Episode 40: Field Dispatches from Four Continents

Doug Gordon: Hey, guys. So last night I was walking around my neighborhood at eight o’clock, and I heard something that I had never heard before. I want you to take a really careful listen to this.

[Ambient sound]

Aaron Naparstek: So, haunted Jack in the box?

Doug: [laughs] No, not a haunted Jack in the box.

Sarah Goodyear: No, I know what it is.

Doug: Yeah.

Sarah: Those are the bells of St. Agnes.

Doug: Yes. So the really crazy thing is that that church is almost a mile from where I live. And I’ve lived on this street for six years, and not once have I been able to hear that at eight o’clock on a weeknight. Usually, I mean, it’s just a roar of traffic at the end of my block. And now I can hear it.

Aaron: And here I thought car horns were part of the church bells all this time.

Doug: Yeah. Ding dong. Ding dong. Honk! Right. No, that’s gone. That’s not happening anywhere. That’s the world we’re living in right now. This is The War on Cars, the podcast about hearing church bells when all the cars are gone. I’m Doug Gordon. I am in my bedroom in Brooklyn.

Aaron: I’m Aaron Naparstek, and I’m in Newfane, Vermont.

Sarah: I am Sarah Goodyear, and I am also in Brooklyn, about a mile and a half from Doug, and closer to St. Agnes than he is. I hear it every night.

Doug: Yeah, it was—it was very weird. So I walked around last night, just needed to go to the pharmacy for non-coronavirus-related reasons, and it was just shockingly quiet in my neighborhood. It was very odd.

Sarah: So it’s been about a week since we’ve sat down and talked to each other like this. How have things been going for you this past week?

Aaron: So as you guys know, I’m in Vermont, and I’m now—I’m a new car owner, as …

Doug: You’re lucky we had you back, Aaron.

Aaron: Yeah, I know. I know. No, it’s important. It’s important for one of us to experiment with car ownership. It’s—let me tell you, it sucks. It’s not good.

Sarah: [laughs]

Doug: [laughs]

Sarah: So what sucks about it?

Aaron: So, you know, I have this car, and it had a temporary license plate on it. And my wife drove it to the grocery store the other day, and the temporary license plate fell off. So now we have a car with no license plate. And so then I had to, like, make a bunch of phone calls. Like, what are you supposed to do when your temporary license plate falls off? The guys at the dealership were basically just like, “Fuck off, we’re not gonna help you.” And it’s Vermont. You can do whatever you want. Nobody cares. And I’m like, I don’t believe that. I’m from New York. And you’ll get arrested for driving around with no license plate or, you know, maybe, I don’t know. New York might be fine, too. But it’s just like, there’s just this, like, chunk of my brain that is occupied by car ownership stuff. And it just is reminding me of why, when I have owned a car in the past, I hated it. You know, it’s just like, it’s just there. It’s this sort of like, ongoing thing that you just kind of have to, like, think about, and there’s bureaucracy and maintenance. And it’s like this burden. And I mean, granted, yes, things could be much worse. And there’s bigger burdens at the moment. But, like, it’s just a thing that—it’s reminding me of why car ownership sucks.

Sarah: So you’re not feeling, like, the rush of freedom from having it?

Aaron: Not feeling the freedom, Sarah. Not feeling the Ford Escape freedom. Nope.

Doug: It’s good to know at least one piece of the administrative state remains throughout all of this. So that’s comforting.

Aaron: Actually, that’s part of the problem is the DMV is closed, so I can’t, like, even deal with this. Yeah. No, so anyways, car ownership life, hopefully done soon.

Sarah: How are things going with you, Doug?

Doug: They’re okay. So like I was saying, I was out last night, and it was pretty dark and quiet. And I got to admit that actually last night was the first time I felt afraid. I hadn’t been out much at night, and it is a very different city to be walking in. Now it doesn’t help that 90 percent of the people you see are in masks. And that just is both a constant reminder of what’s happening, and also people in masks are scary at night, no matter who they are. I probably look scary. So it just felt very weird. Like, I was describing it to my wife of a feeling of, like, if your parents died, and you went to their house right after. Like, emptiness. Like something was gone that should have been there. So it just felt both weird and scary at the same time, if that makes sense.

