Episode 100: The War on Cars Turns 100

Doug Gordon: AI is all the rage these days, so I decided to ask one of those chatbots to write the perfect Cleverhood ad for me. Here’s what it came up with: [clears throat] Are you tired of being stuck in traffic? Breathing in exhaust fumes and feeling like your daily commute is a neverending battle with cars? Then it’s time to join the war on cars with Cleverhood. Cleverhood is more than just a brand, it’s a lifestyle. Whether you’re biking to work, running errands, or just out for a leisurely ride, Cleverhood has you covered—literally. Okay, so that’s pretty impressive. I mean, who needs podcast hosts? The thing is, though, AI isn’t real, but rain is. So even if these chatbots render me, Aaron and Sarah obsolete, you are still going to need a Cleverhood. Listeners of The War on Cars can receive 15 percent off everything in the Cleverhood store by going to Cleverhood.com/waroncars and entering code CLEVERLOVE at checkout. Again, that’s Cleverhood.com/waroncars, code CLEVERLOVE. Stay real and stay dry with Cleverhood.

Mike: Howdy. This is Mike from Saratoga Springs. The War on Cars is my kind of culture war, and a good antidote to typical journalists viewing things only through a windshield. Keep it up!

Brandon: Hi The War on Cars. Brandon here from Stockholm in Sweden. Congratulations on 100 knocked out. Keep going, keep fighting, keep pushing, keep asking and keep inspiring. Thanks very much.

Phil: Hi, this is Phil from Micromobility Report in Wollongong, Australia. To Sarah, Aaron and Doug, congratulations on 100 episodes. It’s fantastic. I’ve listened to every one, and I know there’s a lot of other people in Australia that do too.

John: This is John from Olympia, Washington, fighting the war on cars because cars are fighting a war on us. We’re like the mouse in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. We thought we had a good idea, but it has taken over and refused to be checked, and it is carrying us away and it is actually destroying our only livable place.

Marcus: Hi, this is Marcus in Richardson, Texas. The world needs a war on cars so that people have more space for housing and money in their pockets. The war on cars means creating more usable options for bus riders, cyclists and walkers.

Michael: My name is Michael from the car-dependent city of Columbus, Ohio. I support the war on cars not only because climate change is a major threat to the globe, but also because livable communities are better for mental, physical and spiritual health. No one should be forced to drive in order to live.

Margot: Hi there. This is Margot calling from Halifax, Nova Scotia. I’m interested in the war of cars because I see how much better our city of Halifax could be if only there were a few fewer cars and more people cycling. Keep fighting the good fight and I’ll keep listening.

Abe: Hey, the name is Abe Perlman from Washington, DC. You ask what the war on cards means to me, and I’d say, I’m sick of cars. I’m sick of seeing them, I’m sick of hearing them, I’m sick of smelling their exhaust, and I’m sick of almost being hit by them. So let’s go out and win the war on cars, guys. Okay? Thanks.

Andre: This is Andre from LA. Why do we need a war on cars?

Child: We need a war on cars for the sake of our children.

Woman: We need a war on cars for the sake of the climate crisis.

Andre: For the sake of micro-mobility.

Child: For the sake of our wallets.

Woman: For the sake of our mental and physical health.

Andre: For the sake of our transportation infrastructure.

Child: For the sake of human civilization.

Woman: War on cars!

Andre: War on cars!

Child: War on cars!

Aaron Naparstek: This is The War on Cars. I’m Aaron Naparstek, and with me are my co-hosts, Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon.

Sarah Goodyear: Hey there.

Doug: How’s it going?

Aaron: Good. This is a big episode for us. It is number 100.

Doug: Dun-dun-dun-dun!

Sarah: It’s really—I’m so excited. It’s kind of hard to believe a century of The War on Cars.

Doug: This is when we get sold into syndication and get that Seinfeld money, right? Yeah.

Aaron: Really?

Doug: No, that’s 200 episodes.

Aaron: Oh, okay. Darn it! Okay, so for this episode, we’re going to look back on 100 episodes—or I guess 99 episodes. And we’re gonna go all the way back to episode number one, our very first one, to ask what we got right, what we got wrong, and get into all the changes that have happened since we recorded that first one. All the changes that have happened I guess with us as a podcast and also in the world, like, actually a lot has changed since September, 2018.

Doug: I don’t know what you’re talking about. Everything’s exactly the same. Things are fine.

Aaron: [laughs]

Sarah: So how do we feel about listening to episode one, guys?

Doug: I don’t even like listening to recent episodes. I don’t like hearing my own voice. I don’t think anyone does. So I’m not looking forward to listening to episode one.

Sarah: I am a little worried about how embarrassing it might sound.

Aaron: Oh my God.

Sarah: I’m a little cringey.

Aaron: I’m just, like, girding myself for just absolute hating this.

Doug: [laughs]

Sarah: [laughs]

Doug: I mean, let’s think positive.

Sarah: Stay tuned, folks.

Aaron: Yeah.

Doug: Anyways, I mean, let’s put a positive spin on it. We’ve gotten better at this, I think. I hope. I think we’re a little more polished than we used to be. You know, the kind of Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours or whatever it is. We’re not quite at 10,000 hours, but we’re doing all right.

Aaron: I’m managing expecta—I’m just setting myself up to be pleasantly surprised.

Sarah: Yeah. I mean, and I will say having—having peeked at this, that, you know, we weren’t completely wrong about everything. Like, we actually said some things that hold up. So be strong and just face reality.

Aaron: Okay.

Sarah: That’s—that’s part of being a grown-up.

Doug: Okay. Sounds good to me.

Sarah: [laughs]

Doug: We also have a very special guest for this episode: you, our listeners. After all, you are what makes this podcast possible. We wouldn’t have gotten to 100 episodes without all of you. We put the call out on Patreon and asked our Patreon supporters to send in voice messages with their questions, their comments, and we’ll get to that and exactly what we asked in just a little bit.

Sarah: Speaking of our Patreon supporters, if you want to help us produce the podcast yourself, go to TheWaronCars.org, click “Support Us” and sign up today. You’ll get ad-free versions of regular episodes, you’ll get exclusive bonus episodes, stickers, of course, and much more. Plus, you’ll get to leave us a voice message for our 200th episode.

