Episode 159: The War on the War on Cars with Ted Mann 

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Sarah Goodyear: Welcome to The War on Cars. I’m Sarah Goodyear. With me in the studio is my co-host, Doug Gordon.

Doug: Hello!

Sarah: Good to see you again. You’ve been away.

Doug: Yeah, I was in London, Poland and Barcelona for a conference in Poland, and bookended the trip. So hard to come back to the US.

Sarah: Yeah, I was in Brooklyn, which I love, but I’m a little …

Doug: It’s the Barcelona of New York.

Sarah: [laughs] There we go.

Doug: Yeah. Both start with B.

Sarah: That’s right. So today we are gonna be talking about something a little closer to home: the Trump administration’s full-on financial assault on all of the modes of transportation that we hold dear here at The War on Cars. Biking, walking, public transit, basically it’s all under attack. It is the war on the war on cars, you might say.

Doug: We covered some of this in our Project 2025 episode, but I don’t believe we thought it would be quite as bad as quickly as we talked about back then.

Sarah: I think that is the 2025 mantra: We didn’t think it was gonna be this bad this quickly—2025. Anyway, before we get into that, we have a guest here who’s gonna be helping us understand what we are up against. But we’ve got to get a little business out of the way. First of all, you can pre-order our new book, Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile wherever books are sold.

Doug: And it’s coming out on October 21, but if you pre-order the book before then, you will get some really fun bonuses that we’ve just worked out with our publisher. It’s really cool. Everybody who pre-orders, you’ll get access to a live virtual Q&A with Sarah and with me and a special guest to be announced. You will also get a little toolkit poster of, like, ways to imagine life after cars or win the war on cars. Suitable for framing, we’re told. We haven’t seen it yet. We’re still designing it.

Sarah: Yep. And Patreon supporters who pre-order get even more fun stuff, which includes signed book plates, an exclusive downloadable street sign artwork designed by a listener.

Doug: Yes.

Sarah: Fantastic. And this is the super fun part: personalized video responses from me and Doug to your questions. I’m really excited about this.

Doug: Yeah. If you’ve ever thought, why aren’t Sarah and Doug on Cameo, for example, now it’s happening.

Sarah: I know. I think people often ask themselves that question. Anyway, you can find out more about how all of that works at LifeAfterCars.com. You’ll also find links there to all our upcoming tour dates. More events are being added all the time. It’s pretty exciting.

Doug: Yes. And remember, you can always find and support us on Patreon at Patreon.com/thewaroncarspod. So thanks.

Sarah: Let’s get to our guest, who is joining us remotely from Washington, DC. Ted Mann. He’s gonna explain what is going on with federal transportation funding for active transportation projects. Ted is a reporter at Bloomberg News, who has been covering this story as it has been evolving. He is also the co-author of Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric. Ted Mann, welcome to The War on Cars.

Ted Mann: Hello. Glad to be here.

Doug: Thanks for being here.

Sarah: Yeah. We’re so thrilled to have you, because for transportation nerds in the New York metropolitan area, you’re kind of a big deal. We all remember you as the person who broke the Bridgegate story for the Wall Street Journal back in 2013. Just quickly, that was the scandal that emerged when some traffic lanes were closed on the approach to the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey, in what appeared to be an act of retribution against the mayor of that city for not supporting then Governor Chris Christie’s bid for re-election. And those closures caused a massive traffic jam, and the fallout became a national political story.

Doug: The famous phrase, “Time for some traffic in Fort Lee,” right? That came from that. That scandal seems quaint today.

Ted Mann: It totally does. The notion that intentionally messing with transportation in the greater New York City area, the notion that that is scandalous, is quaint and old fashioned.

Sarah: And it had a really big impact on the Republican primary in 2016 for the presidential election, widely considered, I think, to be one of the things that kind of made Chris Christie much less competitive than people thought he was gonna be.

Ted Mann: The scandal blew up at a really inopportune time for Christie, because that was right when he was expecting to pivot from a blowout re-election victory into starting the fundraising for his presidential campaign. And instead, they were busy mopping up a scandal for months, and it really held him back from what would have been the outset of a bid for the nomination.

Sarah: Right. And here we are today. [laughs]

Doug: So on Earth Two, President Chris Christie is in his, you know …

Sarah: It’s like the butterfly effect, but with …

Doug: A traffic cone by an exit ramp to the George Washington Bridge.

