Jaywalking (1923) w/ Doug Gordon

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2022

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

*** The Radiotopia fundraiser is happening right now! Support this show by becoming a member today: https://on.prx.org/3Ehr3B6 ***

It’s November 20th. In 1923, in Cincinnati, a referendum to limit the speed of cars fails after massive lobbying on the part of the auto industry. The referendum came up for a vote after tens of thousands of people signed a petition asking to limit the damage cars could do to pedestrians. In the wake of this, cities also passed jaywalking laws, effectively tilting the balance from pedestrians to automobiles.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie are joined by Doug Gordon of the “War on Cars” podcast to talk about early concerns over cars, anti-car populism, and how the streets were designed to favor the automobile.

And don’t forget about Oprahdemics, hosted by Kellie, out now from Radiotopia.

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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Avergan.
0:11.0	This day, 1923, the voters, the people of Cincinnati vote on an ordinance that would limit
0:17.4	the speed of cars in their city to 25 miles per hour.
0:21.9	This vote was taking place amidst a big conversation about the introduction and the arrival of the automobile
0:27.6	in American cities and votes like this were kind of taking place all around the country. The car lobby, no surprise, was
0:34.6	mobilized looking to defeat efforts to curb or limit the car use in cities. Part of
0:40.0	this process was something that also happened in Cincinnati around the same time, the
0:43.9	passage of the first laws around jaywalking and all of a sudden pedestrians had to
0:49.2	seed to cars, they had to look both ways, and what we see is that the laws and the culture were starting to tilt towards the automobile. A message was starting to be sent about who really the roads in cities belong to.
1:02.6	So let's talk about this fight in Cincinnati
1:04.8	and the larger fights around the country
1:06.8	and speed limits and all this and jaywalking and all this stuff.
1:09.2	Here as always are Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt
1:11.5	and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.
1:13.2	Hello, Jody.
1:15.2	Hey there.
1:16.7	And our special guest for this episode
1:18.3	is Doug Gordon, Safe Streets Advocate,
1:20.2	and co-host of the War on Cars Podcast one of three hosts for that I think we've
1:24.9	shouted out your podcast on our show before but Doug thank you so much for joining us
1:28.6	it's great to finally have you on the show it's a pleasure to be here thank you so
	...

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