Doug: There you go.

Aaron: Okay, guys. Time to play some clips. So going all the way back to episode one, which we titled “Why the World Needs the War on Cars.” The episode description for this one is actually pretty interesting given the title. Someone want to take the description?

Sarah: Doug, let’s hear it.

Doug: Okay. “In this pilot episode, we discuss why the world needs a War on Cars and ask if tech—specifically tech companies—can save our cities from the car. Are e-scooters, Lyft buses and self-driving Ubers running through Elon Musk’s tunnels the wave of the future, or are they a harbinger of dystopia?”

Sarah: Huh. Wow.

Doug: Wow.

Doug: The more things change.

Aaron: The more things change.

Sarah: [laughs]

Aaron: We’re still talking about the exact same thing.

Doug: One of these days we’ll get to an episode where we don’t mention Elon Musk, I guess.

Aaron: Yeah, maybe that’s the secret to our success—just keep talking about Elon Musk.

Sarah: Okay, so let’s hear what we were preoccupied with back in 2018.

Doug: So the scooters are great. I think they’re fun. Like I said, I would use one. I have used them. But the guy who’s coming in from Canarsie on the L train, he’s not getting on a scooter to get to his job near, say, Grand Central. He’s not doing that. And so as much as I think they’re fun and represent this amazing kind of front on the war on cars, I see it as a symbol of the failure of American civic government to provide for its people.

Sarah: Yeah, because they’re just not willing to expend the political capital to make these things happen. And that’s despite the fact that polls show that people in the United States want more investment in public transportation. So they don’t give a shit about those people because they’re not politically powerful, and the exact people who need public transportation the most are the ones with the least power. And then somebody like Elon Musk comes into a city like Chicago for instance, and he’s like, “Oh, I can build you a thing that gets you to the airport in 12 minutes, and I’ll do it all with my own money and you won’t even have to worry about it. It’s gonna be great!” Who believes that that’s gonna actually happen?

Aaron: So right. So …

Aaron: [laughs]

Sarah: That’s pretty good.

Doug: I gotta admit I think we’re sort of still banging that same drum of, like, you know, all this investment in tech, all this focus on shiny objects and tunnels is the wrong focus.

Sarah: Yeah. And also the insistence on privatization and that, yeah, we can have transportation systems in our cities as long as they don’t cost taxpayers anything. I mean, that’s something that we’re still talking about today. Yeah.

Aaron: I mean, I can’t believe that this is still a topic, actually. I mean, it’s just—it hasn’t—you know, I guess the micromobility stuff has certainly panned out, you know, scooters and bike share and things like that. But I mean, the Elon Musk tunnel thing, the fact that we’re still—that’s still being floated as a realistic idea in various places is just completely nuts.

Doug: Although interestingly, I would say the scooters haven’t panned out, right? Like, I think private—privately-owned e-bikes and scooters are a thing that have happened that we didn’t really predict. We thought it was gonna be like private companies, like Bird dropping scooters everywhere, and cities saying, “Yeah, we’re not gonna build bike share and build a light rail. We’re just gonna offload all this to a scooter company and you’re gonna be on your own.”

Aaron: Yeah. Yeah.

Doug: So that’s been a real change. We thought kind of the future—or at least that’s where it seemed like it was going at the time—was scooter companies. And now it’s just everyone buys their own bike, which is great.

Aaron: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. And the scooter companies actually are in disarray of various different kinds, and have been sort of off and on throughout this period. And I don’t see them taking over the world. And it’s interesting how much those scooters and the inconvenience they caused and so forth were part of the discourse then, and there was a lot of hand wringing about scooters being left on sidewalks. And that has died down considerably, I think, in part because those scooters, you know, they didn’t proliferate the way that some people were worried.

Aaron: Yeah.

Doug: It didn’t pencil out for a lot of companies.

Sarah: Okay. Our next clip is Aaron, and he’s talking about something that I really, really think that he has been right about for so long, and he’s just getting more right about it all the time.

[laughs]

Aaron: Oh my God. That’s music to my ears! Nothing could be more pleasant to hear than that.

Sarah: And nobody else is saying this as much as he is. So let’s hear what Aaron has to say.

Aaron: I’m hoping we can come to some place where there’s a more holistic view where, like, okay, Uber is putting more cars on the street. The problem is more cars on the street. We need to cap. We need some sort of limit. Like, New York City, big cities in general have a—there has to be some limit to the number of cars a city can hold. And when I look at my street, I’m much more worried about the cars that I see, the private cars that I see parked at the curbside all day, all week, maybe moving like once a week, basically sitting there for 95 percent of the time, hogging up street space that could be used for dedicated bike lanes, could be used for dedicated bus lanes. And what I’d like to do is I’d like to start getting these companies like Uber to start to fund, like, take money from those guys to fund the stuff that we really need in cities, which is better biking, better buses, better walking.

Sarah: Yeah. So I mean, the thing that I think that you’re so right about, and that you’re one of the few people who just says this over and over again, is that we need to limit the number of cars. That in order to get cars to do less damage in cities, we need to have fewer cars.

Aaron: Yeah, I mean, we started up a publication, Sarah and I, called Streetsblog like 15, 20 years ago now? Like, forever ago.

Sarah: Yeah.

Aaron: And, you know, we’ve been really focused on streets and street design and redesigning streets. And I feel like that was one of my hopes with the podcast is that we could talk more about cars. Like, the street design stuff is super important and needs to continue, and other places haven’t even barely started like New York has. But it just feels to me like we’re not gonna solve this problem until we actually just start explicitly addressing the problem of too many cars and too much driving. And have—like, we need to have explicit policy goals that are oriented around, like, reducing the number of cars, reducing the amount of driving. So it’s like, if your city is just focused on, like, yeah, we’re gonna build X miles of new bike lane, X miles of new bus lanes, that’s all good. But, like, where also is your goal to reduce cars and driving? And I feel like that’s a place where we just, like, haven’t really—it’s just so hard for American policymakers or anyone to, like, explicitly make that a goal. Like, we actually have a goal of reducing the amount of cars. We want fewer of those.