Sarah: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I guess my mood—I just have been super moody. Like, I just—I’m up, I’m down. Sometimes I feel like everything’s okay, and I’m gonna triumph over this, and the city is gonna triumph over it. And then, you know, I read something that makes me realize just how many people are already suffering just a couple of miles away from me. And I just become overwhelmed with terror. And, you know, I’ve been telling people that it’s not even like I’m on an emotional roller coaster, it’s like I’m in an emotional washing machine that is on an emotional roller coaster. [laughs] Like, I just—I’m just, like, going every which way every second. So that’s kind of where I’m at. And, you know, here in New York, as everybody around the world knows, shit is getting real very fast.

Doug: Yeah. And that’s the weird disconnect, because it is like a horror show at many of the hospitals, but you wouldn’t necessarily know that just walking around. That’s one of the odd things about being in a big city.

Aaron: It’s funny, because I’m having conversations with people up here and, you know, Vermont’s obviously a couple of weeks, a few weeks behind New York, and people are seeing what’s happening in the hospitals in New York. And they’re like, “Wow, it’s terrible down there.” But there seems to be a sense of that, like, that stuff is somehow not gonna come here. And, you know, so I’m having these kinds of, like, gentle conversations of, like, “Well, you know, we don’t have a lot of ventilators around Southern Vermont, do we?” You know? And people aren’t really—and they’re like, “Well, but, you know, it’s not the Bronx. Like, we don’t live, like, 15 to an apartment here.” There’s kind of this sense of, like, it’s not gonna hit this place because it’s rural and it’s less dense. And that’s just a—seems like obviously a mistaken notion.

Sarah: Yeah, I’m definitely feeling like people are like, “Well, New York, you know, what do you expect? I mean, if you’re gonna live like that,” you know? I feel that vibe coming from the rest of the country, so that’s bumming me out. But, you know, just trying to keep my mood up. And one of the things that’s keeping my mood up is hearing from our listeners from around the globe.

Doug: Sarah, the other thing that’s keeping my mood up is really awkward transitions from, like, scary people in masks and massive death, to our listeners, as much as we appreciate them.

Sarah: Yeah, as much as it is pretty awkward. And then there’s, like, our Patreon supporters, they’re keeping my mood up.

Doug: Well, here’s the thing. And I think we should make this pitch, right? So we really depend on our listeners to keep the podcast going. We really appreciate everybody who’s continued supporting us. We also understand that, like, shit’s real, and the economic crisis is upon us. And so we know how people must be doing. But if you can pitch in, go to our website, Thewaroncars.org. For just two bucks a month, we will send a sticker. We just sent out a big batch of stickers, so that is still going as long as the post office is still rolling, we will be. Other rewards like t-shirts and stuff like that might take longer. But man, we are so appreciative of everybody who has been donating and emailing us and tweeting at us, and it’s just been great. So thank you.

Aaron: And another special thanks to our sponsor, Spin Scooters, for hanging in there with us. We very much appreciate the support.

Doug: Absolutely.

Sarah: Yeah. Because all joking aside, it really is great to be able to connect with people. And obviously, the only way we can do that is remotely right now. So we did ask our listeners to send in voice memos from around wherever they are. And they did, they came through. We got voice memos from four continents, guys. I think that’s pretty cool.

Doug: Wow. That’s awesome.

Aaron: That’s really cool.

Sarah: So we’re gonna start in South America with Juan from Bogotá. And here is what Juan has to say about what COVID is doing in his part of the world.

Juan: This is Juan from Bogotá. The biggest change is that the Sunday Ciclovía is now a permanent Ciclovía along the week. Ciclovía is streets and main avenues are closed to cars and only open to bicycles. The idea of this is to bring down the numbers of our permanently overcrowded TransMilenio BRT system. It’s been brought down to 45 percent, and what we’re hoping for is that these changes may become permanent as they became permanent in the Netherlands after the oil crisis in the ’70s.

Doug: Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s really cool.

Aaron: So cool. So Ciclovía, we should explain for people who don’t know what Ciclovía is.

Sarah: Yeah, you’ve seen it. Right, Aaron? You’ve been there.

Aaron: Yeah, yeah. I’ve ridden in the Ciclovía. It’s basically what Bogotá does every Sunday. They open up a huge network of streets. I don’t know what it’s up to now, but it’s many, many kilometers of streets that basically become open to pedestrians and cyclists. And there are massive exercise classes and, you know, yoga classes, and all kinds of activities that take place on the public streets on Sundays. And no cars allowed. And that’s amazing. So it sounds like Bogota has basically just instituted that as a kind of permanent feature as part of this pandemic. Which is—you know, that’s great.

