Episode 153: John Mulaney, Natasha Lyonne, and the Battle of the Bike Lanes
Doug Gordon: It’s been just over one month since I picked up the new Xtracycle RFA. I love this bike. I’ve put over a hundred miles on it already, just running errands around the neighborhood. And riding the RFA has been so much fun. It has totally changed my life. But I get it, what if you live in a place where cars are king? Maybe you’re wondering how an e-cargo bike can change your life. That’s why I spoke to Riley, a dad from Tucson, Arizona. Even though he and his wife had been biking for transportation for years, having two growing kids meant he found himself driving more than he wanted to.
Riley: I was driving my kids 10 miles round trip twice a day in traffic in a car, and it really wasn’t good for me. I could feel that driving and being in traffic, I didn’t feel good doing it, and I also felt like I was doing my kids a disservice having them cooped up in a car on main roads and in traffic. When I was driving a lot, I just thought, like, I can’t do this year-round.
Doug: As the kids got bigger, Riley and his wife faced a choice, and they decided to make biking work for their family.
Riley: We had just one car that we shared, and we didn’t want to have a second car, so it felt cheaper to own an extra cycle with e-assist. It’s also a lot cheaper to maintain. It costs almost nothing once you get it. There’s no insurance or oil changes or anything like that. The other reason we decided to spend the money was quality of life. It really is different to commute on a bicycle and get exercise and have fresh air and the wind in your face, and be moving slower and seeing the world around you and getting to know the city in a different way. And also not being stuck in traffic, which I think almost everyone would say is not a pleasant experience in most cases. So it was a quality of life thing. It was a big decision, and we were not sure it would be worth it when we did it, but it really was. Almost immediately we felt like this is really great.
Doug: Riley opted for the Swoop, which Xtracycle bills as the ultimate kid hauler.
Riley: We chose the Xtracycle Swoop cargo e-assist bike because as a family of four, it was the most versatile. So it has a step-through frame. My wife is 5’5″, I’m 6’1″. It makes it easier for everyone to get on and off. The seat can raise or lower quite a long ways to accommodate both of us, so it’s comfortable to ride for my wife and me. The back bench is quite long and comfortable for two kids and even three kids. And it was without a doubt the perfect thing. We could pile the kids on, all their stuff, and I could fly no problem five miles with all of us on the bike. We actually weren’t that much slower than we’d be in a car in a very car-centric city. And we felt a lot better. The kids loved it. And I’d return home and I’d feel great.
Doug: In a place like Tucson, the Xtracycle Swoop turns heads.
Riley: When we ride and show up on the electric assist cargo bike, lots of people ask questions about it and want to know about it. And what I like about the cargo bike is it’s easy to take everyone and everything with you on the bike. You’re not struggling to fit in backpacks or groceries or people. It makes it really easy, and I think a lot of people choose a car because they think I can just throw everything in this car that I need. And the cargo bike is the response to that for the bike world. It makes it easier to choose, because you don’t have to think too hard about what you’re gonna bring or not bring. That’s one thing that I really love about the cargo bike.
Doug: And you know who else loves it? Riley’s kids.
Riley: My kids love riding the bike to school. My daughter, I remember one of the first times we rode to school, she spread her arms out wide and just said something like, “This is the best way to get to school!” And so yeah, they really enjoy it. They prefer it. And if it’s possible to go by bike, that’s what they choose.
Doug: We here at The War on Cars choose to go by bike when we can, too. And we want everyone to enjoy the benefits of cargo biking, whether to reduce or even relieve the need for cars in your life. Head to Xtracycle.com/thewaroncars and take the one-minute ride guide. It’s a quiz that’ll help you find out which Xtracycle bike is best for you. And if you decide to purchase a bike, you’ll save $500 by using promo code WARONCARS500. Again, that’s Xtracycle, X-T-R-A-C-Y-C-L-E.com/thewarOnCars. Find out how an e-cargo bike can change your life with Xtracycle.
Doug: This is The War On Cars. I’m Doug Gordon. Before we get started, a quick note: As we’ve mentioned before, we have a new book coming out. It’s called Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile. And it’s coming out in October from Thesis, an imprint of Penguin Random House. We’re really excited about the book, and to celebrate, we’re doing a big live show at the Bell House here in Brooklyn, right in our backyard. Tickets for that show will go on sale very soon—possibly next week—and pre-sale access will be given first to our Patreon supporters. To become a member, visit Patreon.com/thewaroncarspod and you’ll be the first to know when the pre-sale is open. You can also visit lifeaftercars.com to pre-order the book and stay updated on our North American tour. If you can’t make it to Brooklyn, we will hopefully be in a city near you. We can’t wait.
Doug: A couple of weeks ago, our friend Alissa Walker was a guest on the weekly Netflix show, Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney. John Mulaney’s show is a kind of absurdist homage to classic late night talk shows like the Johnny Carson version of the Tonight Show, the Dick Cavett Show, and the Merv Griffin Show. Kids, ask your grandparents about them.
Doug: Alissa, a Los Angeles-based journalist who’s been on the transportation beat for years, was there as an expert to help with the show’s nominal subject: Is Uber good? Now I’m a big fan of John Mulaney’s, and I enjoy Everybody’s Live, so when someone I know like Alissa is on a show like that, you can be sure I’m gonna watch. Well, it didn’t take long before the conversation turned to bikes. Actress Natasha Lyonne, another guest on the program, basically hijacked things to bash bike lanes like a common NIMBY.
