait, what am I doing,

wasting an hour and a half of my time in this terrible traffic

when I can't even see these buses on how fast they're going.

And then very quickly he changed the culture of transportation in Bogota, Colombia.

He also talked about class and that vehicles are instruments of the class struggle

and determinants of class and that bicycles weren't.

You gotta have a $1 million bike and a $40 bike

and they both use two wheels and you got a pedal to get through.

Not with a car.

You got distinct, there's distinct features that make it so that you know

if somebody has a lot of money or doesn't, or somebody pretends to have a lot of money or not.

And that class argument really hit home to me because I was very poor

and I was paying too much for that car.

And it was just a status symbol that didn't have any practical

application in a large city like New York City for a 22 year old.

So all those things kind of turned me into a crazy person.

I ended up selling my car maybe six months later

using some of that money to pay for my campaign for city council.

So I ran and some of the money I got for selling my car came from running.

I bought a bike and I only traveled on bike during my first 2013 race.

That's how I got around everywhere.

My front wheel got stolen and I borrowed my sister's powder blue wheel for the front

and it became like a signature.

People were like, you know it's Antonio, if you got that powder blue wheel in the front,

go find them.

And that's kind of how I started it.

I started learning a lot more and I got involved with families for safe streets.

The streets pack got ahold of me and just started learning

so much more about transportation.

But that's how I became, it was biking, but it was a transportation advocate.

That's my origin story is that he kept in yellow so I was my inspiration for that.

And then you said that you like to bring people along.

So how did you in those early days start to bring people along to this issue that at the time

was it's not that way anymore, but it was very controversial?

I said it out loud.

I think that's the most important thing is I wasn't scared.

Everybody saw me psych me.

So the first thing is council members always used to make fun of me like in a high school way.

They're like, oh, Antonio, what are you doing?

Get a car. What are you doing?

Antonio, what are you doing?

Go put a helmet on.

And they just saw me as a younger next generation.

But I would tell them, hey, I was riding down the street and it's just like no bike lanes.

You shouldn't be riding on that street.

It's very dangerous.

And I was like, why can't we make it?

Like there's no way for me to get to city hall unless I go down the streets.

Okay. Let's work on it.

And just having like a relativity.

No council member knew an average cyclist while they were in the city council.

And I always say that if you're not in the room, no one cares about you.

Like that's why it's important to have minority representation in rooms, women,

queer community.

And I want to just say like those are really important people that I have in the room.

But you also need people that have different modes of transportation.

Then I started also finding like families for safe streets really helps because those are

terrible stories that really hit home.

Those are realities.

We're not making this stuff up.

People have lost loved ones because of this.

And then the disabled community and talking about their inability to get around the city they love

and everything you do every single day they can't do.

Moms with strollers.

And those are all strong constituencies in the city.

Moms with strollers, the disabled community.

You know, now cycling folks, folks that lost people through car crashes.

So I built the constituency that could really move people.

And then I brought them.

I never talked for them.

I just said, hey, would you mind having a meet with some folks related to transportation?

And they were like, yeah, I'll meet with your crazy people, Antonio.

And then when they got in the room, they weren't crazy people.

It was a mom who lost a son.

It was a disabled person that hasn't been, hasn't been able to go to, you know,

a waterfront view ever because there's no access to it.

You know, those things really change people's perspective.

So I try to find the common denominators.

I try to find a way to really, you know, connect with people and not, not look at them as like,

oh, you're a car crazy here.

You're terrible people.

It's like, no, I get you have a perspective.

You grew up with this car culture.

I get it to break that down.

I need to, I need to connect in a certain way.

And that's, that's the strategy that I used.

So I am also a native New Yorker and I've seen a lot on these streets.

But one thing I didn't see until, you know, really the last 10, 15 years

was transportation being taken seriously as a standalone issue by mayoral candidates,

city council candidates, anybody who was running for office.

It was just sort of, it just wasn't spoken.

It wasn't something that politicians really felt like they had to have many positions on

any of that.

So you've been a part of that change.

Maybe you could talk about some of the way you framed it and used a particular phrase

that that was a little bit challenging, confronting, but then also if you could

tell me how you feel that your constituents and the people of this city at large,

how they have come along as well, because I've certainly seen that as a New Yorker.

Yeah.

So first Carlos Menchaca and I owned the transportation committee.

That was, we were one of the first five people that supported Melissa Mark Verrero to become

speaker and she gave us access to pick three committees that we either wanted to be on or

chair and she would make it so that we could be on one of those three committees and chair all

three of them.

Sanitation, transportation were two of mine.

I put land use and she had me on land use.

Carlos and I were the only two people on the transportation committee that had any outside

like car culture mentality and we were saying things like lives over parking, safety over

parking.

And it was just hard to like beat that back and no one was saying that out loud in these

committees.

And I don't want to say we were the ones that pioneered this conversation on transportation,

but I really feel like we were part of the OGs, the first ones of the groups of people

that started making it so that you had to pay attention to us.

Also, we were very effective organizers and leaders.

We were great communicators, we were young and I remember I did this tweet where I wrote

break car culture, thousands of likes and people see that.

And they're like, what the heck?

Antonio is getting all this attention.

They're showing up for him and it started working.

But also both people before us, Jeanette Sadiqan and Mike Bloomberg, which is crazy

that I would bring Mike Bloomberg's name up.

I feel you.

Yeah.

But Jeanette Sadiqan was like, I'm going to build this plaza on 42nd Street,

like on Times Square and like deal with it.

10% popularity, like everybody hated her.

And she's like world renowned for the work that she did in New York City.

And that was something big for me too, is that it's not popular now, but it's okay.

Like just do what's in your heart where you think is right.

And Jeanette Sadiqan, now everybody loves that plaza.

And we can't even think about Times Square without that plaza.

And the bike lane and park slope.

These folks were ready to go to war, a literal war for this.

And they were hitting, there was physical altercations, glass thrown in the bike lane.

And now I don't, I can't remember a time when there was like, there's no bike lane and park

slope. I can't remember a time when there were, well, the cars in Prospect Park,

I remember, I can still remember those.

But now people can't even fathom the idea of putting a car in those places.

So what ended up happening is people made bold decisions.

They stuck with their guns and then were absolved later on.

So I thought in my time is like, I'm just going to be bold.

I'm just going to do what I think works.

And I will be a one-term council member.

But in 20 years, somebody's going to give me an award for like my ridiculous idea.

And it's like, I want to go down like Jeanette Sadiqan.

I want to go, and she still wasn't popular when I was a council member.

I want to be clear that it took more time than that.

So that's one.

So then I made Williamsburg and Bushwick the center of DOT experiments.

I told them, any ideas you have, you throw them at us first.

So when we talk about parking for car share happened in Williamsburg first.

Electric vehicle charging, Williamsburg first.

Anything.

You just think about it.

It happened in Williamsburg first.

And Williamsburg became like the central node of the largest population of people that cycle.

Cycling became second nature.

It's a young community, but we also have public transportation.

Like you don't need a car if you live in Williamsburg.

And we built that environment out.

That vehicle is the worst way to move around in Williamsburg.

And now people in Williamsburg are doing it too.

We have Hasidic folks in a bike club, Hasidic Jewish folks in a bike club,

which is something I never thought I'd see.

I talked to a rabbi that said, we need more time.

It takes time to build this culture, but we have a bike club.

And Tony, I'm like, more power to you.

I see it.

Latinos that are using it and are riding it.

The bike lanes being supported because they're delivering food

in the Deliveristas look like me and that our people are like,

we got to protect them too.

I'm like, you can't protect them without bike lanes.

And it's just things started happening.

And now I feel like we've mainstreamed transportation support or policy,

but not all the way through.

We got a lot of work to do, but we've made a lot of progress.

I do want to ask specifically about the parking around Borough Hall and how you came into the

office and maybe explain to people first, the previous resident of that office had a different

attitude.

But also then, if we could, after that, maybe you could tell us, I know that there's still

some parking up there in Cadman Plaza that's contested with the judges.

And if we're ever going to get a new motion, don't get any emotion on that.

I'd love to hear your perspective.

But for our listeners who are not New Yorkers, maybe you could explain when you arrived at

Borough Hall that New York City has a borough president for each borough along with the

mayor.

And that is an office that has some real power.

And in Brooklyn, the beautiful Borough Hall is a historic building.

It's very much like City Hall in Manhattan, and it has this beautiful plaza around it.

So maybe you could tell us what it was like when you got there.

So Borough Hall, the building sits inside a park for all intents and purposes.

That's what it is.

We are inside a park.

And I get to Borough Hall, and there is parking all throughout the plaza.

Columbus Park, in which Borough Hall sits, is one big plaza.

It's a glorified sidewalk more than anything else.

It doesn't feel like a park, but it is a park.

And it feels less like a park because the previous borough presidents parked all of their

vehicles on the plaza, including staff.

So we had maybe five parking spots to the left of Borough Hall.

We had about nine to the right of Borough Hall.

We have parking in front of Borough Hall.

It was just a lot of parking.

I knew that if I became borough president, that was going to be a day one thing that I

was going to do.

It took me like three weeks.

It wasn't a day one.

It wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be because it was a lot of pushback from staff.

There were previous staff.

Eric Adams didn't take everybody on day one.

He took them in time.

So there were people that were like, we're not going to listen to you.

We're just going to keep parking here until we leave to City Hall.

This is stupid what you're doing.

So they protested a bit, but eventually we got them all out.

Now there are no cars parked in the plaza.

I got a lot of accolades and support and praise for that, which is crazy.

That removing parking from a park would give me praise.

But that's how bad it is here in New York with car culture.