Doug: Compared to New York City, which just announced that in a city with 6,000 miles of streets, it will be opening up 1.5 miles—not all continuous—in four out of the five boroughs, so that people can get a little breathing room if they happen to live near one of these spots. So not the most ambitious plan when compared to Bogotá.

Sarah: And I think it’s really interesting that the Bogotá plan is specifically to relieve congestion on mass transit. You know, it’s trying to make it safer for people to ride mass transit, which is a great thing because a lot of people are still using that to get where they need to go. And actually, this is a question from Donna in Washington, DC, I believe. I don’t know if we’re gonna be able to answer, but let’s hear it.

Donna: Hello, War on Cars. I was just wondering, in these times when we’re all trying to practice social distancing, what those of us who rely on public transit can be doing to help protect ourselves?

Doug: Yeah, I have not been on the train in a month. I mean, I was working from home before this began, so I would only take the train for special events or trips into the city. I mean, I guess for people, there are a lot of first responders and doctors who have to rely on subways and buses to get where they’re going. I think like anywhere else, when you enter into a public space, like, make sure you’re aware of what you’re touching, wash your hands after you finish your trip, you know, stay away from other people, which in New York apparently doesn’t sound like it’s gonna be that hard because subway ridership has just cratered.

Aaron: You know, it also gets into this question of mask wearing, which I feel like there’s a lot of contradictory information out there right now about whether or not regular people should be wearing masks—regular people being non-medical professionals. And it seems like right now in the States, like, we really need all of the masks to go to hospital personnel, but that if we were in a more ideal situation, we would be perhaps emulating more of what they’re doing in some of these big Asian cities, which is that basically everybody on public transit tries to wear a mask, a surgical mask of some kind or another.

Sarah: Yeah, I feel like the mask thing is one of the many, many confusing things about this.

Aaron: Totally.

Sarah: Like, that I was told early on, like, masks don’t really protect you, they don’t really do anything, they don’t protect anybody else, it’s useless to wear them. And I really bought that. I was like, “Okay, no masks.” That was the one thing I didn’t try to buy ahead of time. And now I really wish that I had a small supply of masks for my family. I did find an N95 mask in my basement from an old painting project that was still …

Aaron: I looked for that mask myself.

Sarah: Yeah.

Aaron: I knew I had one down there, and I couldn’t find it.

Sarah: Yeah. And anyway, so then I wore it to the store the other day and, like, just psychologically, it made me feel a lot better. It made me feel like I was being more responsible. And I really have come to question the guidance that we got on masks. But I’m afraid that I don’t have—like, I’m certainly not qualified to give a definitive answer of what you should do on public transit, but I agree with Doug that just exercising whatever measures you’re taking in any other kind of public space is a good idea. Our next voice memo is actually from a person in a place where they do wear a lot of masks, and where there are a lot of very active measures being taken by the government on public transit, and that is Taipei, Taiwan. Let’s listen to that.

Alex: Hi War on Cars, this is Alex from Taipei, Taiwan. Taiwan has been on high alert since December 31, when health authorities in China held their first press conference. As of March 24, transportation in Taipei is all running normally. For the January to February period, which was the height of the panic in Taiwan, there was a 13.8 percent decrease in metro ridership. Bike share is also a very popular option in Taipei, and good weather has meant seeing tons of riders using the system lately. On Taipei Metro, over 90 percent of passengers are wearing surgical masks, and you see Metro staff constantly cleaning trains and stations. Public service announcement videos on trains and platforms featured Taipei Mayor Ko, who’s a regular metro commuter. All stations have restrooms, and some high-volume stations have temperature scanners. Taiwan shows that, even in a democracy of nearly 24 million people that is very politically polarized, that an effective public health response is still possible.

Sarah: So I’m moving to Taipei after this is all over. [laughs]

Doug: I mean, I hear that, and I think all stations have restrooms? I mean, we—come on, in New York, we don’t have that. I guess it just goes to show that having functioning social and physical infrastructure in good times are probably going to be the things that help you out in bad. And that might be the key difference that New York finds itself in. We are very far behind in terms of physical and social infrastructure, and that might be why the epidemic is spreading so greatly here.

Aaron: Can you guys imagine how New Yorkers would respond to the idea that when you walk into a busy public place or a restaurant or a subway station, you have a temperature gun aimed at your forehead to take your temperature by the authorities? And if your temperature …

Doug: Aaron, why do you hate freedom? Why do you hate my freedom?

