Episode 177: Final Dispatches from Book Tour

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Sarah Goodyear: If one of these cars comes up onto the sidewalk, I’m dead. And then literally 20 yards later, I came upon one of those fairly large cable or phone equipment switch boxes that had been just destroyed, clearly within the previous 24 hours, because there was still lots of car debris everywhere. And it was like, oh yeah, that happened.

Sarah: This is The War on Cars. I’m Sarah Goodyear, and I’m here in the studio with my co-host, Doug Gordon.

Doug: Hello, and welcome home.

Sarah: Yes, welcome home to the oven that is New York City at the moment.

Doug: It’s pretty humid. It’s pretty bad.

Sarah: It’s pretty—but I’m so glad to be home. And honestly, we have been on tour for months and months. We were on tour for about seven months, and we’ve been home for about five weeks now.

Doug: Well, you’ve been home longer than I have. I got home a week and a half ago from two big conferences, which I guess we’ll talk about maybe towards the end of this episode. But I think I calculated that over the course of seven months, I was home for no more than about 45 to 50 days total.

Sarah: That’s about what I came up with. And I will say that it is so great to be here in New York City.

Doug: [sings] In the greatest city in the world….

Sarah: Yeah. I just—I have a renewed appreciation and love for my home, and it feels great to be home.

Doug: Knicks in five, baby!

Sarah: Knicks in five. We’ll talk about it.

Doug: Yes.

Sarah: Anyway, so we are gonna get into all of the good and the bad of what we saw when we were out there on the road in North America. But first, a little business.

Doug: You can find us on Patreon at Patreon.com/thewaroncarspod. And of course, you can order our new book, Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile, wherever books are sold. And you can find out more at LifeAfterCars.com.

Sarah: All right. So basically, we’re gonna keep traveling. We’re gonna keep doing appearances out there, but the book tour as a book tour is wrapped.

Doug: Pretty much.

Sarah: It’s done. Yeah. So we’ve got a bunch of cities that we want to talk about that we saw on the tour. And there’s a lot to say. So …

Doug: Yeah, we spent three whole days in each of these cities. So we are experts on all of them.

Sarah: [laughs] That’s right.

Doug: But no, I think it was a really good way to see a lot of the country in a shorter amount of time, sometimes to go to cities that I don’t think we necessarily would have gone to on our own with our limited money and vacation time. And we really got a flavor for what’s out there. And I think the overall message I might want to send—I’m sort of wrapping up the episode before I even start—is there’s a lot of good stuff happening out there. And we’ll talk about some of the bad stuff that we saw, but I kept saying at every show that we did that doing this tour filled my cup. You know, like, every place we went, somebody is working on something amazing, or there is a really great elected official who totally gets it and is moving the ball forward. Not that there aren’t major headwinds everywhere, but it was really—the only reason I’m sad for the tour to be over is that ends now.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, and the other thing that really struck me as we were out there, we went to so many different kinds of cities. And what struck me is that no matter what kind of city it is, there are people doing this work. And there’s a model for pretty much any kind of place that you might be in, in the cities that we’ve seen. You’re gonna find some echo of your own place in one of these cities out of those 32 or so that we went to.

Doug: Yeah. I mean, I think when you go to a lot of public meetings or whatever, or you hear elected officials talk, they say, “Well, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.” And I’m kind of of the opinion that there sort of is.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Doug: Like, most of these tools work in most cities. They’ll have their own little flavors, their own different textures but, you know, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel in every city. Like, whether it’s transit or bike lanes or public space, like, generally the tools are the same.

Sarah: Yeah. So let’s start with—we did do a bonus a few months back where we talked about some cities that we went to over the winter, and I want to just quickly bring people up to speed on those.

Doug: Right. So we went to Miami, Pittsburgh, Toronto and Phoenix, and we covered that in the bonus, all of those cities. And, you know, again, each of those cities had something pretty amazing about them. Miami had The Underline, which is a really cool reverse High Line. Really enjoyed it. I had some issues with it here and there in terms of some of the connections to it are still in Miami, let’s say.

Sarah: [laughs] Yes.

Doug: You know, lots of big busy roads with big trucks and big cars, but we had a great time there. Pittsburgh, unfortunately it was covered with snow when we were there. However, Bike Pittsburgh, Scott Bricker, shout out to him, showed us a good time. We got a great walking tour of downtown. Lots of good stuff going on there. If they can just start to plow their bike lanes, then I think they’d be a year-round cycling city.

Sarah: Yeah, and also really impressed by the bus network and the reliance of people on the buses there. That’s really something.

Doug: That’s a real bus city.

Sarah: That’s something to build on. Then we were in Toronto, which of course, one of the great cities of North America, and engaged in a years-long battle to try to maintain its bike infrastructure that, you know, they are winning that battle, but it’s a tough one. And there’s a lot of …

Doug: Well, the Premier Doug Ford of Ontario is not a fan of bike lanes, as we all know, but Cycle Toronto is doing some really admirable work to push back against that. And I do think, like in a lot of cities, the outsized attention that a hater like Doug Ford is putting on bike lanes is causing people to say, “Hey, wait a minute, this is what you’re spending your time on? People just getting around safely?” So obviously a lot of challenges. There are too many cars in Toronto, one of those cities where it’s just kind of impossible to get from the airport to the downtown via transit. Correct me if I’m wrong, listeners, but it took me a solid hour and a half in a car—yes, in a car—to get from the airport to the hotel.

Sarah: I came by train, so I didn’t have that problem, but I did have a problem going back to the train, because I was leaving on a Sunday morning and there was no metro at my metro station until 8:27 in the morning and my train left at 8:00am.

Doug: Look, other than you, no one needs to get around in Toronto early on a Sunday morning.

Sarah: No, on a Sunday morning, everybody’s resting. And then sort of like in many ways the opposite kind of place from Toronto, Phoenix.

Doug: Although interestingly, very easy to get to and from the airport via transit in Phoenix.

Sarah: It’s true. It’s true. That was very …

Doug: The SkyTrain and the metro system there, the light rail.

Sarah: That was really nice. But Phoenix, it’s a challenged city, no surprise. It’s a big, sprawling Sun Belt city that actually has some really nice transit in it. And we took that down to the NBA arena and saw what it’s like on a game night. And that area is really great. So a challenged city, but a city, again, where people are trying to make change, and where there is the potential for some really good work to be done. So if you want to hear more about all of those you can go back to a bonus from earlier in the spring and find out more about it. But we’re gonna get to the cities that we haven’t talked about yet. And the first one of those is Atlanta, Georgia.

Doug: Yeah. So when we have been talking about the tour or have been interviewed about different cities, everyone always asks was there a city that surprised you? And both of us, without hesitation, for different reasons, say Atlanta. I lived there briefly after college. You hadn’t been in a very long time and had only really seen kind of the downtown convention area. Atlanta is doing so much in the downtown core, and obviously the Beltline, which we’re gonna talk about, is a major driver of that. What I found really interesting about Atlanta is that what I remember from way back is there was no bike culture to speak of. You know, I’m sure there were delivery cyclists and messengers and things like that, but there wasn’t really like a culture of cycling in the city. And now there is.

