Saturday, June 13, 2026 - 26/23 Car Supremacy

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1. From KPFK in Los Angeles, California, Valley Free Radio in Florence, Massachusetts, WNUC in Detroit, and Biketalk.org worldwide, this is Biketalk.
2. Biketalk.
3. Welcome to Biketalk. I'm Taylor Nichols.
4. And I'm Nick Richard.
5. Hey, Nick.
6. How you doing?
7. I'm doing good. I'm in a hotel in Missoula, Montana, or otherwise known as Mecca, for people who tour on bicycles,
8. because this is the home of adventure cycling.
9. Did you coin that, that it's a mecca, or are they calling it that?
10. I'm the first person that I know of that said it,
11. but I can't imagine I'm the first person to say it
12. because it really is the place that a lot of touring cyclists go to
13. on their way across the country.
14. Is it like your midpoint?
15. You know, I don't think it's quite the midpoint,
16. although I did go a long way up the coast and then over.
17. I'm about 1,500 miles in,
18. And I think that the full trip is going to be about 4,000.
19. So I'm a little less than midway mile-wise.
20. But climbing-wise, I think I'm a little past midway.
21. The last 24 hours of my trip encapsulate the highs and lows that people go on, I think, on a trip like this.
22. Yesterday afternoon, I had this beautiful ride up this river valley of the Loxah River, L-O-C-H-S-A River in Idaho.
23. And Nick, every bend of the road was beautiful.
24. There was no traffic.
25. The river was a whitewater river off to my right and mountains off to my left.
26. I camped at Clearwater Wilderness Gateway with very few people around all by myself.
27. Could not have been better. No services, no internet, no Wi-Fi.
28. Then yesterday I rode up and I had to go over Lolo Pass.
29. So that was hard. You know, the first part was slightly up, but going over the pass was hard.
30. Then I get to the top of the pass.
31. So there's a little bit of a high riding along the river, a little bit of a low going over the pass.
32. Then down the other side of the pass was just a beautiful high.
33. Then I get to these hot springs and I take a hot springs.
34. I soak.
35. Oh, man.
36. I know.
37. It was like this is this is what I signed up for.
38. But this morning, yeah, now I'm in Montana and I lost an hour going from Idaho to Montana.
39. so this morning i wake up you lost an hour like because the time yeah the time change going from
40. from pacific to mountain time but this morning i wake up and it's raining and it's like you know
41. riding in the rain is one thing but waking up in the rain when all of your equipment your tent
42. your bags are all wet is a little bit of a problem because you don't want to pack it all up
43. wet and i had no internet so i couldn't check the weather to see when the rain was going to end and
44. all that. So that was a low that I had to deal with. I was cold. It was wet. I didn't know what
45. the heck I was going to do. But right across the street where the hot springs were, are,
46. was a little restaurant that had Wi-Fi. So I went there and had breakfast and coffee.
47. And I felt kind of guilty, like I should be having oatmeal and coffee at my campsite. But
48. then I thought, no, that's stupid. You know, go to the restaurant. And I waited out the rain
49. in the restaurant.
50. And then today I had like a 35 mile ride
51. from Lolo Hot Springs to Missoula.
52. And it was slightly downhill and a tailwind that made me feel like Lance Armstrong on drugs I not kidding I was flying
53. I was going 21, 22 miles an hour without even thinking about it.
54. And then it started to rain a little bit, but it wasn't bad.
55. And I was just flying.
56. And so that was a high.
57. But then the low, and this is what I want to end on, a couple of drivers buzzed me.
58. and Nick, I'm riding on a road that four, five, six, seven minutes go by without a car.
59. So I'm very comfortable riding in the middle of the lane. I can hear cars coming from a mile away.
60. And yet when they do come and they do pass me, one out of 10 scares the living daylights out of me
61. by not moving over an inch. And one truck, what do they call it when it goes by and the wind
62. pushes you? I don't know. Truck wind? Yes. Truck wind or slipstream actually pushed me off the
63. road into the gravel. And, you know, just those two guys that did that almost ruined this perfect
64. 35 mile ride in beautiful country. And I only bring all this up because we want to talk to
65. Jim Pocras about how we can deal with this and is artificial intelligence driving driverless
66. cars, could that be one of the answers? Because these two guys ruined this beautiful ride for me.
67. So on that note, we want to welcome Jim Pocras to the show. Jim, thanks for coming back on.
68. Tell us a little bit about the legal issues around, I mean, do we call it AI driving or
69. do we call it driverless? This is a great subject to be talking about, and I'm really jealous of
70. your trip. However, I think that, you know, what you experienced with the truck and with that other
71. A driver is right at the heart of what we're talking about with autonomous vehicles or AI vehicles, vehicles that do not have a driver in them.
72. The heart of all of this is safety on the road.
73. You know, we want safer roads.
74. Okay, is it safer or not safer with an autonomous vehicle that has been programmed with, you know, all these type of software to try to eliminate the problems and the dangers like that you had today?
75. driving too close to you, the speed that they got, you know, making it dangerous for cyclists or even
76. pedestrians where these vehicles may be able to pick up, you know, what is going on on the road.
77. In some states, you have to give the cyclist or the person on the road three feet. And in other
78. states, you have to change lanes. Right. Again, on these autonomous vehicles, they have software
79. and radar that is supposed to pick up a pedestrian or a cyclist and then maneuver themselves in a
80. position where they're safe so that the roads are safer. If an AV does hit me or some other
81. vulnerable road user, who is responsible? The vehicle owner? The operator? Or what?
82. That's the question of the day. Every crash used to start with the question when they'd come into
83. my office, who is driving? How does that question change when nobody's driving? Okay, so who's
84. responsible for this? Who do you sue? You have to take a look at the circumstances surrounding
85. how the crash took place. So you're looking at the software and what is driving that vehicle
86. and who is responsible for that. And you have to look at both sides of the story. There could be a
87. lot of comparative negligence on the person, the pedestrian or the cyclist and how they're
88. operating. So if the question is, you know, who gets sued at this point, you have to kind of look
89. everybody The vehicle manufacturer Tesla Waymo Cruze or whoever it is You look at the software developers if they separate from the vehicle manufacturers the vehicle owners depending on the state law
90. Going back to human safety operators and then parts manufacturers, the people that manufacture the cameras, the radar.