They see that cars king and parking it in a park is a perfectly legitimate thing to do

and that we shouldn't even ask questioning it makes no sense to them.

But we got rid of them and it was a great victory and no cars have been back.

There was a security guard that started parking there for a week.

I was away in the Dominican Republic and I want to answer this because it was out on a story

and I'm very upset with Street's blog, but my father had just passed away.

So I was in the Dominican Republic.

It was during the coldest time in the city and there was like snow.

It was just brutal.

But I was away and one of our folks that works for DCAS, a security agent,

decided they were going to park their car, only their car on the plaza again.

I wasn't there to see it, but it seems like somebody came and told our staff

that that was happening and we hadn't moved on it.

The story came out and I was in the Dominican Republic and I called my staff.

I'm like, what's happening?

They explained it.

The guy is no longer on the plaza, obviously, but they know how crazy I am about that plaza.

I personally, you know, walk around and make sure I don't like that.

The news parks there right now, the New York press and they just and I tell them get off

and they don't listen.

They never listen.

They park on it and they don't care.

Those are the folks I really wanted to eventually got to deal with.

But nobody parks in the plaza.

Nobody parks in the park.

That is a rule.

Now we have another issue that there's an actual parking lot in that park

that is owned by judges, that is run by judges.

It's owned by the city and it's only a MOU.

Memorandum of understanding under I think the Bloomberg years that they're allowed to park there

whatever.

We have a law in New York state that says if you alienate Parkland that you have to give it back

to that community one to one.

If they want to keep that Parkland, then the state of New York is going to have to find us

land in that community board one to one somewhere else.

And if they can't, they got to give us that back.

And we are ready to go to court for it and that's what we're going to do.

We're going to go to court.

The problem is this is a judge's parking lot.

So the presiding judge over this case will be somebody that parks on that parking lot.

And they are livid.

They are very upset.

And I think this is less about the parking and it's their pride and their power being tested.

And it kind of harkens back to the bike last year is because they're using all sorts of

absurd arguments to defend the practice.

So one of the things that these judges are saying, and our listeners should know,

that Borough Hall also sits many of the federal and local and state courthouses are right there

next to Borough Hall around this plaza.

They are saying it's a security concern and they have to be able to park there in order to like

be safe.

To which I would say, why would you have a space that basically has a big neon sign that says

judges park here?

If you're concerned about judges safety, wouldn't you want them scattered at a lot of anonymous

parking garages?

Not too many people actually know who the judges are.

Like, but if you want to find them, now you know where you know.

Now you know where to find them.

But I think you're right.

It's like, don't tell us what to do.

Who are you, some elected official who's going to be out of here?

We are the law.

They also have plates that say New York judge on them.

So the plates tell them who they are.

I'm like, if you're trying to be safe, maybe you shouldn't tell people that you're a judge with

your plates.

So that's one.

And two, I told them we would help them get valet so that they would go to the court in the front

and is the fastest route to the door.

They would be able to have that and then somebody would valet and bring their car.

So they would have a shorter traffic movement and they said no to that.

So we gave them ideas to secure their safety.

And none of it matters because it's not about safety for them.

This is about power.

And if you know anything about my history, I love going after people who want to break the law,

want to circumvent policy because they think they can.

And they're going to have to figure it out.

So what we want is to go out and this might have to be like a New Jersey case or something.

We might need to take it to the federal government.

Yeah, that judge should recuse himself.

But they're all going to have to.

What do you do?

The Bronx, you know, the Bronx is getting a call from the head judge and he's going to say,

hey, you know what's up, don't rule for them.

So we're going to have to figure something out.

But it doesn't matter.

We're taking the fight to them.

They're going to have to try to win.

The court of public opinion is stronger than the court system of the state of New York.

And we're going to prove that.

It needs to go to kids court.

We need kids to preside over this.

It's ridiculous we're having this conversation.

It absolutely is.

Speaking of taking the fight to the power,

you know, I think a lot of people, average voters, activists like ourselves,

are looking to our next Congress to really take it to the Republicans and say,

not just move on, not just say, let's restore stability, but to really regain and retain

oversight powers as granted to Congress in the Constitution.

You know, your former colleague and former guest of the show, Brad Lander has said,

you know, people want fighters, not folders.

What do you see your role specifically, but obviously Congress's role more broadly

in looking back over the last, let's say, 10 years of corruption of this administration

and doing something about it so people are held accountable?

Yeah.

So I believe that after Trump lost the first time and Biden won, that the Democrats thought

that he was like a flash in the pan, that he was a moment and that the United States

was healing now and didn't do a good job at holding to account his administration.

They were scared about the optics of being partisan or being, you know, the Republicans

were systemocrats and they didn't do anything.

They did the bare minimum.

It wasn't, it wasn't strong.

It wasn't tough.

It was half, half stepped.

So I thought it was not good.

And now they're back and they're stronger.

They're more emboldened.

They know that the Democrats are not strong.

So they're undoing work that we spent 50 years building overnight.

They're undoing it in one year.

And I don't care what the Democrats say.

If the general public is like, oh, don't do that.

Don't prosecute Republicans.

That looks bad.

Don't impeach President Trump.

That's not going to look, I'm not the one.

They shouldn't send me to Congress.

Because I'm going to go all in in making sure that anyone that broke the law,

anyone that did things that are illegal, anyone that broke policies,

that they're going to be held to account, they're going to go to oversight hearings

and they're going to be held to account.

I think we have to go all the way in.

There's no way people are not arrested for what we're seeing happen right now in the United States.

And we have a war in Iran that they've not done a good job at articulating what an eminent threat was.

And we're spending billions of dollars and soldiers that have died for this war

that I think is illegal and nonsensical.

The implicitness in the genocide in Gaza is something that is real,

that we need to be held accountable for as well.

The Epstein files are not out.

Or if they are out, there's this big, terrible issue and not one person has been arrested.

Not one person, not even charged for what's happened in the United States.

As every step of the way, we're seeing airplanes with three bedroom apartments inside them.

These people are corrupt.

They're breaking laws.

They're doing very terrible things.

I want to find all of them and I want to hold them all to account.

And then the next time people think about this, they're going to talk about

the era of post-Trump 2027 was an era of accountability.

Everyone was held to account.

And maybe the next ones don't think about trying to destroy democracy anymore.

So that's where I am in my head and I don't want what I think is just like

democratic decorum to stop us from being able to do that.

So we did just face down the federal government and we're still in the process of facing down

the federal government over congestion pricing, which obviously took decades to even get there.

And we've seen our governor go back and forth.

She ended up thinking it was politically advantageous to be on the side of congestion pricing.

So that was good.

But it's been a tough battle and it is a battle directly with the Trump administration at this

point. It seems to me like it's a great example of the type of battle that needs to be joined

in every forum and community in this country right now to kind of hold back

the forces that want to dismantle all this hard work that we've done.

So what lessons have we learned in the fight for congestion pricing and have we learned

the lessons that we need to have done?

Yeah, so on a federal level, we need to figure out a way to make it so that

if and when we get approvals from the federal government and they're locked in,

that in order for them to be undone, you need like a court order and a decision by a judge

to be able to pull back on anything that we contractually are obligated to do.

And that makes it so that the president can unilaterally remove funding or permission

from a state over something that was already agreed to that was invested in and so forth.

It allows for us to continue to make the case that it's the right thing to do and then and so forth.

But right now what happens is that he takes the money and then we have to go to court to

put it back in. I rather him have to go to court to take it in the first place.

So is there something we could do legislatively that makes it so that that happens so that we

could stop protecting ourselves long term from the politicization of these contracts and these

initiatives. So that's the first thing I want to do. The second thing is that Governor Cathy

Hoek was best week was when she supported congestion pricing. Her favorability ratings

went up, everything went up. And I talked to her and tell her, you keep doing both progressive

things, you will see your continue to spike. And there's just this this reality that they live in,

their worldview where being progressive is a negative thing in Long Island and in other parts.

And it's just like, no, I think what is not progressivism, what it is is a lack of ideas.

People don't want the same. People want different. People want to see ideas come.

All the ideas that we think about all come from progressives. Every single advancement we've

made in this city have come from progressives, because we're always trying to have better things.

Establishment Democrats want everything to say the same. I remember a council member told me

they were from the Bronx, and they said, Antonio, my slogan when I ran for office was,

I will keep everything the same. That was his that's what he says. That was my that was on my

palm card. Everything will stay the same. And it's remarkable. It's crazy. It's big to me. That's

a very selfish way of looking at the world. But yeah, so I think that we should be finding it.

I think Cathy Hoku, it's popular for her. But I also think that she needs to go all the way.

I think we have we have stepped congestion pricing. And I don't think it's working as good as it can

work. I think it's working because it was always going to work because there's data and information

that supports us. But the $9 toll has made it so that we've just found we just found out

that people wouldn't pay $9 for a toll to get into Manhattan, which is insane to me.

And I think to a lot of working class families, the $15 was the number. And that number wasn't

random. That number was the one where it was like, it hits the pocket just enough for somebody to

rethink whether or not they're going to drive in and might take public transportation instead.

15 was the number, not 12, not 99 was still not enough to convince somebody to leave

their car at home and take take the train. So I think we got to get to $15 an hour. So that's how

I see it. And it will generate a lot of money to continue to advance and support our public

transportation system. And then if you make it to Congress, like, how do you make that case to

other cities? Because right now, we cannot get, let's say, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, any

other city to get it because Sean Duffy's in charge, Trump is in charge, they're never going to

approve it. But if we're lucky enough, we work hard enough and get a trifecta, let's say, in the

government, or at least at least both houses of Congress, let's say, how do we make the case,

how do you as a New Yorker make the case to your colleagues from those other cities and states

that this is worth doing at the maximalist level that you can do it?