Sarah: [laughs] Yeah, exactly. But Ted, so you are an expert of sorts in political wheeling and dealing to do with transportation. And that’s really what you’ve written about in this article that was all over my social media feeds the other day, and it has the headline “Trump Cancels Trail Bike Lane Grants Deemed ‘Hostile’ to Cars.” Can you tell us what’s going on with this story?

Ted Mann: The folks at the Trump administration DOT, including Sean Duffy, are going through grants from discretionary programs that have previously been awarded to cities and counties all over the country. There’s one known as RAISE, which used to be called INFRA, which used to be called TIGER, but essentially it’s a pool of discretionary money that cities and towns can apply to for things like street safety programs, bike lanes, pedestrian trails, traffic calming. These have been pretty non-controversial grants and programs, including the money that went out during Trump’s first administration.

Ted Mann: There’s a whole other program called Safe Streets for All. And this time around, they’re going back through grants that have already been awarded and they’re clawing them back from the recipients, and in various forms, at least according to the letters that we’ve seen, they’re saying this does not prioritize automobile travel and, you know, single drivers moving around in cars through this city, and therefore it’s not in keeping with our policies. So it really is the war on the war on cars. [laughs]

Doug: It’s probably worth pointing out that RAISE stands for Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity. And so perhaps those two words, “sustainability” and “equity” got flagged in some sort of AI DOGE-related purge. Not that they wouldn’t have gone after these things anyway, but it’s certainly part of it.

Ted Mann: I think that’s right. We’re seeing all over the place, including the cuts that Russ Vought announced yesterday on funding for Gateway and for the Second Avenue subway where they’re sort of applying the anti-equity consideration frame. But then also there have been from the outset from Duffy, there have been indications that they don’t like bike stuff. It was in one of the early memos, there was a reference to bicycle infrastructure as something that they were—this is my paraphrase, but view skeptically. So yeah, it’s tough to know exactly where they’re coming from, other than the language in the letters, where in a couple of these instances they’ve used that phrase, “this is hostile to the automobile.” It’s almost like it’s hurting the car’s feelings.

Sarah: I have to stop on that, which is it’s not saying these grants prevent more people from moving through the street, these grants are not good for people. It’s really that they’re not good for cars.

Ted Mann: It’s almost anthropomorphizing the vehicle, right? [laughs] There was one of the letters, I think it is one of the ones sent to Boston. Boston had a couple of grants pulled back that essentially said, like, we’re looking at your project, and it’s making it less auto-centric. Which is exactly what would have been put in an application under the previous administration, and instead that was grounds for revocation of the money.

Doug: Before we move on too far, because we should talk about each of these projects, like you mentioned the Gateway and Second Avenue stuff, that literally just broke yesterday as we’re recording this. And one of the things that they said was that the DBE, or Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program, was the problem. Which could you explain what that is for our listeners?

Ted Mann: Sure. First of all, it’s a law passed by Congress that federal money is splitting DOT grants when they go out to recipients. So those would be states, state entities like the MTA or the Gateway Commission, or in some cases counties. There are supposed to be set asides when public money is going to pay for big projects that are intended to steer some of the business to firms that are from historically disadvantaged demographics. So in other words, minority-owned contracting firms, women owned-contracting firms. This is long-standing federal policy. It’s in the rules. There’s still—at least, I haven’t checked this morning, but there’s a webpage on the DOT’s website all about this program, because it’s something you’ve got to abide by if you take their money to build something.

Ted Mann: And as of two nights ago, DOT has turned this on its head. They’re referring to a couple of recent court decisions to say that all of that is unconstitutional, and therefore any recipient of a grant who took into account historically disadvantaged communities when they were deciding who would get the contracts under that grant has now violated the Constitution and those monies can be frozen or pulled back. 

Ted Mann: Some of this is, in the view of the MTA and the state officials, they see this as sophistry, right? Because really, what’s at stake here is the administration wants to fight with Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer. And right now, what’s useful to them is being able to hold back some of this money. And so I think there is this question of how much is this—you know, speaking of Bridgegate, how much of this is just the weaponization of the DOT as part of this political gamesmanship that’s going on, and how much of it is something that they’re really going to be serious about going forward? So if the issue is we’re holding back a $300 million reimbursement until the government reopens and then MTA will get its money, that’s a problem, but it’s not as big of a problem if what they’re actually saying is all $18 billion of the money for these two projects are now back up in the air because we’ve decided that the entire way that DOT has administered grants like this for many years, decades, is no longer valid. That creates a whole other problem.