Doug: And because it came up really, I think in the last, let’s say five, six, seven years, it’s coincided with the rise of e-bikes. So I don’t think I’ve seen a city where e-bikes were as central to cycling as Atlanta. It’s hot, it’s hilly. That’s part of it, of course, but I think so much of it is because it just all happened in the last, like I said, five to seven years. And the Beltline being a major driver of cycling has been really remarkable. Now the Beltline has its problems.

Sarah: Oh, yeah, it definitely does. And I just want to fully acknowledge those problems, which is it’s been a huge success—when it’s completed—a 22-mile ring road, essentially a bicycle road around the city of Atlanta. And it’s gonna be an amazing thing—and it already is an amazing thing. There’s been a lot of development that has happened along parts of the Beltline that unfortunately has not been done in the most mindful way in terms of displacing existing residents in the area. And as we so often see, some of this infrastructure is coming as part of a package that includes gentrification and displacement.

Doug: In the Virginia Highland area, close to where we were staying, you really felt this. Like, all of the businesses were catering to a specific clientele. You had, like, the pop-up bagels place and more of the, like, TikTok viral ice cream places and a Patagonia store or whatever it was. And a lot of development along there, I don’t really know how much of—or if any of it—is affordable.

Sarah: Yeah.

Doug: And in that area, the Beltline was functionally obsolete as a transportation corridor. Like, I don’t even think you could go for a run there because it was just so crowded.

Sarah: Certainly not at certain times, yeah.

Doug: Granted, it was St. Patrick’s Day weekend while we were there, but what we were told by folks who live there is that it’s pretty crowded on a nice day, on a weekend, on a weekend evening, and you really can’t bike through there. We had a hard time.

Sarah: It’s so crowded, nobody goes there anymore.

Doug: Yeah, exactly.

Sarah: Yeah, but I mean, there’s a lot to celebrate even in that, right? It’s like, obviously the demand is so huge, and I saw so much joy and so much fun intergenerational interaction and just people having a really good time. Atlanta knows how to party. Atlanta knows how to have a good time.

Doug: To be outside.

Sarah: And you just saw that. It was just—it was fun to be out in it. But I then also talked to a young woman who used to live near there and can’t afford to live near there anymore. So that’s really a real problem, and that’s something that the city needs to reckon with. There’s also debates going on over transit that was supposed to be part of the Beltline development, and that the city is now dragging its feet on and reversing some of its intentions.

Doug: Not just dragging its feet but, like, powerful interests are shooting it down.

Sarah: Yeah, and saying we should replace this with autonomous vehicles, some kind of Elon Musk-esque fantasy of autonomous vehicles shuttling people back and forth in an efficient way. It’s not gonna happen, folks.

Doug: I will say the good thing about the Beltline, what I really liked about it was that it shows that building decent infrastructure accelerates the demand for more infrastructure. So I was able to piece together a pretty decent run that connected from the Beltline to Piedmont Park to other parts of the city. And I was running alongside protected bike lanes. I rode a bike through different parts. We got a really nice tour from the folks at Propel ATL. And in some of the less demand-intensive parts of the Beltline, we saw all these great little spurs coming off of it with protected bike lanes and really safe connections. And so when you build something like that that is meant to be a transportation corridor and a recreation corridor, you’re gonna spur demand so that people don’t have to drive to it, so they can just take their e-bikes and bike half a mile to the trail and then get where they’re going. So I think if Atlanta leans into that it can take some of the pressure off of the Beltline in terms of transportation and recreation, like, let people have their fun in the gentrified areas and let it just be a nightmare of, like, Times Square on a Saturday afternoon. That’s fine, but the solution to crowding on the Beltline is gonna be more places where people can just bike and walk without cars. Because clearly, Atlanta has—the demand is there.

Sarah: And yeah, I just want to say that the demand for non-car transportation is clearly there. And we had a wonderful experience riding with the Atlanta Bike Bus to an Atlanta United soccer game in the big stadium downtown—it’s also the NFL stadium. And we rode with these kids through the streets, and it was great. And we got there and they had valet parking. And the woman who was the head of the sustainability program at this enormous stadium …

Doug: Mercedes-Benz Stadium, no less.

Sarah: The Mercedes-Benz Stadium. She was saying that she has been commuting by e-bike for, I think, about a year now. And she said, “I go in the rain.” She’s like, “Anything not to get in my car.” And there’s a lot of that in Atlanta. And what was exciting about her story was she was a car-to-e-bike person. She was not a bike-to-e-bike. She made the transition from a car; it was a replacement for car trips. And I think you really are seeing that in Atlanta. And that’s really exciting because driving in Atlanta sucks so badly. We’ve seen some cities where driving doesn’t suck enough to really get people out of their cars. Well, Atlanta, it sucks about as badly as it can. And so what an opportunity to give people more choices.

Doug: Yeah, I think the joke is that Atlanta is 45 minutes from Atlanta by car. So I think that’s right. And we also went to a Hawks-Nets game, two terrible teams.

Sarah: Yeah.

Doug: Had a great time. But, you know, the stadium is accessible by MARTA. We took MARTA and bus connections there.

Sarah: It’s a little bit of a bleak environment around there. Yeah.

Doug: Yeah. The challenge is the walkability around there. It is technically walkable, but the walkability and the pleasantness of the walk is a really different story. But, you know, I think Atlanta, if it really leans into cycling and e-biking and, you know …

Sarah: Public transit.

Doug: Public transit and those connections, it’s the city to watch.

Sarah: Yeah. Love you, Atlanta. From there, we went just a little short hop to the city of Memphis, Tennessee, and really a huge, huge hop in terms of where this city is in its infrastructure in general and its position in its state, because Memphis is being systematically starved of resources and stripped of representation.

Doug: Let’s just say it’s because of racism.

Sarah: Yes, we can say that.

Doug: Memphis has incredible bones. The downtown is one of the nicest …

Sarah: Gorgeous.

Doug: … you’ll find in the Southeast, if not anywhere in the United States. It’s really got some beautiful old buildings and walkable streets. Obviously, the history, the blues, civil rights. We went to the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel.

Sarah: The Mississippi River!

Doug: The river is right there. Like, there’s so much to speak of there, but it’s one of those cities that clearly has not recovered from COVID. The downtown was pretty empty in the evening, even during the day. Beale Street was busy-ish. Of course, we weren’t there at a peak time. Do you remember how cold it was?

Sarah: Yeah. Well actually, it was hot when we got there. And then this enormous weather system moved through and, and there was a tornado warning.

Doug: So we had to stay in our hotel.

Sarah: And then it was like 20 degrees the next day. It dropped—like, I think the temperature dropped 40 or 50 degrees in one day.