91. There's a thing called LIDAR, like a radar in a vehicle, in these autonomous vehicles, that sends out a laser type of radar.
92. and then braking systems, steering systems, and look at all of that.
93. So those are the potential defendants in the case.
94. It sounds like there are multiple industries to sue if a vulnerable road user does get struck by an AV.
95. That's correct.
96. The legal system is really moving from a driver negligence to a system negligence.
97. The focus for a lawyer now is going to have to be getting information with regard to vehicle sensors and videos and radars and braking and steering, remote assistant communications, prior DMV collision reports.
98. And that's where we're going to have to be looking at with regard to who we sue.
99. Like I said, when we're suing everybody, you know, from the manufacturer down to the people that make the software and the vehicle owners and the human safety operators.
100. But we're also going to have to take a look at the pedestrians and riders of cycles to determine how they're riding.
101. There's still a whole comparative negligence.
102. But that's what I'm going to be looking at, systems negligence versus driver negligence.
103. And that's going to be a whole different story.
104. I can't wait for AI to take over some of these truck drivers' jobs.
105. I know that's a bad thing to say.
106. But if AI or autonomous vehicles, now, Nick, I know you have a different viewpoint on this.
107. If they make the roads safer, I'm all for it.
108. Nick, what's your argument sort of against it?
109. Well, there's the jobs point of view.
110. Personally, I think it's probably inevitable.
111. Like in trucking, I think that's going pretty fast.
112. Driverless vehicles, if they're safer, that's what matters in some ways.
113. But it doesn't really solve the problem of car dependency.
114. It keeps us in cars.
115. It keeps us in multi-ton vehicles, you know, with just a person inside.
116. And so that's a lot of energy.
117. It's inefficient.
118. And if you're trying to create more public transportation, people using active transportation,
119. you know, you're not doing anything about the problem of cars.
120. Of too many cars.
121. However, I think Jim's argument is at least the cars that are on the road could be safer
122. if we can figure out how to hold people responsible for the products that they make.
123. Again, like Jim said, whether it's Tesla or Waymo or whatever.
124. Yeah.
125. When I was in Idaho, I did the Idaho stop.
126. Okay, cool.
127. And I also had lights on my bike, all the reflectors, and I even wore a vest, a bright vest.
128. You know, Jim, it really sounds like there's so much to cover in this.
129. I think we should come back and continue this conversation about whether it is moving us in the right direction with autonomous vehicles.
130. There's lots of other issues besides just jobs, vehicle miles, travel, pollution, all these kinds of things.
131. And I look forward to discussing this topic further.
132. I'm going to look forward to talking about that, too, because if it makes the road safer, then I think that we go toward that.
133. Well, Jim Pokras of Pokras and De Los Reyes, merci beaucoup.
134. Okay. Just have a nice, safe ride. I wish I was doing that with you.
135. Thanks, Jim.
136. Thanks, Jim.
137. That was Jim Pokras of Pokras and De Los Reyes. And I think it's time for the news, Nick.
138. I Stacey with this week news From Chicago ABC 7 News on Friday June 5th 35 Chicago DOT employee Riley O known for working to make riding bicycles
139. in the city safer for everyone,
140. was killed biking in a paint-only bike lane.
141. Riley is at least the third person struck and killed
142. by a driver while biking in Chicago this year.
143. In Seattle this past Monday,
144. 30-year-old elementary school teacher Christian Sawyer
145. was killed while biking in the intersection
146. of 12th Avenue South and East Yesler Way by the driver of a garbage truck. A protected bike lane
147. was supposed to be built there by 2021, but the blocks in question were removed from the city's
148. plan in 2019. From StreetsBlockUSA, a group of advocates recently announced they've mapped over
149. 2,000 bike parking locations across the Las Vegas Valley as part of a campaign by Bikerackmap.com.
150. Bike racks are often sited on private land, and because most city building codes don't require them, unlike car parking, many local governments have no idea where cyclists can publicly lock up, and cyclists have no choice but to find storage on the go.
151. Check out how to get started in your community at bikerackmap.com.
152. You know, I joked earlier that I made it to Mecca, but I did go to the Adventure Cycling headquarters and I got to meet Josh Bowden, the guy who's in charge of tours and things like that for the ACA.
153. And he gave me a tour of the building and they have free ice cream.
154. I'll throw that in, too.
155. It's like the spoken hostel.
156. You keep running into that.
157. I love that.
158. the offices of Adventure Cycling have these beautiful spaces for people who are traveling
159. by bike to hang out, clean their bike, fix their bike. There's a reading room with all these books.
160. It's really a wonderful place to spend an hour or two on your journey across the country.
161. Okay, so I made it to Mecca, right? Yeah.
162. Missoula, Montana, and the home of Adventure Cycling. I caught Josh Bowden, who's been
163. helped me with this trip just as he was getting ready to leave and he was nice enough to stay.
164. But we're in the building, Josh, that's been the subject of controversy of whether you keep it or
165. not. I can see why it's a beautiful space with all these bikes, but tell me a little bit about
166. the space. Yeah. So like you said, a little bit controversial, I guess, but it's all about
167. blown over now, you know, got the building and we're here to stay is kind of where we landed.
168. So, and as you can see, yeah, like there's bikes all over the walls, a bunch of beautiful here.
169. we've been here for oh gosh 20 30 years i want to say so it's kind of become the staple and
170. um like you can see here we have all these cyclists that come in we take their pictures
171. and we do these like official portraits that are very pretty so a lot of people go out of their way
172. to come here just because it's i did yeah you have to missoula is not near anything so you have to
173. come out of your way but here at the front when you walked in you walked by some of the history
174. that before adventure cycling was adventure cycling the founders of it these two couples
175. did this thing they called the hemis tour which was a ride all the way from the northern tip of
176. alaska all the way to the southern tip of south america oh wow that was back in the 70s so like
177. they apparently invented the term bike packing like that was the first time it got published
178. and used and as you can see like obviously this is audio so listeners can't see it but
179. they were riding bikes with like essentially road tires you know and they're going through
180. mud and on these dirt roads so they were gravel riding and bike packing when there wasn't
181. equipment for that, you know, they were hardcore.