Doug: And we should probably just explain that the Gateway Project is the tunnel connecting New Jersey with Manhattan. Amtrak goes under there, New Jersey Transit goes under there. These are tunnels that are more than a century old and, you know, have been on the verge of collapse for decades at this point.

Sarah: Yeah.

Ted Mann: That’s right. And they’re a pain point for New York. And just as they did in the first Trump administration, the DOT is sort of using that squeezing on this project because they know that it’s an essential project for New York City, and that gives you leverage over Schumer.

Sarah: Chris Christie, way back, I think in, like, 2010, was using this project as leverage in his political rise to not the highest point where he thought he was gonna be at. [laughs] But I want to circle back because, you know, yes, some of this is targeted at “Democrat,” quote-unquote, states and regions, but the rescission of these biking and walking grants is actually affecting lots and lots of places that are “red states,” quote-unquote. And, you know, you give the example of a project in Fairfield, Alabama, for instance, right?

Ted Mann: Yep.

Sarah: Can you tell us a little bit about what’s happening there?

Ted Mann: Sure. Fairfield is, you know, a little city in Alabama. They’re a good example of a community where there’s no other option. The city clerk, when we called, said, “Yeah, like, if we don’t get the grant, the whole thing doesn’t happen.” This isn’t San Diego, which is now scrambling to find the money somewhere else, and they probably will be able to because it’s a big economy. There are lots of little communities that applied for this money because they want a little bit of what is being built all over the country for themselves. You know, a safe place to ride your bike, a convenient way to get across town that you could do on foot instead of having to get in a car.

Ted Mann: And I think that sort of, as you said, there is this sense that all of these projects, all of this non-vehicular infrastructure is essentially liberally coded. This is for blue cities, this is for yuppies in Patagonia fleeces. And that’s just not at all in keeping with what’s actually happening out in the country. People of all political stripes like to be able to ride a bike and not get hit by a car. This is true. We had a quote in the story from Kevin Mills in the Rails to Trails group basically saying, like, there’s this idea that this is only for one part of the country, but really, the appetite at the local level is very broad, and it’s not subject to some partisan divide or even like a MAGA/anti-MAGA divide. And so I think that’s one of the most interesting pieces about going after this entire mode, or sort of every mode that isn’t the car, is that you’re gonna hit a lot of places where there’s actually tremendous public support for just making it a little bit safer to cross the street.

Sarah: We’ll be right back after this break.

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Doug: Okay, we’re back. Could we maybe go through some of those projects? We mentioned Boston, you mentioned specifically this case in Alabama. But what is the Boston project? Albuquerque, San Diego, what are these projects that are being clawed back?

Ted Mann: One of the projects in Boston is basically just a road safety overhaul of the neighborhood of Mattapan Square. And the Albuquerque plan is the continuation—they’re nearing the end of this long-term effort to do a bike trail going all through the city, and they’re at this downtown piece that required a chunk of federal money to be able to complete the circuit. There’s a similar project in Illinois, where going back to the 1990s is when they started planning a bicycle trail, a mixed-use trail, a pedestrian and bicycle trail that would go all the way across this county in Illinois from one county line to the other. And it’s a place where you have railroads—I believe the railroad’s on the northern edge and there’s highway on the southern edge—and so this is really providing a transportation alternative that didn’t exist in this county, and that they’re almost at the point of finishing finally, but now it’s been interrupted by the cessation of that grant.

Sarah: You know, this reminds me of back in February, we had Beth Osborne, the executive director of Transportation for America on, and she was talking about the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025, saying, you know, we’re gonna come after transit. We’re coming after transit. And she was pointing out that if you look at the list of transit agencies—and there are about a thousand agencies on that list—what she told us was they’re overwhelmingly in smaller and rural communities. And the people who are doing this, I think, sometimes don’t even realize. That they can be sort of shocked, she says. When you show them the list, they’re like, “Oh, wait. Those are the communities that allegedly I’m supposed to be in favor of,” these small rural communities that are in what MAGA people would call “the real America.” But transit has become so left coded, as you say, and biking as well, that that just all seems to go out the window. And it’s really—it doesn’t seem like there’s any kind of legitimate policy rationale here. It’s really an ideological stance.