Doug: After the show, Gersh Kuntzman, the editor of Streetsblog, asked for my take on it. I’ll link to the resulting piece in the show notes. As part of writing it, I reached out to Alissa Walker, but rather than waste the opportunity and just get a few quotes, I decided to get a little deeper with Alissa and turn the interview into an episode. Some of the things I wanted to talk about were: why do smart people say unintelligent things about bikes? Why is it that conversations about transportation almost always descend into people complaining about cyclists, even if the original subject of the conversation has nothing to do with bikes? How do we as advocates fighting for safe streets and rational solutions reclaim the narrative from people with high profiles but low knowledge on the issues we live and breathe? It is always fun to talk to Alissa Walker. You can listen to the interview after this quick break.
Sarah Goodyear: It’s been kind of a rainy few months here in the part of the world where I live, and as a result, I’ve been wearing a lot of Cleverhood, especially my new Zipster jacket. It’s bright and reflective, and gives you such great coverage when you’re on a bike, but it also keeps you dry when you’re out walking. As a matter of fact, I find that I’m not using an umbrella much anymore at all, just throwing on my Cleverhood and heading out to meet the day. You can get 15 percent off everything in the Cleverhood store now through the end of June if you use the code JUNEBUG at Cleverhood.com/waroncars. That’s JUNEBUG at Cleverhood.com/waroncars. Wear a Cleverhood and leave the umbrella at home.
Doug: Alissa Walker is the editor of Torched.LA, a news site that covers the civic investments and policy decisions Los Angeles is making in preparation for the 2028 Olympic Games, among other upcoming mega events. She’s been a staff writer for Gizmodo, Curbed and New York Magazine, and co-hosts the LA Podcast. She’s also a friend of The War on Cars. Alissa, I believe you last appeared on the show on episode 19, which was six years ago.
Alissa Walker: Wow!
Doug: If you can believe that. All right, so welcome back, Alissa Walker, to The War on Cars.
Alissa Walker: Thank you for having me, Doug.
Doug: Well, let’s back this up. Okay, so you were a guest on Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney on Netflix. That was on Wednesday, May 21. I have to admit, when I saw your social media posts and other things about it, it’s a little surreal to see something to the effect of “Amy Sedaris, Sigourney Weaver, Natasha Lyonne and public transit advocate Alissa Walker.” How did you feel appearing on the show?
Alissa Walker: Well, the most exciting part was when I—you know, you’re backstage and you see the credits start to roll, which, you know, at the beginning, the opening sequence, and I got the Inherent Vice lock up. So I was so excited to see my name, like, right there on the screen at that exact moment. But it was—I didn’t know who was gonna be on it until, like, the day before. So I had agreed to join, and then I think they book everybody else, and I don’t know how it exactly works, but I didn’t know who I was gonna be with until, like, 24 hours before the show aired. So I was very excited.
Doug: I don’t know, Sigourney Weaver, obviously one of the biggest stars of the 20th century and today. I mean, Ghostbusters, Avatar, Alien, everything.
Alissa Walker: Yeah. I mean, my childhood.
Doug: Working Girl.
Alissa Walker: Literally everything. Yeah, my kids were pumped. And so were my parents, I guess. Appealing to all generations. [laughs]
Doug: I would have lost it a little bit being on stage with her, on the set with her. Yeah. So how did this come about? What did the producers say when they reached out to you? What did they want to talk to you about?
Alissa Walker: Yeah, so shout out to Molly Lambert and Kelly Casey, who have worked on the show for a while. And they—I guess they set the theme. And the themes are just so arbitrary, it seems like. Like, I had watched the whole LA series that he did last year, which I thought was so good. It was really—you know, it was a kind of this, like, moment of togetherness, I felt like, for the city, where everybody was watching it every day because they did a show every day for a week. It was quite fun and very well, like, researched, and very well, like, produced. And so when I saw that they were gonna be bringing the show back, it’s like now it’s weekly. The topics are, you know, they’re just a little bit—they’re not about LA, right? But this one was interesting because they said the topic was going to be about Uber. And I was like, “Oh, interesting. Uber.” I was like, “Okay.” And then I guess the angle was, is Uber good? and they asked if I had any thoughts about that as a transportation reporter. And I said, I did have thoughts about that. [laughs]
Doug: You’ve been covering this for a long time, so it’s been coming.
Alissa Walker: Yeah, for 15 years probably, yeah.
Doug: I’m sure you had many thoughts, and very few of them actually made it onto the episode in the end, which we’re gonna talk about. So—all right, so I want to actually preface this conversation. I was talking about my love for Sigourney Weaver, and you were saying how excited you were. I think John Mulaney is perhaps the funniest and smartest comedian working in Hollywood, in entertainment today. He’s really just been having a moment, as they say. He’s all over the place. He was on the SNL 50th special. He’s sort of like the modern incarnation of Steve Martin, which is maybe not the best way to say it, because Steve Martin is very much alive. But he’s got that younger, wittier, just very smart—I don’t know, there’s just something about him that is very of the moment. And he’s brilliant. So we should put that out there. I think sometimes, you know, when we break these things down, we don’t want to be seen as humorless scolds.
Alissa Walker: No, and I think the thing to remember is that it’s not even really a talk show. It’s like a comedy show. So it’s not—no one’s there to actually talk about real subjects or, like, even talk about their work or what they’re working on. It’s like a—it’s a comedy show. And you do have a full dress rehearsal. Like, I got to go, you know, I got there and you do a full stage, like, on the stage dress rehearsal where, you know, he asked a lot of really good questions. He seemed to be familiar with the material and very interested in, like, what I wrote about and talking about transportation. So it’s—you know, he definitely, I thought, was quite thoughtful. And I also think, you know, when you think about who your audience is for, too, right? I mean, it’s like, the fact that I was with New Yorkers, I was immediately like, “Oh, we can actually really talk about—we don’t have to go over all the other stuff that we normally talk about when I’m talking about transportation in LA.” But then it kind of reverted to the same stereotypes anyway. [laughs] So it was just so surreal.
