Podcast: ‘Life After Cars’ authors live at Bike Happy Hour

What a thrill it was last night at Bike Happy Hour to share my conversation with Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon in front of a live audience! Y’all really brought great energy and made the night so memorable for all three of us. I didn’t film the event, or take good photos, so thankfully BHH regular Jana snapped a pic for the lead (and episode cover). Thanks Jana!

The conversation went great and I think you’ll enjoy it. Sarah earned several rousing ovations and Doug was his usually sharp and brilliant self. These two are carrying so much weight on their shoulders as high-ranking generals in the War on Cars, and they do it with what I think is just the right balance of activism and pragmatism. They’re what I like to think of as reasonable radicals.

Highly recommend listening to the full episode (and stay tuned to BP social channels for some video clips of our chat in the Shed prior to Bike Happy Hour), and below are a few excerpts:

Doug on tyranny:

“We should talk about the title. We moved from [the podcast title] The War on Cars to Life After Cars… it’s still provocative, but it’s more of an invitation to imagine something different. It’s not as combative, but the word tyranny. I was really happy that we got that into the subtitle because right now we know something about living under a form of tyranny. And part of that, right, is that you’re never not thinking about the tyrant. You wake up in the morning, you think, what did he say?

You’re never not thinking about it. And what do we all want? We want leaders who we don’t really have to think about that much, who we trust are doing a good job. And so that is how it is with cars. You are never — if you are car dependent or live in a place with forced car dependency — you’re never not thinking about how your life centers around the car.”

Sarah on how we can win more battles:

“You have to organize. And now more than ever I am grateful for being in this movement because, as fascism advances upon us and tries to shut down every source of joy and good that there is, we are already organized here. Everybody in this room knows people they can trust, knows people who understand the way that politics work. And I think we just need to double-down on organizing, frankly. And to hear people get up here and say, ‘Come meet me to talk about this street. Come meet me to talk about this event,’ that to me is exactly what we should be doing and we just have to keep doing it.

And we have to keep the pressure on our elected officials and let them know that the people who ride bikes and transit and the children in our communities are every bit as much their constituents as the people who drive cars — and the cars themselves are not constituents!”

Sarah on Zohran Mamdani:

“My favorite thing about the Mamdani campaign is the way that it has elevated bus riders and the bus itself.

And I know that the bus is super important here in Portland, right? Yeah! Let’s hear it for the bus! Okay, who are the most stigmatized transportation users in this country? It’s not people on bikes. It is people who ride the bus. They are widely stigmatized and they’re perceived as they should get the leftovers.

And here is this fantastic, brilliant, charismatic man getting up there and putting buses first, right at the core of his campaign the entire way. And to me, that is so emblematic. The people who ride the bus deserve the same dignity and respect that everybody else deserves, and we can give that to ’em.

We have the wealth, we have the knowledge we can give people dignified transportation, and buses are a fantastic way to do it. And let’s do it! That is what I hope for. I hope that the rest of the country looks around and says, ‘Oh my God, here’s the wealthiest city in this country… and if we can get buses running fast and free and, and with the respect that people will be getting when they get on the bus and realize, ‘Wow, my government thinks that I deserve to have a bus that gets me to work on time.’

I mean, I just can’t even tell you how I think that is a seismic change in this country.”

Doug on Mamdani:

“What’s the worst that’ll happen if Mamdani says, ‘Let’s make all the buses free and fast’? Okay, he tried, maybe he can’t get all of them free, but he gets 10 routes, two in every borough. free. And he gets 20 more lines that are sped up with dedicated infrastructure. That is a win.

My entire philosophy of advocacy is the city says, ‘Hey, we’re gonna do 10 miles of protected bike lanes next year. Your job as an advocate is to say, ‘No. F you! I want a hundred miles of bike lanes!’ Then they come back and they say, ‘You know what? We can squeak out 20.’ And you say, ‘We did it. We won.’

And I think that that’s what you need in Democratic politics again is people shooting for big ideas and saying it simply. When’s the last time a Democratic politician had a platform people could chant back to the candidate? So to me, who cares what the wonky part of free buses, he’s shooting for something big and we should encourage more of that.”

Doug on how Portland can lead:

“I love Portland’s bike culture. New York City doesn’t really have like a bike culture in the way that Portland and a few other cities do. And so for example, like the Naked Bicycle Ride and the fact that that existed and then ICE is here and the National Guard is gonna come and like the Naked Bike Ride happens in a flash [everyone laughed at the unintended pun!]… that was a great thing to see. It’s one of those things that’s like maybe easy for outsiders to make fun of — but then, like, it was effective.

That being said, one of the things I talked about the last time I was here 11 years ago was that I felt like too much of Portland’s bicycling was based on culture. And not on infrastructure. And I think it’s good that the infrastructure has really advanced in the last year and that you have folks here who are working on it… So I think it’s, preserve the awesome bike culture that you have because it’s special and different; but also don’t forget that a lot of people don’t want to go to the Naked Bike Ride or bikeapalooza, they just want to go to work.”

— Listen to the full episode in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.