Ted Mann: I think that’s right. Or certainly they haven’t given us a policy rationale. I was just looking at one of the letters that flew in over the transom. This one was sent to—I believe this is the state of Delaware. But in one of their rejections, they just say “the project runs counter to DOT’s priority of focusing the multimodal grant programs primarily on projects that promote vehicular travel.” No why, why we’re pivoting away. And I do think it’s true that it is seeming like an ideological project, and it doesn’t exactly match up with the politics. Again, Kevin Mills’s example was Florida, which has a really aggressive trail construction program ongoing. That is now a ruby red state, obviously. Ron DeSantis is the governor, but there’s a good network of trails and they’re expanding it and building it. So it’s not like there is something that is essentially partisan here. It’s just been sucked into the broader sort of polarization project that is sweeping over everything.

Doug: I’m only laughing because, you know, they’re basically saying, “Look, we’re taking all the multimodal grants and we’re focusing it on one mode.”

Sarah: [laughs]

Doug: Like that’s …

Ted Mann: Right, right. You’re multimodal is too multi.

Doug: [laughs] Right.

Sarah: Right. And also they talk about “vehicular traffic,” apparently unaware of the definition of the word “vehicular,” which is a vehicle can be many different things, including a bicycle or a bus.

Doug: Well, bikes are only vehicles when you want cyclists to follow the rules of the road. They’re not vehicles when they’re entitled to space on the road. That’s different.

Sarah: That’s when they’re toys.

Doug: That’s when they’re toys. You know, I think one of the interesting things that I have noticed in reading your reporting and other stuff about this terrible news, they’re talking about this being hostile to cars, and that’s why they’re pulling some of this stuff back. But they’re pulling stuff back that doesn’t actually take space from cars. If we were talking about Sean Duffy saying, “Hey, your project repurposes travel lanes away from cars and gives it to bikes, or it narrows crossings for pedestrians and that requires the removal of dozens of parking spaces, so hey, we’re gonna take your funding, and that all has to be parking and car travel lanes,” I could sort of get my head around sitting in the shoes of a Republican at the USDOT. But we’re talking in some cases, like you just said, about off-street trails that do not take space from motor vehicles whatsoever.

Doug: And I think that speaks to the ideological piece of this. Like, anything that seems to threaten the primacy of cars, even if it’s your ability to just move, as you said, from one side of town to the other in a completely car-free space that wouldn’t otherwise be for cars, that’s on the chopping block, too.

Ted Mann: Yeah, that’s right. And so some of these, they are reducing a lane or they’re striping a bike lane in part of a space which is only signaled for cars right now. But in others, as you say, yeah, these are totally off street. This is just improving trail networks. Then there are other examples—and this is in the clawback in particular some of the Safe Streets for All program grants. You can see that the objection is actually just this might slow down the cars that are moving there now. One of the rejection letters to Boston says, “Your project includes several elements that impede vehicle capacity and speed.” Like, literally, that’s the point of the Safe Streets for All grant.

Doug: Right. We want drivers to go a little slower so they don’t hit people, or when they do, people are not killed.

Ted Mann: Right. To go the speed limit so that you don’t kill somebody. But yeah, so that’s the case. In some of these projects, they are rejecting something that would have reallocated lane space to a bicycle. But in other cases, they’re not even taking any physical space away from the cars. It’s just trying to create space for other modes, and also to make the cars go the speed that the city wants.

Doug: The specific project I was thinking of that you wrote about was the Route 66 bike trail in McLean County in Illinois that was basically following the path of Route 66, and just allowing cyclists some space that would not have taken space from drivers.

Ted Mann: Right. And that’s the one that they’ve been working on for decades, slowly piecing it together just to try to create this alternative. Again, not at all impeding anyone from driving across the county in a car, but giving you another way to do it which is actually safe. And that was one of the ones where when we called the local government, they were saying, you know, the sponsors are not giving up, by and large, at least the ones that we talked to. There are some who, as in the Alabama example, there’s just not an alternative. There’s no money in that city’s budget to do this without federal help. And in other cases like McLean, what they’re trying to do is scrounge anywhere else they can find. And I think they already applied for an Illinois state DOT grant. So they will be looking for alternatives, but it has completely scrambled, in many cases, these efforts that are years in the making to build this stuff.

Doug: One of the things that the Department of Transportation said to McLean County was that they were canceling this because they needed to ensure that “taxpayer dollars are used efficiently in ways that maximally benefit the American people and improve—” and this is the important part, “improve their quality of life.” It’s like, what improves your quality of life more than being able to just hop on a bicycle or walk across the street? It’s just maddening that the only definition of quality of life is your ability to get in an expensive car, fuel it up with expensive gas, and sit in traffic and go.

Sarah: And pollute the air of your community and …

Doug: Make your neighbors less safe.