Sarah: Right. And I actually think that something that’s happened increasingly since we recorded this is the increase in the size of vehicles, right?

Aaron: Yeah.

Sarah: And so I think not only do we need to reduce the amount of cars, we need to reduce the amount of car, right?

Aaron: [laughs] Right. Yeah.

Doug: Totally.

Sarah: So, like, that cities also should have, if you’re registering your 22-foot-long Chevy Suburban in New York City—if you’re even allowed to do that, which I don’t think you should—you should pay a premium for that registration that you can feel, right? Because all these people who complain about parking at the curb, there are probably 20 percent fewer parking spaces in New York than there were four years ago because the cars have gotten so big.

Aaron: Absolutely.

Sarah: So yeah.

Aaron: If you want to get a sense of how annoying I am about this now, my kid’s science teacher emailed me just yesterday to ask if I wanted to help judge the physics bridge-building competition, which I was like, “This is the greatest honor I’ve ever had. Like, you actually want me to judge!” And one of the goals of the bridges the kids are supposed to design in the 10th grade is to reduce congestion, reduce motor vehicle congestion. And I was like, you know, actually before judging commences, I think we need to debate whether or not alleviating vehicle congestion is a constructive goal for the city, or if we should be working to improve access or—and, you know, it’s just like—it’s like I had to annoy my kid’s physics teacher.

Doug: I love that it’s a physics class, but somehow I’m imagining you getting to the judging like, “Look kid, there’s no congestion pricing cameras on this bridge, so I’m gonna have to give you an F. Sorry.”

Aaron: Yeah. But he agreed. He was like, “Actually, that’s a good point. We’re gonna change that next year. Like, our goal is to get cars off the streets.”

Sarah: All right.

Aaron: Okay. Go, Mr. Physics Teacher.

Sarah: You won that battle.

Aaron: Yeah.

Doug: So before we move on, I think we should talk about, like, what are the big changes that have happened since episode one? Like, not just what did we get right or what did we get wrong but, like, a lot of things have changed, not just the size of vehicles, but, you know, the first thing that comes to my mind is the rise of e-bikes. Not that e-bikes weren’t a thing back in 2018, but they’ve just—the chart is just a straight up line basically showing the rise of e-bikes just in the last even two or three years since we started the podcast. So I’m wondering if you have other ideas or other things that you think have been big developments since we started.

Sarah: So for me, one of the biggest things that’s happened is that the debate over land use and the density of cities has made it fully into the mainstream of politics. Sometimes in a really negative way. You know, Trump campaigned on they’re trying to take your single family home away from you and make you live in a warren of multi-family housing, and how horrifying that would be. But the fact that that is increasingly something that people talk about, understand, and that to me is a foundational part of the war on cars is making smarter land use decisions and really talking about the consequences of single-family sprawl development. I think that four years ago that was just not something that anyone outside of very wonky policy circles was talking about, and now it’s something that gets debated in the public square. And I think that’s a really good thing.

Aaron: And, like, California is passing huge new laws that are restricting the amount of parking near transit stations and forcing cities to build more houses. I mean, it’s just—it’s become like a really huge issue that’s changing quickly.

Doug: I think a lot of these issues were much more siloed back then, and that includes racial equity, policing, housing as you’re saying, transportation of all forms. And, you know, the last four years or so have seen lots of reasons to do a pretty deep reckoning over why those things have been siloed and why they need to be merged together. So I think that’s been a real big change. Like, everybody’s talking about everybody else’s issues, probably still not sufficiently, but it’s been a huge—a huge thing.

Aaron: And I mean, of course, the biggest thing probably in the last four years was the pandemic. The way that that event rapidly changed the urban landscape, and then the way in which certain aspects like outdoor dining and more people biking, but also more people driving, the results of the pandemic have just sort of stuck with us. I mean, it’s still sort of unclear whether or not we end up with a better city or a worse city out of that. But yeah, that was obviously a huge thing.

Sarah: Yeah. And I think it really made people aware of public space just in general, and how vital that is to preserving sanity. Because without the public spaces that we had available to us during that time, I think that there would have been even more of a mental health crisis than we’re still experiencing now, which is profound, obviously.

Aaron: You know, you look around the streets and there’s all these people still enjoying, you know, these outdoor dining booths that are—have replaced parking spots. There are more people biking than ever before. And these are like a lot of habits and new features that popped up because of the pandemic. I don’t know if you guys remember but, like, there was that two-month period where sort of everybody stopped driving and air was clean all of a sudden in all these cities. I mean, it gave us this glimpse of what’s possible if we sidelined cars.

Sarah: All right. So enough of listening back to our potentially cringeworthy thoughts from episode one. It’s time to turn to you, the listeners who make this podcast what it is and support us. In that first episode, we had asked ourselves the question: why does the world need a war on cars? And for episode 100, we have turned it around and asked you that question. And we also asked: what does the war on cars mean to you—not the podcast, but the lowercase version of a war on cars—and what you all are doing to fight that war? So let’s hear from you.

Jenna: My name is Jenna, also known as Jenna Bikes, and I’m in Portland, Oregon. To me, the war on cars looks like sharing my car-free life every day on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. It means showing that you don’t have to sit in traffic every day, that you can ride your bike and you can enjoy a slow form of transit that is safer. To me, it is showcasing the fact that you can break these norms and you can live a different life, even though it is harder in this society. I love to share the positives of a car-free life as well as some of the things I had to learn along the way. Every time someone complains to me about traffic, I say, “Welcome to the war on cars.” And it is the best thing ever. Love you all!

Aaron: Thanks, Jenna.

Doug: That’s awesome.

Aaron: That’s something that’s changed. I mean, just the sheer number of people who are out there on their own social media platforms kind of advocating and talking about similar issues to us is sort of staggering. I mean, that has really ramped up in the last four years.

Joe: Hi there. I’m Joe from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Joined the Patreon just a couple months ago. I’ve been listening for a couple of years to The War on Cars. To me, the existence of this pod and this idea is nothing less than finally an acknowledgment that culturally many decades ago we screwed up as a country. We were sold a bill of goods in highways and car culture, in car-first culture. It came at the expense of people. So it’s been a long time, but it’s great to see that we’re at a point where we can acknowledge that, talk about it and do something about it. So I love what you guys are doing. Please keep it going.