Doug: But there’s so much potential in Memphis because the downtown bones are just incredible. But of course, you know, there isn’t much of a bus system to speak of. The bus system that exists, the frequencies are completely unreliable. We heard story after story of people who would wait for the bus and then have to give up and get in a car because the bus just didn’t show up. After dark, it essentially stops running. Like, it’s just not reliable.

Sarah: I think it stops at 7:00.

Doug: Yeah.

Sarah: And our show there, which was at a bookstore in a strip mall, that was the only show that we’ve done where every person but one drove to the show.

Doug: Yeah. So if you haven’t been to one of our shows, we do an audience survey to find out how people get there. We sort of play it as a joke. Because usually the majority of people, even in Atlanta, bike, walk or take transit. And then we sort of joke when inevitably five people say that they drove there, like, “Okay, you can leave,” and we make a joke about that. This time we didn’t want to joke about that because we had a feeling that the majority of people would drive. But I think even we were surprised that, like, 99 percent of the people there, literally, because there were 100 people in the room, 99 percent of the people drove.

Sarah: And one guy who tried to take the bus was sitting at the bus stop for so long that eventually a friend of his was driving by and said, “Hey, do you want a ride?” And he took the ride because …

Doug: Yeah, not a great bus system when it relies on people feeling bad for you giving you rides.

Sarah: Yeah. But the bright spot in Memphis was so bright. And that was Kelsey Huse, who is known as Memphis Urbanism on the platforms. And she …

Doug: Yeah, force of nature.

Sarah: … is so enthusiastic about that city. She is so out there and involved in everything. She is riding her bike all over the place, and she showed us such a good time. And I wanna give a special shout out to Cxffeeblack, which is a fantastic coffee house and community center out on a little bike lane.

Doug: Yeah, so Cxffeeblack was incredible. Independently owned.

Sarah: So good.

Doug: Great drinks, really good. Talked to the owner for a little bit. It is on the corner of Bowen Avenue and National Street, and National Street was a big wide road and they’ve put a bike lane down the middle, public seating, some plants, grassy areas. So it’s become a real community hub, and it connects two bike paths, basically, two recreational paths. And it’s just a short little stretch. It’s not very long, but it kind of shows that even in a place like Memphis, there is demand. And, you know, if you build it, they will come. We saw people using it. We used it. It was pretty cold there while we were biking around but, you know, it can be done there.

Doug: And Memphis, again, has its challenges. Lots of sprawled out streets. I think technically the most dangerous city for pedestrians in the United States. Florida is the most dangerous state. But I think that Memphis might be the most dangerous city. But people are making improvements there. And I think what’s really cool about National Street and Cxffeeblack is, you know, contra the Beltline example in Atlanta, this is done with some real intentionality to make sure that the businesses there and the community there are brought along and it doesn’t just become a vehicle for gentrification. So I was really impressed by that. We saw some other cool things there as well. The former Sears building that has been turned into a community hub with a library, university space, food hall, that kind of stuff. So that was really great.

Sarah: A nonprofit that helps people get the financial resources and training to purchase and use mopeds for getting to work and doing their business. That was really innovative. And to me, that is the thing that—these are the kinds of things that Memphis has that are exceptional and can be built on, which is that because it is an under-resourced city that is not getting a lot of attention, it’s also a place where there’s a lot of freedom to kind of do more DIY and guerrilla stuff.

Doug: And the community spirit there is just incredible. And, like, sorry, LeBron James but, like, it’s a great city, and it’s not gonna be a better city if the Memphis Grizzlies leave, and if rich people say they don’t like staying in hotels there. Look it up if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

Sarah: Yeah, yeah.

Doug: But, you know, I was so impressed by the people we met there, and it’s a really cool place. And like I said, you know, the civil rights history alone is worth the trip. It’s incredible.

Sarah: Yeah. So much love to Memphis. And so then we took a little break after Memphis, and our next stop was the great city of Chicago, Illinois. And I had essentially never been to Chicago. I’d been through it on a train. I had walked around a couple of neighborhoods. I had never spent the night in Chicago before. And I am just gonna say, I am in love with the city of Chicago. What a place!

Doug: Yeah, I’ve spent a lot of time there because my wife and her family are from the suburbs. What did you love about it?

Sarah: I loved its attitude. I loved its swagger. I loved the architecture, the sense of importance. And what I said was like, this is a city that’s in a flat swamp in a prairie. And you would never know that you’re in a flat place with the incredible architecture that has been built over the last 100-plus years. They have created a city that sort of has its own topography that is really just a majestic urban topography. And there’s so much to look at and see. The food was great, the people were great, the transit was great. I had such a great time.

Doug: Yeah. My big issue with Chicago—and I love it because there’s just so much to do—I think it’s like one, I think when we got there, we joked and said, like, “Ah, it’s good to be in like one of the real cities in America.”

Sarah: Yeah.

Doug: I did a half marathon on the lakeshore and spent some time there biking as well. And, you know, I take for granted that when you’re in Central Park or in Prospect Park, you cannot hear cars. You cannot see them and you definitely cannot hear them. But there was almost no part of the lakeshore where you couldn’t hear Lakeshore Drive.

Sarah: Yeah.

Doug: And there are even some parts where it’s right there and you think, oh my God, one car comes off of that at high speed, I’m dead. And I know there are plans to rethink Lakeshore Drive. I think the city should pretty much ban cars from at least half of it, if not all of it. It’s way over capacity for most of the time, save for rush hours. But you’ve got this gem of a park. It’s a really beautiful park, and there’s just parking everywhere and a high-speed highway right next to it, and you just hear it. And even with my headphones in, I had to turn them way up. So that, you know, it’s sort of like we always say, cities aren’t loud, cars are loud. There’s no better example than just being in this beautiful park along Lake Michigan with lovely views of the skyline and the lake, and all you can hear are cars.

Sarah: Yeah. And actually, I went out to Wicker Park because everybody said this is a great neighborhood to get a sense of what one type of neighborhood is like in Chicago. So I went out there and it was beautiful. The residential streets are so lovely, and great transit. And then what was disturbing to me was the streets that have stores and restaurants on them, the commercial streets, are huge four- to six-lane, two-way traffic sewers. And you have these cute little boutiques and restaurants and bars and whatnot, but a lot of the time they’re right next to these really big scary roads. And it just—again, it just degrades the quality of the experience pretty dramatically of trying to be browsing along a street, but there’s high-speed traffic going in both directions right next to you. It just doesn’t feel relaxing.

Sarah: And at one point I was walking along this one street, I forget which one, and I was like, man, if one of—just like you say, if one of these cars comes up onto the sidewalk, I’m dead. And they were all going really fast, and there was no sense of protection from them in any way. And then literally 20 yards later, I came upon one of those fairly large cable or phone equipment switchboxes that had been just destroyed, clearly within the previous 24 hours because there were still lots of car debris everywhere. And it was like, oh yeah, that happened. That car came up onto the sidewalk. And so yeah, there’s way too many cars in Chicago.