Sarah: And make yourself less healthy. It’s really chilling, actually. And I guess trying to find some hope in this, you’re talking about ways that communities and municipalities can try to fight back against this. What are the mechanisms that states and cities and towns and counties have to try to continue these projects? I’m sure it’s case by case, but what are some of the levers available?

Ted Mann: In some cases, it’s going to be simply finding the money at other levels of government that are not hostile to this kind of infrastructure being built. So if there’s a state DOT that can give you a grant that can sort of patch together the financing plan that way, that will be one option. I’m sure there will be attempts to do fundraising from the private sector and from foundations where they can sort of—where the loss here can be cobbled together. There’s gonna be self help in some cases. I think in a lot of cases, there’s gonna be delay. You’re gonna have to postpone stuff that might otherwise have been in construction, you know, probably not this year, but in the spring.

Ted Mann: It’s also the case that, going back to January 20, when this administration came in, they’d started hitting pause on all sorts of this stuff, including some of these grants. Some of these recipients had already received a letter saying, “By the way, we’re reviewing these seven awards that you received over the last two years,” or whatever. And so in some cases—I’m thinking of Albuquerque here and the official that we talked to there, that grant, there was no fully-funded grant agreement because it was being reviewed—whatever that means—by the DOT. So everything has just been frozen. And you can’t—you know, without the grant agreement, you can’t start spending money. You can’t start working on the thing. So the silver lining of this getting clawed back from Albuquerque is what they told us was, okay, now we can go get the money somewhere else and get back to work. They’ve just been sitting there for nine months waiting for something to happen.

Ted Mann: So there will be a little of that, too. And I think that some of this—assuming that the administration doesn’t suddenly change its posture here, some of this stuff will be built by states and cities and counties and other entities without the federal government’s help until there’s an administration in power that isn’t opposed to this stuff ideologically.

Sarah: But isn’t there also cases where if a city or a county has entered into contracts, and contractors are working and those contractors need to be paid, they’ve done the work, can’t entities find themselves in a pretty scary legal situation where they’re not able to pay a contractor’s bill? And who’s got the legal liability for that?

Ted Mann: Oh yeah, certainly. This is where we’ve all, in the past few months, had to learn a lot about the difference between obligated and unobligated funds. I think, at least according to the people we’ve been talking to, the administration is on firmer ground to pull back some of these awards where you’ve essentially won, you’ve put in your application, you’ve been awarded a grant, but it’s not been obligated yet. For those that are not obligated yet, it’s gonna be a lot easier for Duffy to just pull the awards back. For those that are, where there is, as you’re saying, work underway and, you know, invoices to be paid, you need to look at that response we got from Boston, which seems to be essentially saying we’re reserving our right. I think there will be legal action if they go through with some of this stuff.

Doug: This is gonna upend everything also, because if I am one of those contractors, I own a concrete company or something, and in the future I get some contract from the government to, you know, build a bike lane or a trail, I’m gonna want that money up front. I’m not gonna basically sit there and say, you know, “I’ll trust the federal government to reimburse the state or the city, but I’ll do the work in the meantime.”

Ted Mann: Yeah. I mean, are you gonna bid—if there’s an RFP for a bike lane somewhere and it’s a county saying we have a federal grant to pay for part of it? Like, are you gonna bid watching this? I don’t know.

Doug: Or a gateway tunnel project in the billions of dollars, not a bike lane in the millions of dollars.

Ted Mann: One of the biggest factors all over the world in deciding whether to put investments into infrastructure is political risk. And we are in an environment of tremendous political risk.

Sarah: Yeah. And the fact that the cost of raw materials is also incredibly volatile because of the on-again, off-again tariff situation, and that the cost of labor is also going to probably be changing in unpredictable ways because the construction industry is having a huge part of its labor force …

Doug: Rounded up.

Sarah: Rounded up.

Doug: Deported.

Sarah: And deported, and put into concentration camps, essentially. So the uncertainty that you’re talking about in a nation where, you know, when I started covering these issues 20 years ago, it was all about, oh, crumbling infrastructure, crumbling infrastructure, and kind of trying to get ahead of the crumble and try to build some infrastructure for the new century that’s now already a quarter over, and it seems like it’s just going to slow that down again.

Ted Mann: Yeah, that’s right. And just to your cost overrun point, I don’t have the number in front of me, but I think it was yesterday or the day before the Brightline West—my colleague Martin Braun wrote about how their cost estimate for that project has just soared, and they’re blaming material costs.

Doug: That’s the LA-to-Vegas train, yes.

Ted Mann: The almost-LA-to-the-almost-Vegas train.