Yeah, we got to be successful one and show that through success, we can make it happen.

Because those are democratic cities that should be pushing for congestion pricing because it's

working here. But I also want to say that people want to see it work for a significant amount of

time. And I think we're going to hurt ourselves because we didn't regulate the taxis enough so

they're coming in at a high rate. And it doesn't look like congestion is down visually if you're

just walking in. The $9 is not enough to keep people out. So I do think that we're not going

to be able to show a great model long term because the model was watered down and is not working as

effectively as it can or efficiently as it can. But also, there's some things that I want to work

and nationally bring attention to. And there's some things I want to really be New York. And I'm

going to be focused on New York. And it's just maintaining it in New York, protecting it in

New York, making a better version in New York. And the advocacy won't have to happen. The model

itself is the advocacy. It's success, it's its advocacy. So I just want to make ours as successful

as possible. And through that, hopefully, generate more support for it nationwide.

Okay, I'm going to just ask one last question. And that is, what is one example from your own career

that you think that voters who care about these issues, that you think shows best

why voters who care about these issues, active transportation issues, why they should vote

for you? I'm the only candidate in this race that has receipts. I have a long history

of being an elected official. And you could look or try to find where on transportation issues.

I wasn't bold. I wasn't the first. I wasn't innovative. I wasn't strong. I didn't hold the

line. You're just not going to find it. No other council member or assembly member or anyone in

this race has that track record. They talk again, but I talked it and did it when it wasn't popular.

To talk about bike lanes in 2014 was absurd to elected officials. It was political suicide.

And I did it when it wasn't popular. So now I'm seeing other things happening right now,

like daylighting, for example, being watered down. And I think it's outrageous. I think

it's outrageous. And I don't even think it's bold. And it's what we're fighting for now.

And I think that the city council took a step back in the last four years from the projections

and the trajectory that we had when I left. And I think that's because of leadership. And I exhibited

a level of leadership on transportation in this city that I'm very proud of. And I would love

anybody to look at my record and tell me it's not the case. But now I want to go to Congress

and do that nationally. I want to take the work that I did here, the risks I took. I want to take

that to Congress and do that work. And people could always confide in me because I never did it

because it was politically expedient. I did it because I actually believe this stuff. I don't

need to read it in a book. I don't need to see it on TV. I live it every single day. I take the

train to work every single day. I'm biking less because I'm getting older, but I bike.

My vehicle, which I do have, is the last way I get around in this city. I've had it for eight years

and put like 20,000 miles on it. And it's because it is an inconvenient way to move about in this

city. So I ask everyone that's out there, just look at the candidates, look who talks about it,

and look who walks the walk. And I've been able to do that. And I want to say thank you to them

for entrusting me to not only be a council member, and then electing me to be a borough

president. But I hope when the time comes, I could also be their congressperson. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you all. After a break, we'll hear from assembly member Claire

Valdez. I was standing on a street corner recently, and I noticed that the guy next to me was wearing

a Cleverhood zipster jacket. And I immediately felt a bond with him. That's not just because

Cleverhood skier is my own choice for effective, convenient rain coverage when I'm biking and

walking. It's also because I can be pretty sure that we both appreciate other things about Cleverhood,

like the fact that they use PFAS free water repellent and fabric made from recycled fiber,

and that they support local and national street equity organizations.

You can join the Cleverhood team by going to cleverhood.com slash war on cars and entering code

shower power to get 15% off everything in the Cleverhood store through the end of May.

Cleverhood.com slash war on cars code shower power. Stand together with Cleverhood.

Assembly member Claire Valdez is a union organizer, artist, and member of the Democratic Socialists

of America or DSA. She is a dual citizen of the Islata del Sur Pueblo Nation and the United States.

She currently serves in the New York State Assembly representing parts of Western and

Central Queens. Claire Valdez, welcome to the war on cars. Thank you so much for having me.

We're happy to have you here. I want to start out by reading the first paragraph of the

transportation section of your platform because it's a little bit of an opening salvo and a kind

of manifesto in the war on cars really. For more than half a century, federal transportation policy

has been written by and for auto industry CEOs. Working class New Yorkers got the bill, poisoned air,

gutted neighborhoods, and a mass transit system starved of funding. The highway system was a

political choice that channeled public dollars toward private gain. So yeah, that's a pretty

powerful opening statement for your transportation platform. How did this become such an important

issue for you personally and as an elected official? Absolutely. So I'll say I'm not from

New York City. I grew up in Texas where there is almost no public transit system to speak of,

and I hated driving a car. I gave up my license and was dead set on living in a city where I

didn't have to rely on a private vehicle to get around and landed in New York City over a decade

and I just love public transit. I think it's incredible. It is the great equalizer in New

York City, or it should be at least, I think it should be. It gives people the freedom and

possibility to move around the city to get where they need to go, to not be limited by private

vehicle ownership. Obviously, it's great for the environment, but I do think it's about freedom.

It's about freedom to be able to live your life the way you want to and be able to navigate our

incredible city through a public transit system that should be very robust. I think it was very

important to me that our first platform policy was the transportation policy and that we are

talking about this as much as we can. New York 7 is serviced by trains and buses, but very

unequally. There are certainly parts of the district that have unreliable bus service or no

train service to speak of and we want to fix that. Then personally, how do you get around New York?

Obviously, you're extolling the virtues of public transit, but talk about your transportation

experience on a typical day. On a typical day, we're taking a bus or a train primarily. I live

in Ridgewood, so getting back and forth from my office in Sunnyside, it's the Q39. It's our grand

chariot of the 37th Assembly District, but I take the M very frequently, the L. When I can,

I like to bike. We'll probably talk more about bike lanes throughout this podcast, but Ridgewood

is very well connected to parts of Bushwick, but getting up into MassPath and further up into Sunnyside

or down into Glendale is a real challenge and we want to try and address those challenges.

I think for people who aren't in the city, they should probably get a picture of the district

because it is probably what they picture parts of it when they think about Brooklyn and Queens,

but Ridgewood, for example, is very much like a suburban single family. It's changing a lot,

of course, but the built form of that neighborhood is a bit different than, for example, where we're

sitting recording this podcast right now. Sure. Ridgewood is a lot of three flat apartments.

It's a beautiful neighborhood, but it is less dense than other parts of the district. It depends

on where you're looking. Certainly, MassPath has a lot of single family homes, but is also very

industrial. It's a very diverse district, racially, economically in terms of industry,

so it's kind of hard to map out exactly what the whole district looks like, but Ridgewood itself

is, yeah, I think, is very quiet and less dense than other parts. In your transportation platform,

you take note of how poorly federal transportation spending priorities address the real needs of

New York City residents. About 79% of the people in New York 7 commute by transit, walking or

biking, and most of those on transit, a big majority of those on transit, 80% of federal

transportation dollars go to roads. That's a longstanding federal formula. What would you do

specifically to get New York more federal money for transit, biking, pedestrian infrastructure,

the things that our residents really use? Yeah, I think we need to change the formula, and we need

to change how much is allocated to our public transit system, and to our bike networks. There's

so much investment in highway infrastructure, and understandably so, we want to make sure that those

are kept up, but if we're only investing in highways, we miss the opportunity to be investing in

public transit, and really all over the country too. We know that this is the need for public

transit exists far beyond New York City, but considering our public transit system moves

what, 8 million people every day or more, we need it to be functioning well, to be accessible,

there are real dire accessibility needs, there are real upgrades that need to happen,

and we need to be expanding it too. The IBX has a lot of promise, very excited about that project,

QueensLink, other things, but so many working class people rely on this infrastructure,

so many of the residents of New York 7 rely on it, and we have to shift the way that these

funds are being allocated, so that we can keep building this system out, and make it as accessible

and affordable as possible for people to get around. In your platform, you talk about formula-based

funding that's going to be based on ridership for transit systems. Explain how that would work.

New York City transit ridership is a huge proportion of the public transit ridership

throughout the country, but we don't get a fair share of the federal funds that should be going

to us, and to support a transit system that, as was just said, services millions of New Yorkers

every day. We need a bigger share of that pie, and again, that money could go toward elevators,

signal maintenance, and upgrades, so many things that will help improve transit

times, so we can actually get where we need to go reliably and quickly,

and I think it just makes sense. It's a matter of equity, really, that transit system that has

a huge share of public transit ridership throughout this country has an equitable amount

of money going into it. How would you get the rest of Congress to get on board with that idea?

Because certainly, you can get the New York City congressional delegation, and perhaps

the greater New York area on board with that, but some Congressperson in Texas, a Republican,

or even some Democrats might not be on board with this idea of changing the formula.

What would your approach be to bridging that gap between different legislators?

It'll be a challenge for sure. Things in Congress are always a challenge, but I come out of organizing,

and it's about finding where our commonalities are, where we can agree on things, where we can

build together, and like I said, I want to help support public transit infrastructure all over

the country. It's required for us to really tackle climate change and inequality all over

the country, and so I'm really committed to building that fund to make sure that we have

the public transit. We need not just in New York City, but everywhere, and I think we might be able

to find some common ground there and in other infrastructure projects too, so hoping to find

some places where we can build together and bring some more resources into our transit system here.

Are there any serving members of Congress that you would try to make common cause with

to fight for more urban transit funding generally, and is there that kind of a coalition,

or is that something we could build? I think it's something we can build. There are so many

Congress members who represent urban districts around the country that in theory should have

really robust public transit systems. We mentioned Texas earlier. Austin's public transit system

could certainly be built up, and Greg Casar is an incredible Congress member who I think I'd be

really interested in working with on something like this. So that's one idea, but I think

considering New York City really has the best public transit system in the country,

we can lead the way and really advance a vision for what this could look like anywhere else.