Doug: So you get out there, you’re introduced, talk show style.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: As I mentioned, tonight’s topic is: is Uber good? Question mark. I’m joined tonight as a resource, as a source and expert on this, by public transit advocate Alissa Walker. Give her a big hand.]
[applause]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: Alissa, thank you for being here as a reference point, as someone with a lot of knowledge of the topic for us to bounce questions off of, for my callers to speak to. And we very much appreciate that you’re here.]
Doug: And pretty much right away, Mulaney asks you the question about Uber: Is Uber good? And then stops and says, “Wait a minute, how did you get here today to the studio?”
Alissa Walker: [laughs] Yeah.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: Before we begin, you are a public transit advocate. So not so much an Uber fan?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alissa Walker: I would say that it’s good that we have options to get around, especially ones that we can access from our phones. But cars haven’t done a very good job with that historically, so Uber is actually, like, contributing to the problem in a way by investing millions …]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: So wait, how did you get to the show tonight?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alissa Walker: I took public transit.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: You took LA public transit?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alissa Walker: Of course I did.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: That’s fucking wild.]
[laughter]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: Like the bus?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alissa Walker: The bus and the train.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: Took the train! This is a dystopian nightmare, wow!]
Alissa Walker: You always go back in these instances where you’re like, “Oh, I could—” I was going in your mind of, like, a million things to say back. And yeah, I had something in my mind to say about, like, “Well, a real dystopian nightmare is, you know, getting stuck in the 405.” But you’re not really—in these situations, you’re not really there to make jokes, right? Like, I’m the expert, so it wasn’t my job to, you know, crack up—you know, crack up the other people. It was my job to just laugh. And I obviously was just taken aback a little bit by his response because I just thought, again, it seemed like the literal “Walking in LA” song by Missing Persons.
Doug: Right. Right.
Alissa Walker: Which I’ve done a radio segment on and, lie, went back through all those clips. On the Tonight Show, they used to make jokes about how people got—were not allowed to walk in LA. And so it’s very—it just was so expected and I was legitimately laughing, like, it was really funny. And then it was just like, you know, my time was over. [laughs]
Doug: Right. And you were at the far end of the couch almost in sort of like suburbia.
Alissa Walker: Oh yeah, really far away. And also, like, I mean, I think it’s important to remember too, of course I don’t think that transit is a punchline, you know? I don’t think it’s a joke about taking transit in LA. But I was also, like, just really happy that he asked. I was really glad that he asked me how I got there. So it was my chance to say, “Yeah, I did not take the car service. I did not take the black SUV that your production company offered me. You know, I just took the train. It was the easiest way to get there: bus and the train.
Doug: And I can offer a defense of the LA Metro. I took it when I was there in September. I did not rent a car. I took the bus and the train, and it’s quite pleasant. It’s actually really nice. And the Metro stations are very nice. They’re staffed by lovely Metro employees who will help you get where you’re going. And it’s safe and very nice. As a New Yorker, I liked it.
Alissa Walker: That’s right. Yes. Thanks for the endorsement, Doug.
Doug: First guest is Amy Sedaris. She comes on, she tells a story about a cab driver who’s, like, constantly stopping and spitting. I’ve had cab drivers like this. It’s a total talk show anecdote sort of thing, like, nothing that special. Then Sigourney Weaver comes out.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sigourney Weaver: I’m so excited to be here on your fantastic show.]
[applause]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: Thank you!]
Doug: And she talks about how she prefers the old school New York City yellow cabs. She’s old school.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: I didn’t realize this, but both of you are New Yorkers. We’re talking about transportation, and you’re from the most transported city in the world.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sigourney Weaver: Absolutely.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: You’ve lived your whole life in Manhattan?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sigourney Weaver: I’m born and bred, yes.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: Wow!]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sigourney Weaver: Yeah. I think it’s a great place to grow up, a great place to raise a kid.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: And when you’re there, do you take Uber?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sigourney Weaver: I have strong feelings. [laughs]]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: Share them.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sigourney Weaver: I am New York taxi all the way.]
[applause]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: Oh, wow.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sigourney Weaver: Listen, if you need to take an Uber, fine, but there—we have to preserve this great tradition.]
Doug: So at this point, nothing really weird is happening. This just seems like total normal talk show banter. Nothing too special, right? Then Natasha Lyonne comes out.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: She is an actor, writer, director, auteur, and gonzo journalist. Please welcome the one and only Natasha Lyonne!]
Doug: This is where things start to go off the rails. Natasha Lyonne hijacks the conversation to make it all about bicycles.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: Do you fuck with Uber, Natasha?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Natasha Lyonne: Do I fuck with Uber? No. I fuck with Delancey Car Service, remember them? ’80s?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: Oh, very nice!]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Natasha Lyonne: Delancey. Yeah, they’re still around. I’d take an Uber. Of course I do. What I don’t fuck with is bicycles.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: Oh, yeah.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Natasha Lyonne: I think we need to shut down the bike lanes. Do you agree, Sigourney?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sigourney Weaver: Absolutely.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Natasha Lyonne: And no one gets along transportation wise—bikes, roller blades, no one gets along.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sigourney Weaver: And they don’t use the bike lanes anyway. They use the curbs, and …]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: Some weird kamikaze move of Bill de Blasio that he made the bike lane the bus lane.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Natasha Lyonne: I mean, speaking as Eric Adams ex-wife, I just wanna say, I’m so glad we’re in alignment on this, because we gotta get rid of those bicycles.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Richard Kind: And get rid of the electric bicycles.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Natasha Lyonne: Yes.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Richard Kind: They’re the worst. They’re useless.]