Doug: Yeah. And Michigan Avenue, for example, major tourist destination, makes Fifth Avenue in New York look like a village street. You know, it’s super wide. There’s just far too many cars. Like, some of the sidewalks are wide, but not wide enough. You know, every city thinks they don’t have enough space for bike lanes and bus lanes and more pedestrian space, but Chicago has plenty. And if we get out of our federal nightmare, I think Chicago should be the next candidate city for congestion pricing, because it really could use fewer cars. The transit coverage, the L, is pretty great. You know, I know it could be better but, you know, great bus service, great train service overall. We had the acting president of the CTA, Nora Leerhsen, as a guest at our show. And then remember we were running for the bus?

Sarah: Yes.

Doug: To get back to our hotel after the show. And guess who was on it? Nora Leerhsen. So she walks the walk and buses the bus, I guess.

Sarah: She buses the bus, yeah.

Doug: And she was—we rode back with her. She spoke to the bus operator and really makes a point of riding transit. So what Chicago has going for it also, just great people. She is an incredible leader, and she really cares about transit and making it better and understands that the L is what makes Chicago possible. It’s what makes Chicago Chicago, the same way that the subway makes New York, New York. So Chicago is just a great city. I love it.

Sarah: Yeah. But it needs to dial back on the car situation pretty dramatically. And yes, congestion pricing will come there. And then we went up the lake just a little bit to Evanston, which is a suburb of Chicago. I got there on the L. It was really a cool place to be. And there the lakefront is not cut off by a big road, and you can just sort of walk through a neighborhood up to the lake, which is …

Doug: Yeah, a beautiful park along Lake Michigan.

Sarah: … a spectacular thing to be able to do.

Doug: And the Northwestern campus.

Sarah: And the Northwestern campus.

Doug: So we went to the Transportation Library, which if you do not follow Rachel Cole on social media, you should. She is the head of the Northwestern University Transportation Library. She posts all of these random catalogs and studies with incredible artwork on their covers from a period of time in American transportation history when not everything was digital. And look up the watermelon truck.

Sarah: Yeah, we saw some great stuff.

Doug: She really rolled out the red carpet for us, and put out some great New York-related transportation stuff she was working on. A really cool thing about airlines and first-class menus and things like that. So, like, an incredible resource. If you’re ever there working on a project or writing a book or just curious, you should try to go. It’s a really great place. And Rachel is amazing, has one of the coolest library jobs I can imagine in the country.

Sarah: That was a really special, special moment.

Doug: But Evanston’s great. You know, like, it is covered by the L. It is covered by Metra, which is the commuter rail. And of course it has Northwestern there. So, you know, it has that college campus vibe with, like, lots of people walking, lots of people biking. But they have built some really good infrastructure, and it kind of shows what a mid-sized city and even a kind of more suburban feel place can do with cycling and good transit service. So, you know, not everything has to be New York, Chicago, even Atlanta. It can be like a good old streetcar suburb, like Evanston. And we should lean back into that kind of stuff.

Sarah: So then after that, we went—we fled the country briefly and went to Montreal. And Montreal, I’m gonna just say it, is probably my favorite city …

Doug: Greatest city in North America.

Sarah: … that I went to, except for New York.

Doug: Well, yeah. Exactly.

Sarah: Yes. [laughs]

Doug: I don’t consider New York a city, it’s just home. Yeah, exactly.

Sarah: I haven’t been to Mexico City either, so I gotta hedge that, but yeah, Montreal, just what a dreamy city. And we were invited by some professors at McGill University who really rolled out the red carpet for us there. And we got to meet and talk with a lot of really interesting people who are doing work at McGill, research at McGill.

Doug: Future planners of North America, for sure. Yeah.

Sarah: Really cool. And then we did a great Q&A with Vélo Québec at a local cafe that was really cute and fun. And we went out for drinks afterward. And it’s just a joyful place to be. It’s got incredible street life. It’s got so many cool places to hang out. The park is incredible. I went up to the top of the mountain and sat there, and it’s completely quiet and it’s just, wow, what an incredible city.

Doug: Yeah. And I hadn’t been there in about 12 years. And the last time I was there, you know, the bike infrastructure was very good, but some of it was rolled up during the winter. And now they’re not doing that. And so I saw a lot of new permanent bike lanes in Mile End and elsewhere in the Plateau. It’s a 365-day-a-year cycling city, even though it gets very cold and very snowy, obviously. And of course, when we were there, it was just on kind of the shoulder season of the seasons and the cold. There was still a little snow. I saw tons of kids biking, tons of families. And it’s great. So, you know, again, another one of those myth-busting cities where it’s hilly, it’s cold or rainy or snowy, and people are getting around and they just know what to do. And yeah, it has the kind of best of the best of European attitudes, and they’re Canadian, so they’re nice. So I like that part as well. Big shout out, I think we need to mention Paku, who gave us these wonderful illustrations. We might put something up on social media about all the stuff people gave us along the way, but I just wanted to shout that out because he made these beautiful illustrations for both of us.

Sarah: Yeah. And I also want to say that they’re dealing with some real reactionary stuff there in Montreal, not unlike some of the things they’re dealing with in Toronto. It’s not as extreme, but the current mayor is not as pro-bike as …

Doug: No, the former mayor, Val Plante, got a lot of credit for advancing cycling. And part of the reason those bike lanes are there now year-round is because of her and her team and a lot of the people that we met while we were there. I guess the best you can say for Montreal right now is that as reactionary as the current government is, they at least recognize rolling stuff back would be very bad politics. So they might not be going forward as quickly as they were before, but I think we’ve turned a corner in terms of most of the politics where people understand that removing stuff and being actively anti-bike lane in a city like Montreal is bad politics.

Sarah: Yeah, and the advocates there are extremely on it, and extremely organized.

Doug: Well, it’s all these folks who used to work for Val Plante or with Projet Montreal who are all rock stars, and now they are sort of scattered into—they’re like the Rebel Alliance.

Sarah: Yes.

Doug: They’ve sort of scattered to the different systems in the galaxy, and are working on little things here and there. And they’re all brilliant, and that’s sort of what you need.

Sarah: So while l’âge d’or, or the golden age of Montreal cycling, may be a little bit behind us, I believe that there will be a new golden age that will come in the future. And also, we saw an incredible hockey game there. I don’t want to not say that we had an incredible time watching the Montreal Canadiens. And we saw Cole Caufield, who’s one of the Canadiens’ stars, score his 50th goal of the season. And the joy in the building probably could be felt for hundreds of miles around. It was rocking so hard.

Doug: I’ve never experienced a louder arena for any type of sport in my life. It was incredible. I was instantly turned into a Habs fan.

Sarah: Yeah.

Doug: Yeah, it was great.

Sarah: Go Habs, go, and go Montreal, go, because all the good things are gonna come to you.

Doug: I have a special guest back with me in the studio. This is your third or fourth appearance on the podcast?

Zeb Gordon: Probably, yeah.

Doug: What’s your name?

Zeb Gordon: Zeb Gordon.

Doug: Oh, I should know that because you’re my son. How old are you now?

Zeb Gordon: I’m 13.