Aaron: Amen, Joe.

Monica: This is Monica from DC. You know, it’s been a really interesting few years, and I just want to thank y’all for continuing to inspire me to do better, even as I have become a cycling instructor, and I’ve painted some ghost bikes and I’ve led some rides and I’ve helped out others on their rides. And we’re all just doing our best in the face of overwhelming car culture. And just this little podcast is a nice slice of anti-car culture.

Nick: Yeah. Hi, my name’s Nick. I live in Manchester in the United Kingdom. I’ve been a warrior on cars, I guess, for about 10 years now. And I believe we need a war on cars for the following reason: as a civilization, we are currently standing at a crossroads, and if we’re not careful, we’re about to make a mistake of historic proportions. Very few people seem to realize that we’re living through a golden age in innovation, in micromobility solutions. Obviously, we’ve had the bicycle for a long time, but we’re looking at e-bikes as well, cargo bikes, e-cargo bikes, e-scooters, even electric wheelchairs, mobility scooters, things that can provide independent mobility for a huge swath of the population. But all we hear are people wanging on about electric cars, the most boring, predictable, tedious application of this electrification technology. The car industry yet again telling us that a new car is the solution to all our problems. So welcome to The War on Cars for creating a community, bringing people together from around the world who have the same ideas and giving us strength. Here’s to the next hundred and many more beyond that. Thank you very much.

Aaron: Love that. Three good ones.

Sarah: Yeah. I mean, I love Nick calling out just this obsession with electric cars. You know, “Electric cars, electric cars! Just electrify all the cars!” I feel like if you are actually looking at the reality of the situation, you can’t say it with a straight face. It’s not gonna solve the problems.

Doug: No. As Aaron said earlier, you know, fewer cars. And we don’t care how they’re powered. If I’m hit by a car, I don’t think to myself, “Oh, thank God it was good for the planet.”

Aaron: Interestingly, I think of one of the places where we’ve changed, or at least I’ve changed a little bit, you could go back to old episodes of the podcast and I’m sort of the pro-electric car guy in some episodes, and I think that’s a place where I’ve changed. I don’t—it just doesn’t seem like that’s going to be a viable solution. It’s still—you know, it’s probably better in some ways than people driving around gas cars, but it’s mostly just a distraction that’s gonna keep us, you know, entrenched in this motor vehicle-dominated status quo. And yeah, I think that’s a place where I’ve changed, and I don’t know what it’s going to take to get millions of Americans to come around to that too.

Sarah: You know, they may be coming around. E-bike sales are outpacing electric car sales, and I think that those millions of people who are buying e-bikes are a constituency for the kinds of ideas that we’ve been talking about. And they are also a significant economic force. And I think that’s a very powerful thing that’s evolving.

Doug: I also wonder, too, if the size of the new electric vehicles has been a thing that is in a weird way going to be the automotive industries undoing. I mean, that’s hyperbolic, of course, like, it’s not going anywhere. And there are lots of places where people need cars, and they should be electric if they have them. But the absurd, grotesque size of these cars like the Hummer that President Biden was recently shown driving, a 9,000-pound vehicle that most people are gonna use to get groceries and drive their kids to soccer practice. I think, like, even that is showing to more car-brained people that there’s something kind of absurd going on here, you know?

Aaron: Totally. It reminds me of the horseless carriage a hundred years ago. The electric Hummer is the horseless carriage of electric personal mobility. Like, we’re still in this phase where it’s like we think that electric personal mobility is gonna look the same as our gas-powered mobility did. So we make an electric Hummer. It’s like sticking a horse head on the front of your new a steam- or gasoline-powered carriage. But I think, like, electric mobility is going to be something very different than cars. And it’s like we haven’t quite made that transition, so we’re still in the horseless zone. Anyways, I loved Monica’s tagline for us, you know, The War on Cars, a nice little slice of anti-car culture.

Doug: Pretty good, yeah.

Sarah: Yeah.

Aaron: That was really good. We should use that.

Sarah: Thanks, Monica.

Michael: Hi, I’m Michael, a bicycle network researcher in Copenhagen. I think a war on cars is important, but it’s just fighting the symptoms of a greater disease, which is greedy short-term thinking in complex systems. I think we need more education about system dynamics and how simple solutions are never the right answer in a complex world. Apart from “Fuck cars.” Come on.

Aaron: [laughs] Oh, my God. That’s so good.

Sarah: Oh, Michael. Michael. Thank you so much for that.

Doug: You’re speaking our language, Michael.

Sarah: [laughs] Yeah. Especially me.

Aaron: Nuanced. Nuanced yet simple.

Emily: Hi. My name is Emily, and I’m a fan of The War on Cars podcast because it gives me intellectual company. I ride my e-bike to my son’s bus stop, and then I continue to work almost every day. And I know that by putting my son on the third wheel that’s attached to my bike, I’m risking his life and I’m risking mine every morning. And it’s a hard thing to do, and I appreciate the support that I get from listening to other people who are also in this war. I don’t want to be a victim of it. I want to be in a society that’s more sustainable and just, and it just gives me hope to listen to your episodes. Thank you so much for making it.

Christian: Hey, guys. Christian here from St. Louis, Missouri. And first of all, I just want to say thank you for doing this podcast because it makes me feel sane. And the reason we need a war on cars is because a system that moves the most cars or attempts to move the most cars versus the most people is inherently dysfunctional and inefficient. But beyond that, it’s destroying the environment and it’s killing an enormous amount of people. So among the many, many, many reasons, the reason I’m fighting the war on cars is to stand up and say that preventable deaths are unacceptable.