Doug: And just for context at the end there, that is Richard Kind, who is basically Mulaney’s, like, Ed McMahon sidekick on this show. Love Richard Kind, very funny guy, also a New Yorker. So, Alissa, at this point, I thought to myself, take away the lights, the makeup, the set, the famous names, the studio audience, and you just have a DOT presentation with an expert—let’s say you.
Alissa Walker: [laughs]
Doug: Talking about a new plan for the city for how to better manage car sharing, let’s say. And people just suddenly scream, “But what about the bicycles? And the electric bicycles, they’re killers. I was almost hit and killed five times yesterday!” What was your reaction at this point?
Alissa Walker: Well, it goes back again to, like, the whole premise just felt like it was 2010. And I was like—I really was like, we’re talking about, like, Ubers and like, you know, we started talking about scooters, which I brought up, so we were talking about bikes, bike lanes, Uber and scooters. I was like—it’s like, you know, we’re getting into, like, you know, the 20-teens or whatever we call them, right? But what was really going through my mind at this—well, kind of as the conversation started to drift, so at the very beginning of every episode, they have these quotes that kind of like frame the theme, which we know is like a loose theme. And this one was like a quote from Travis Kalanick that was like, you know, “We’re gonna take over the world.” And then the second quote was from a Guardian story that was like, “Uber robo-taxi kills Arizona pedestrian.” So I was like, this is opening up the door to talk about safety.
Alissa Walker: But at the same time, I was like, I’m in this situation with New Yorkers. Like, they must know what congestion pricing is. And actually, Richard Kind and I had talked about it during the dress rehearsal, and he said he loved it. He said he rides the buses and the trains. And so we had had a little conversation about it and I was like, “I think I—” you know, in the back of my mind, I was like, “I think I need to try to talk about congestion pricing on this show.” [laughs] And then I was like, all right, you know, I think I can do that. But then when—by the time we’re getting to bike lanes, I was like, oh, we gotta—we gotta walk—I gotta walk all the way back, like, through, like, the safety stuff or else, you know, it’s gonna make it seem—you know, as soon as you’re trying to frame it as, like, nobody should have lanes or we shouldn’t have bike lanes, I was like, oh, do I have to really explain all this? And then the audience is from LA, so I’m like, are they even gonna care about any of this that I’m gonna talk about if I say—if I bring up congestion pricing? But I was like, surely they know what it is and that it’s helping, right?
Doug: So you bring up an important point that you brought up a little earlier, which is if you were to read a transcript of this conversation, you remove the names and some of the locations, and then you asked, “Okay, who in this transcript is the New Yorker and who are the people from Los Angeles?”
Alissa Walker: Right.
Doug: You’d have it totally backwards. You would think that you, Alissa Walker, were the New Yorker who took transit, and that the other folks, the big Hollywood celebrities, were the Los Angelenos who drive or are driven everywhere. And I thought that was just so interesting because you had John Mulaney, who is very much associated with New York City despite all of his love for Los Angeles.
Alissa Walker: Of course.
Doug: Sigourney Weaver, of course, as we said, born and raised. Natasha Lyonne, who is like the living embodiment of, like, a 70-year-old New York City native even though she’s 46. Just that voice of hers is a New York City character all by itself. And then Richard Kind, of course, and even Amy Sedaris, who didn’t get into it quite as much as the others. But it was basically like five New Yorkers versus you, and you were the only one standing up for things like bike lanes and transit, which I found very interesting.
Alissa Walker: Yeah, and I mean, I did—I mean, you know, you always just go back and look at these situations. You’re like, “I could have said this,” or whatever. Like, being on live TV is really hard that way. But it was funny to me that they got so much more mad every time I said bike lanes. [laughs] And so I probably said it again because it was like—it was getting such a reaction out of them. So the second time I was like, “You know, we need extra wide bike lanes.” [laughs] So I’m sure I was doing it, too.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alissa Walker: The bus should have a lane. The bike should have its own very wide lane.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Natasha Lyonne: But where is the wider bike lane? It’s Manhattan. We don’t have the space.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: But you’re talking about the model town from Beetlejuice, where everything’s perfect. That’s not happening.]
[laughter]
Doug: Yeah, I did love that it was point, counterpoint. Point: no bike lanes; counterpoint: extra wide bike lanes.
Alissa Walker: [laughs]
Doug: Yeah, exactly. That really was great. I mean, look, we totally could riff on this all day. I mean, I think it’s important to put in this context Richard Kind saying e-bikes are killers. Natasha Lyonne saying get rid of all the bike lanes. Like we said, this just sounds like old school cranky New Yorkers at a community board meeting circa 2011. But it’s important to throw some stats in here. According to the DOT in New York City, e-bikes, scooters and mopeds account for 1.8 percent of the 449 ped fatalities between 2020 to 2023, and roughly 4.5 percent of the nearly 30,000 pedestrian injuries over the same period. So in other words, cars and truck drivers are causing 98 percent of fatalities and 96 percent of injuries. And I think this is obviously the part of the conversation where I should say we shouldn’t pretend that this is not a problem just because it’s an insignificant one. I think a smart city should be capable of solving multiple problems at once with the proper proportion that each problem demands.