182. But out of that came the ride that everyone knows about us,
183. which is the bike centennial, the 1976 ride across the
184. country on the Trans Am.
185. So that, during their two year trip going across the
186. Americas, they had that idea of like,
187. let's gather this thing and celebrate.
188. They did that, and then out of that came what was bike
189. centennial, which became Adventure Cycle.
190. Did you meet Kay or not?
191. Did I meet Kay? I don't think so.
192. Oh, she was just here like yesterday.
193. today oh you met her today oh she was here today okay she's the 71 year old woman that i met on the
194. route earlier okay and she did that ride in oh really wow she was 21 i was gonna say she's 71
195. man yeah she was young when she did that first one yeah so i'm sorry i didn't mean to interrupt
196. you here you're good you can just see some of like the bike centennial the old logo and some
197. of the old pictures you know i always look at this and it's kind of appalling because most people
198. don't have helmets right the first helmet was not made very long before that ride you know
199. so it's a little funny to see people wearing just like their trucker hats and their you know
200. shorts right well racers didn't wear helmets even in in the 90s i mean lance armstrong was winning
201. tour de france's without a helmet right with drugs but without a helmet right right yeah i think he
202. had other things going on in the helmet but um yeah but we've been here for a long time um in
203. the building which is you know why people care about it so much and like you said it is kind of
204. a Mecca for people.
205. You have to go very far
206. out of the way to come here
207. just to see the place
208. that gives them
209. all the information
210. for all of their maps
211. as going on shows
212. with people like you.
213. So it does mean
214. a lot to people.
215. So we get it.
216. And it's nice
217. to have a building.
218. Yeah, I think so too.
219. I mean, well,
220. we won't go into
221. the whole story again,
222. but it sounded like
223. you could have stayed here
224. even if you did sell it.
225. That was the hope, yeah.
226. But, you know,
227. things went
228. in a different direction,
229. which is fine.
230. We're still here.
231. We're still plugging along
232. pretty well,
233. and we're doing great this year.
234. Great.
235. I'm really glad to hear that.
236. Tell me more about the space back here and some of these bikes.
237. Yeah.
238. So the bikes kind of come from all over.
239. And if you, like, walk around and see most of them, we have those official portraits I was talking about.
240. You can see, like, they're all black and white.
241. Oh, yeah.
242. And even the modern ones, we still keep it black and white because that's our style.
243. Right.
244. And they come with a little blurb, sometimes written by us, sometimes written by the rider we take a picture of.
245. So these will often tell you, you know, these pictures are beneath the bike hanging on the wall.
246. so you can see the story of like who is this person what were they doing with their bike what
247. did their ride mean and that can kind of explain it and this woman you just explained to me is on a
248. around the world race by herself and she's doing like 250 a day yeah lail wilcox which some of the
249. listeners might be familiar with like pretty famous ultra endurance athlete who's now a board
250. member of adventure cycling she gave us one of her bikes from a tour divide race from years ago
251. generous enough to give it to us we have a beautiful picture and she wrote a really nice
252. write up about her ride and kind of the struggles of her ride that year because it was pretty tough
253. for her well there are lots of struggles in a ride like this i mean i'm i'm finding the highs
254. and the lows every day yeah so i guess that's part of it yeah but really like when i first started
255. here my director for tours that let me in i remember one day he's like just walk around and
256. just read like all the pictures and like that was my job that day was just read descriptions because
257. like it helps you remember like why do we do this job it can feel sometimes honestly a little
258. frivolous like oh i work to let people go on vacation but people that do these rides know
259. how special it is and how meaningful it is so it's nice to see these descriptions from people
260. that have gone by and like what their rides meant to them and it reminds you like oh this is actually
261. really important for people like this is like human flourishing at a highest right right well
262. i totally agree yeah and it really is beautiful and you have all the maps here and the big map of
263. the of the country and you actually helped me a little bit with my next section that i'm going to
264. do. So, um, Josh, thanks again for everything over the past six months you've been coming on the
265. show. It's been fun. It's been fun. I love doing this stuff. I just love helping people. And I
266. think last time you were on, you mentioned that you were going on a river trip. How was that?
267. Yeah. So I did three weeks on the grand Canyon on down the Colorado and it was awesome. It was
268. both easier and a lot harder than I expected as my first raft trip of my life. So it was a wild
269. ride but it was super fun definitely trip of a lifetime type of thing and uh went from never having been in a raft in my life to being able to row up to like class three rapids So progress pretty quickly
270. Yeah.
271. Well, I totally understand it being easier and harder than you had expected.
272. So Josh, thanks a lot.
273. Thanks Taylor.
274. One of the things that we all agree on is that our roads are dominated by cars.
275. And I think you have this interview now, Nick, about this exact fact.
276. Here is this influential study.
277. car supremacy, deconstructing the ideology driving our modal hierarchy.
278. Ashton Romer, you've got a study, Car Supremacy, where you looked at a couple hundred public
279. testimonies in Washington, D.C., where, as you put it, private citizens at public meetings
280. are shaping policy for street design, for safe streets. I've always found it amazing that the
281. average person is considered to have equally valid points of view, along with those people who
282. presumably know something about transportation and traffic. In New York, I'm watching this
283. backlash, bikelash. And this is the other part where you talk about car supremacy as an ideology.
284. in the 31st Avenue bike lane in Queens.
285. This organizer on Reddit, Miser,
286. has identified the opponents as being a hate group.
287. They intimidate people, especially women.
288. They yell things like death to transplants and hipsters.
289. And you really take a look at that in this study,
290. how that's an ideology.
291. As a point of context,
292. I'm a PhD candidate in peace and conflict studies
293. at George Mason University in DC.
294. and I'm an urban planner by training. And so I come at this from a very unique perspective.