Doug: What I loved about those is the kind of pairing of the person saying “intellectual company,” and then Christian saying that keeps him sane. There’s always a balance that I think we try to strike when we do this podcast of just, like, preaching to the choir, but being that person who has read so many stories of, like, “Cyclist collides with truck,” you know? And you just feel like a crazy person when you actually know the circumstances. The driver was looking at their phone or was drunk when they plowed through a bike lane and killed someone. I think that what I like about what we try to do is to break through that and to speak to the people who are sort of like the listener version of me who read those stories and are just like, “Wait a minute, that is not at all what happened. You’ve got to be crazy to put it that way.” So I really appreciate hearing that. Thanks so much to both of them.

Sarah: Yeah. And I think that it also speaks to the cognitive disconnect that we all feel when we’re making the choices that we make to walk, to ride transit, to ride bicycles. And people are like, “Why are you doing that?” And you know that even though yes, is it dangerous to ride a bicycle in a city with your child? It is. It is also dangerous to drive a car down the highway with your child. And people do that without batting an eyelash every day of the week because they have to. So to have a group of like-minded people talk about making these choices that actually are rational choices, and we’re told over and over again that they’re frivolous or dangerous, to have people around you making those same decisions is a real affirmation that like, hey, no, this is a rational decision. This is the right thing to do, to teach my child how to ride public transportation as a matter of course, or how to move themselves around and not be dependent on a motor vehicle. That affirmation is super important.

Aaron: Yeah. Emily’s comment was kind of heartbreaking. You know, she’s actually doing the right thing. She’s doing probably the thing that’s more efficient, you know, better for the world around her. And yet she has to feel like, “Oh, I’m putting my kid’s life at risk,” taking the kid to school on the bike. It’s just—that’s just completely unacceptable, you know? It’s just like that’s the thing that we need to change.

Doug: Yeah. And I think I just want to say that Emily and Christian that that affirmation that you’re talking about, Sarah, it just goes both ways because I think we could be doing this podcast and still just be three crazy people talking to nobody.

Aaron: [laughs] Yeah, that’s true.

Doug: But, you know, the fact that we’ve built this audience and that people are responding to it, it makes me feel a little more sane. And I really love that about our listeners that, like, there are all of these people just in their own little way fighting in their own towns, their own cities, and sort of creating this community that’s all over the world now. So thank you both so much.

Dan: My name is Dan Simonson. I live in Syracuse, New York. I biked to work today in three degrees Fahrenheit with the -20 wind chill and light snow. To be honest, it wasn’t that bad. I wore a lot of layers, and it was better than biking in the rain. We need a war on cars because no weather I’ve ever encountered short of freezing rain is more dangerous to me than the automobile. Whatever the conditions, some dingus who drives recklessly places me in danger nearly daily. Ban cars, build alternatives, build barricades if necessary. This pseudo system of transportation needs to end.

Aaron: Good use of “dingus.”

Sarah: Yeah. Can everyone see my raised fist after—after each one of these? [laughs]

Doug: I’m about to break into a song from Les Miz right now. Build barricades. I loved that comment. So thank you, Dan.

Scott: Hey team, I’m Scott in Seattle. I’m fighting the war on cars because it’s an existential fight globally and locally. Around the world climate change is really happening largely because of cars. That’s affecting us locally. We live for the summer weather here in Seattle, but now we’re seeing perennial wildfire smoke that forces us inside. I proposed to my now wife on the weekend of the most intense heatwave we’ve ever seen, and six months later we had to move our wedding venue because of flooding that was exacerbated by sea level rise. And despite Seattle supposedly being a progressive city, cars still dominate our streets and our politics. Every bit of new infrastructure for people walking and biking is a battle. And we don’t have time to debate that when so many people are getting injured or killed on our streets. I want to raise my future kids in a city that is safe and easy for them to get around without a car. So that’s why I’m fighting the war on cars where I live. Thanks for everything you’re doing to bring light to this movement for humanity.

Ben: Hey, War on Cars. My name is Ben, and I live in Washington, DC. I’m fighting the war on cars because I want my city to be a healthier, more enjoyable place to live. My city and region’s overreliance on cars robs us of the chance to breathe cleaner air, taking the ambiance of [inaudible] and just feel safer on the street. We’re seeing improvements here, some of which I get to work on because I’m a civil engineer. But I just know that they can be done much faster, bolder and on a larger scale than what’s approved and funded.

Dave: Hey, this is Dave Cohen from Brattleboro, Vermont. The war on cars? This is my take. It’s about how we move on this Earth and why that actually really matters in our relationship to the human and more than human worlds we inhabit, to our own sensory and emotional embodied experience of all these things. I like to think of the four Cs of car culture: coercion, conformity, concealment, colonization. We’re coerced into this, and we experience a kind of generational and spiritual amnesia of our ecological landscapes. And I think that’s so much about what the war on cars is about. And I love what you guys are doing in bringing out the psychological, eco-psychological dynamics of the automobile and is impact on everything around us. Thanks, guys.

Aaron: Good to hear from Dave! That’s Dave Cohen from episode 49.

Alex: Hi, my name is Alex Dyer. I live in Wellington, New Zealand. I’ve been involved in the war on cars since I returned to live in Aotearoa from Europe. I ride a Bullitt cargo bike. I don’t believe in cars, I believe in cities for people, healthy streets, equitable and livable neighborhoods, and a regenerative natural environment. Codependency is the opposite to all these things and more, and I believe that unnecessary driving is the new smoking. Please make use of my wiki dedicated to reducing codependency at bit.ly/break-car-culture. Keep up the fight!

Aaron: Put it in the show notes.

Sarah: “Unnecessary driving is the new smoking.” I love that.

Doug: Yeah. I also love New Zealand, and Alex is a force of nature in his hometown and does a lot of great work. And we’ve got a lot of great listeners in New Zealand, so thanks for sending that in.

Aaron: I’m happy to come do the live show in New Zealand anytime.

Sarah: [laughs] Yeah.

Aaron: So let us know.

Doug: I’ll go. Yeah, happy to do it.

Sarah: Yeah, I could make that.

Tom: Hi, my name is Tom, and I’m an eighth-grade teacher. I think a huge problem facing us in the war on cars is that we have built so many of our schools on the outskirts of town. These schools are a huge investment. They’re gonna last 60 to 70 years. And we’ve kind of baked in this awful, awful land use pattern for that long unless we spend the money to redo them or to have infill housing or something else. Thank you guys for all you do.