Aaron: Exactly. Like, I just feel like Americans are so ill-suited to this. Like, our culture, we would have such a hard time with that. I mean, I personally would love that, but I think most of us would have a really hard time with that, right?

Sarah: Well, I have to say, as someone who is here in New York now, I have a feeling that people would have a very different reaction to it now than they would have had two weeks ago. I mean, I do think that increasingly, you’re seeing people wearing masks in all sorts of situations who would never have been wearing masks two weeks ago. And I think that there’s just the fear of the virus has become so profound, and the fear of other people who might be carrying the virus is so profound, that I think that here now you might see some openness to that kind of public health measure.

Doug: But that’s precisely the problem, right?

Aaron: Yep.

Doug: And I can’t stop thinking about our response to climate change, which is that until the problem is manifest and present, we cannot do jack shit about it. So Lower Manhattan floods? Maybe we’ll start to really get serious about our response to climate change. But the threat of this thing that all scientists are saying is coming has not motivated us to do anything. And it was exactly the same with COVID.

Aaron: Yeah. A buddy of mine up here in Vermont whose immune system is pretty heavily compromised in a variety of ways, he went to the bank with a mask on and the bank threw him out. The bank employees said that the mask was making them uncomfortable. So it actually had—he was trying to protect them and protect himself, and it actually had the exact opposite effect of making people feel like this guy is a danger to us.

Sarah: Wow. That’s really sad. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that we in the United States can’t seem to figure out how to care about each other even now. We can’t seem to figure out how to take care of each other. We’re just incapable of it. And it’s really sad.

Aaron: Okay, but I mean, come on. I got you on the negative jag. You were so positive a minute ago.

Doug: Well, no. I mean, look, my neighbors are a really good example. There’s an older woman who lives in our building, and people have volunteered to, like, bring her stuff. And I do think at an individual level, at a neighborhood level, at a community level, generally people are good. And what we’re seeing in America is that the government sucks, that our institutions are failing us, and the multigenerational project to just undo democracy and the administrative state has left us with nothing but each other.

Aaron: Right. And I think people will step up. I mean, I think communities will step up, and people will help each other in lieu of government, and especially in places where government doesn’t exist anymore in any functioning form, we’re gonna have to help each other. And I think Americans are good at that, and can do that when called upon.

Sarah: All right. Sorry, I think I was at, like, the bottom part of the roller coaster right there. So I apologize for being so dark there for a second.

Aaron: It’s my fault. It was the bank story.

Doug: We’re gonna have those moments. It’s okay. This episode of The War on Cars is brought to you by Spin Scooters. Beaudry Kock is head of policy initiatives and spin, so we asked him: are scooters just a fad? Can they really transform urban transportation?

Beaudry Kock: In and of themselves, they’re not going to transform cities. Our system is so rigged against humane scales of transportation that it doesn’t really matter what you introduce, it’s probably going to fail if it isn’t a car. If we can start a ball rolling to change what streets mean to people, to change attitudes towards on-street parking and bus lanes and all the things that we’re fighting for every day, then that’s where the transformation is going to be. And it doesn’t really matter at that point, you know, whether it’s flying hover boards or, like, pocket teleportation devices, it’s not the technology itself that’s ever going to do it. It’s going to be the regulatory environment, the mindset change. And that will be the legacy of scooters if we can get that far, it’ll be the legacy of other modes to come.

Doug: Spin Scooters is a proud ally in the war on cars. Learn more about the work Spin is doing to support safe, just and livable streets at Spin.app/Streets. Again, that’s Spin.app/streets.

Sarah: All right, so now this next voicemail’s from here in the United States. It’s Sebastian in Los Angeles.

Sebastian: Hello, The War on Cars, this is Sebastian in Los Angeles. One of the things that I and others online have noticed is that, during this pandemic as people are staying home and not driving to work, the number of cyclists on our streets has greatly increased, including what seems to be a lot of families and new cyclists. In one sense, it’s kind of sad because it shows how dangerous our streets are, but I hope that more and more people will continue to bike even after this pandemic ends.

Sarah: John from San Francisco is also seeing a lot more bikes on the streets, and it’s helping to keep him sane.

John: John Elliott from San Francisco reporting on the COVID-related conditions where I am. Number one, the bicycle is a complete lifesaver. It always has been, but getting out of the house and biking around for hours with proper social distance and fresh air has been mentally and physically a lifesaver. And number two, cars need to slow down. Just because you can go as fast as you want because the streets are empty, slow down!

