Declaring a War on Cars

we're not saying that cars don't ever have a place the idea that cars need access to every last inch of asphalt and flat space in any City that's absurd so this is Doug Gordon the co-host of the war on cars and we're gonna just talk a little bit today about this war on cars and why maybe we need to declare a war on cars that might be the only way that we have some more sense of personal freedom and mobility in our future that's a perfectly good Manifesto for the war on cars nice work welcome to the war on cars Aaron as we said infiltrated the New York International Auto Show I think I might have been the only member of the press Corps to arrive by Citibank so I'm not kidding I'm not making this up this is where we record the war on cars our studio is right upstairs from just a massive parking lot in the heart of Brooklyn it's great to be here in your stomping grounds and kind of learn more about how some of this infrastructure evolved how you were kind of active in the early days and in the same time that I was starting my e-bike shop in 2011 and you were doing some of this advocacy work here in Brooklyn where it's really kind of ground zero of a lot of this infrastructure coming to pass we're we're getting to this place where Brooklyn is voted as one of the top bikable cities in America a lot of times they can just enjoy it and not really recognize that there is a fight to get there it is a battle I'm glad that most people aren't aware of the battles because I think we should move towards a place where bike Lanes get installed in the same way that like they lay a new sewer line move into a building and there's high-speed internet you should move on to a street and there's a safe bike lane or a safe place to ride or a safe place to walk and that should just be a thing you take for granted all right on the bright side we are in this beautiful Park and cars were allowed here up through 2018. and I bet if you told any of the people here especially if they're new to the city can you remember or can you believe that cars used to be in this park they would think you were nuts the idea that we would ever let cars in this beautiful space and that's really in essence what you're fighting for right yeah proclaiming exactly space the idea that we're left with just no space for ourselves and we had an interview with Jason Slaughter or not just bike he was talking about how a lot of communities have no sidewalks a lot of them were built after cars and they were just like well we have cars like why are we going to want to walk anywhere we're really Limited in like where we can go in many places in America because we're faced with that the idea that you might want to walk to the park nearby and you can't do it without driving because it's not safe yeah and you know here in New York City we're really lucky that we are in a place that was built largely before cars I mean certainly was carved up by highways and Robert Moses era projects but you know I have two kids and my 13 year old she has an incredible amount of Freedom she can just wake up say like Papa can I go meet a friend at the park yeah go ahead I don't have to drive her if I'm busy it doesn't matter right so she has freedom but you also have a lot I have tons of Freedom like imagine if I had to drop what I was doing to take her to a birthday party or just to see a friend she can just be gone for most of the day hang out with a friend and I don't have to worry about it yeah she'll update me and tell me where she's going she's not trapped in her room on the days where I'm busy cars are promised as Freedom at Independence but really only for a very small number of people first of all you have to be able to afford one Cars also exclude lots of people people who can't drive because of disability kids elderly people who have decided their reflexes are not fast enough to keep up with driving I like to think of the war on cars as a pro Freedom Movement pro-choice well it's interesting that you say that because many people will say that you're trying to take away my freedom when you're trying to take away my car and I think as you said before it's not necessarily taking every everybody's car away or saying you can't drive a car but it just enabled more places that you're not dependent on a car if you look at the Netherlands where they have enabled a lot more oh wait we have to ring a little bell because on the podcast anytime we say the word well in the Netherlands people are only used to what they're used to and it's hard to show them another way change is scary I have a friend who works at Google and the user interface design anytime they change a button I will email him and say I don't like this I'm gonna give it a few weeks but I don't like usually by the end of those few weeks I'm like okay you know I didn't like it because it was different works the same might work a little better even and I think that's very true of streets it's the street outside of your house you've lived there forever you don't like to see a change in certain ways cars were allowed in this park up until five years ago and we were told you can't ever change that if you do the traffic outside of the park will be terrible but some point to the busy surrounding streets which they say will now be even busier without the shortcut a headache for drivers much traffic more congestion that's that's a problem now they gotta drive local through the streets they're going to create traffic and more pollution well after 30 years of advocacy the mayor just decided okay we're going to get it done now there's no looking back people are used to this you just sort of have to push through change recognize that it's going to be difficult but short-lived the only way you can make everybody unhappy is