Doug: I loved this comment because I don’t know if you listened to the 99% Invisible episode on the Japanese show about the kids, you know, like, four year olds walking to school. One of the points they make in that episode is that in a lot of Japanese towns and cities—and this is true of a lot of old school American cities—is that schools were the kind of anchor of the community. They were located downtown or close to it. And now we’ve upended that development pattern, and schools are built on some, like, you know, field on the way outskirts of town, like Tom says. And it not only bakes in the land-use pattern and the driving, it bakes in the culture of the folks who say, “But how am I going to get my kids to school?” And so I love that comment from Tom.

Aaron: It’s huge. And we’ve done that really in the last 30 years.

Doug: Yeah.

Aaron: A lot of those schools are new.

Sarah: I actually was the editor of a small newspaper in Camden, Maine, in the mid-’90s, and that’s a town of about 6,000 people. Really picturesque Maine coastal town. And the high school was in the middle of town, and while I was there, they were planning a consolidated high school at the edge of town. And this was before I understood these issues fully, but I remember thinking, “Well, what is that gonna mean? Like, that kids aren’t gonna be all hanging around downtown the way they are?” And it teaches kids this is how you’re gonna get around as an adult. And that’s an educational opportunity that’s not only missed, but it’s actually going exactly in the wrong direction.

Josh: Hey Sarah, Doug and Aaron, it’s Josh from Halifax, Nova Scotia. I’m fighting the war on cars because I want to leave behind a better city for future generations. I don’t have children, but I know they exist, and I don’t like when they get run over. You guys were also a huge inspiration for me to shift my carpentry business from a diesel Jetta onto an electric cargo bike. So thank you.

Aaron: That’s cool. Carpenter on an electric bike. I mean, that’s—that’s awesome.

Sarah: That’s so cool, Josh. And if we played any role in what sounds like a really cool and smart decision, it makes me so happy.

Doug: I just want to bring Josh to my next community board meeting and have them stand up when someone says, “What, you’re gonna ask plumbers and carpenters and contractors to get on cargo bikes?” I just want Josh to be like, “You know, actually, I did that.”

Aaron: Mm-hmm.

Anna: My name is Anna Bailliekova and I live in Milwaukee. Here in Milwaukee, one in six households don’t have access to a private car, and those households are disproportionately in historically disinvested communities that bear the cost of car culture over and over again. These neighborhoods were destroyed to make way for freeways and widening state highways, and now consequently, they have the highest rates of traffic violence and air pollution. We know the solutions, and we know that by prioritizing the needs of the most vulnerable, it makes our cities and our streets work better for everybody. I dream of the day that I can send my two kids to school on their bikes and not worry if they’re gonna get there. But until then, my life is made richer by moving through the city at a deliberate pace in the world and not shut away in a metal box. And it’s made more meaningful by the connections I make with other foot soldiers in the war on cars. Congratulations on 100 episodes. Here’s to 100 more.

Doug: So that’s Anna, who you might recognize from episode 93, “Making Milwaukee a Bike City.” And yeah, there’s a great number of foot soldiers in the war on cars there in Milwaukee.

Sarah: Yeah, and I think her point about equity is so important, and to remember that these car-centric cities that we live in, these destructive freeways, the truck traffic, the high-speed car traffic that moves through these neighborhoods, that this has always had a greater impact on people who are not as wealthy or marginalized in other ways. And Black and brown people have suffered the brunt of this. And I really thank Anna for pointing that out, because that is a big part of what we’re fighting.

Patrick: Hi, my name’s Patrick and I’m a board member of Bike JC in Jersey City. Love The War on Cars. Really look forward to every episode. I’ve learned so much from the podcast, and I’d like to invite The War on Cars podcast to look at Jersey City and Hoboken and see the amazing work that’s been done there over the last few years in terms of Vision Zero and making the streets more bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly.

Aaron: That’s high on the list.

Doug: Yeah, it’s really worth mentioning here the success stories in Hoboken and Jersey City. You’ve got Mayor Ravi Bhalla in Hoboken and Steven Fulop in Jersey City. I think Fulop actually is not running for reelection. He might be running for governor, which is a good thing because Jersey City is fighting a possible highway expansion. And hopefully if Fulop becomes governor that won’t happen. But they both are real success stories. Hoboken, I think, has had zero traffic deaths in four years. Jersey City had zero on the streets that it controls last year in 2022. So yeah, we’d love to get over there. It’s a quick subway and PATH ride away.

Aaron: Jersey City is building tons of new housing. It looks like another, like, mini Manhattan sprouting up on the other side of the Hudson River when you look over there.

Sarah: Yeah.

Aaron: They’re doing amazing stuff.

Sarah: And this in one of the most car-centric states in the country, where sprawl development is sort of the rule and, you know, the resistance to any form of trying to level the playing field is so strong. And so I just think it’s really fantastic to see in New Jersey in particular.

Doug: This one is from a listener named Michael.

Michael: Hi there. I just wanted to say thanks for all of the great work that you do and for the show. Last year unfortunately, I lost my fiancée, Charlotte, to traffic violence, and of course after that I had a lot of anger about the way cities are designed around cars, to make people drive their cars. And I didn’t really know what to do with that, but then finding the show, it was really wonderful to hear that there are people out there who are doing everything they possibly can to make the roads safer for people like her. So thanks again.

Sarah: Wow. Michael, I am so sorry for your loss. And I’m sorry that Charlotte isn’t in the world anymore because of this system that we have.

Doug: Yeah. I mean, I really appreciate Michael you sending that in. And this is what it is all about. There’s nothing more important than making sure that no more people are harmed or killed on our streets just getting from point A to point B.

Aaron: Most often, the way that we hear about these traffic fatality events is just through, like, a news squib or, like, a statistic. And then when you imagine that, you know, there’s 40,000 plus Michaels out there, even more because every traffic violence victim has, you know, multiple friends and loved ones. I mean, there’s so many Michaels it’s kind of hard to grasp how unbelievably violent the system is.

Doug: So for this next set, I thought it’d be good for us to just dive into very specific ways that people are fighting the war on cars where they live.

