TEASER: Cars Drive Us Apart, Subway Takes Unite Us
The War on Cars
The War on Cars, LLC
4.9 • 937 Ratings
🗓️ 26 August 2025
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is a preview of a Patreon-exclusive bonus episode. For complete access to this and all of our bonus content, plus ad-free versions of regular episodes, merch discounts, presale tickets to live shows, and more, become a Patreon supporter of The War on Cars.
In this bonus episode, Doug and I discuss a couple of recent studies that look at just how destructive cars are to the social fabric of our communities, how they decrease life satisfaction, and how walkable neighborhoods with public gathering places are an important resources for combating the loneliness epidemic.
As we often say, we have custom-built our communities for cars, in the name of convenience. That obviously sucks for those of us who don't want to drive. But the crazy thing is, as we have often pointed out, that it also sucks for people who do think that driving it's a terrific way to get around.
In the full bonus, we also give you our take on David Byrne's Subway Takes appearance—and his take about urban bike etiquette!
Become a Patreon supporter of the podcast for access to the entire episode.
Pre-order our new book, Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile, coming in October from Thesis, an imprint of Penguin Random House. And catch us on tour this fall and beyond. Tickets for live shows are on sale now!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What you're about to hear is a sample from the latest Patreon bonus episode of the War on Cars, |
| 0:16.7 | in which we talk about some recent research into how our autocentric transportation system makes us lonely, and how cars divide society. |
| 0:26.9 | It's one of the major themes of our forthcoming book, Life After Cars. |
| 0:31.6 | If you'd like to hear the rest of the episode and get our take on David Burns' subway take on bicycle etiquette. Find us on Patreon |
| 0:41.3 | at patreon.com slash the war on cars pod. You'll get lots of other great benefits too. |
| 0:47.6 | I think it gets it something I talk about a lot, which is that the answer to our problems |
| 0:51.6 | is not to turn everything into Manhattan or Brownstone, |
| 0:54.6 | Brooklyn, or downtown San Francisco or the loop in Chicago. It looks a little bit more like |
| 0:59.8 | old-fashioned streetcar suburbs where you have main commercial shopping districts and just behind that |
| 1:07.3 | you have apartment buildings and then behind that you have single family homes |
| 1:11.3 | so that you could walk to the grocery store. |
| 1:13.8 | It doesn't mean you wouldn't have a car necessarily, but the life satisfaction that they're |
| 1:18.7 | talking about in this study where you wouldn't have to use a car for more than 50% of your |
| 1:23.7 | trips, that becomes a little more possible. |
| 1:26.6 | So the study wasn't designed to get at the reasons for people's dissatisfaction with this |
| 1:32.4 | problem of having to drive everywhere. |
| 1:34.9 | But the researchers did have some ideas. |
| 1:37.9 | So, Doug, you want to read this from the Guardian article? |
| 1:40.6 | So the lead researcher said the results were surprising and could be the result of a number of negative impacts as driving, such as the stress of continually navigating roads and traffic, the loss of physical activity from not walking anywhere, reduced engagement with other people, and the growing financial burden of owning and maintaining a vehicle. Some people drive a lot and feel fine with it, |
| 2:02.1 | but others feel a real burden, she said. The study doesn't call for people to completely stop using |
| 2:06.8 | cars, but the solution could be in finding a balance. For many people driving isn't a choice, |
| 2:12.0 | so diversifying choices is important. Diversifying choices is important. Well, this study got flagged right away because diversity was in there. |
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