You briefly mentioned the Queens link, which would be in your district, and for folks who don't know,

it's an abandoned right of way for rail, and there's a kind of debate right now over,

should it be an active transportation corridor, bike path, mixed use path,

or should it be reactivated as some sort of train line? There's been money that's been granted to

study this. There's a very active constituency that's fighting for it to be a railway. Again,

that's where the real retail politics comes into it, because you have to convince folks who might

not want to train running through their backyard that this is the good thing to do. I personally am

in favor of it being a train again and not just an active corridor for biking and running and

walking. How do you bring those people on board who are saying, you know, I moved into this house,

there was no train when I moved into this house 40 years ago or whatever it is, and now you want

to have a train running right through my backyard, even though the tracks are there essentially.

This will be an active conversation. I am also very excited about the idea of Queens link and

activating that rail line. We're going to have to work really hard to bring people on board who

might be skeptics. From my perspective, trains bring economic development. They bring, like I

said, better access to different parts of the city, less reliance on private vehicles. Those are

benefits that the residents could absolutely enjoy, maybe even easier access to the beach,

which is one of my favorite parts of the city. I think there are ways that we can go about talking

to people about what a Queens link rail that could bring. I think it's a really exciting

investment in a moment when the IBX being the exception, there aren't as many big investments

in rail lines. This would just be, I think, really exciting and a real opportunity for us to build

in Queens and parts of the city that have not had the rail service that they should have.

I think it will take some bringing people on board, but I think there are so many benefits

here. We want to move this project forward. Another thing that caught my eye in your platform was

about electrification of vehicles. One of the things I always say is EVs, the V doesn't stand

for car. It stands for vehicle. There's a real diversity of vehicles that we can electrify.

You can get a lot more out of those batteries if they're moving smaller vehicles. I'm interested

in, particularly, you talked about subsidizing commercial electric cargo bike fleets as a

possibility. Maybe you could talk about that and other aspects of electrification that you think

the federal government could play a role in. Yes. MassBeth, we mentioned earlier,

is both a residential neighborhood, but also one of a lot of industry. There's a UPS facility

there, an Amazon distribution facility there, many other warehouses. It's actually,

New York State, this district has the biggest number of mega warehouses anywhere in the state.

They're mostly located right there in MassBeth. There is a ton of heavy truck traffic that travels

through there. Asthma rates are very high. I think we can look at last mile vehicle delivery

alternatives to address those issues, to address traffic violence and asthma, and electrifying

a cargo bike fleet could be one way to go about that. We're very interested in that.

Our city will require vehicles. It will require trash trucks, delivery vehicles,

all kinds of vehicles to be on the road. Those should be electric, and in my opinion,

union-made as well. I think we can look at how we federally subsidize the transition to an

electric vehicle system for municipalities as a way to, again, tackle climate change,

make sure that our air is clean, and make these vehicles smaller and safer to be on the road.

Moving away from transportation for a bit. Right now, democracy is under attack. As we record this,

the Virginia Supreme Court just overrode the redistricting initiative that passed by a majority

of voters there. The Democratic base want fighters in Congress. What would you do to go to the

Congress and say, we need to investigate Trump officials. We need to impeach Trump. What would

you bring to that fight to protect democracy and then future-proof it against this kind of attack

that we've seen? It's really despicable what's happening. It's the Supreme Court case around

the voting rights act that just came down. Our democracy is under attack from a lot of different

sides. We need people in Congress who will use every single tool available to us, including

hearings to bring oversight and accountability, real accountability, to call for a Trump's impeachment,

to call for the investigation of ICE agents who have broken the law and infringed on so many of

our rights. We need to be bringing every single tool and resource we have through Congress,

and we need to be using our bully pulpits as congressional members to speak out against this,

too. It's unbelievable what is happening in this country, but we also have to acknowledge that

our democracy has been under attack for well beyond the Trump administration, well before the

Trump administration was in office, although under this presidency, I can't believe how far we've

regressed. I come out of the labor movement. I'm a former union organizer. I really believe in

unions as a pillar of democracy in the United States, and when unions were at their strongest,

a generation or so ago, we saw much higher democratic participation. We saw much more

economic equality. CEO pay was much lower. Our incomes as working people were much higher,

and I think so much of the reason why I wanted to run for office to begin with was around building

the labor movement, getting as many people as possible into unions, and making sure that people

feel capable of and powerful enough to fight for their democratic rights, not just in the workplace,

but in every single part of their lives. So I really believe in the capacity for the labor

movement to help advance this and fight this fascist administration and to build a democracy

for what comes after Trump, too. We know that this term will end, and we have to have a real

plan for the rights that we are going to reinshrine, the rights we're going to advance,

and what we're going to do after this Trump administration is out, and the Democrats have

control of someday, the presidency, the Senate, and the Congress again, because we can't let that

moment pass without us advancing a real vision for what our democracy should be and what working

class people deserve in the United States. So we here at the War on Cars really do think that

automobile dependency and automobile infrastructure as it's been built in this country is a big part

of how we've eroded our democracy and our civil life, and that that's all connected.

And one of the things that the Biden administration did to try to repair some of the harms that

been done by auto infrastructure was the reconnecting America project and pilots to

look at tearing down freeways, reconnecting neighborhoods, and doing that in a way that

was equitable and not destructive, further destructive to the communities, many of them

really disadvantaged that were gutted by these roads to begin with and now are trying to recover.

So you talk in your platform about trying to extend that program and do more of that work,

which we certainly would love to see, but in this incredibly hostile federal atmosphere where we

have a secretary of transportation who is saying that anything that's hostile to cars

needs to be just thrown on the garbage heap, how would you work for those goals in this environment?

I really appreciate you saying that the highway structure, the way that our infrastructure has

been built in the United States has also been attacking our democracy and undermining it.

I totally agree. Actually, Eric Blanc wrote a little bit about this in his book about the

Starbucks worker organizing. When workers were living much closer to each other, organizing was

much easier as companies started to spread out or move to rural parts of the country where cars

were more required to get around. Organizing became much harder. Obviously, a lot of that

happened in the South where organizing is just hard now to begin with because of right-to-work

laws. But the way that private vehicles separate us and keep us alienated from each other and

take us out of social life has been a real problem for organizing and for building a

real social democracy. I really appreciate you laying that out because I absolutely agree.

Under this administration, we're still seeing organizers on the ground advance, open streets,

reclaiming public space. I hope to continue to support that work. I really look to the organizers

in Greenpoint and Williamsburg who have been doing so much around the K Street Bridge and

Barrie Street as places where even under difficult organizing circumstances, there are

wins that are possible. I hope to help with community block grants, other ways to bring

some funding in to support that work. But these communities, so many of the communities in New

York 7 are really hungry for safe streets, for better bike infrastructure, for reclaiming

space that has for so long been only available to private vehicles. And that organizing will

continue under any administration. And I have a lot of faith in the power of just everyday people

who recognize a problem in their neighborhood coming together and advancing a vision that is

much more community-minded, democratic, and available to everyone to enjoy. So my role will

be to support that with money and using the bully pulpit and advancing that vision. But that

organizing happens in every single administration, even under really dire circumstances. And we'll

continue. Let's get a little wonky for a second. So you have a little bit in your platform about

the manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, MUTCD, which basically is the guideline by which

all traffic engineers, no matter where they live, what state, what city, have to follow. And it has

prevented us for many years of getting the safer streets we want. It sort of leaves us only with

a highway-based toolkit for local streets, essentially. I'm oversimplifying it. But you talk

about, in your platform, introducing legislation to end the requirement that state and local

governments follow MUTCD in all of their street designs, because they have to if they want to

get federal funding. How would you go about that? Because I feel like just changing it to the level

that's been changed rather recently to update bike lane symbols and other pro-people street

designs was very difficult. How would you leapfrog the whole process and get that funding to just

go directly to cities so they can design the kinds of things that work for their communities?

Again, it's going to take organizing and identifying people and other members who have had

similar frustrations with this. It takes so long to get basic signage in place to prevent

crashes. And basically what we've heard before is that we can't really do anything here until

there is a crash. But I think that's unacceptable. We need to be proactive in street safety and

making sure that the bare minimum signage is there to help people way find, to make sure that

vehicle drivers know that their bike lanes, all of that, it needs to be much easier to make that

possible. And we can't be the only district that has felt that frustration. So we'll have to organize

with our colleagues to see where we can find common ground and really push it forward.

Would you call for an entire wholesale recalculation of things? For example,

right now you typically cannot get a crosswalk installed if there aren't a minimum number of

people crossing the street. And that of course is a ridiculous metric because you can't always

calculate how many people would be crossing the street if there was a crosswalk there.

So what would you do in that circumstance? How do you see your role?

We have to kind of challenge the premise of exactly what you just said. People don't cross

the street there because there's no crosswalk. So how can we know how many people would cross

the street if there was a crosswalk? And really just push back on those ideas that have limited

public street safety from advancing. And again, we cannot be the only district that has struggled

with this. We are not the only urban district in this country. We can build a little coalition to

to make this possible. So how have you seen public opinion and or political opinion, political

atmosphere evolve on these issues over the course of your time in public service?

So good question. I think there is, as we were saying earlier, such a hunger for community.