Doug: It’s kind of wild that you’ve been doing this since 2018, since you were really little.

Zeb Gordon: Yeah.

Doug: Okay, so we’re here to talk about Cleverhood. We both took our Cleverhood Rover Rain Capes. Do you remember where?

Zeb Gordon: Disney World.

Doug: To Disney World, because we were traveling together, because I’ve been on book tour, and what does a guilty father do?

Zeb Gordon: They take you to Disney World.

Doug: They take you to Disney World when they’ve been away. What I remember about that trip was it really only rained, like, once while we were there. I had my, like, park bag because I’m a Disney adult. You’re shaking your head. Why are you shaking your head?

Zeb Gordon: Because you’re just—you have the gear, the Mickey bag.

Doug: I have the gear. I did take our Cleverhoods, because the cool thing about them was that they stuffed down so small into that bag that we could walk around all day, and you probably didn’t even know I had them until I pulled it out.

Zeb Gordon: Yeah.

Doug: What do you like about the Cleverhood?

Zeb Gordon: They’re good for biking. Like, when we did the Five Borough.

Doug: Right.

Zeb Gordon: When it was raining a lot.

Doug: We did the Five Borough Bike Tour, and it started raining towards the tail end. It really started. And what did we do?

Zeb Gordon: And we just put them on, and they were really good with stuff for the thumbs.

Doug: Right. They have thumb loops so that when you’re holding your handlebars, the cape doesn’t fly around. And the hood fits right under your helmet so it doesn’t fly away. So that’s good. And what color was yours?

Zeb Gordon: Yellow.

Doug: I think I said this last time you were here. Part of podcasting is asking questions you know the answer to, and I feel like that’s similar to parenting. Don’t you agree? I’m always asking questions, and you’re like …

Zeb Gordon: You know what the answer is.

Doug: So would you recommend the Cleverhood to other kids?

Zeb Gordon: Yeah.

Doug: And to parents?

Zeb Gordon: Yeah.

Doug: Traveling?

Zeb Gordon: Yeah.

Doug: For riding bikes?

Zeb Gordon: Yeah, they’re good. They’re comfortable. They’re for everything.

Doug: You’re a lot less talkative than you were when you were little. Does that happen when you turn 13?

Zeb Gordon: I don’t know. I’ve been 13 for, like, four months.

Doug: All right, well, you’ll tell me at the end of your time as a 13 year old. Maybe when you’re 14, you’ll talk more. Who knows? But did you know, Zeb, that listeners of The War on Cars can save 15 percent off of the best rain gear for cycling and walking and traveling and riding the Five Borough Bike Tour and going to Disney World with code TRAVELWITHME now through the end of the month of June. Did you know that?

Zeb Gordon: I did not.

Doug: You did know that because you were sitting here while I was recording the rest of this episode.

Zeb Gordon: Oh, I didn’t know that until then.

Doug: Oh, because you had your earbuds in and you were just playing on your tablet. Okay, well, go to Cleverhood.com/waroncars and enter code TRAVELWITHME and you’ll save 15 percent.

Zeb Gordon: I don’t think we really need to save 15 percent off on Cleverhoods. We have so many now.

Doug: Oh, we don’t need to save 15 percent off, because Susan very nicely sent you one or two. Yes. But everybody else can go to Cleverhood.com/waroncars.

Doug: We should briefly mention Cambridge. We weren’t there for very long. We were at the Harvard Graduate School of Design for a presentation. And that was great. Cambridge, very famously, they have this 2019 ordinance where anytime a street is repaved or dug up for utility work, when it goes back, the city has to protect the bicycle infrastructure or some type of bicycle infrastructure. And if they don’t, they have to justify why not, which is a real reversal of usually how it works, where you have to justify the bike infrastructure and its need to exist. And as a result, you can bike pretty much everywhere. It’s probably the most transformed city in the last four or five years that I’ve experienced.

Doug: I was there another time visiting family as well. And you really can bike everywhere, and with the Blue Bikes, the bike share system, it’s pretty easy to get around. You know, I know on the Boston side of the Charles River, people are not so thrilled with Michelle Wu right now. Feels like things are stagnating there for various political reasons. But there’s a lot going on. And again, I just think the politics have changed so much because the infrastructure has changed. And I think if you want to change the culture of cycling, you have to change the infrastructure. And Cambridge is a really good example of how that’s happened.

Sarah: Yeah, I think it’s a real model that people could look to because it does—once you get past the initial political hurdle of getting the ordinance passed, then it takes politics out of infrastructure. And politics shouldn’t be in infrastructure. It shouldn’t be a political battle to make infrastructure safe. That should just be the norm.

Doug: Yeah, they’re treating safe infrastructure like running water, sewage, electricity. Like, it’s just another utility essentially. And like you said, it takes the politics out. Some of the elected officials we spoke to who were at our show basically said, like, it allows them to just focus on other stuff. And then when people call and complain, they can say, well, this is the law. This is what we’re doing. We’re following the law. That’s what you should do.

Sarah: So you were in Orlando as well?

Doug: Yes. Orlando Bike Coalition. Shout out to Beth Resta and Mike down there. I was down for another one of my Disney races, and did a little side trip for an event into Orlando at a brewery. And it was great. We had a nice crowd at a brewery there. And I want to shout out Anna Eskamani. She’s running for Orlando mayor, hopefully will be the next Orlando mayor. The fact that, for example, she showed up to an event for a book called Life After Cars is a good sign that Orlando is moving in the right direction. Obviously, it has its challenges with the highway cutting right through the middle of the city and all the other big roads. But I’d never really spent a lot of time in downtown Orlando, and I got there early before the event, so I was able to walk around, went to a coffee shop, biked around a little bit. They’ve got Lime and all of the different dockless stuff. And they’re building some really good bike infrastructure there, and it’s a really nice downtown with some historic neighborhoods, brick streets. The tree cover in some of those neighborhoods is really beautiful. It’s got that old sort of Southern vibe, and it’s great. You know, and they are building more infill housing in the downtown, so more people will be living there. Orlando has a lot going for it. Obviously, as you get out of the city and farther out, you just get into just Florida sprawl, and that’s terrible.

Sarah: Right.

Doug: But, you know, I think again, if Orlando really leans into what made the city really nice to begin with and what will make it nice: density, more walkability. It’s great. So yeah, we had a really nice time there. A good group of people came out. Vote for Anna Eskamani for mayor.

Sarah: [laughs] Okay. And so our next big stop on the tour was another one of these places that I didn’t really know what to expect. It was a place I hadn’t been to before and sort of a counterintuitive place maybe for The War on Cars, Life After Cars, but they really did a great job of bringing us out there. And that was Columbus, Ohio.

Doug: Yeah, I love Columbus.

Sarah: I want to give a shout out to Transit Columbus. We were originally supposed to go there in January. And they had done this incredible series of memes leading up to our appearance. And then it had to get moved because there was a big snowstorm and we couldn’t go. And then we went in April, and they did another series of just absolutely fantastic memes. Transit Columbus, so creative, such a great organization. Stevie Pasamonte, just one of the people that really stood out for us on this tour. And so Columbus, I just think generic Midwestern city. That doesn’t—being the person that I am, I don’t have a lot of experience with those kinds of places.