Alissa Walker: That’s a very good way to put it. Yeah.
Doug: Yeah. Part of the problem that we’re having in the city right now is everything seems wildly out of proportion. We have a massive police crackdown with criminal summons given out to e-bike riders and other bicycle riders. Meanwhile, you blow a red light in your car, it’s just a traffic ticket. Again, don’t want to say that e-bikes aren’t a problem. People can stop writing those emails right now. We have covered this on the show before. Alissa, you have been covering this just forever. We have heard it all, we have seen it all. How do we regain control of the conversation? A bit hard to do in the middle of a television program when you’re up against Natasha Lyonne. But, like, what do we do in the larger cultural narrative to try to reclaim some sanity here?
Alissa Walker: I guess, like, the one thing I was trying to say, you know, as I was trying to, you know, say that everybody deserves their own space and bring the safety aspect into it—and, you know, I could have quoted all sorts of statistics. And during the dress rehearsal, I think, too, like, what really resonated was saying that, you know, some of the more shocking stats about, like, in LA, we have, you know, more people are killed by cars than homicides, which, you know, I think that really does get people’s attention. Was that the right moment to bring that up? You know, probably not.
Alissa Walker: But I think trying to refocus the conversation, as I was trying to do by saying, yes, the real—yes, space is a real problem, especially in a crowded city. But the problem is the single passenger vehicles, which we all know. And I don’t think anybody disagrees with that anymore. I mean, I think you can really tell people—if you tell people that, like, Uber is making traffic worse, which is, you know, what I tried to frame everything I said around—which is true—and that they’re spending, you know, a lot of money to undermine public transit, which I tried to say, but I got interrupted, you know, at the beginning.
Alissa Walker: But there’s—I think people do really understand those things. But it’s like when you come up against somebody trying to make it about lanes, maybe that’s the lane trap that we always fall into. You know, and you came here and rode these bike lanes with me here in LA on Hollywood Boulevard a couple of months ago. And, you know, we’re having fights, but they’re not the exact same fights that are happening from back then, but it’s still this idea of, I guess, space. It’s like a spatial disagreement about how space should be allocated. And I don’t know how you get past that. I felt like I’d heard it all before. And I don’t know, it’s the lane trap. You can’t really talk about lanes, perhaps. But then again, we’re having great conversations here about bus lanes. Like, we’re putting in so many new bus lanes. We have this amazing enforcement, we’re raising money for the city. Our city is broke, and bus lanes are one of these, like, shining lights of revenue that’s just pouring in. So I don’t know, maybe we are moving past it. Maybe people are finally getting it. But if you want to talk to anybody about taking away their space, I think that that’s the trap.
Doug: And the funny thing is, I think that people don’t see the space that cars take up. Because even Natasha Lyonne, in that rant that she directs towards you and towards John Mulaney, she says, “It’s Manhattan. There’s no space.” And never once does she say that that Cadillac Escalade that even in a New York City-based television show probably would have picked her up at her apartment to take her to, let’s say, the ABC Studios at Lincoln Square, that Cadillac Escalade is taking up tons of space. But to her, it doesn’t even factor into the equation. She doesn’t even see the car. The car is just part of the background. It used to be a yellow cab, now it’s an Uber, so what’s the difference?
Alissa Walker: Yeah.
Doug: It’s just part of the background. And the bicycle is this new thing, this outlier, this stranger that deserves to be—let’s just get rid of it. Let’s just get all the bicycles to self-deport or, you know, whatever it is that we’re doing to people these days.
Alissa Walker: Although, how did people get, like, food delivery in New York all these years? I don’t—I think the bikes were there. [laughs]
Doug: Well, and so—and that’s the kind of funny thing. There’s a moment where John Mulaney says, you know, he sort of liked it when the bikes were just like “sidewalk pirates” and he’s basically referring to messengers. Which is—I think is a great Mulaney-ism, “sidewalk pirates.”
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: I liked it better when bikes were just sort of pirates going down the sidewalk. I prefer the sidewalk than them having their own lane.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alissa Walker: I’m so glad we’re focused, guys.]
Doug: But then you even see a little bit of the sort of like, well screw pedestrians mentality that sometimes informs community board meetings because what he was saying was, like, “I preferred it when the bikes would just be, like, on the sidewalk.” And Natasha was just like, “Yeah. That would be better.” Better for whom? The pedestrians. Certainly not.
Alissa Walker: That’s why I wanted to be like, “Don’t we need wider sidewalks?” I mean, I really think that it’s like—I just want to reiterate, it’s a comedy show. I’m not even sure if this is truly what any of these people believe. Although I’m sure, like, Sigourney Weaver’s comments about taxis, I do believe that. I think she, you know, probably doesn’t really know what these, like, ride-hailing apps are, maybe. Like, she probably—she might not have ever used them, which I think was going to be something so interesting to talk about. And I also appreciated that Richard brought up—tried to bring up Waymo, and then was kind of like cut off by John, who was like, “No, it’s Saymo.” They have that delivery robot that they like always bring out as a bit.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Richard Kind: How do you feel about the Waymo, the self-driving—since he’s there?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: This is not a Waymo. This is a Saymo.]
Alissa Walker: And that would have also been, I think, a really interesting way to flip the conversation and be like, “Well, who—which cars do get to be on the road? And who feels safe going in which vehicle? And what does safety mean? For what reasons?” Because yeah, there’s—like I said at the very beginning, there’s so many more options, even from when we first had this conversation in, like, you know, 2010, right? There’s so many more things going on on our streets. And it would have been great to talk about literally any one of those things instead of this, like, very old argument.