295. I see lots of literature about the dehumanization of bicyclists. So studies showing that people will
296. actually see cyclists as less than human when they're given a scale of 100% human and 0% human,
297. it's less than 100%. You have people that use their vehicles as weapons to injure and kill
298. people on bikes in a very targeted manner, and also systems that don't sometimes even treat that
299. as the crime that it should be. And then you have people who categorize folks as an entire group
300. and make assumptions about them. And in my field of peace and conflict, you know, that happens
301. in sectarian strife and civil wars around the world in ethnic conflicts. And so one of the
302. questions that I've been thinking about is, at what point does something cross into a hate crime?
303. And that was something that I had posted on Blue Sky.
304. But to get to some of this paper and its genesis, I live car-free in D.C., where I see on a daily basis the many harms of cars playing out on our streets.
305. I also noticed that while D.C. has been pushing forward some meaningful measures, our politicians are canceling promise projects to make the streets safe for everyone, including people on bikes.
306. And this was not just in D.C., it was a trend in other cities, and I might add in other liberal cities.
307. And also in the world more broadly, it's not just a U.S. phenomenon.
308. The thing is, is I wasn't seeing lobbyists pushing back in meetings.
309. You know, there weren't people glad handing congressmen.
310. I was seeing fellow citizens, as you mentioned, opposing these measures.
311. They were having a huge influence on local policymaking.
312. And that's power at play.
313. I was also seeing, you know, lots of facts, lots of tragic stories being shared in these
314. public meetings and not swaying people.
315. And I had the sense that maybe there was some sort of ideological belief system at play because if you present facts and if you present harrowing and really tragic stories that people had had with personal experiences of road violence and car crashes you would think that that might sink in for folks We know that many of the varied harms that come from cars
316. exist, and yet we effectively, to your point, allow disgruntled neighbors to dictate our public
317. health policies to not only the detriment of people who ride bikes, but every road user.
318. My use of car supremacy is very intentional to look at the power and the ideological structure.
319. And as you mentioned, I did look at a corpus of 200 testimonies that had been presented at DC
320. Council hearings live. And I looked for testimonies within that group that somehow oppose measures to
321. reduce the speed of or space allocated to cars. I found that 57 of those testimonies had those
322. characteristics. And so then I did a lot of analysis on them and I found that there were
323. three general trends and how people characterized their opposition. And I call these rhetorical
324. devices. I have an example, static scarcity. DDOT is trying, DDOT is the district department of
325. transportation is trying to do too much with the narrow streets we have. There's space for bike
326. lanes. There's no space for street cars. There's no space for bus only lanes. And there's no space
327. for the yellow and white poles they have erected. Not even those, but DDOT keeps trying to do all
328. those things, the government keeps paying engineers to design the impossible. I'm sure for
329. many listeners of your show, the examples that I share will sound familiar because we do see this.
330. One of the fun games I like to play now is when I read coverage of especially a bike lash debate,
331. but also general debates about challenges to car dominance. We see the same things come up again,
332. but this argument is that street space is fixed and already fully allocated. Of course, they didn't
333. say that there wasn't enough room for cars. That's the assumed kind of default to neutral.
334. What it says is that making any reallocation for bikes, buses, or pedestrians that happens
335. is nonsensical or impossible. The second is what I call blame inversion. So this is when
336. people attribute the known dangers of cars, congestion, pollution, crashes, fatalities,
337. to bike lanes and people on bikes rather than to the vehicles that cause them. And I would note
338. in DC and in the US more generally, this tends to be around bikes and bike lanes and bike
339. infrastructure and people on bikes because those are the most present and potent, if you will,
340. challenge to the dominance of cars on our streets simply because we don't have large-scale efforts
341. to roll out dedicated bus lanes. It's about bikes here, but that's only because we're trying to put
342. in bike lanes where bike lanes haven't been before. And here's an example that I'll read.
343. Bike lanes will actually make the avenue less safe by causing confusion for drivers, bus passengers,
344. New visitors and pedestrians, 7,000 cars per day diverting into neighborhood streets will make the side streets more dangerous to you, especially for children.
345. What's interesting about this rhetorical device is that I found that oftentimes people actually implicitly reference the car dangers that they were upset about.
346. In this case, you know, cars on neighborhood streets will make the side streets more dangerous.
347. And yet there was still this kind of mental gymnastics to contort it to blame another mode of transportation.
348. The last one I call nefarious minority.
349. Here's an example.
350. At this point, I have hundreds of data points that show how undemocratic the bike lane agenda really is.
351. I can confidently say the vast majority of bureaucratic agencies have been corrupted by paid activists while silencing citizens who care about their city.
352. This is framing people on bikes or really any road user who challenges the dominance
353. of cars as an unruly politically connected fringe whose low numbers justify ignoring
354. their safety needs and dismissing their participation in civic processes.
355. So beneath each of these claims is a core belief The first that connected to static scarcity is motor monoculture So this is the idea that streets should be the domain of motorists
356. Then when we think about blame inversion, that the belief that supports that is auto impunity,
357. that we should ignore all of the harms caused by cars. And then the last, which is tied to
358. nefarious minority is this belief, modal marginalization, that people who use other
359. modes of transportation shouldn't actually be represented in political processes.
360. You're using the term ideology, the car supremacist ideology and the othering of bicyclists.
361. These are all concepts from race and gender.
362. Are we allowed to use that kind of frame?
363. Yeah, no, that's a really important question.
364. I did a lot of reading in the literature and there were a couple of other folks that used
365. supremacy, supremacist in their conceptualizations of this as it related to automobility. In one case,
366. you had someone talking about legal structures that don't penalize the harms of driving the way
367. that we might consider. And so there were other instances of this being used in academic literature.
368. I did get some feedback from reviewers, you know, why not car dominance? Folks like Peter Norton
369. have done a really great job of showing how historically other modes of transportation
370. have actually been posited or framed as subordinate modes of transportation and that
371. cars were the supreme best, you know, most legitimate mode of transportation. And so
372. there's a similar mindset shift. Of course, I'm not trying to argue that what happens with
373. automobility is nearly as detrimental to society as the awful things that have happened with
374. white supremacy and misogyny and that sort of thing. But I think that it's a very helpful
375. framework for us to think more critically about how ideology operates. And the definition that
376. I use in my paper, an ideology is a system of collectively held normative and repeatedly
377. factual ideas and beliefs and attitudes advocating a particular pattern of social relationships and
378. arrangements and or aimed at justifying a particular pattern of conduct which its components
379. seek to promote, realize, pursue, or maintain. So there are beliefs that are used to advocate for a
380. particular pattern of social relationships. And so when I think about a pattern of social
381. relationships, I think of two things. One is how are people treated in our public streets?