I think especially coming out of the pandemic. And I should say too, during the pandemic,

there were so many open street projects that kind of came about. And a real demonstration of what

is possible when we take vehicles off the road and open these spaces back up for pedestrians

and people walking their dogs and kids playing and really seeking a space outside of our homes

that is in the public realm that's safe. And I think following the pandemic and the closure

of some of these streets, the closure of sidewalk sheds and other kind of new space

that have been available to us, I think there's such hunger to bring it back and to keep it in

place. People are really looking for real community in their lives. They're looking for

places to be in community with their neighbors. And so I think public opinion and this is

changing a little bit. I think there's much more interest in advancing a vision of New York City

where more space is available to the public and taken away from private vehicle traffic.

So people can get out and experience our beautiful city. I think people are coming

around to this idea and I just think that there's such desire to build community,

to get away from our screens, to get away from our phones, to touch grass as they say.

So I think things are moving in our direction. And then how is your understanding of these

issues? You said you arrived in New York because you wanted to live car free and taking transit

was just this sort of miracle of great equalization as we've talked about on the show before and you

mentioned, but a lot has changed just in your time in the assembly. Certainly the election of Mayor

Mamdani here in New York, how has your understanding of these issues changed over time?

Right now we're in this really exciting moment of possibility. We have a new

a new mayor, Mayor Mamdani, who is very invested in street safety and in cycling infrastructure.

He himself is an avid city biker. And so I think we have a real opportunity to advance

more projects around the city, which is really, really great. I came to New York City and as you

said, public transit was this incredible miracle. But it's also, it doesn't always work. It can

still be incredibly hard to get around New York City. I was coming back from the rent guidelines

board vote last night. I was going to catch my beloved Q39 and I waited 25 minutes for this

for this bus at like seven o'clock in the evening. It's really frustrating and acceptable. And of

course they were all bunched. The Q39 famously is very a bunchy bus. So there are three right in

a row as soon as I got on mine. But there are things that we think we should be doing to make

our buses more reliable. And for people who have disabilities or mobility issues, our buses are

often the only route they have that's actually accessible and available to them to get around.

And it's not fair to make people wait 25 minutes if this is their only avenue for getting home.

So there's a lot we need to do to make our transit system more accessible, to make it reliable,

and to make it affordable. Because now we're paying $3 a trip and I'm paying $3 to wait 25

minutes on a sidewalk in Long Island City. It's not an equitable system.

Recently here in New York, we were sort of a laboratory for resistance to the Trump administration

on transportation issues with the fight over congestion pricing. And obviously there's 20

plus years of history in this. But it did become a really sort of frontline political issue where

Governor Hockel made a stand. I think that was a politically calculated thing to do to stand up

to Trump on congestion pricing. And we prevailed and we continue to prevail there. What do you

think we have learned from the battle over congestion pricing? And what have we maybe not

learned? Or is there a risk that similar things might happen and we might not have learned the

lessons from that? I think what we learned or what we should have learned is that these programs

are at their most unpopular right before they're enacted and then they're enacted

and it becomes part of life. Congestion pricing, we all know, has been enormously successful.

It has brought in so much revenue for the MTA. It has reduced congestion.

noise. It has made air cleaner in lower Manhattan. On every metric, it has been a success.

And what we should learn is that these ambitious programs are the ones that we should be pursuing.

I'm glad that the governor ultimately stood up to Trump on this. It took a little bit of time

for that to happen, unfortunately. And I was very, my constituents in the assembly district

were very upset that she had backpedaled on this back in, what was it, 2024. So I'm glad that she

made the right choice that she stood up against Trump and that we won. And so I think we should

take to heart that these ambitious programs are an opportunity for New York State to lead,

for our leaders to be real political leaders, to stand up against the Trump administration,

and that we can bring real revenue to our public transit system and do, you know,

succeed on every single metric that congestion pricing advocates had said for years that it

would succeed on. So we should move forward and we should try these things out. We should, you know,

once they're in play, they become incredibly popular and really beneficial to the city.

So I hope that's the lesson that we learn is that we can be ambitious and that New York

State can and should lead on all manner of fronts, but certainly in advancing our public

transit system, fighting for climate justice, all of those things I think should be leading

in those fights. Is there a way you can bring that rhetoric? I mean, I feel like this is a

problem that Democrats always have, which is we do something good and then memory fades of all

the freak out before it happened and the acceptance afterwards. And then we propose the next big thing

and then the freak out happens. And it feels like there's rarely a Democrat who stands up and says,

you know, folks, we did this before, all you people were wrong, you know, you can't exactly say it

like that, of course. But basically, like we understand that people are nervous about this,

but we have so many examples where we tried something big, people were nervous, there was a

lot of fighting, and then we did it and it worked out. I feel like Democrats almost, they're always

just reading the polls, that's what was the problem with Kathy Hochold, pausing it in the first place

and not just saying, this is what I know is right, it will work out in the long run. Like,

are there other areas beyond transportation where you feel like we need to be doing that?

Oh, almost every single area of public life. I mean, we can look at Medicare and Social Security

and big universal programs that were risky at the time and now are just part of American life.

I think we should be really ambitious on all these fronts. You know, we had a federal jobs

guaranteed in the Workers Progress Administration back in the 40s and 50s. There was an incredible

program that built so many of the great works that we have in our country that provided living

wages to artists who made incredible work during that time. We should be really ambitious and we

can point back to those successes. You know, I talk a lot about social housing on this campaign,

housing that's, you know, affordable and democratically managed and, you know,

subsidized in some way by the state. We have a long history of building that housing, too,

in NYCHA and Mitchell-Lama. There are a lot of different models we can always point back to and

say, look at these grand investments that we made that now are just part of the fabric of New York

City. Congestion pricing is good. I'm glad it is here and it exists. We should not have a short

memory about these fights. We should remember them and they should make us braver in advancing a

vision for our society in the future. Okay, so we're going to wrap up with a final question,

which is, can you give us an example from your career that you think really illustrates best,

why it is that people who care about active transportation, why voters who care about these

issues should vote for you? Such a good question. In 2024, I think this was even

before I was elected to the Assembly when Kathy Hople was backtracking on congestion pricing,

I was out saying absolutely not. We need to move forward with this program. We can't let the political

winds blow us off track here. You know, we know that this program will work. We know that it will

be a huge benefit to our city. And Democrats shouldn't be afraid of their own shadows on a lot

of these issues. So I stood really strong for congestion pricing. And I've been working with

advocates on the ground to advance bike lane safety and to really rethink the way that our roads are

being used, specifically in Ridgewood and MassBeth. And I hope to continue that work. But again, I

think our party will lose voters if we are not. If we are continuing to just read polls and see

where the winds blow, this is exactly what gave rise to the Trump administration. We need to be

listening to our base and advancing a real vision for what working people need in New York City and

beyond. I think that's a great place to end it. Thank you so much. much for having

me. Great to be here. Thanks for being here. After this break, we'll hear from New York City

Council member Julie Wan. We've been wearing the Lumos Ultra Smart Bike Helmet on our rides around

the city lately. And I got to say, this thing is pretty nifty. The Lumos Ultra Smart Bike Helmet

features integrated lights that can be seen from nearly 1500 feet away with 360 degree visibility

for maximum safety in any environment or conditions. It also features turn signals activated by a

handlebar mounted remote. Plus, the Lumos Ultra syncs with the Lumos Firefly Lights, the all-in-one

smart bike light that acts as both front and rear light with turn signals, brake lights,

synchronized flashing, and convenient magnetic mounting, which makes them easy to put on and

take off your bike. Oh, and the other cool thing about these lights? With Lumos TeamSync,

cyclists can synchronize light patterns when they're out on a group ride. These things are so

bright and functional. And back in 2022, the Firefly became the most funded bicycle light project

in Kickstarter history. To learn more about the Lumos Ultra Smart Bike Helmet and Firefly Lights,

go to ridelumos.com. Stay safe and be seen with Lumos.

Julie Wan is a member of the New York City Council representing District 26 in Western Queens.

She is the first Korean American to be elected to the council. Before that, she worked for IBM

advising the federal government on tech modernization. She is running on a platform that

calls for us to move from a profit economy to a care economy. We will talk about what that means

in the context of transportation. Julie Wan, welcome to the war on cars.

Thank you so much. It's so good to be here. Glad you're here.

So let's just start with that. How does your concept of an economy of care, which is an idea

that I find really, really powerful and necessary, how does that relate to transportation?

I'm currently the only mom in the race and the only immigrant. And what we simply mean by a lifetime

of care, our main platform, is that from the moment you're born until the day that you die,

that the government has a responsibility to take care of you, especially when you're most vulnerable.

So when you're too young to work, too sick to work or too old to work. And that includes

transportation because I don't think the oligarchs or those, the powers that be right now really

understand what fast, reliable transportation means to all of us. So for me to get here from

Queens on the poor G train, every single one of them all throughout the city are delayed today

and yesterday and now they're going to be down on weekends all summer. Horrible. But for me,

I could give you a call and say I'm going to be 15 minutes late or five minutes late and you're

not going to hold it against me. Thankfully. But when it comes to childcare, for example,

if I'm at city hall and I'm trying to get home to pick up my child from daycare,

for every 15 minutes that I'm late, I'm going to be charged $10 or $15 or $20 depending on

the daycare center. That means that for working class people, you're actually squeezing them

to deciding between am I going to be able to leave work early and get penalized at work

to get to my childcare center on time? Or am I going to pay the $15 because the subway is just

simply not running and it's not reliable. And I'm not going to be able to get there. And not

only is there a financial burden for these working families to have reliable public transit,

but there's also an emotional burden. Can you imagine being a four year old, seven year old,

12 year old, and your damn mom is always late. And you see them crying on the street,

be like, my mom's always late. She doesn't love me. So there's a lot of impacts that I don't think

people truly understand if that's not your daily life. And if you're not working class,

but also when you really care for the women, because for us, it's a feminist message.