Doug: Yeah, I will say that as someone who respects your work and has been reading you for a long time, whenever you see a friend, a colleague, or even someone that you don’t know but whose work you really like, get the opportunity to be on a show like this, you think, “Oh, gosh. There couldn’t be a better person. Like, that is exactly who we want to go into the trenches to make the case on behalf of walking and cycling and better public transportation and better public space.” You fought a valiant effort, but you just were sort of, like we said, exiled to one side of the set.
Alissa Walker: I like the ex-urbian, yeah.
Doug: Right, yeah. But I did find it interesting—and this just happens all the time. The subject was: is Uber good? And it was just, “But what about bicycles?” Like, somehow the mere talk of sharing the road with non-bicycle things turns into bicycles. We’re finding this—some people in reaction to the news that we’re writing this book, Life After Cars, their immediate response is, “But not everyone can ride a bike.” And we’re like, “You haven’t even read the book. It actually—bikes don’t make up a huge part of the argument that we’re talking about here. They’re just one piece.” You know, I’m reminded of Mayor de Blasio on The View with Whoopi Goldberg from a bunch of years ago, and he was there to talk about, I believe, healthcare, and how the city was in the face of all the stuff happening in Washington trying to beef up its health insurance for low-income New Yorkers. And Whoopi saw this as an opportunity to just—well, she had the mayor’s ear, and she’s gonna complain about bikes. And I feel like maybe Natasha has been holding on to this for a long time. “Hey, we’re here to talk about transportation. You know what? Bikes are transportation. I’m gonna talk about that.”
Alissa Walker: [laughs] And also, like, I was so prepared to talk about—which I—a lot of other—well I mean, again, it’s a comedy show, but I was—I thought that, you know, talking about is Uber good would open up all these really interesting conversations about, you know, there’s a huge wage theft case that’s being settled. You’ve had one in New York too, right? Like, unionizing workers, like, you know, and being able to collectively bargain for things. Like, there are so many, like, I think, good parallels to what they’re facing as maybe actors, and to look at, you know, transportation options that have, you know, these harmful impacts to not just our cities, but to, like, the labor movement. So I was like, surely that will come up. And the guy, the one crew member, his dad called in who was a Uber driver.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: Hello, Larry in Philadelphia.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Larry: Hi, John.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: Hi, how are you?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Larry: Good. I’m an Uber driver, and always been afraid of a lack of conversation with my passengers, so I don’t shut up the entire ride.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: Oh, you don’t want them to talk?]
Alissa Walker: That was the thing, too. Like, the, usually the callers have questions for the expert, which could—that could have been bounced to me, but they only had one that was on topic, and the other two were, like, asking about completely different things. [laughs] So they weren’t even, like—the calls weren’t screened in a way that they had questions about Uber either. But yeah, I really wanted to ask that Uber driver, like, if he felt like Uber was stealing from him or something. That could have been such an interesting conversation to me personally.
Doug: It’s always a challenge when things turn into what you sort of don’t want them to be, but you have to recognize what the thing was that you are in. I mean, you know, Mulaney is a very good improviser. He’s a great comedian. And there was a really good bit when you were all talking about Lime bikes and scooters. And there seemed to be a whole lot of confusion. Sigourney Weaver, again, brilliant person, but I don’t expect her to know all that much about this.
Alissa Walker: [laughs]
Doug: And then there was this sort of riff of, like, does the Uber driver pick you up and you’re on the back of the scooter?
Alissa Walker: [laughs]
Doug: And that was, like, to me, a hilarious image that someone like Mulaney could have just played with for hours, probably, in a comedy show.
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Sigourney Weaver: Do you ride on the back of the scooter with an Uber driver?]
[laughter]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alissa Walker: Yeah. When you open the app, it has all sorts of options. So it tells you, like, do you want two wheels or four?]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: Oh, I didn’t know anything about that.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alissa Walker: And the reason they do that is because they know that cars can’t be a solution, right? It’s easier to get between the traffic if you can go in the well-maintained bike lane that I’m sure you will …]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: It’s not well-maintained.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, Alissa Walker: Well, it should be.]
[ARCHIVE CLIP, John Mulaney: It should be.]
Doug: Yeah, you want to just have fun with it and go with it, and you recognize that the questions are sort of just pretext for a fun conversation.
Alissa Walker: Yeah.
Doug: You’re not there to solve transportation.
Alissa Walker: No, not at all. And the other really funny thing he said was when I was trying to say, like, you know, reorganizing the street so people could have lanes and be safe. And he was like, “What? This isn’t like the model—model town in Beetlejuice,” which I just thought was, like, the funniest. I was laughing so hard, but then I was like, wait, the Maitlands died in a car crash, like, on the bridge.
Doug: Right. Yeah, exactly.
Alissa Walker: Completely not the safest place.
Doug: Perhaps if they had been on the back of an Uber scooter holding on to an Uber driver, they would have been safe.