382. And we see people who drive cars using their cars as weapons and targeting people on bikes and other
383. modes of transportation and harming them. We also have the really charged rhetoric that comes out of
384. public meetings. And so this is moving from the public street to public forums, but you have folks
385. that will say very denigrating and threatening things about people who ride bikes. There's a
386. small body of research that's actually around dehumanization of bicyclists and people on bikes.
387. Researchers have found that some respondents will actually rate people on bikes as less than fully human.
388. And so when you take all of these things together, you can see how that pattern of social relationships is being worked by a certain mode of transportation.
389. And that is seemingly the only thing that really differentiates how people are treating each other in these spaces.
390. There was a quote in your study, Robert Davis, in Death on the Streets, Cars and the Mythology of Road Safety, where he said,
391. it can be argued that it's much more necessary to see car use as something which requires checking than attitudes on gender or race,
392. because the very fact that...
393. that even particularly careful motorists can kill through a moment's negligence
394. makes this in some ways more of a necessity than the examination of power and ideology
395. surrounding other social issues. And that's a strong statement. But when you consider,
396. you know, over 40,000 people killed a year by cars and over a million worldwide,
397. and the number one killer of children, there needs to be some checking of people's worldview or
398. their ideology. When you consider that transportation is all around us, that it's
399. something that we always have to engage in every day, that means that we are constantly put into
400. these conflict situations. And not only that, but our built environment foments these conflict
401. situations day in and day out. It permeates most aspects of our society. And that I think is what
402. Robert Davis is getting at is that even careful motorists, you know, can have something happen.
403. And it's also so normalized in our society that we don't realize how many ways it has worked its
404. way into our structures, our culture, and even our individual behavior. When I get a someone
405. mouthing, sorry, as they plow through a crosswalk, and I'm trying to cross as a pedestrian with a
406. walk signal and it's a, you know, near miss, uh, close pass. And that's the best of it. You know,
407. I've had people purposefully, you know, uh, speed into me when I'm walking into an intersection as
408. a way to control and intimidate my movement and those spaces. And so all of the ways that that
409. conflict ripples through society, it's ever present and it's however unwillingly or unintentionally
410. folks contribute to it or participate in it. We're, we're all enmeshed in it merely because of
411. transportation being such an integral part of our lives.
412. Car supremacy hurts people who drive too.
413. This is one thing that I looked at in the paper in DC over the past however many years since
414. Vision Zero was committed to, I think it was 2015. Pedestrians are always the category of
415. deaths that is highest. And the second highest is drivers and car occupants. And so when we
416. designed streets that prioritize the speed and storage of vehicles over the safety of all road
417. users, we all are worse off from it. And it's not just crashes, it's air and noise pollution,
418. it's environmental degradation, it's climate change, it's old folks who when they lose their
419. license, the mental impacts of losing a license are as bad to older folks as a terminal cancer
420. diagnosis because we have built our communities in such a way that there's so much fracture in
421. our social fabric and in our ability to access places without using a weapon every time that we
422. go out into the world if we aren't lucky enough to live in a you know a city like dc that has some
423. decent public transit and bike and walking infrastructure you know getting back to some
424. of what we were talking about earlier one of the things that happens in racially divided societies
425. like the U.S. is that people who adhere to white supremacist beliefs will often try to
426. pit different groups against each other so that those groups do not focus their attention on
427. the white supremacy culture and society that causes all of the harms in the first place.
428. And so to make a little bit of a parallel here, I've talked with folks and seen in my own
429. experience that there are often debates where people who ride bikes, bus riders, pedestrians
430. are pitted against each other And I think in the advocacy space sometimes we reinforce this when we have just a bike advocacy group or just a pedestrian advocacy group I would like for there to be a multimodal advocacy group and also frankly one that
431. invites in drivers who are willing to look to data and lived experience of others.
432. Because here's the thing, I don't know of any public street in Washington, D.C. where
433. cars are not allowed.
434. And there's this propensity to think, oh, if there's one bike lane that is built, that
435. is protected, it means game over, no cars ever allowed again. And that is, I don't think what
436. most people who advocate for bike lanes want, they just want a safe place to bike. And maybe
437. that means just reducing speed limits across a lot of wide range of streets. And that would be
438. effectively a, you know, a bike lane, because if it's a low stress network, you know, most of the
439. time you can bike there. It doesn't mean that cars can't drive. It just means you have to slow down
440. a little bit. And so there's this zero sum mentality that often gets introduced that I
441. think really warps the discourse in an unfortunate way. Thanks a lot, Ashton. Thanks so much for
442. having me. It's been great to chat. The car supremacy model is one way of looking at it.
443. You can look at it as an addiction. You can see it play out in all of the road calming projects.
444. You saw it near you. On Willoughby, on Fountain. How dare you take away space
445. from storing my vehicle, from letting me drive my vehicle as fast as I want.
446. And now there's a big win in New York City on 72nd Street.
447. There's going to be an east-west two-way protected bike lane, but they had to take away some curb space to do it.
448. And so there was some backlash.
449. And we talked to Carl Mahaney about it, and he's been on the show before, and here he is again.
450. Yeah, Carl's great, and he's been fighting the good fight for a long time.
451. Carl Mahaney, director of Streetstopia Upper West Side with Open Plans.
452. How are you doing?
453. I'm doing good. Quite good, actually, after Tuesday's vote.
454. Community Board 7 had the full board meeting to discuss the proposed safety upgrades to West 72nd Street,
455. which included a two-way protected bike lane.
456. We spoke a couple of months ago when it passed the Transportation Committee.
457. But this was the full board. This is 50 members of community boards.
458. That's big.
459. Each community board has 50 members. It's big.
460. This was advertised in the council members' email newsletter.
461. We put a call to action out.
462. There were some pretty global opponents.
463. We filled the room, 170 seats roughly, and dozens were turned away.
464. It was a big event, three hours, but the community board voted in support of DOT's proposed changes to 72nd Street.
465. A huge win for advocates who've worked on this for at least six years, probably more, and a huge win for the community.