try to make everybody happy you can't make everybody happy this is New York City we've got two baseball teams two basketball teams two football teams and about a million pizza places with some variation of the name famous rays that everybody thinks is the best you're never going to please everybody even in a small town you need leaders who are just going to make you know informed choices that they believe are right and just get it done you kind of have to like prioritize different groups of people on some way right Juan the people that live there I think they should certainly have a high priority the majority of people actually in New York City don't own a car we are so focused on building car infrastructure and really stuck on that idea we're not actually serving the people that live in these places that really would appreciate some of these different amenities well that's kind of the entire history of like the mid 20th century through even today is that we carved up American cities to serve largely white suburbs who could sort of access the city and extract equity and then take that back to where they come there's like resource extraction always stop for cute kids crossing the street it's summer camp time so all of these kids are doing these like day camps in the park and it's great really the things that are enabled once the the space is reclaimed back for walking incredible Etc I've never seen a street that goes car free or car light that isn't an immediate success especially in densely packed cities like New York but even in small towns you know we're a social species and so the more space we can give people to just be out among other people the better it is for everybody most people are not necessarily thinking about or aware of but recognize advising that when we are traveling around the cars we're generally not having the same social interactions in some ways it can enable some of that hey I can visit my grandma a hundred miles away because there's not a train get there okay car enables that but how often do I go to visit Grandma the idea that we can have these natural social interactions in our built environment I'm not one to like call friends I'm actually pretty terrible about calling people back but I love the idea that I can just walk around and just have interactions with people I need that I crave that yeah so easy for me to get so focused in in my work and just block out everything else but if I can go walk to the store or take a bite to the store and then have some interaction for me I'm much happier and healthier I don't know about you guys I mean I'd love to know this idea of a social life that is centered around cars well it was almost impossible because the car is almost like this like Star Trek like transporter right you enter into your home and there's a journey in the middle that really isn't that important actually and then you are at your destination but when you live in a city and you make a similar journey to go see Grandma to go see a friend along the way you're going to bump into some other people you know you might have a pleasant interaction with a total stranger you might see that person who you're not friends with but you just see all the time yeah and you do get and their Studies have shown these little kind of dopamine hits that enhance your mood when that happens the opposite is true in a car all the people who are on the road are in your way some people don't like that though right like some people like their space I still think that we need these things yeah and no one's trying to take it away everybody necessarily wants to live in a city from my side like I really respect and appreciate all different perspectives because I think there are ways to satisfy these needs and and it's not necessarily about just getting everybody to believe what I believe no I think it's just a matter of like opening people's minds to different ideas yeah and perhaps the idea is that they shut out unknowingly sure I don't give a [ __ ] if you ride a bike if you take the bus but I don't want you to be the kind of person who opposes a bike lane or bus lane on your street simply because you won't use it you might use it selfish right just like we live in a society not everybody is going to benefit directly from every amenity or piece of infrastructure there are all kinds of services I don't take advantage of in this city but I'm really glad they're available to other people and I'm gonna say that a kid can't have uh pencils because I I don't want to pay taxes right and look some people kind of when they're done or don't have kids they they move out and they live somewhere where they can not pay taxes and I think the same is true look if you want your big house and you want to drive to the grocery store most of America is available to you if we're slowly trying to change this city to make it easier for people to get around and make it more sustainable to give people more choices that's the contract you enter into when you live in a city you know the interesting thing you're talking about change and all this Evolution perhaps we went too far perhaps the technology went too far and we can say that for other things whether it be cell phones or computers maybe we went a little bit too far with the automobile more is not always better we got to pull it back we need to have a little moderation here a car is a thing where the more people have won the less useful it is that's not the same as a bicycle the more people in your city who bike that's better for you because it's safer if I bike and I'm alone I get to work in 35 minutes if I bike and they're 100 cyclists with me I get to work in 35 minutes so yeah I think you're on to something that it's not this idea that like cars are an inherently terrible thing cars