Doug: Yeah, I was gonna say, we’re gonna sound very like New York snobbies here.

Sarah: No, I don’t want to sound snobby. I really am sort of saying that I’m ignorant. I’m confessing my own ignorance.

Doug: That’s good. The opposite.

Sarah: It’s exactly the opposite.

Doug: Dumb New Yorker.

Sarah. Like, I’m a dumb New Yorker. Exactly.

Doug: Yeah, Columbus again, it has a lot going for it. You know, the bus system could be better. Everybody complained about it, but we actually didn’t have a bad experience on it. The bus kept showing up within, like, a minute or two of us arriving at stops.

Sarah: I mean, we were staying on a major bus route, so that was really helpful?

Doug: We were just down from Ohio State. Shout out to Harvey Miller there for also showing us good time and hosting us at The Ohio State University. Yeah, and, you know, the downtown to Ohio State, it’s a pretty easy trip. I took a pretty nice bike ride around. They’ve got their sports arena area where the soccer stadium is, the minor league baseball team is, and where the Blue Jackets play as well for the NHL. So, like, that’s all a sort of campus area that’s being built out. And actually, I will say it was one of the few downtowns that felt active. Like, there were a lot of people. You know, it’s the capital, so you have state government, you have the university, so you have education. So you have two recession-proof industries.

Sarah: Healthcare, I think there’s a lot of healthcare.

Doug: And healthcare is big there as well. Insurance is big there. So I really liked Columbus a lot. They’ve—we got to see a tour of the downtown and some of the plans for the next five to ten years. They are building new protected bicycle infrastructure in the downtown. There wasn’t much. It was maybe the sharrow capital of our tour, as far as when we got there, but they are building some new protected infrastructure. The area along the river was really beautiful and filled in and turned into a beautiful park. So, you know, one of the more livable cities I felt that we visited. I went to German Village, which is a great area.

Sarah: Oh yeah, German Village was beautiful.

Doug: Yeah, one of the nicer neighborhoods that I experienced.

Sarah: Although I hear that they have some problems with a little NIMBYism there. But, you know, what really struck me about Columbus, especially in contrast to a couple of the other cities that we’ve talked about, is that it is a rapidly growing city. It is a booming city, and there’s a lot of investment going into the city right now. And what’s exciting to me about it is that there are people who seem to have the ear of the powerful folks in town who are fighting to make sure that as this wave of growth hits Columbus, that active transportation and transit are part of the plan. And we were invited to speak to the Columbus Metropolitan Club, which was, I would say, the most sort of traditional and establishment.

Doug: Yeah, sort of like a chamber of commerce, business-based organization, cultural organization as well.

Sarah: And we had a very receptive audience there of business leaders and elected officials and community leaders. And it really felt like a city where there is—and this is my New Yorker positive stereotype of the Midwest—that there’s sort of a civic pride and an organized civic spirit that is trying to make this a better place in a very earnest kind of way. And I was really moved by that, and really felt like the combination of growing prosperity, smart people, and this really organized approach to development might mean that Columbus could really make some huge strides in the next 10 years.

Doug: Yeah, the challenge with Columbus is that if you look at it on a map, it’s incredibly sprawled out. It’s huge. We experienced a small slice of it.

Sarah: A tiny part of it.

Doug: But it’s sort of like if you took a jigsaw puzzle and just threw the pieces on the floor, that’s a map of the city of Columbus. And sort of like you were saying before, it’s one of those cities where it’s too easy to drive, and so the incentives to make things better are a little more challenging because people don’t see, oh, I could turn a 45-minute drive into a 25-minute bike commute, or I could get on the bus and it would be faster and easier. So, you know, like they’re just—the urgency isn’t there like it is in Atlanta or other places. But like you said, the movement to move things forward is there. And because, unlike a lot of Midwestern cities or just cities in general, the population is growing, there’s a real opportunity to make it so much better. And it’s got all these great, beautiful neighborhoods. We were in the Short North, which is a really cool area, easy for walking around, lots of things to see and do.

Sarah: Italian Village.

Doug: Italian Village, beautiful homes, lots of nice little parks. The German Village bookstore that we were in, that was one of the best bookstores. It was like something out of a Harry Potter story. Sorry. I mean, you know, the good parts of Harry Potter.

Sarah: [laughs] The good parts.

Doug: Yeah. You know, there’s just a lot going for it. And again, being a university town, like, there’s demand for cycling and walking.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s a cool place. From there, we did a quick stop in Jersey City, New Jersey, right across the river. That was a day trip for us.

Doug: That was pretty easy. Yeah. Took the PATH.

Sarah: Yeah. And, you know, what a wonderful place Jersey City is turning into.

Doug: And a real Vision Zero city. They’ve not had a death on city-operated roads, I think, in five or six years.

Sarah: Yeah. And the adjacent city, Hoboken, which we also toured on bike, also Vision Zero. And I think they’ve gone even longer without a traffic death. So these are some of the most densely populated places in the United States of America. And there is a really conscious effort to make a better environment for people on bicycles. Pedestrianized streets and other amenities, and obviously a great transit network that deserves to be greater.

Doug: And New York City DOT, if you’re listening, daylighting. A lot of the success in Hoboken and Jersey City has come from daylighting intersections with little more than paint and plastic in most places. And that has really made things a lot safer. So it can be done.

Sarah: And, you know, as we were riding around, we did a fairly big ride around and saw a lot of different parts of Jersey City and Hoboken. I will say the driver culture in New Jersey is not good. Drivers are not great. And that’s something, of course, that we experience every day here in New York. So many times when you have a bad experience with a driver in the city of New York, I’m just gonna say it, you look down and it’s Jersey plates.

Doug: I actually, on my way to meet everybody, I was with a couple of the guys who were showing us around, and we got harassed by a driver who rolled down—so we were on a one-lane street, and we were taking the lane. There were three or four of us. And this driver was really angry behind us, like, to the point where we’re like, this could get violent fast. And at the intersection, at the red light, he rolled down his window and started yelling at us and started saying things like, “You guys are ruining the city! Go back—” something like “Go back to where you come from.” Now, my grandfather was born in Jersey City, so that’s what I told him. Never mind that I don’t actually live in Jersey City. I just was like, “Uh, my grandfather was born here, so thanks.” And I don’t normally confront drivers, but this guy was just like—it was too much. And I was with other people, so I was like, if something happens …

Sarah: And also, that is a really good dunk.

Doug: Yeah. Oh no, wait, the best part was he was like, “Oh, look at these Mickey Mouse Club losers” or something like that. And I had my—I have, like, a sling bag that has a Mickey Mouse pattern on it. I was like, “Yep, you got me, man. You got me. Total Disney adult right here.”

Sarah: That’s great.

Doug: So I was just sort of yes-anding this guy. But yeah, so yes, Jersey drivers in Jersey.