Doug: Yeah, I mean, as far as the cars go, I have noticed a lot of speeding, red light running. The streets are just wide open, so some people are treating it like a drag strip. But I am encouraged by the number of people I’ve seen biking—especially families. It’s a really great way—my son and I get out at the end of their online school day, basically, and we go out for a ride. And it’s so nice to have that time together. It’s relatively quiet, we’re able to go on side streets that are even quieter than usual. So that’s been really good.

Aaron: You know, we have some friends who I’ve been trying to convince to ride bikes in the city for a long time. They have a 13-year-old son, the same age as one of my kids, and also a 10-year-old son. And those guys are biking everywhere right now, and really enjoying it. The kids have a lot more freedom, especially in this time when they’re kind of locked up, they’re able to go bike along Brooklyn Bridge Park on the waterfront and get some air. And, you know, hopefully they’re still staying socially distant and all that, but they basically just have a massive amount of independence compared to what they had before. And, you know, it’s easy to imagine that they’re gonna continue biking when this is settled down.

Doug: But I guess the thing is that—so Sebastian, in his voice memo, said that he hopes that more people will continue to bike after this ends, and so do I. And what you’re saying, obviously, like, we all hope that that happens. But I think what we’re seeing is that cities have been relying on hope for way too long. Like, I hope if we put in this one bicycle lane and a bicycle share system, more people will come out. But if cities don’t use this opportunity as we come out of this to install more bike infrastructure, to close more streets to cars, then all the cars are just gonna keep flooding back and nothing will have changed, and they’ll have missed this huge, huge opportunity. So I think that, in addition to managing the current crisis, cities need to be saying, “Okay, what happens when we slowly reopen schools and businesses?” And there’s the residual effect of people not wanting to take transit and they take to bikes. Are they sharing the streets with Uber and Lyft just like they were before? Because that’s not going to work.

Aaron: I mean, there’s also the question of whether there’s gonna be any money in cities and states for a while after this happens. You know, I think there’s a good chance that we’re gonna come out of this thing with some really broke, bankrupt municipal and state governments and transit agencies. And you can imagine a scenario where it’s not going to be really possible to build new bike infrastructure because places are going to say we don’t have the money for it. You can also imagine a scenario where transit systems are going to be really in a lot of trouble when this is done, and people are gonna be compelled to ride bikes more because frankly, it is the most efficient, least expensive way to get around a city. And, you know, in an odd way, being bankrupt might be great for biking.

Doug: Well, and being personally bankrupt or down lots of money might throw more people to bikes when they can’t afford a car payment or they’re trying to save 139 bucks on a Metro Card each month. Like, that might be a motivating factor for more people than we think.

Sarah: I mean, I think that what this crisis is doing in real time is it is showing people that underneath the normal reality that they accept without thinking, that there are actually a lot of decisions that have been made about how space is allocated on streets, and who gets priority, and who gets to take up room in our cities. And that just with the way that it’s revealing things about our healthcare system, our educational system and every other system that we have, what it’s revealing about our transportation system is not very pretty sometimes. And it may be that people will see that as an opportunity. You know, that’s the thing that we’re hoping with all of these systems is that they might be improved.

Doug: Well, of course, the irony of all of this—or not the irony, because it’s not surprising to anyone, is that transit systems will be broke. Nobody will have money to paint a bike lane. But man, highways? That’s gonna be a big opportunity to get people back to work. We’re gonna build lots of highways after this is over. It’ll be a jobs program.

Aaron: Always money for highways.

Sarah: And the auto companies are gonna get bailed out again, probably.

Aaron: Socialism for cars and trucks is the only kind of acceptable socialism.

Sarah: Let’s hear from Philip in San Francisco about what he’s seeing.

Philip: Hey, War on Cars, Phil from San Francisco, where we’ve been sheltering in place for about a week. My partner and I try to go on walks around the neighborhood for our own mental and physical well-being. And it’s really hard to maintain six feet of separation from other people on such narrow sidewalks. You know, we often have to walk into the street really to make sure that we have appropriate distance. And it’s just a really stark reminder of how much space we’ve ceded over to cars in our urban environment.