Doug: This is probably the point of any episode where we would say what’s the hope? What should people do? It can feel a little difficult to really even pose that question, because I don’t know what the answer is. I mean, I guess just off the top of my head, I think if you are in a red state, if you are in Florida and you enjoy cycling on that lovely trail system that they’re building in Texas, in Florida, elsewhere, you call your congresspeople and say, “What’s up with this project? Like, my health and safety depend on it.” If you’re a contractor, same thing.

Sarah: I actually was wondering, Ted, I had heard from someone I spoke to who is from Florida, who is somewhat involved at the governmental level in this stuff, who said that actually, being in Florida might be your best bet because you can, you know, make your supplication directly to the administration, and because they favor the state of Florida, you might be able to get some of this back again. Are you hearing any of that?

Ted Mann: That is a theme that we are reporting on, about how broadly the pain will be shared of a lot of their fiscal policy, the cuts—not just transportation cuts, but this stuff and lots of other stuff. And we don’t really know yet to what extent everyone—red state and blue state—will see things like this happening, projects being clawed back. But certainly, if you look at the way other things are going on in Washington these days, it seems like there will be states and delegations that have a better chance of getting their aid restored, or getting their favorite policy looked kindly upon by the administration. But that’s something where we’re just gonna have to keep reporting on it and watching it as this year and the next year unfolds.

Doug: So if you want a good bike trail in your state, donate a gold-plated bicycle to hang in the new ballroom that they’re constructing next to the White House, I guess.

Ted Mann: Which, as someone pointed out to me the other day, is going to be disrupting traffic on the 15th Street bike lane for, like, the next four years or something. So …

Doug: Our friend Alissa Walker pointed out that everywhere Trump goes, by the way, like, public transit increases because he just screws up traffic for everybody else. So maybe we just need to send Trump to every part of the country, and we can get people on board with using public transit and biking.

Ted Mann: [laughs]

Sarah: Or I’m imagining that the mode that will be favored for transport to the ballroom will be actually horse and carriage a la, you know, sort of British royalty like the beautiful gold encrusted carriages with plumed horses.

Ted Mann: And whale oil lanterns.

Sarah: Exactly. [laughs] At the portico of the ballroom.

Doug: Right. Like, how far back do we want to turn the clock actually, is really the question we’re talking about here. I do wish we could end on a more hopeful note. I do think it’s important to lay out the stakes. And your reporting, Ted, has been really valuable in terms of laying out exactly what these projects are. And I think to the point of your piece, that this is being felt in red states and deep red states like you said, like Florida, as well as liberal enclaves like the Northeast is an important point to make here. So we’ll stay on top of it, and hopefully have you back with better news, I guess.

Ted Mann: I would love that.

Sarah: Yeah. And I think for me the hopeful part is that there are reporters like Ted who are reporting on this as a systemic threat to the progress that we have been making in this country. And so yeah, Ted, keep it up. We really need what you’re doing.

Doug: We need good reporting. So thanks.

Ted Mann: Well, thank you so much. Keep up the good fight.

Sarah: That’s it for this episode of The War on Cars. Another thanks to Ted Mann for joining us here. You can find Ted’s reporting at Bloomberg News. We’ll put a link in the show notes.

Doug: Remember, you can support us and get exclusive bonus content, pre-sale access to live shows, free stickers and more by signing up on Patreon at Patreon.com/thewaroncarspod. A big thanks to everyone who supports us, including our top contributors: Charley Gee of Human Powered Law in Portland, Oregon, Mark Hedlund, Virginia Baker and Brandon DeCoster.

Sarah: And please pre-order our new book, Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile. And find us on tour this fall. Learn more about ordering and fun pre-order bonuses at LifeAfterCars.com.

Doug: Thanks also to our friends at Cleverhood. Listeners of The War on Cars can save 15 percent on everything in the Cleverhood store now through the end of October with code LIFEAFTERCARS. For the best gear for cycling and walking, go to Cleverhood.com/waroncars.

Sarah: And thanks to Upway. For a great deal on a certified, pre-owned e-bike, visit Upway.co and save $150 off any e-bike order over $1,000 with code WARONCARS now through the end of October. Again, that’s Upway.co.

Doug: The War on Cars is produced with the generous support of the Helen and William Mazer Foundation.

Sarah: This episode was edited by Yesenia Moreno. It was recorded at the Brooklyn Podcasting Studio by Walter Nordquist.

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

Sarah: And I’m Sarah Goodyear. And this is The War on Cars.