are a tool we've over deployed them I cut my teeth as a bike Advocate but now I see myself more as like a Safe Streets public space Advocate and I think a lot about the subway as like this great Civic Miracle here's this thing that people built a long time ago certainly needs a lot of help today rich people take it poor people take it people of all different races with all different backgrounds and we all sort of like coexist and it's not that there aren't problems in New York you know you kind of have to have a pretty tolerant attitude to exist in New York yeah otherwise you go crazy bump it into people and you just love the subway for that reason it's it is this great space where we all mix you know in a place like La I lived in Long Beach for a while it's not the same cross-section of the community that rides the bus or rides the train people say yeah maybe it's not safe maybe it doesn't go as many places actually the bus service is pretty good and yeah I've seen speed I know all about the the buses all right ah you know you mentioned briefly about this power Dynamic maybe one of those things that people are oftentimes not really thinking about so much but I know personally when I get behind the wheel of a car my whole mentality changes and I think that's oftentimes subconscious and I I had thought recently about this idea that of the Stanford Prison Experiment people put on the warning outfit yeah they divide people into prisoners and sort of wardens or guards right and very quickly they change the object of the Stanford Prison Experiment was to determine if it was the acquisition of power that made guards turn brutal or whether brutality was actually intrinsic to human nature itself the prisoners are sort of Meek and subjective and the wardens get very abusive and like people who normally wouldn't hurt a fly right right there's a term for this in the transportation world it's modal bias when you recognize that about human nature that we can very quickly dehumanize other people it's just the separation of being behind a windshield often timed with tinted windows which in many places are not allowed but in America they're very very commonplace yeah not to actually be able to have eye contact with others very quickly your one Machine versus another machine I call cars the internet comment section of the real world we've all seen those people online who are just like you would never say that to a person face to face why are you putting that in the comment section because you're anonymous right the other person isn't a person to you they're just text or a picture on a screen and I think the same happens with cars when you take public transit when you bike and you can see the person it's harder to dehumanize them empathy is maintained you said that your advocacy work and that sort of thing actually started not far from here yeah you want to go check it out yeah well let's go that way it's right around here so I guess this is one of the first parking protected bike Lanes in the city yeah there was a pair in Manhattan but this was the first parking protected bike lane here on Prospect Park West in Brooklyn and it was installed 2010 and this is like kind of when it all got started for you right yeah this really is where I became a bike Advocate started attending community board meetings about this bike lane was pretty shocked to discover that it was super controversial there were all these people who lived along here who are against it who filed a lawsuit against the city and I got deeper and more involved with advocacy with Transportation Alternatives with folks locally here with the community board to kind of fight back against what I felt was just like bad faith scaremongering opposition really a lot of the bike infrastructure we see today kind of started around this time if this project had failed many of the bike lanes that you see in the rest of the city would not be there or they would have taken a lot longer to be put in place because this was so contentious you had some pretty powerful people with direct ties to City Hall who were pushing back I think part of the reason this guy got so much attention both from Advocates and the press in general was because it felt like this was the Bellwether as goes Prospect Park West so goes the rest of the city thankfully we won as you can see like it works let's catch some shade over here and let's do it it's hot but does it need to be a war can we just have like a gentle conversation the war on cars is tongue-in-cheek the title mayor Rob Ford the former mayor of Toronto he said the war on the car is over and he was promising to rip out bike Lanes stop building Transit Lanes now channeling my co-host Aaron Apple stock he would say you're damn right there's a war on cars cars kill 40 000 Americans a year injure countless more they're polluting our air boiling our planet our noisy they do all this things like why shouldn't there be a war on cars they're waging a war on us I think what a lot of people don't recognize is that there was a war on pedestrians and bicyclists and horses at that time and a lot of this was stripped away from us I think about la and how there was loads of bike infrastructure in La at one time they had bike highways things that we would dream of today and it was pulled away the street cars were bought and pulled away when you become aware of the history of what it took to get to this point where cars are just everywhere and you understand the the revulsion and the the pushback against cars in the 1910s and the 1920s it's good to take that long historical view it took a hundred years to get to this point hopefully it won't take 100 years to change it back but we do need to change it back a little bit bikes are becoming a bit more popular they're becoming