For the backbone of the economy, structurally, we've put the onus on care on women,

especially women of color, to be our home care workers for the sick and the elderly,

to be our childcare providers for our children, and also to be taking care of your sick husband

or your partner or your child, if anybody in your family is ill. So that means that every

single part of this journey for a home care worker to get to work, they need a reliable

bus transit, because that's where most seniors live. They're not living off of a subway line for

most of them who qualify for Medicare or Medicaid to have home care. And in addition to that,

you're also pushing them thinking about, how am I going to get this senior who is on a wheelchair

to get on a train that is inaccessible, that does not have an elevator? How will I get this person

to their doctor's appointment as a care provider? Because I am being paid to be a care provider,

but I am not a weightlifting machine that can lift this 300 pound person, plus the weight of the

wheelchair down the subway. And I'm going to have to beg and beg, especially as a mom now.

Because I have $2, a two year old and a four year old, I have to look to the kindness of other

young men who are going up or down the subway after time myself. By the time I'm like a block

away from the subway, I start to look around me like, which one is going to be my victim today?

We're going to beg them to take the stroller up with me so I could make it onto the subway.

And that's what we're talking about when we talk about a lifetime of care, including transportation.

I have been that mom scoping out who is going to help me up the stairs. And I do try to help

other women when I can, but I think you're right that that's something that is not often seen.

So a lot of the problems that you just referenced have to do with the fact that our transit system

has been systematically starved of funding over generations. And federal funding is vital to

making improvements in our system. But at the moment, we're facing a federal administration

that is actively hostile toward active transportation. So what would you do specifically

if elected to Congress to get New York more federal money to improve transit biking and

walking in our city? Right now, we've been hearing about a $73 million cut to the Department of

Transportation for New York State. And if that's not enough, we had this huge war where we had to

take a lawsuit for protecting congestion pricing. And we already lost in congestion pricing because

the governor decided she woke up one day and she's like, well, you know what, I'm going to cut it in

half. So we're already losing revenue to begin with that we need very badly for over a hundred

year transit system that needs to be upgraded to be able to serve our people the right way on time

and be reliable. So I think there's multiple layers of what we're currently seeing in this

scenario, which is first and foremost, we have to expand funding for the safe streets on roads

for all programs so that more communities can redesign dangerous streets now without waiting

for the federal guidelines to catch up, which also means that we have to rewrite the federal

highway design guidelines to begin with. So that safety for pedestrians, cyclists and bus

riders is the default, not an exception that requires extra approval because unlike the rest

of the country, especially that are more rural for an urban city like ours, we have special needs

and we have a lot more density and we have to be able to redesign our streets without having to

wait so long. Because I am so sick and tired as a council member, the amount of complaints that I

get for just a stoplight outside of a school, a speed bump outside of a senior center,

traffic light for intersections that children and parents and adults alike have been injured or

have died. Yet we get feedback all the time from the Department of Transportation, which say, oh,

well, you know, the federal guidelines tell us that we can't do this because of that and

it does not apply and it should not be a one size fits all for the same way that you would have

for Cleveland. No, no, not to Cleveland, but it is not New York City. And we have to be able to

move at the speed that we need to so that people are not getting injured and people are not dying

and we're not putting people's lives at risk, which means that overall, we have to give cities and

local governments the flexibility to build streets that fit their communities without fighting

Washington for permission constantly. But we do very much badly need the revenue and we also need

to have the grants to make it happen. And we should not be fighting Donald Trump from Washington,

DC saying, no, no, I don't support this bike lane going in. It is not your business. You don't

ride a bike. You don't live here. Go away. So council member, in 2020, you were running for

office and you got hit while riding a bicycle. Not too far away from here. And you posted about it

and said, you know, there was no protected bicycle lane on the street. I want to talk a little bit

or ask you about your own personal experience just getting around the city and how, you know,

as a mom, how has that experience affected the way you approach transportation in your district

and the stuff that you lobby for as a council member? Well, it's actually about love. I lived

in law and city and my boyfriend at the time who's now my husband was living in Bay Ridge.

So long distance relationship. Exactly. I might as well have flown there.

Because if I took the train, it would take me over an hour and a half. But if I rode my bike,

it would take me about 45 minutes because I'm a young, healthy person and I could bike straight

through from Queens to Brooklyn. Yet the further I go into deep Brooklyn, it is a free for all.

People are running you over with a car. And unfortunately, on one of my rides back home,

I was hit by a car who was trying to parallel park and didn't see me coming. Even though you had

the painted bike lane on the ground, it is not very visible and it is not safe. And it is not

an intentional design for our protection. And unfortunately they did hit me. And I got to say

the only people that helped me up when I was unconscious were delivery workers. And I was

bleeding and luckily the delivery workers helped me onto the street so that I'm not lying in the

road where cars can run me over because I'm not visible at all at that point because I'm just

unconscious on the ground. I'm incredibly grateful for them. And also it's deeply personal to me

because my mom in Queens was run over by a car, a vehicle, a young woman who was probably 18 or

19. She was on her phone while driving and talking to her passenger. And even though it was my mom's

ride away at a crosswalk, she ran my mom over. If my mom was not wearing a backpack, when she

fell backwards, she probably would have had a concussion and could have died. She had to go

through two surgeries on her shoulders because it completely tore her shoulder and dislocated it.

And as someone who works on a nail salon, which is what my mom has done her whole life,

it left a pretty destitute because she couldn't do the work that she needed to do.

In addition to that, unfortunately, again, it's about love. My mother-in-law was also in a very

bad car crash. She was in a coma for over three weeks and doctors told my father-in-law that

there is no hope that we should probably pull the plug. But true love stays and they had faith.

And luckily she survived, but she is not the same. You could tell that she's had a tube.

So her voice and the way that she talks is a little different. And then you could tell that

neurologically, she has been without oxygen and also physically, she was in a wheelchair for a

very long time. And now she's finally capable of walking on her own, but she can't do certain

exercises. And you can tell that she physically has been in a very bad car crash.

So you have this deep personal experience with traffic violence in your family and expanding

circles outward. But a lot of people don't. And sometimes it takes that, unfortunately,

for them to understand why this is important. And we've certainly seen that in Republican

circles, like unless an issue affects them directly, they don't think it affects anyone

or is worthy of government intervention in any way. Are there serving members of Congress,

let's say, even on the Republican side, who you think you could make common cause with

in this fight for more transit funding to change design manuals and standards so that

cities can move a lot faster? Are there people that you really see as models that you would want to

work with? Anybody at the end of the day, I think once it affects them personally, they will come

around. So I think about Bob Holden, for example, he's kind of like a quasi, neither Republican

or Democrat. He's common sense caucus or whatever he used to be. You're a fellow city council member.

Yes, he was my neighbor. And he was vehemently against daylighting. But he was the one who

led the charge on decreasing speed limits for motor vehicles, especially the scooters. I forget

what classification they are, but they're over 100 pounds. And they are not supposed to be motors

that are not really pedal assist bicycles or things like that. Right. I call them mopeds.

I'm not sure if that's the correct terminology technically. But he's actually the one who led

the cause in city hall and he started to bring in ballerinas who were completely fractured after

getting hit by one of those motor vehicles and was left destitute because she could no longer dance

at Juilliard. He also brought other people who had ADA accessibility needs who were trying to cross

the street on their right away and was hit by one of those vehicles and also led them very badly

injured. So I think, you know, you never really know what people care about and what their background

story is until you get to personally know them. And as a council member, I've always been very

independent and I've worked across the aisle from Republicans to socialists to moderates

as a progressive council member myself. And I've always been very intentional to spend time with

folks to really get to know them to figure out what makes them tick. What do they really love?

And what's their life story? And how can I convince them that this bike lane that goes through from

my district all the way to Mass Beth, his district, why it's worth fighting for and why it's worth

approving? Even city bikes. He was very upset about city bike stations being placed all over

his district. He's like, why are they so close to each other? I'm like, well, Bob, here's why,

because it has to be within a certain mall radius of each other so that you can go and park. Otherwise,

people will be charged more. Yes, you may lose parking, but here's how it's going to help you

because it's going to have better visibility for your seniors. And we can also think about how it's

going to make it safer for anybody who's driving because nobody wakes up each morning saying,

I'm going to go and commit homicide or I'm going to go and mull somebody on the road.

I genuinely don't believe most people are waking up doing that as a driver.

You talked about city bike, which is something that I think has really transformed the streetscape

here in New York over the years that we've had it. And public attitudes toward all of these

modes of transportation have changed a lot. I was wondering what shifts in public opinion

you've observed during your time here and in public service.

I'm extremely lucky and fortunate that I live and have grown up in Western Queens because

Western Queens is one of the most transit rich in all of the outer boroughs because we have

access to so many subway stops in Queensborough Plaza and many ways to transfer the last line on

the G connecting you to me in Brooklyn. So I'm extremely grateful, but that's not the story

for everybody. I often have these conversations, especially with the former transportation chair,

for example, Sylvina Brooks Powers, who's in Southeast Queens. And now the current WD speaker,

Natasha Williams, where they say it is not okay for my low income black and brown New

Yorkers and residents to be told bike to New York City. That is quite the trek. At least I'm

right next to Manhattan. So yeah, I could make it over the Queensborough Bridge on the north

out of roadway within 15 minutes and I'll be in midtown. But for them, that's an extra hour to

just get to Western Queens plus Manhattan to downtown that's a two hour bike ride. So I really

do sympathize for racist decision that have been made in history where black and brown neighborhoods

that are low income have either been eminent domain turned into highways, or it was intentional to

leave them out of the public transit accessibility so that they can't get into certain wealthy

neighborhoods. And that was intentional redlining. So I think we have a long way to go when we have

these conversations. And I tell them all the time, we have to be thoughtful to make sure that we're

not penalizing people who are just trying to get to work. And they have no other mode of getting

to work. But it's a matter of making sure that we're prioritizing them for public funding so that

they are getting an extension for the subway, for the IBX or Interboro Expressway or whatever they

want to do, Queensland, I don't even care. There's so many train projects that we've been talking

about in the state. Fund them all. Let's do everything so that we have as much connectivity

as possible. And I'm grateful now. Finally, we have a ferry from Southeast Queens to connect them

to Brooklyn and Manhattan because that's just one other avenue. But we have so much work to do for

the outer boroughs, especially in low income neighborhoods that aren't as lucky as me.