Mary: This is Mary from Madison, Wisconsin. Where I live, I’m fighting the war on cars to have more livable streets so my kids can walk or bike to the places they need to go. I’ve contacted my city about unsafe intersections, asked for longer signal timing when it’s too short to cross, asked for leading pedestrian intervals and bike racks in parks. I’ve even asked for bike racks at my doctor’s office. In each of these cases, they made changes because someone spoke up. It’s these little things that keep me going. Keep up the great work.

Aaron: Hello, War on Cars. This is Aaron from Somerville. As a soldier in the war on cars I work personally and luckily enough professionally as well, to ensure that everyone can live in a walkable and bikeable 15-minute city. I recently had a success close to home. After years of being in community meetings for redesigns of streets that I used but didn’t live on, the street my house is on is finally getting redesigned. In these meetings you always hear people say that they live on the street and don’t want to lose parking. Well, I was able to attend the meeting for my street and say that I live on the street and I would love to see less parking and more bike lanes. When the final design came back a few months later, the plan included full separated bike lanes and other improvements for people walking, biking and taking the bus. Best yet, during this meeting there were no complaints about loss of parking. In fact, the main complaint was that bike lanes weren’t wide enough. That gives me hope. Thanks, all.

Aaron: There’s so many Aarons in Somerville.

Doug: [laughs]

Aaron: Did you take my coffee at Diesel Coffee in Davis Square, Aaron, when they called “Aaron?” Someone did that.

Doug: I love these two messages. You know, like Mary was saying, just speaking up and being that squeaky wheel who shows up at the doctor’s office and was like, “Hey, I rode my bike here. Do you think maybe next time there could be a bike rack outside?” I think that those little things go a long way. And Aaron’s message too of just like, “Hey, I live on the street and I want to lose parking.” That’s who I am at my community board meeting, so that one gave me a real laugh. And it’s a great success story.

Sarah: And that is the change, right? There are more people who are speaking up. And every time one of those people speaks up in a meeting, that gives 10 other people the courage to speak up at a meeting. So keep speaking up, folks.

Aaron: And it also shows how easy it can be to be a kind of an activist in this realm. Like, you don’t need to start an organization or go to a bunch of community meetings. It could just be as simple as, like, going to your kid’s school and saying, “Hey, like, it’d be really nice if we had some bike parking out front here instead of these three parking spots for cars.” Like, just being that person can make the change happen. It can be that easy.

Doug: And it’s achievable. Like, I can’t take on the oil companies myself.

Aaron: [laughs] Right.

Doug: But I can get bike parking at my kid’s school.

Aaron: Give it a shot.

Mark: Hey, this is Mark Hedlund from Berkeley, California. I got started in bike advocacy by biking around this beautiful place that we live with my family and my kids, and later started a bike bus to our kids’ school and helped some others get a bike bus going too for their school, which is such a great way to just enjoy biking together. More recently, I’ve gotten involved in, like, city council comments and local debates. I’m fighting really hard right now to get bike lines on a street in North Berkeley called Hopkins Street. The residents there are just absolutely vehement about parking convenience being more important than climate change or kids’ safety. And I just don’t buy it. I think we need to keep our kids safe and keep our planet safe at the same time and have fun while we’re doing it. So I’m doing all I can to fight that battle, and I really appreciate the inspiration that the podcast gives every week.

Doug: So we forgot to mention at the top one of the biggest changes in the last couple of years: the bike bus that Mark mentions here. It’s not just happening in Berkeley, but Portland, Barcelona. There’s one that’s been started up here in Brooklyn. There’s lots more in other cities, and that is, like, one of the most joyous ways to fight the war on cars. I love it.

Aaron: It’s so cool. And that whole point that Mark makes at the end that he’s having fun while doing it, I mean, that’s, like, really important to remind yourself. Because, you know, this stuff can make you angry and upset and agitated and it’s like, you know, try to have fun while you’re doing this.

Doug: Riding bikes? It’s awesome, plain and simple.

Janet: This is Janet from Madison, Wisconsin. I’m fighting the war on cars by running a car share at my co-housing community and by organizing co-housing communities across the country to form car shares. 40 households can easily get by on 10 or fewer cars. The benefits are obvious: fewer raw materials, less parking, and especially a change in the way people live when they move away from owning private cars.

Sarah: I love that because I do think that co-housing is a really exciting thing that’s happening more and more, and incorporating car share into it is just so organic. We did an episode, episode 59, “Housing for People, not Cars“, where I talked to people who live in a co-housing development in Portland, Oregon, Cully Green. And there are so many ways in which this kind of sharing community can build really solid non-car mobility and attitudes. And again, lots of children are being raised in these, and what are they learning? They’re learning that not every family needs to have its own car, and all of that is gonna be paying dividends 10, 20, 30 years down the road in the mindset of people who understand you can live differently and you can move differently and it will feel better and it will be more fun.

Danny: Hi, I’m Danny from Denver. I’ve been a bike commuter my whole adult life, but I recently got an e-bike and encouraged all my friends and family to try it. Many of them went on to buy their own e-bikes, and we now have a friendly competition to see how many car miles we can displace each month. My friends are going above and beyond and they’re beating me most months. But that’s okay because even though I’m losing, it’s a win for the war on cars.

Doug: Yeah, I just love that. And we should mention that Denver has had great success with its e-bike rebate program. They just did a round with, like, 860 vouchers that sold out in 20 minutes. They had thousands and thousands of people jamming the website to claim a few hundred bucks off on an e-bike. So Denver is a real—I don’t know, It’s a real great city. We have a personal connection through the podcast because we did our first live show there, and we love the people of Denver. And I love this idea that even when you’re losing, you’re winning. It kind of gets back to that fun aspect as well.

Eric: Hi, I’m Eric from Phoenix, Arizona. Back in March, 2022, while I was biking to breakfast I got hit by a huge pickup truck in a hit and run and broke my collarbone for three months, meaning that I cannot use my arm at all for three months while it healed. It’s incredibly frustrating that both the police didn’t really help in the investigation, and how much that one collision made me terrified to do things like biking and also impacted my daily life. Since then, I now live in Mexico City. I’m so much happier living somewhere walkable. So I recently got my settlement from Geico for the collision and decided to donate all $30,000 of the settlement to the Parking Reform Network. It’s the best shot that we have on the war on cars. Thank you for your podcast, and know that a better world is possible.