466. It's just this basic infrastructure that we honestly shouldn't have to have a three-hour-long meeting and scream at each other to get installed.
467. It's on 72nd Street in New York City, Manhattan, going from Riverside Park to Central Park on the west side.
468. Yeah, that's the cool thing about it.
469. It's going to connect these two incredible resources, these two incredible green spaces that contain probably the two most used greenways in the country.
470. And right now, there's nothing connecting them.
471. It's a half a mile between the two.
472. And if you want to get there, you have to ride in the street.
473. You have to choose your poison.
474. There's a bunch of blocks, but none of them as direct as 72nd Street.
475. It's a cycling artery that's used now, even without the infrastructure.
476. As a vehicular transportation route, it's really quite underutilized.
477. There's four wide lanes of traffic to in each direction.
478. Cars lining each curb, as we see too often still.
479. Some of it metered parking but a lot of it alternate side as we call it in the city which is free parking One of the things that worth pointing out that the DOT has proposed and they taken feedback from stakeholders is to eliminate all alternate side parking along this stretch of 72nd Street
480. So everything will now be metered, either passenger metered, commercial metered, or loading zones of some type.
481. And that's going to really help with this chronic double parking situation.
482. This bike lane sort of fight that we're always getting into, it's a curb management issue as much as it is a transportation issue.
483. We need to manage that curb differently so that we can take that space that's already available in the street.
484. 72nd is a great example of that.
485. And just reallocate some of it.
486. So that curb management piece is key.
487. And I think that's the thing that DOT is focusing a lot on in the next couple of weeks.
488. We're hoping that implementation will happen later this summer.
489. That's the plan.
490. But when God made those parking spots, Carl.
491. Right.
492. His intention was that it remain parking.
493. Yeah, that's a good point.
494. You would think that that were the case based on some of the comments.
495. Although I will say, this is the first bike lane trite where parking has not been the predominant narrative.
496. At least the loss of parking.
497. This one, because it's a pretty active commercial corridor, it's been curb access for delivery vehicles.
498. And also there's some residential blocks, plumbers, HVAC dudes, whatever.
499. That has really been the largest theme in practical opposition.
500. Very little about loss of parking, which almost is concerning.
501. Maybe they've missed that part and they're going to come back and yell about it.
502. Or maybe it shows that we've kind of moved on a little bit from that.
503. There have been efforts like with the trash containerization pilot program that's being rolled out citywide now over several years.
504. city bike docks, daylighting. People are getting used to the fact that maybe that
505. curb space isn't in fact ordained by God. That's the static scarcity idea of the
506. researcher we talked to in this episode, Ashton Romer, that the streets are fixed now that they've
507. been designed for cars. Right. So every project like this changes that in people's minds,
508. socializes the idea that that is in fact not the case. But you had a lot of opposition.
509. It was such a contentious topic.
510. Did they all really care that much about curb access for HVAC guys?
511. Yeah, that might have been a little bit of a straw man for some of them.
512. I think there was good faith concern, is still good faith concern about curb access for deliveries.
513. I do think that's something that the DOT needs to work out.
514. And as a matter of citywide priority, they are featuring curb management in all of their projects.
515. They're actually developing a team. I don't know if it's going to be an office or a unit, but a curb management team within DOT dedicated.
516. They haven't had anything like that to date. It's just been these disparate folks within different units within DOT.
517. So that's an indication of how seriously they're taking it. That's one argument that's in good faith.
518. But then you've got, I mean, it doesn't matter if you're in San Diego or Seattle or Des Moines or Boston or Brooklyn.
519. it's the same arguments that you've probably heard a million times.
520. Emergency vehicles won't be able to get to our street.
521. This is going to create traffic chaos.
522. The air is going to be fouled.
523. Seniors and children are going to be mowed down by errant e-bikes and tourists on city
524. bikes.
525. All of this stuff that is demonstrably false.
526. You could rebut every single point with data.
527. And in fact, in the meeting that was done on some of these points,
528. doesn't change that group of folks' mind.
529. And I think in New York in particular I know this is a nationwide issue right now but e e devices I say that because e are not the worst offender in some ways
530. They're the most ubiquitous.
531. But in New York, we've got these stand-up scooters.
532. There was that horrific crash on the Queensborough Bridge that did not involve an e-bike.
533. That involved a stand-up scooter that can go 53 miles an hour and a regular bike.
534. So that adds to this swirl of sort of paranoia.
535. And in some cases, I think there's a xenophobic and maybe racist component, even if it's unconscious.
536. There is very much an othering that happens in these arguments against a project like this that I think just really do a disservice to the process and to the people involved in just trying to make the city better, including the DOT, who has to hear this stuff and get accused of all sorts of terrible things.
537. Is this just some aspect of human nature that gets poked when a traffic calming project happens?
538. You know, change is hard, right?
539. Like your street might suck, but it's your street and you're used to it.
540. I think we see that with the businesses in particular.
541. They get their deliveries through a completely dysfunctional system.
542. The double parking on 72nd Street, all of the Upper Millside, honestly, is off the charts.
543. And there's a ton of upstream stuff that has to happen to just change how stuff gets loaded onto trucks and distributed, what times of day.
544. But the idea that a shoe store, the proprietor of the shoe store said that this will put him out of business.
545. This bike lane will put him out of business because of the delivery issue, which is obviously ridiculous.
546. And it'll be fun to follow up with him on that.
547. But the idea that a shoe store has to get deliveries constantly through the day from like five different vendors, 10 trucks each or whatever it is.
548. It's a crazy way to run a city and it's no way to manage a business either.
549. Right. Because you've kind of constantly got people taking delivery.
550. So all sorts of systemic issues lead to this double parking problem.
551. But long way to get back to your point, the human nature part, the shoe store or whatever
552. the business, they have figured out how to operate within the dysfunction.
553. So when you shift that dysfunction to something else, even if it's going to be better, their
554. hackles go up and they're like, how is this going to affect my operations?