Sarah: It’s tough. And that is something that I do think that over time, infrastructure helps. But it’s a very challenging environment, and it’s a dense and hotly contested environment. It’s challenging in different ways than someplace like Phoenix, where there’s just so much space, and drivers are just going eight trillion miles an hour all the time. It’s a different thing where drivers often are stuck and angry and …

Doug: And jealous because the bikes can go everywhere.

Sarah: Right, because we’re having more fun than they are. But anyway, thank you, Jersey City. That was a really fun night.

Doug: All right. And then speaking of out-of-state plates that you often see in New York City, we were in Philadelphia.

Sarah: Yes.

Doug: I gotta say, one of the best cities in the United States.

Sarah: By a country mile. I mean, it is—it is just so much fun. And we had the great joy and privilege of going on one of the Wednesday night bike rides.

Doug: Yeah. Wednesday night rides. Amazing.

Sarah: Oh my God.

Doug: We had beautiful weather. That certainly helped. But the crowd there was really great. At a certain point, it met up with other rides that were happening along the Schuylkill River, and we got to experience some of the new infrastructure and the running and biking path over there. But, you know, Center City, of course, and other neighborhoods, it’s pretty dense and very walkable and very bikeable. So even in places where there weren’t bike lanes, it felt okay. Now, I know that some of the bike lanes that they have in Center City were put in because people died. So I don’t want to sugarcoat it, but talk about a city with perhaps the most potential to be the most bikeable city in the country, it’s Philly.

Sarah: Yeah. And what really struck me was on some of the narrower residential streets that we traveled through, you know, there aren’t bike lanes, but it’s more of kind of a bike boulevard potential feeling where—or a bike street kind of potential, because these are narrow streets. They don’t see a lot of car traffic. And there are a lot of people out on the street. We saw a lot of kids riding bikes for recreation, just in their neighborhoods.

Doug: And obviously a big university town with lots of different colleges.

Sarah: I will say also that I found drivers there to be pretty respectful a lot of the time.

Doug: That would be news to all the people listening in Philly, I would imagine. But yeah.

Sarah: I know. But when we were going through like four-way stops in some of these residential neighborhoods, and we were taking a while to get through because there was a lot of people, there was no honking, there was no yelling, there was no sense of pressure from the drivers. I just want to—I do want to push back against the stereotype of Philadelphia being a sort of place where everything is so tough and whatever. Okay, yes, it’s very tough. I’m certainly not gonna contest that.

Doug: But they’re having a good time there, you know?

Sarah: But there’s also a lot of kindness on the street and a lot of warmth.

Doug: City of Brotherly Love and all that.

Sarah: It has a warm feeling to it.

Doug: Yeah, I really liked Philly. Obviously, SEPTA is having its challenges from within and without. Certainly the state legislature is pretty hostile to public transit in the state in general.

Sarah: Did we mention racism?

Doug: Exactly. And we did take it. It’s a really easy way to get around. And look, I think much like Chicago, smoking is a big issue there.

Sarah: Yeah, smoking cigarettes.

Doug: It’s very interesting, because it’s not a big issue in New York City on the subway. I mean, every now and then, but to the degree of, like, in Chicago and Philly, you would get on trains and even if someone wasn’t smoking, you smelled cigarette smoke. I don’t experience that here in the city, in New York. Yeah, I really like Philly a lot. And obviously, the history there is just incredible.

Sarah: Then I made I guess what is sort of the last official book tour kind of journey up to the state of Maine, where I lived for eight years. And that was a great trip down memory lane for me. I was invited by the Build Maine Conference, which is a really interesting conference that’s been going on for a few years that is dedicated to really just building Maine, and trying to make a Maine that is livable. Portland has become unaffordable for most Mainers. And talk about gentrification. It’s really gentrification of an entire city where people who grew up in that city are being forced out. The rents are just insane, especially as someone who used to live there. I was hearing, you know, rents for, like, on Congress Street downtown where you used to be able to rent an apartment for $500 a month, it now costs like $3,000 to $4,000 a month. You don’t earn those salaries in Maine. That’s for people who are digital nomads or other kinds of people who …

Doug: Who fled during COVID from Boston or whatever.

Sarah: Exactly. And it’s a real problem. However, Portland is looking really good in a lot of ways. And there is a great movement to make the streets safer. There are—there’s not really protected bike infrastructure that much, but there is a strong movement trying to create a bike culture that is safer and more inclusive. They’ve also had a great victory in stopping highway expansion near the city. And so, you know, I think that it’s early days in Maine. They’re really just trying to get more housing. It’s a huge, huge issue for the state of Maine, for Portland.

Sarah: Then I went up to—the Build Maine conference, was actually in Skowhegan, Maine, which is the smallest place that we’ve been on on the book tour. It’s a town of about 8,600 people. It’s a logging town, mill town, on the Kennebec River. It’s a spectacular location. There are these beautiful gorges, these beautiful steep stone gorges with falls. And they’re gonna be developing that whole area as a water park, like a canoeing and kayaking, extreme sport outdoor area. That’s really cool.

Sarah: But I talked to people there about something that we frequently get asked on the podcast, which is: What about rural areas? What about small towns and especially rural areas? And I spoke to advocates there who are doing really interesting things with shared transportation for people in rural areas, ways to have people be able to help their neighbors to get to medical appointments or whatever, because a lot of the towns in Maine—Maine is also one of the oldest states, if not the oldest state in the nation. And so there are a lot of people who are stranded in rural areas without good transportation. It’s very dangerous driving in the winter. And, you know, there need to be creative solutions. And there are advocates on the ground there trying to figure out how to get people where they’re going in creative ways. And yeah, that includes carpooling with neighbors, or very micro transit solutions for people that will get them to healthcare, that will get them to the city. And all of that is really happening.

Sarah: And I have to say, I was really impressed by the amount of energy there was in Maine to improve a place that is incredibly car-dependent. That’s what radicalized me is moving to Maine, because for the first time in my life, I couldn’t do anything without a car. And so it’s really exciting to me to see that there are people who are working hard to create options and freedom for people living there. Because it’s a great state. It’s one of the great states in the country in terms of natural beauty and unspoiled natural resources.

Sarah: And the way to keep those natural resources unspoiled is to do dense development in the areas of the state that have already been developed and not allow sprawl to become a thing. And that’s a real—it’s a real problem with Portland because the affordability on the peninsula of Portland is so poor that you are having people sprawling out from Portland. And so, you know, it’s a place where we could cut that off before it fully happens. And so I’m excited to see.

Sarah: Another thing about Maine for people who don’t know, the Maine Turnpike Authority—which is a bad thing, but the Maine Turnpike does not allow billboards on it. So when you’re coming out of the rest of New England and you enter Maine, it’s a really wonderful breath of fresh air.

Doug: You know when you’ve crossed the border from New Hampshire into Maine just by the lack of billboards. I remember that as a kid.