cool to some extent and I think that that's part of what happened with the automobile so the love affair with the automobile is a phrase that you hear on newscast you hear it's just inserted into stories this idea Americans have a love affair with cars you're never going to change it but that phrase love affair with the automobile an early 1960s sort of infomercial starring Groucho Marx where that phrase was repeated over and over and over again and it was sponsored by a car company sort of like Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend that's not just an organic phrase that people started coming up with that was the thing that came from a movie from a song and now it's part of the culture same with love affair it would be like saying you went to a town that has one restaurant all they serve are cheeseburgers and you would say oh the people in this town love cheeseburgers I think that's sort of how we think about cars is that Americans love them but in the absence of presenting a menu of options of choices you can't really tell what people's preferences are I want to live in a place where I walk outside and there is the car share vehicle there's the bus stop there's the Bike Share station there's the bike rack where my own bike is locked up there's the stairways to the subway I have choices for how I can live my life like the worst thing that could happen to my neighbors right now would be if I said I'm done being a bike Advocate honey let's buy a car and let's park it on the street when you have more biking structure people actually do give up their cars or use them right yeah they quite often give up parking spaces yes and so the only way you can make it better and I'm going to quote Jason Slaughter of not just bike so I know you've had on is to give people viable alternatives to driving the only way we're going to solve the problem of cars in cities is to have fewer cars and cities that's it everything stems from there the reason I'm an advocate is because I can affect things on my local Street I really can't affect what happens at the federal level I can vote I can donate I can show up to protests and rallies I can get a bike rack in front of my kids school I can meet with my State Assembly member and say have you considered an e-bike rebate program for New York State and help them push that through so sort of my advice to people is like the cliche of like think globally act locally we can pivot more in a very agile way at the local level yeah so know your city council person you know know your mayor know your state representatives and yes know your DC Representatives or Senators your Congress people but like really tender garden and work here great societies are where people build trees for the shade that they may never enjoy we have only begun to scratch the surface of New York City and Brooklyn as a bikeable safe walkable place what we're doing now what I've been involved with with the amazing Advocates who I learn from and work with all the time this is just the beginning and much of what is yet to come I will never get to enjoy because it'll it'll take a long time and that's fine and to get there it's going to be a fight you don't get a trophy for being an advocate I'm going to give you your virtual trophy today please uh show appreciation for Doug in the comments and and for the war on cars podcast no and I gotta say like the trophy is meeting awesome people and connecting with the community of people online who are fighting in their own way these little war on cars because like I always say like people are the best people yeah there are people who love their cities or where they live and Advocates even if you just show up for one meeting or make one phone call to an elected official you are a person who cares and the world needs more people who care for those that want to check out your podcast available on all the platforms available wherever you get your podcasts and we're at the war on cars on whatever the newest non-twitter thing that's coming next so we're on all of the channels but yeah please please listen you know we try to approach this topic not just from a policy perspective but from a cultural perspective we've had comedians on we've had actors on but we've also had elected officials on so there's something for everybody I hope so we hope that you join the war on cars if you do tell us in the comments that you join us tell us your experiences we'd we'd love to see that and and perhaps it'll make others feel a little less alone see you next time I'm sorry but this woman is still trying to parallel park her car I feel bad for her she's just yeah do you need do you need help we can we can direct you pull up pull up next to the car just straight stay straight all the way to the left turn no other way other way yep everybody keep on coming back so convenient but then you get stay there stay there now turn the other way turn the other way found a parking spot but all the way all the way stop just turn all the way to go to parallel parking either it would take me like five minutes to do this so thanks for the win okay yeah just keep on yeah keep on coming back yeah you're good go team only your third time oh yeah nice work take care anytime that was two bike dudes help someone parallel park we don't she was so sweet she was so smart drivers no [Music]

Channel: Propel

Views: 78,792

Keywords: Designing The Future, urban planning, safer streets, safe streets, city biker, bike life, commuter life, bike commuter, bike city, bike design, bike lane, city planning, urban design, war on cars, the war on cars, reclaim public space, public transportation, public transportation advocate

Id: fhihTG8KgSs

Length: 21min 34sec (1294 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 04 2023