555. From a resident perspective too, it's sort of similar.
556. I'm used to the street the way it is.
557. this represents a threat to my understanding of my neighborhood, how I interact with this street
558. that is honestly not serving anybody terribly well. These changes will be better, no question,
559. but it's hard for people who don't have a vested interest in the change, or they do,
560. but they don't see it to come to that. Some of them, not all. And I think that's another thing
561. we're pointing out. At this community board meeting, there was this sentiment expressed
562. by some of the board members that we've heard from the community and they don't want this,
563. when that's very much not what was said in the meeting,
564. but it was about a 50-50 split,
565. maybe a few more proponents than opponents.
566. But the sentiments against were just loud
567. and aggressive and dominating and vitriolic.
568. So they certainly stood out more,
569. but they did not remotely represent
570. the Democratic vote count, what people want,
571. not to mention who has the ability to show up at 6.30
572. on a Tuesday night to attend a three-hour meeting, right?
573. that's also sort of, you know, selecting for people who fear change.
574. There's also a question about why do ordinary people of any kind
575. get to decide how a street is designed?
576. Like, is that not a skill that is that not
577. something that you would have to read a book about or of some kind?
578. Or absolutely.
579. Totally.
580. I'm so glad you brought that up because it's been driving me crazy
581. for this entire process over the last couple of months once they presented
582. presented to the community board, everybody is suddenly a traffic planner and an urban designer,
583. but with no information, just vibes, right? That's not to diminish like what that sort of
584. lived experience, the rich, nuanced understanding of a block or an intersection, what people who
585. live there can sort of contribute to that conversation. But the project itself, this is
586. infrastructure. We don't debate, you know, whether we're going to change a sewer pipe and ask
587. everybody if that's cool. And if, you know, no, it flows from one side to the other.
588. Or a highway.
589. Or a highway.
590. You don't have that same kind of public input about how it should be.
591. Totally.
592. And you don't get it removed after a public backlash either that easily.
593. Right. I mean, if only, right? That's a larger project. But this gets to that thing that you
594. asked about, is this human nature? I do think there is this emotional response to change.
595. We heard a lot, too, that this is being imposed on us. People would say, I live on 72nd Street and this is being imposed on me. Nobody asked me personally, Spide or Sally or whatever their name was, like what I thought. And while I do think there are ways to improve the public engagement process, everybody doesn't get a say or a veto over public infrastructure.
596. The New York City Department of Transportation, with our current mayoral administration and the current commissioner, I'm noticing a shift where the community board is no longer a veto point.
597. It is one venue to collect public feedback.
598. There's some theater involved, obviously, as we saw Tuesday night.
599. But even the vote itself is not necessarily an opportunity to veto the project or approve the project.
600. It's feedback that they can, in their best professional judgment, take or leave.
601. All right. So the redesign has been approved by the board 26 to 19.
602. That's right. Which is a huge win. I mean, you know, it's, it definitely makes it a lot easier
603. for DOT to move ahead because they can say that they have the, you know, the board's approval.
604. Interestingly, no elected officials have come out in support or in opposition to it. They probably
605. understand that it's happening and they're waiting to just let it happen without getting involved
606. because of the vitriol.
607. So we get into this sort of like
608. back to the opposition
609. being really aggressive and mean,
610. mean spirited in a really upsetting way.
611. There were some folks
612. who came to this meeting
613. that I spoke with afterwards
614. who don't come to community part meetings.
615. They're not used to this
616. and their jaw was on the floor
617. and how rude people can be to other people
618. when they fool cornered like that
619. over a bike lane,
620. which I think was also really confusing to people.
621. Like this is just basic stuff.
622. But every project like this
623. brings out these people
624. who really just are opposed to change for them.
625. We heard that a lot too.
626. I'm not opposed to bike lanes, just this bike lane.
627. I'm an avid biker.
628. Did you hear that one?
629. Oh, yes.
630. Yes.
631. A woman went up to speak in opposition with her bike helmet, like around her bag, prominently
632. displayed, talked about how much she rides.
633. But I follow the rules of the road and all of these other people, these delivery workers,
634. these people on e-bikes.
635. Yeah.
636. All of this demonizing, this othering that just does not help.
637. We'll check back in with you, Carl.
638. Congratulations.
639. You been working on this for a long time Thank you Yeah it feels good to get a tangible win And let hold our breath a little bit until late summer I love to check that hit and tell you how it working once it
640. on the ground. All right. Holding my breath. Thanks, Carl. You know, I want to end Nick
641. with one more interview from the road. When you're doing a trip like this, you, you meet people and
642. you leapfrog each other and they pass you and you pass them. And you see people going the other way
643. and you say to someone that you're riding along with,
644. oh, did you meet Erwin from the Netherlands?
645. And they say, oh, yeah, or Mark from Germany or whatever it is.
646. These couple of kids that I met about a week and a half ago in Prineville, Oregon,
647. and then I met them again in Idaho, and I finally got them on tape.
648. Okay, so I'm in States, Idaho, and I ran into two people who we spoke to in Prineville
649. when we were at the Good Bike Company,
650. but I was too stupid and didn't hit
651. re-record. Hey, tell me your
652. all's names again and where you're starting
653. from and where you're going to. So I'm
654. Jenny and we are starting in Portland, Oregon
655. and then we went to the coast and now
656. we're going to Portland, Maine. Ah, that's right
657. and you are? I'm Vince and we're on the
658. same journey. Yeah, well you guys are on some
659. journey. You're camping the whole time it looks like.