Alissa Walker: [laughs]
Doug: Okay, so but, like, here’s the big question that I kind of come down to, which is this: we are saying—this is completely unserious, but it remains true that more people will be seeing this show—even though it’s streamed on Netflix, right? It’s not like the Tonight Show, but it’s still a really popular show—than will listen to The War on Cars or perhaps read a Streetsblog article. Like, let’s just be honest. And it is an opportunity for our issues to get in front of people. And it is always a little disappointing when the conversation goes in this just “Let’s hate bikes, everybody. Don’t we all hate bikes?” Oh, the studio audience, like, goes crazy, like a scene out of Idiocracy or something. How do we push back the narrative? Like, these changes are worth it. Uber is, in fact, not good. Wider bicycle lanes would be a solution to the problem that people like Natasha Lyonne are always complaining about. How do we seize control of these places so that it’s—yeah, it’s not Natasha Lyonne dominating the conversation. It’s the transit expert like you.
Alissa Walker: If you look everywhere but the actual show itself, and I have to say, like, a bunch of the crew members came up to me afterwards and were like, “You were right.” A bunch of the audience members were still there when I went, you know, back down there, like, “You were right.” So the consensus was not, you know, that I was—that I was wrong, even within the, the, you know, room itself. But the online feedback, I mean, there are, like, Reddit threads where, like, everyone is in agreement that, you know, we should have bike lanes, and kind of arguing for exactly what we were talking about, like, cars are not solutions for crowded cities, so let’s, you know, stop pouring money into those solutions or those non-solutions.
Alissa Walker: So I would say, like, I think the conversation really has shifted, and perhaps the people on that stage—who are all very lovely, by the way, like, before and after, absolute thrill to hang out with them and talk to them. And, you know, they were smiling while they were saying I was wrong and I was smiling while they were saying—you know, I was saying they were wrong. But I really do think that just from the feedback that I’ve seen and gotten, the narrative has shifted. Like, a lot of people really are pretty rational in that what we’re doing right now is not working, and that some changes are being made for the better. New York is probably the best example. I wish I could have talked about things like the decrease in honking, all those new studies from, you know, congestion pricing. It’s not just that there are fewer cars and the buses are moving faster, but the quality of life is improving just on a block-to-block basis in Manhattan. So let’s focus on the good things and keep bringing them up, even if we get shouted over. [laughs]
Doug: Okay. Well, I wonder then if that isn’t another way in which this was all like a community board meeting, which is that you go to these meetings and people are screaming about bike lanes, and the people who are showing up are talking about almost being hit, and just put the bike lanes on the sidewalk and all that stuff. But then you actually step outside into a transformed city and you see oh, there’s 10 people queued up at the light on their bikes. There’s a kid on the bike lane that’s just going to soccer practice that just last night everybody was screaming about. These people who don’t have a platform and can’t just, like, dominate and look at camera one and say, “Get rid of all the bike lanes,” they’re not going to the meetings, they’re not invited on the talk shows. And if you actually go out into reality, things are much better than they seem. So maybe that is the lesson of, like, let’s not get too fixated on the controversy, and just try to bring it all back to reality as much as we can.
Alissa Walker: Yeah, I mean, the next morning—well, first of all, I did—I took the train there. I took the bus and the train there, and I took the train home, and then walked the rest of the way from the train station on the way home. When I was—when I was walking out—first of all, it’s hard to get out of a studio because everybody drives in and out. So if you’re on foot, they don’t quite know what to do with you when you’re leaving the—it was sunset hour, like, right in the middle of Hollywood, where I used to live, you know, where I first started taking the train all the time.
Doug: Did you have to hang, like, a big parking visitor pass around your neck just to walk in the studio gate?
Alissa Walker: [laughs] Yeah, just to be able to go in there. Well yeah, they have a special, like, side gate you have to walk through, but I went out and there were, like, all these crew members who were out there maybe, like, you know, they were leaving and striking the set and everything and they’re like, “Where are you going? Are you getting an Uber?” I’m like, “No, I’m going to the train.” They’re like, “Okay, good job. Yeah, like, awesome.” And then I took the train home with, you know, the million—like I said, the million people who ride transit every day in LA, we’re not that—it’s not that wild. And then I got home and, you know, I got off the train and walked past, like, my local street vendor and, you know, saw all these people out, you know, going to bars. And I was like, okay, like, yeah, this is the city that I want. This is what I was describing. And the next morning I had to go, you know, downtown. And got a bike, got a Metro bike, bike share bike, and got in that bike lane and made a video of the tons of people in the bike lane with me. And I was like, yeah, I actually think, you know, give them a few years, they can see if congestion pricing really works in New York, and then maybe we can bring it some other places and they’ll know that I was right. They’ll know.
Doug: I know that you’re right. So that’s important.
Alissa Walker: [laughs]
Doug: You know, it’s so funny because you’re talking about movie studios. Movie studios are like these little cities. And you know what you often don’t find in the middle of a movie studio? A lot of cars. You often find golf carts and bikes and people walking, and the only vehicles you see are service vehicles. And so in a way, I think, you know, we think about all of these places where human beings intuitively understand that cars don’t make sense. And, you know, to quote Natasha Lyonne back to her that, like, they take up too much space. There isn’t enough space for automobiles in most situations where you have a lot of people. And it is funny that there often is that disconnect in places like Los Angeles where people intuitively get it in the places they like to go, whether that’s a movie studio or Venice Beach or Disneyland. But when in terms of just getting from point A to point B, they don’t understand it in the same way.
Alissa Walker: Yeah, I totally brought that up in the dress rehearsal because we were talking about, you know, exactly that. I was like, “Look how you get around on your own studio. You know that cars aren’t going to work, and there’s people just zipping around on golf carts everywhere.” So yeah, I guess that can be my next—my next big appearance. I can convince them to talk about golf carts because I think that’s my real obsession, my real propaganda I want to drop on everybody. Are golf carts good? [laughs]
Doug: Well, you were very brave to go on that show. I thought you did an excellent job. You know, like we said, it is a comedy show; it’s not meant to be totally serious. I think you’re also brave for coming on here immediately after. I don’t want you to burn any bridges with the staff of John Mulaney’s show.