How do you separate good faith arguments against some of this stuff or for from the bad? Because

I think some of our listeners who are familiar with some of the players that you're talking about,

Bob Holden, for example, he's really against e-bikes. As much as I agree that the e-moto

problem, these unlicensed, otherwise, there are essentially motorcycles have no place on our

streets if they don't have license plates, if their users aren't licensed to use them. There's a

little bit, as I'm hearing you talk about this from my experience, that it's kind of a Trojan horse

for some of these people that like, okay, let's do the reasonable thing,

regulate these things that have no business being on our streets, and then we can maybe,

if we're lucky, fold in the pedal assist bikes. Because he was also proposing a bill that would

have made it impossible for a mom who wants to put kids in a cargo bike on a pedal assist bike,

he would have lumped all of those things into that. I think Sylvanna Brooks powers the former

transportation chair, or someone like Adrian Adams, a former speaker, they would sometimes say,

yeah, I'm in favor of the better bus service in my neighborhood or the better bike lanes in my

neighborhood, but you can't put them in because we're a transit desert. And so you'd get stuck in

this catch 22 of, we can't get better transit improvements because people in my neighborhood

don't have better transit. So how do you separate, because you're going to get a lot of that in

Washington from Republicans for sure, how do you separate that out? So first and foremost,

I was not on Bob Holden's bill, but I did sympathize with the people that he brought who have become

completely inept of doing what they were pursuing a passion and dreams because of their injuries

from vehicle violence. For me, I think that there are always pragmatic solutions that can be done

because nothing happens overnight. So for example, my day lighting bill for intro 511,

I already know, and unfortunately, the mayor no longer supports universal day lighting,

but even if I were able to pass it because of funding restraints, that I would at best get

like a few thousand a year, we have 40,000 across the city. And speaking of bad faith

arguments, like it goes both ways, because I to be very honest, I'm not going to make any friends

at DOT here. I thought a lot of their arguments against your bill were kind of bad faith, like,

oh, it doesn't always work. And they were citing studies that were mixing different types that

wouldn't apply here. It comes from both sides. Oh, yeah, we have a whole entire white paper on

why their study was trash, because it was not a study. If you actually want to do a study of

successive day lighting, then you would actually study the other cities that have successfully

done it, not yourself who doesn't have it at all. So it was, it was just trash to begin with.

But going back to your initial question is that you have to understand that

unfortunately, bureaucracy takes time. And that means that there's a compromise that you can make

where I have made it very clear, because by the end of last year, we were able to get

almost a super majority sign on to the bill. And that was because it was a clear understanding

of saying, Hey, here are the clear council districts because we have the data of my council

district, which I had 257 injuries and 24 deaths. That's one of the highest in the whole study

to other council districts like 1838, 4447. So I already had the number of injuries and deaths

where we say, Hey, these are the top priority. Clearly, that's where people are dying. We go

in there first. Those are going to be the first ones to receive universal day lighting, and we're

going to build it out from there. And that means that simultaneously, because it does not have to

be a neither nor, it can be yes, and we will do day lighting and we will get to your district.

But in the meantime, let's also make sure that we are building some sort of public transit

infrastructure for you and having better bus service for you and having bike connectivity for

you. So that way you can get in between neighborhoods and Queens safely without getting injured.

And that was something that was very digestible for people and also making sure that it's clear.

Hey, as we start in your neighborhood, even if you don't have that full public transit that you

dream of because you are a transit desert, you can you and I can both agree that senior centers,

daycare centers, schools, hospitals, and places of faith, they deserve day lighting because you

want them to be safe. Am I right? And they say, Yeah, of course. So let's start there. And

that's how you start to build out in phases in getting to a universal system in the city of New

York, the way that we have across the nation and across the globe. So talking about e-bikes,

technological change that's happened on the street, another technological change that people

are thinking about and concerned about is the potential for autonomous vehicles to come to

this city right now. The pilot has been paused. But this is something that we've seen in cities

around the country as we've been going around. And autonomous vehicles are going to come knocking

on New York store again, I'm sure. And your platform calls for what you say, call a human-centered

framework for autonomous vehicles and support workers who drive for a living. Could you explain

what that means to you? So right now, I think first and foremost, it's important to realize or

acknowledge that autonomous vehicles don't exist. There was an expose on Waymo, how there was somebody

offshore behind a screen driving on your behalf, or at least having to interact with Waymo to make

sure it's driving safely. I think all technologies, like you said, some can be good and some can be

harmful. So when I think about autonomous vehicles, I think about the truck drivers. Truck drivers that

are driving taking some sort of medication or drug to stay awake for their long hauls, which are

extremely dangerous. And I don't know about you, but I have seen my fair share of those large delivery

vehicles getting into crashes, rolling off of mountains, and harming other smaller vehicles

because the driver was too tired and too exhausted. If we get to a place technologically where we can

have safety that is guaranteed, that we know that it would be much better for us to have an

autonomous driver to at least aid the current driver because we don't want people to lose jobs

and become obsolete, then it is something that I think we should consider for the safety of the

nation. But we currently are not there yet at all. And I think that New York City is also a very

special city and a very different city. We are not currently safe even with humans. We are not

safe with an autonomous robot that isn't autonomous with someone offshore who doesn't know our streets

driving on our behalf. It is already dangerous enough and until our streets are redesigned

to have the fair share of cyclists and alternative transit and pedestrians safe to be in our streets,

I don't think we can afford to have any autonomous vehicles at this time. So it'll take a long time

for us. And I think the governor's decision was right. Getting off transportation for just a bit,

but it all relates. You know, the people who are going to Washington, hopefully in the next term,

there's a great hunger among the base for people who are going to hold the Trump administration

and their Republican enablers to account through investigations, auditing finances,

looking at sweetheart corrupt deals that this administration has enacted using state secrets

to enrich themselves, whatever it is. And so there's a real demand among the base for, as

you're going to have to make common cause with people across the aisle. But at the same time,

we're going to be talking about impeachment and all of these investigations.

What do you think you're going to bring to that fight in Washington?

I was the chair of contracts for four years because my personal training or my professional

training was being a federal contractor for the government. And that meant that I had the

understanding of procurement rules. I had the understanding of the technicalities of terms

and conditions. I had the understanding of what we're negotiating when we close in on a

vendor. And that's how I served as the contracts chair for the last four years for the city

before switching to now I'm the workforce development chair for the very first time.

We've never had that in the city of New York. It's the first time we have a committee to have

that oversight because of exactly what we were just talking about jobs stagnation and the fear

of becoming obsolete as autonomous robotics and AI takes over our industry the same way that we

did during the industrial revolution where all of our industry jobs for manufacturing left and

went offshore to China and other countries. So we are now in a much more condensed saturated

time period where it's moving faster than we can breathe. And we have to prepare as a government

of how we're going to prepare our workforce for upskilling and also universal basic income

to really understanding what does this mean for human flourishing for human goodness.

If we are going to have less administrative tasks for us to do because it's been automated,

does that mean that we're going to have four day work weeks and how do we keep companies

accountable when they're having mass layoffs every single week and hundreds of thousands of

people. What have they done to ensure that our workforce is not going to become jobless overnight

but what have they done to make sure that we were upskilled and there was access to free

trainings and education to make them prepared for this workforce. So when it comes to holding the

government accountable especially Donald Trump that is exactly what I've done under Eric Adams.

As the chair of contracts I passed seven bills for accountability for anti-corruption and

transparency to make sure that we don't have embezzlement and the lining of pockets of the

people who are corrupt like Eric Adams and all his crony friends. And I have experience in doing

that. I have understanding of oversight and investigations. I know exactly how the appropriations

work for the city of New York and I'm going to take that to Washington to ensure that every

single dollar that we are spending is for human good, for social democracy, for social programming,

social benefits like I grew up on, public benefits like public school free lunch, SNAP and FAFSA so

that I can go to college for low-income New Yorkers and everyone across the country. And that's the

same expertise that I would bring to make sure not only are we having a bully pulpit of screaming

because everyone is very good at screaming these days on the internet going viral being controversial

but I'm going to be the one that actually holds the record account by saying here are the documents

here are the receipts here's the evidence and this is how we're going to go into an investigation

and if that means that we have to go to the courts we'll go to the courts if we have to

have an oversight hearing then we will have those oversight hearings. I had a lot of joint

oversight hearings with Department of Investigation as the contractor because of all the contract

fraud and corruption that we had seen in the last four years under Eric Adams. So congestion

pricing let's just go back to that for a second because I think it's been an important test case

for standing up to the Trump administration and fighting for what New Yorkers need and want and

that we had fought to get congestion pricing for so long even as watered down as it was

by the governor. What have we learned from the congestion pricing battle and what have we maybe

not learned? Well what we learned is that executives whether you're the mayor or the governor

can fall asleep one day and wake up a different person. Someone who was committed,

who stood by all of the advocates and said we are moving forward. I don't know. I don't know

what happened. One morning she just woke up and I was shocked. I was like what the heck just happened?