660. Uh-huh. Mainly national
661. forests. So dispersed camping
662. and all that. Yeah, and then we got
663. lucky. Everywhere in Idaho
664. it's been like city parks that let
665. uh bikers state where were we last night what was it grangeville yeah they had an awesome city park
666. that was like there's a whole section for bikers only that was really oh i was in a hotel last
667. night well just because i was so whipped because the day before we both did white bird hill which
668. was really tough yeah it the hill is a little misleading on that when you look to the your
669. side and see white caps and then you see that it's called white bird hill right you know it's a it's
670. a little demoralizing there but it was it was there was a race going on that day which we stumbled
671. into yeah and that that seemed to help our spirits a lot because you would just have these people
672. flying by who were so jazzed that we were doing this bike tour um and we just happened to be in
673. the same place at the same time as they're like on these titanium or whatever super light urban
674. steel whatever yeah just flying up this mountain yeah yeah yeah i think they call it for the hill
675. of it was the name of the race yeah i'm so bummed that i missed that i because i could have used
676. that extra little help they also gave us cookies at the top which was really nice but we heard the
677. fastest time up that well it was 10 miles like 2 600 feet of elevation and the fastest time in
678. that race was 70 minutes wow i think it took me three hours i'm not kidding about what it took us
679. Yeah.
680. So, yeah.
681. Well, tell me, you guys also just said that you noticed something different when you got to Idaho.
682. I wonder if you could explain that.
683. The drivers are just, they're mean.
684. They don't pull over.
685. No.
686. I've switched to, I don't even ride in the, well, the shoulder's so narrow anyways.
687. So I've kind of just, I just ride in the road a little bit because they don't get over.
688. Yeah, I think that that's safer, actually.
689. Yeah, that was kind of how I felt about it.
690. And someone told me that this next stretch that we have going to Kooski and then over Lolo Pass into Montana is also tough just in the sense that the road is really narrow Are you worried about that or do you guys plan it out enough in advance
691. Tell me how this is going.
692. Yeah, we don't.
693. There is a general plan, but we don't really know what our future holds at any given point.
694. Every day there's like an hour of like, what are we doing today?
695. So I guess our biggest worry is between Kuska and some lodge.
696. The map says there's not many services.
697. Right, right.
698. But it looks like there's some campgrounds, so hopefully we can get water there.
699. Yeah, someone did tell me that some of them don't have water either.
700. So when I get to Kuska, I'm going to fill up my water.
701. Totally.
702. And then I'm going to try to go to Knife's Edge Campground tonight,
703. which is, I think, another 20 miles or something like that, after Kuska.
704. and Kooski's 10 or something from here, I'm not sure.
705. Okay.
706. Oh, okay.
707. Yeah, we're probably a little further than that,
708. just going to find some place in the forest.
709. Right, right.
710. Which is heavenly.
711. Oh, that's so great.
712. Well, I hope to run into you all again further down the road.
713. Are you going to stop in Missoula?
714. Yes.
715. We're stopping in Missoula,
716. and then we're hitting on the Parks Prairies Peaks route
717. to get to Minneapolis,
718. and then we'll be taking a little bit of the northern tier,
719. a little bit of our own mapping.
720. So we were going to go through like Wisconsin
721. rather than like Iowa.
722. And then, yeah, we'll figure out how we get to Portland, Maine.
723. Oh, that's so great.
724. Hey, really quick.
725. Tell me how old you are.
726. I am 25 in a couple of days.
727. Oh, almost happy birthday.
728. I'm 23.
729. Great.
730. Well, have a great trip.
731. I hope to see you again.
732. Thank you.
733. Yeah, I hope to see you too.
734. So on the theme of you running into people,
735. So you, well, Kay had come into adventure cycling the same day that you did, right?
736. And she signed in just before I did.
737. I missed her by like a half an hour.
738. But, you know, she actually did something very smart.
739. She took transit from, I'm not sure exactly where in Idaho, to Missoula because she was worried about some of the routes that they were not safe and maybe even a little bit too difficult for her.
740. But mainly because they were not safe.
741. And so we run into each other again.
742. And Kate, if you remember, is the 71-year-old woman who's doing the trans America route for the second time.
743. And didn't she mention that she had someone help her on the road and then she went somewhere where they'd already ran into him and he told them about her?
744. Yeah, exactly.
745. And I think you said it best last week when you said these are the kind of people that you meet on a trip like this.
746. People who are open to helping you, helping you with a ride, helping you with a place to sleep for the night, helping you with a spare tube or something like that.
747. And Kay has relied on that a couple of times and it's been really nice, as have I.
748. So this trip sounds like it's as advertised.
749. I mean, it sounds like it's changing your life.
750. It's harder than I thought it would be at times,
751. and more beautiful than I thought it would be at times,
752. easier than I thought it would be at times and funner if that a word than I thought it would be at times So I don know that it changed my life yet but it changing my life as I do it I think
753. Well, I guess people travel when they're young to learn about the world, to learn about people.
754. And this is a great way to do it.
755. But when you're traveling, when you've already met all kinds of people, I guess you don't have your mind expanded in that way because it's already expanded.
756. That's a great way to put it.
757. I think there's room for more expansion and meeting more different kinds of people like the,
758. I don't know if I said this earlier to you or someone else, but I met all these guys
759. on motorcycles and, you know, they were, they were so fun. They gave me some water,
760. they had water and we stopped and talked for a while. And I said to them that I'm riding across
761. the country to go see my 101 year old dad. And without missing a beat, one of the bikers said,
762. well, you better hurry up. That was a fun interaction. Yeah. Good show. Absolutely.
763. We want to thank Jim Pocras and we want to thank Josh Bowden and we want to thank Carl Mahaney
764. and we want to thank Ashton Romer and we want to thank the kids that I hope will continue to see
765. on my route. And of course, we want to thank our regulars, Judy Richard, Josh Hagelin,
766. Kevin Burton, Amy Ziering, Lindsay Sturman, Stacey Randekker. Is there a quote? It's harder
767. than I thought it would be
768. and easier than I thought it would be.
769. And biking is at the speed of observation.
770. Thanks, Taylor.
771. See you next week.
772. Good show.
773. Ride safe.
774. That's my line.
775. Yeah.
776. This episode of Bike Talk
777. is sponsored by the law offices
778. of Pokras and Delos Reyes
779. with offices in Los Angeles
780. and Bakersfield
781. and serving all of Southern California.
782. Bike Talk is a project of CRSP
783. and the Los Angeles Ecovillage Institute.
784. And that was Bike Talk.
785. If you have a story, a tip, or a topic, head over to biketalk.org and send us a message.
786. Talk again next week.
787. my back today. Keep me fit, get me there. I won't go stinking up the alley behind the
788. dinner grind. Let your mind unwind. If it's life, pretend to lie. Better get yourself a bite.
789. All right.
790. catch yourself a-bye