Sarah: I’ve been doing something. I’ve been taking the lane when I go out running, actually. Taking the lane is something that people on bikes talk about doing, taking up a full lane instead of squeezing over into the door zone by the cars on the right hand side of the road. But now when I’m running, I just am running out in the car lane a lot of the time, because I don’t want to be close to people on the sidewalk, and I’m moving fast enough that I can’t really, you know, just dodge every person. So I’m just like, well, I’m just gonna take the lane. And it feels really good. [laughs]

Doug: Have you guys ever seen—there’s that famous illustration, I believe it’s from Sweden. It basically shows streets as like a canyon, and there’s, like, a dad holding his kid. And you know that if he lets go of his kid, the kid falls into the abyss. And instead of crosswalks, there are wooden planks from one sidewalk to the next, basically to symbolize like one false move in a crosswalk and you’re dead. That’s kind of revealing itself now because you’re seeing, as you walk down the sidewalk, and you know there isn’t enough room for the person coming towards you, for you and that person to share that space, that there feels to be like a threat. That your health is threatened just by virtue of sharing this very narrow space. We’ll post a link to that in the show notes so you can see it. But that’s what’s been on my mind as I walk around, just people are very aware that one inch to the left, one inch to the right is not enough right now.

Sarah: So the other thing that’s happened, I think, and this has happened for me mentally and physically on the street, is that somehow the fact that everything has been turned over, that everything is up in the air and nobody knows what’s certain, has resulted in some surprising freedoms and some surprising space to reimagine what life might be like if we were able to fix some of these things. We heard from someone in Paris, which is a city that’s been on a more severe lockdown than New York for a couple of weeks now, and Cécile in Paris talked about how she’s finding some freedom in this dark time.

Cécile: Hi there, War on Cars. I’m Cecile from Paris, France. France is under lockdown, so when you go outside, you need to have a paper slip stating you’re doing something vital. If I still need to go to my office, I bike, and it has never been as freeing because I don’t have to worry about cars anymore. Paris’s streets are eerily quiet. You see people on the sidewalks, a few joggers, but cars have virtually disappeared.

Sarah: I don’t know. I just got a little bit of hope from the image of Cécile riding her bike through the streets of Paris. It just made me feel lighter and better. And the idea—I mean, Paris is a city that’s already been working really, really hard to improve its bike network, and they had a transit strike a couple months ago that got a lot of people out onto bikes. And I’m just feeling like maybe there are these places that are gonna have these positive transformations coming out of this.

Aaron: It’s definitely going to be a transformation. You really get the feeling that there’s gonna be—that things are gonna change one way or another out of this whole thing.

Doug: Yeah, I mean, because it’s really different than almost any other disaster I can think of where there’s, like, a very clear moment where it happens and then where it’s over. This—even if they said, like, “Okay, we’ve mostly got this under control and we’re on the other side of the curve,” it’s gonna take a long time for people to feel comfortable going back to certain old routines. So I hope people carry with them that freedom of the bicycle, for example, or the beauty of just an afternoon walk, like, after work or after school. That’s been kind of lovely for our family to say, “Let’s get out of the house and just go for a walk.” For no reason other than to go for a walk, which so few people do these days. There’s always a purpose to your trip. So that’s been nice.

Aaron: I’m finding that I’m just appreciating breathing, you know? Honestly, like, I’ll take a deep breath and I’ll be like, you know, I have friends right now who can’t really do that at the moment. And I’m just trying to appreciate the fact that I can, like, take a deep breath and enjoy that.

Doug: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah, for sure.

[dog barking]

Aaron: Oh, now I’ve upset the dog, too. Azi! Hey, come on!

Doug: That’s a good note to end on right there.

Sarah: Yeah, that is a good note to end on. That is it for this episode of The War on Cars. Thank you so much, sincerely, to the listeners from around the world who sent in voice memos. That was one of the things that kept me going this week. It really did. And I really appreciate you being there for us. And we are going to be there for you, too.

Aaron: Please rate and review us on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, because that helps people find us. And write in with any comments, questions or suggestions to [email protected].

Doug: As always, we’d like to thank our top Patreon sponsors: Charley Gee of Human Powered Law in Portland, Oregon, the law office of Vaccaro and White in New York City, Huck and Elizabeth Finne, and big thanks to our sponsor Spin Scooters.

Sarah: This episode was recorded by the three of us at our home studios. It was edited by Ali Lemer. Our theme music is by Nathaniel Goodyear. Our logo is by Dani Finckel of Crucial D. Designs. I’m Sarah Goodyear.

Doug: I’m Doug Gordon.

Aaron: I’m Aaron Naparstek, and this is The War on Cars.

[Aaron: I’m trying to record a podcast. I need, like, silence. Can you go elsewhere? Oh, my God. I also have a—I have a dog to yell at, too. So okay. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Okay, let’s go.]