Alissa Walker: Oh, no. They were lovely.
Doug: Like I said, nothing but respect for him as a comedian, for all of the people on the show as actors and just sort of like cultural figures. All of them are welcome to come on The War on Cars to defend their positions. I’m happy to go on a bike ride with Natasha Lyonne.
Alissa Walker: Yeah, I do wonder, like, how—I mean, yes, like I said, everybody was lovely. The guests were all lovely. The producers and—and all the crew were just absolutely—just such a fun day. I was so grateful for the experience. There are just little things that even shows like that could do. Like, he asks everybody who calls in what kind of car they drive, and you could just—you could just change that even very slightly.
Doug: How do you get around? Right.
Alissa Walker: How do you get around, or do you—have you ever—you could just ask people, “Do you take transit?” I mean, those little things do matter. And like I said, I don’t think transit should be a punchline. Like, I don’t think you should see him asking that as, you know, the gotcha joke or that he was, like, making fun of me. I think it’s like if we are doing it, we should say it. And it’s not that strange because we have a million people doing it every day here in LA—more than Chicago now. So, you know, he’s from Chicago. He should know that it’s a really big deal to have this kind of transit ridership. We are now more of a transit city than Chicago. So deal with it.
Doug: Okay, so Alissa, this is called The War on Cars, and you were sort of like the diplomat in the war on cars. You were like our UN ambassador to Hollywood in many ways. There is a role that diplomacy does play, right? Like, the stuff that you and I can say in this conversation on The War on Cars, or the things that you can write about in Torched, like, the medium is the message. So, you know, you could have gone on to John Mulaney’s show guns blazing, like, “Fuck you all. Sigourney Weaver, fuck you. Get out of your cab.” But, like, that would not have won you a whole lot of friends, I don’t think.
Alissa Walker: I’m sure I would not say that to Sigourney Weaver.
Doug: No. Nor would I.
Alissa Walker: [laughs]
Doug: But I do think there’s a tendency of advocates to see an appearance like this, and some folks will say, “Well, why didn’t she fight back harder? Why didn’t she stick up?” Again, I think you did an excellent job. I just want to lay this out there for the people who are like, “Oh, but it was such a missed opportunity,” how do you balance, like, going into the lion’s den, let’s say, and knowing when to pet the lion and knowing when to stab it with a saber?
Alissa Walker: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s a—that’s a really good way to think about it. That’s what, like, advocates are trained to do that, right? To find, like, common ground. I’m not sure that was exactly, like, the intention of this show. Missed opportunity, of course. Like, I wish I had said “congestion pricing” on late night television. That would have been the best. I tried so hard to get there. I wish I could have said that because that would have been an opportunity, like you said, to find common ground and say, “Hey, this is super popular. People love this and it’s working, so let’s talk about that.” I really wanted to talk about solutions, which I think is, you know, usually the right way with these things. But yeah, the humor aspect of it or, like, saying things with a smile without going all in on becoming like a ferocious advocate. Like I tried to say at the beginning of the episode, like, I wanted to remind people that they had options, because having options is good. And I’m not sure we want Uber to be, you know, the only option that people think of when they’re not driving their car. But I want people to know that, you know, the train is traveling right below them as they go to the studio in Hollywood, or that there is a Metro Bike station, and you can ride in these very nice bike lanes on Hollywood Boulevard that are right there. So just, I think, like, showing people through either, you know, our actions or our social media or our writing that there are other options, and they’re fun and they’re easy and they’re cheaper in some cases.
Doug: Well, Alissa, thank you for fighting the good fight, for bringing it to the people on John Mulaney’s show. I thought you did an excellent job. John Mulaney, if you’re listening, come on the show. I know you love cities. Like, you love New York, you love the subway. Let’s talk about it. Alissa, you’re awesome. Really appreciate it. This was a wonderful conversation.
Alissa Walker: Thank you, Doug. So great to be here.
Doug: That’s it for this episode of The War on Cars. You can find more from Alissa Walker and support her journalism with $10 off the price of a yearly subscription to Torched.LA by going to the link in the show notes or, you know, just going to Torched.LA.
Doug: The War on Cars is produced with the generous support of the Helen and William Mazer Foundation and by listeners like you. Go to Patreon.com/thewaroncarspod and support our independent podcast by becoming a member. You’ll get exclusive bonus content, ad-free versions of regular episodes like this one, Discord access, merch discounts and more. We thank our top Patreon supporters: Charley Gee of Human Powered Law in Portland, Oregon, Virginia Baker, and Mark Hedlund.
Doug: And don’t forget, our new book, Life After Cars, is now available for pre-order. To get your copy, ask for it at your local bookstore or go to LifeAfterCars.com.
Doug: Thanks also to Cleverhood. Save 15 percent off the best rain gear for cycling and walking with code JUNEBUG now through the end of June. Go to Cleverhood.com/waroncars.
Doug:And thanks to Xtracycle. There has never been a better time to get an electric cargo bike, and the good people at Xtracycle are ready to help you out. Take the ride guide and find the perfect Xtracycle model for you and your family. Head to Xtracycle.com/thewaroncars. That’s X-T-R-A-cycle.com/thewaroncars.
Doug: This episode was produced and edited by me. Our music is by Nathaniel Goodyear. And on behalf of my co-host Sarah Goodyear, I’m Doug Gordon, and this is The War on Cars.