We've got to have this follow-through you're talking about here. Yeah we fought for years

so I was pretty shocked to see that as she was lieutenant governor even before she took over

as governor so she probably has I believe was on board for over a decade. So to see that drastic

change shows us a few things. One it's really important to be organized enough to hold people

especially executives in power accountable and I was extremely disappointed to say oh we're not

going to do this at all to come back to say okay well we'll do a middle of the road let's go into

half price and then there was all this conversation about exemptions so I think that it's kind of how

I feel right now about universal daylighting you know we took a gamble saying okay let's hold off

I'm passing this bill until we have a mayor who's going to be a hundred percent supportive

who isn't going to sue us to make sure that we remove this and within under a hundred days of

being elected to see him back away from his promise of supporting universal daylighting when he has

supported us to run through on record at protests at rallies on paper on record so I guess what I'm

to say is people change their mind very often in this business so the ways that we keep them

accountable we continue to have to record them get them on your podcast get them to speak up

because for me my faith I have I still have faith that I hope that if we apply enough pressure

that as Ramam Dhani will come back to himself that he will still stand with us you know if we

push him enough if we publicly shame him enough that he will come back to a census and say you

know what you're right this is the right thing to do we know that this is a proven thing no

matter how many of these old school department of transportation workers tell me that this is wrong

it's not going to help anybody and you're not going to give us any flexibility that he will

wake up and say actually we were all aligned I agree with the advocates we have to move forward

with universal daylighting but that only happens if we organize so we're going to have a public

hearing on department of transportation end of this month and we're also going to have a rally

in support of universal daylighting which means it's funding no I think there's two things there's

department of transportation employees who have been there for a very long time who are against it

and also the funding of having at least 15 million dollars a year to get us to the finish line of

having adequate hardened daylighting of over a thousand structures every single year to be put

in for 40 thousand intersections that's going this is going to take us a long time but at least if

we can get the funding then I know that we can move forward so I think we have to always be

multifaceted it's not just enough for us to say hey Zora Mamdani or Kathy Hockel support us on this

but getting an exact dollar amount and I guess we've got to cross our eyes and dot our t's

the other way around we have to cross our t's and dot our eyes and say Zora Mamdani

will you support universal daylighting by giving us at least 15 million dollars a year so that we

have at least 1,000 hardened infrastructure and will you promise us to give us 20 feet

of every single intersection for visibility you know instead of just having and say universal

daylighting we have to be more detailed and I don't know what else it would take maybe we have

to get him to like cut his hand and become blood brothers with us sure blood two things I think

one we'll put a link into uh the show notes to describe daylighting because there might be some

people who don't know what that is but I personally think that the pushback from dot on daylighting

there's a broader lesson here for listeners who aren't in New York City is not that it wouldn't

work although they're doing all these kind of bullshit studies to show that it would work

but that they believe it's an unfunded mandate that basically like they don't want to have to do it

because they lack the resources the people power etc to do it and rather than say flat out hey we'd

like to do it but we don't have the money we don't have the people power they're just coming up with

so it kind of goes back to like the calling out the bad faith stuff and figuring out how to bring

people along it sounds like what you're saying is if you call it out and get a firm commitment for

funding for this that and the other thing it gets a little harder for them to fall back on

sort of the bullshit excuses yes and for the listeners who aren't familiar daylighting is

just it's very literal daylighting every intersection by prohibiting parking within 20 feet of a

crosswalk citywide and mandate a thousand hardened intersections per year so we want to make sure

that people can't park because at those intersections where people are crossing and drivers are turning

that so many children and so many seniors so many people with accessibility needs and just regular

everyday people are getting hit by cars getting injured or at worst-case scenario completely dying

especially our children so we have to make sure that we push them and one of the ways that we're

trying to do it no matter what is obviously passing this legislation to hold them accountable

and also getting the funding because we don't support unfunded mandates and I think the biggest

caveat about this bill that I want everyone to know is that daylighting is already a law in the

state of New York and New York City should not be exempt this is not a new idea we know in New

York state that it works and even in upstate New York we have it why should we not get it in New

York City where we have much higher deaths and injuries than anywhere else in the state

we could talk for hours I can I can tell but we do need to wrap this up so I'm going to just ask

you for one example from your own career that you think shows best why voters who care about

active transportation should vote for you in this race 100 percent so not only am I the prime

sponsor for universal daylighting to make sure that we have clear areas for crosswalks for

drivers pedestrians and cyclists to all benefit because you can see each other and it's a proven

lifesaving approach across New York state and other countries as well in other major cities

but I've also fought the Adams administration to double the pedestrian and cyclist space on the

Queensboro bridge and we won we were able to open up the south out of roadway so now pedestrians can

have one side and cyclists can have the other to freely commute in and out of Manhattan to Queens

and that connectivity is extremely important we've also made sure that we allocated capital

funds to make sure that we have Queens Boulevard Queens Boulevard and Northern Boulevard in Queens

they were known as boulevards of death because of the amount of deaths that we've had but within

within the first few years of getting elected we made sure that there were hardened barriers

across those two because it's not enough for us to just have a few bike lanes but I care a lot

about connectivity just the way that you would figure out your walking path from here to the

subway station every cyclist should know how they're going to get from point A to point B

without worrying about at what part am I playing this dangerous game of I might get hit by a car

it is extremely extremely dangerous and we also negotiated bike lane expansions in the

waterfront connectivity through our largest neighborhood rezoning in one LIC so everything

that I do whether it's about policies or it's about rezonings for housing physical infrastructure

especially for bike lane connectivity as well as pedestrian safety is going to be a top priority

over parking I was the first one to raise my hand during city of yes when everybody was fighting

about parking minimums I said take it please let's get rid of this now and instead what some people

did was they started to get get exemptions for themselves in their own neighborhoods if they

were against it in their council district which is a shame and I think that's the kind of compromise

we should never be making I think there are some things where we have to say okay here's a phased

approach but we should never allow anybody to get away with not participating because what good

is it if I have connected bike lanes all over western Queens but for me to get to eastern Queens

I have to risk my life to get there in addition to what I've already accomplished which is put in

connected bike lanes and fight my community boards no matter what anybody said

and install as many city bikes as possible all throughout my district as a cyclist myself

but I'll also make sure that once elected I'll reverse the trump cuts to safe streets on roads

for all program and fight expanded funding for complete street projects like the ones that

we're talking about right now because there's so much more work to do especially daylighting

and stand up to federal interference and local street design I do not want to hear ever again

that Donald Trump won't woke up one morning and said I'm going to see the city of New York or I'm

going to cut this funding because I care more about what's going on in Brooklyn what do you

care about what's in Brooklyn you're not even from Brooklyn get out of here that's a great

Trump impersonation by the way that's one of the best I've heard and we want to also protect the

existing funding for pedestrian and cyclist safety improvements and we also want to support

our local governments because it is a partnership when the federal funding grants

come into the state and the state also to visit up with the city we have to figure out a way because

what I see first and foremost from this experience of my very sad disappointment in universal

daylighting support from the mayor is that at the end of the day because the Department of

Transportation doesn't directly report to the city because they also get their largest

chunk of funding from the federal government and the state that they don't really feel like the

answer to anybody and unless you have an alignment of executives and the legislators from every level

of government standing in firm line saying how dare you all of us state assembly state senate the

council member the senator and the congress member and the mayor and the governor are going to hold

you accountable department of transportation to do this project we are not going to budge that's when

we actually corner them to do the work because they're very very squirrely they are little weasels

I try to get them to certain projects and they're like oh well you know like no the state said this

and we're not going to get this funding from the state until then and then the federal government

and the federal regulations say blah blah no we will not allow that ever so we really need to have

an alliance and a strong stance across the board and I think that's when electoral politics come in

I think a streets pack and um Eric and the whole team has been really good and I gotta really give

it to all of the advocates the advocates are extremely active I would like to see more advocates

because I do get feedback from my colleagues a lot where they say Julie one you came to the Bronx

with advocates who look nothing like us and I say fair point but we also have to understand

like a working class person who is too busy and there's no bike connectivity it's kind of like

chicken and the egg right if I'm a woman living in the Bronx am I really taking my bike to work

probably not so we have to make sure especially because women are one out of three to like even

less likely to bike because it is unsafe that we are doing it simultaneously that it cannot wait

that we have to put in the protective bike lanes so that it becomes an option for all people of

New York City and allowing them to have a choice so that they can choose to bike to work if it is

faster for them or easier for them as long as it's safe because safety should not be the biggest

hurdle for women in this city and even men because I know many who say I don't want to bike I have

kids I have a reason to live I love my life and I should not feel like a suicide mission for me to

get to work and I agree with that so that's what we'll be fighting for and we're gonna keep on going

I think that's a great place to end it thank you so much for being with us Julie yeah thank you so

much for having me that's it for this episode a huge thanks to Antonio Claire and Julie for

coming on to talk about politics and transportation with us we'll put links to each of their campaigns

in the show notes and remember no matter where you live make sure you are registered to vote

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I'm Doug Gordon I'm Sarah Goodyear and this is The War on Cars

Taking the Transportation Fight to Congress from NY-7

Infiniti G35

Chrysler New Yorker

congestion pricing

$9 toll

$15

Space Chariot

Transit City Transit

Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices

MUTCD

federal funding

bike lane symbols

street safety

unfunded mandate

daylighting

crosswalk

hardened intersections

active transportation

About this episode

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