Doug: That’s just—I don’t know what the budget of the Parking Reform Network is, but $30,000 …
Aaron: That’s a lot for them.

Doug: That’s pretty incredible.

Aaron: I spoke with Tony Jordan of the Parking Reform Network not so long ago. And $30,000, that would be a substantial donation for them, I think.

Doug: And we just had Donald Shoup on the podcast. And the Parking Reform Network does amazing work. It really is—like, parking reform is the secret sauce in the war on cars.

Aaron: It’s so interesting that this caller, like, he gets hit by a pickup truck on his bicycle, but then kind of makes the leap to giving this donation to the people who are trying to reform parking. Like, that is a highly …

Sarah: It’s very sophisticated.

Aaron: It’s a very sophisticated and advanced response to his truck collision.

Doug: That’s just the kind of listener that we like to have here at The War on Cars, and that we have many of.

Shivaji: Hi, this is Shivaji Shiva, calling from Birmingham in the UK. Proud motorway city, now working hard to make it easier to get around by bus, bicycle and on foot. We recently had our cabinet member for Transport and Environment talk about Birmingham building a future in which the car will no longer be king. Sadly, plans on the ground aren’t quite keeping up with the ambitious statements from the City Council, but they’re a great treat for volunteers of all sorts helping to try and drive things forward. I’d love to know what message would you send the transport campaigners of Birmingham?

Sarah: First of all, solidarity. Second of all, keep showing up.

Aaron: Yeah. I mean, these can be really long fights. So it’s about persistence. It’s about just sticking with it. And you often have incremental victories along the way that aren’t exactly all that you hoped for, and you really have to have the patience and you have to build the infrastructure so that when you wear out, the next, you know, war on cars foot soldier can sort of take over and keep the fight going.

Bailey: Bailey from Arlington, Virginia, here. I fight the war on cars by helping my neighbors fix up their bikes, host neighborhood slow rides, and I’m on the board of a local bike co-op. I want to change my neighbors’ minds that bikes are for transportation and not just exercise. I hear too many of them say they’d ride bikes too if they have the time. That’s when I go into my elevator speech about how I nearly always ride for transportation. E-bikes are great for crushing hills, short trips barely taking any longer biking than driving. The health benefits far outweigh perceived risks. And above all else, it’s way more fun to bike than drive. It rarely works, so I’m stumped. What else can I do or say to convince them to ride?

Aaron: They have to try it, right? Like, you just somehow have to get them out there once. You know, maybe it’s like a special event, like a special, like, ca- free weekend that you help organize or something like that. Like, people—I feel like once people get on the bike and then see how that changes their relationship to the place they live, how much easier it makes to get places, how much smaller it makes their community, like, then people are hooked.

Doug: I also—you know, he said here that a lot of his neighbors say that they would love to ride bikes if they had the time, but I always feel like I ride bikes because I don’t have a lot of time.

Aaron: [laughs] Exactly.

Doug: It’s the fastest, best, easiest way to get where I’m going. I’m super lazy. I don’t like to leave until the last possible minute. And so I think lead by example as it sounds like Bailey is doing and, you know, accompany someone to the grocery store, and show them how much faster it can be to pick up a couple of bags of groceries on your bike than, like, looking for parking or circling the parking lot. So yeah, I think just keep leading by example is the best advice I can say.

Sarah: Yeah. And I think that idea, you know, if you have the wherewithal, if the opportunity presents itself to take a ride with somebody that is a purposeful ride, not a recreational ride or an exercise ride, but say like, “Okay, would you like to try riding to the store together? Would you like to try riding to work together one day?” Because a lot of people are rightly nervous about it because, you know, they can see that the street isn’t designed for them. Maybe create a mini-bike bus for grown-ups yourself, you know?

Aaron: That’s a great idea.

Doug: Yeah. I mean, I also think that emphasis on fun, to sort of just say this is fun. It’s not gonna pay off right away. It might not even pay off with your friends. But Bailey, I’m sure it’s paying off with people in your community who are seeing you and other people out there. So to kind of throw this to the end a little bit, like, that’s sort of what I think we’re trying to do with the podcast. Like, this is also a lot of fun. Like, we can be kind of angry. It takes a lot of work. Sometimes we curse a lot. But it’s also a lot of fun to talk about these things, to do these things, to hear from people all over the world who are doing things to convince their neighbors to maybe drive a little less. And I’m really grateful for that, and for listeners like Bailey and everybody who sent stuff in today.

Sarah: All right.

Aaron: On to the next hundred episodes.

Sarah: Right. That is it for the 100th episode of The War on Cars. Thanks to everyone who sent in voice messages, and if we didn’t use yours it was really just because we didn’t want this episode to actually be as long as Avatar: The Way of Water.

Aaron: Has anyone seen it yet?

Doug: [laughs] Yeah, I do have to pee. I really have to pee right now.

Sarah: [laughs]

Aaron: If you want to support The War on Cars and get ad-free access to regular episodes as well as exclusive bonus episodes, go to TheWaronCars.org, click “Support Us” and become a Patreon subscriber today.

Doug: We really want to thank all of our Patreon supporters, everybody who sent in messages. We also want to thank our top Patreon supporters: Charley Gee of Human Powered Law in Portland, Oregon, the law office of Vaccaro and White in New York City, Virginia Baker Martin Mignon and Mark Hedlund.

Sarah: Thanks also to Cleverhood. For 15 percent off the best rain gear for walking and cycling, visit Cleverhood.com/waroncars and enter code CLEVERLOVE at Checkout.

Aaron: This episode was recorded by Walter Nordquist at the Brooklyn Podcasting Studio. It was edited by Ali Lemer. Our logo is by Dani Finkel of Crucial D Design, and our theme music is by Nathaniel Goodyear. I’m Aaron Naparstek.

Sarah: I’m Sarah Goodyear.

Doug: I’m Doug Gordon. And this is The War on Cars.