Sarah: Yeah. And it’s just, it’s beautiful. It’s green. It’s a place where people really know they have something special in the natural world. And once again, the way we protect the natural world is by making our cities and towns denser and more affordable and more livable. And that’s how you preserve those things which we need to preserve every inch that we have that is green and beautiful like that.

Doug: So that would be a great place to wrap up this episode, which, you know, it’s been a bit rambly, but we should briefly mention that these were not official book tour stops, but I was at the VeloCity conference in Rimini, Italy. And we’ll have a few episodes coming out of that. Rimini has been doing a lot. They’ve doubled their mode share in 10 years. The mayor really had leaned into cycling. It’s a resort town. It’s kind of got this nightclub vibe reputation. I kind of describe it like if the Hamptons and the Jersey Shore had an Italian baby.

Sarah: [laughs]

Doug: And it’s a really cool place with a very beautiful, historic, medieval center. It’s got the oldest triumphal arch in maybe all of Italy. And the Tiberius Bridge, which is 2,000 years old and allowed cars on it until, like, 2018, which is crazy. But, you know, it had a really cool cycling culture, a lot of older people. It’s much—it’s sort of like as Italian beach towns go, it’s a little older demographically. But their mayor has really leaned into cycling. And so yeah, we’ll bring you some episodes from that conference.

Doug: And then I was—before that, I was in Copenhagen for the Copenhagen Cycling Summit, a last-minute invitation. Quick shout out to Henrik Lundorff with the city of Copenhagen for inviting me. I gotta say, I love Copenhagen. It is an amazing city, and of course is held up as, like, the place that is the model for a lot of American cities, North American cities, other car-dependent places, because it has really wide streets, bike lanes. 

Sarah: I sense a “but” coming.

Doug: Yes. I was last there about 13 years ago. And the kind of disappointing thing about going back to Copenhagen after all that time is I didn’t see a lot of change in all of that time. So you go to the Netherlands—and I know there’s a real rivalry between these two places. And there’s just constant iteration on the bike lanes and the bike infrastructure. You go to a city like Utrecht, and they really are just building the most incredible stuff you’ll ever see.

Doug: I didn’t see a whole lot of new infrastructure. There are a couple bridges that weren’t there the last time I was there, but in terms of the quality of the infrastructure—again, I just want to say, I would kill to have what they have in Copenhagen here in New York right now. But I hadn’t—I didn’t see a lot that had changed. And in fact, New York City is building wider bike lanes in Midtown on Sixth Avenue, on Eighth Avenue, than I saw in some parts of Copenhagen. So I think Copenhagen is sort of stagnating a little bit. I did talk to some folks in city government who felt that that was correct, my assessment was correct, that like they might be just sort of resting on their laurels. In fact, cycling among children has actually gone down. Helmet use is up. I saw a lot more helmets there.

Sarah: Uh-huh.

Doug: Because there’s a sense that it’s getting a little more dangerous, which was unusual because Copenhagen, like, that’s the big thing, right? It was originally held up as this place where, like, look at these people in their normal clothes and, you know, all these attractive Northern Europeans, like, biking around, right?

Sarah: Yes.

Doug: And so again, I don’t want to knock it because I, again, would kill to have anything a tenth as good as what they have going on in Copenhagen. The amount of bikes parked everywhere, the social trust, you know, a lot of people just use their cafe locks, the rear wheel locks, and do not lock their bikes to something. So like there’s a high level of social trust.

Doug: I did bike to the town of Hellerup, which is north of the city, and took the long way back. And it took me through some really sprawled out areas past gas stations and sort of more strip mall, single-family home developments. And there were wide bike lanes on the side of multi-lane arterial roads. Again, would kill to have that here in the US. But I was like, huh! You know, like, you gotta keep moving forward, and this work is never done. And so, also being in Copenhagen during Game four and Game five of the Knicks championship, and then during the parade, the victory parade during the Canyon of Heroes, which my son skipped school to go see, I will say the FOMO was real. It made me appreciate what we have going on here in New York, especially with our political leadership pushing things forward in the way that they’re doing.

Doug: And it made me—this tour, including the European leg, we’ve joked in the very first episode of this podcast, I think we joked about Copenhagen syndrome?

Sarah: Yes.

Doug: That feeling where you come back from a place that has functional transit and safe streets and you just—my example was like, I took the Long Island Railroad back from the airport, and the seat was held together with duct tape on that trip back in 2018. You get this sort of depression that doesn’t go away for weeks. I didn’t feel that this time. I certainly felt energized to fix things after being in Copenhagen and seeing how good things are, but I was like, ah, we got a good thing going here in New York. It can be so much better. But I think the big takeaway from this tour was every city that we went to has something awesome. Every city has something redeeming about it, whether it’s the people who are pushing to make it better, or a piece of infrastructure, or the food and the culture, or whatever it is. We saw all of it. But no city has everything, except for New York.

Doug: And so I’m gonna be the New York snob that I think I sometimes accuse you of being, but both of us are that at different times. And it was like, it made me really appreciate coming home and calling this place home.

Sarah: Yeah.

Doug: And I think it’s a lesson for all of the cities that we’re in as we face this, like, horrible federal government. America is worth fighting for. It’s a great place. There are lots of great cities. Like I said, every city’s got something great about it. It’s a big, diverse, wonderful country made better by its big diversity. And we gotta lean into that. We gotta embrace it, and we gotta fight for it. I think we’ve talked about on the show before that at its heart, the war on cars is a defense of cities and what cities can be and do and what they represent. Not just diversity, but just democracy and kindness and community. And that’s what we saw in every city. So keep fighting, America. Let’s go.

Sarah: That’s a great way to end it. That’s it for this episode of The War on Cars. Remember, you can support us and get exclusive bonus content, presale access to live show tickets, free stickers, and more by signing up on Patreon at Patreon.com/thewaroncarspod.

Doug: A big thanks to everyone who supports The War on Cars, including our top contributors: Charley Gee of Human Powered Law in Portland, Oregon, Mark Hedlund, Virginia Baker and Brandon DeCoster. And thanks to our newest top Patreon supporter, Dave Shellnutt, the founder of The Biking Lawyer LLP in Toronto, Canada.

Sarah: And please pick up a copy of our book, Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile wherever you get your books. Learn more at LifeAfterCars.com.

Doug: Thanks to our friends at Cleverhood. Listeners of The War on Cars can save 15 percent on the best gear for cycling and walking now through the end of July with the code in this episode. Just go to Cleverhood.com/waroncars.

Sarah: Thanks also to Upway. For the best prices on a brand new or refurbished e-bike, go to Upway.co and save $100 off any order of $800 or more with code TWOC100. We’ll put a link in the show notes.

Doug: The War on Cars is produced with the generous support of the Helen and William Mazer Foundation. This episode was recorded at the Brooklyn Podcasting Studio by Josh Wilcox. It was edited by Samantha Gattsek.

Sarah: Our theme music is by Nathaniel Goodyear. Transcripts are by Russell Gragg. Our logo is by Dani Finkel. I’m Sarah Goodyear.

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