There is absolutely reason to be concerned that this is a crisis that's going to be exploited by venture capital, by tech capital.

Hello. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, a podcast that wonders how Apple is going to keep saying that it promotes privacy when it's installing a COVID-19 tracking app on everyone's phone.

I'm your host, Paris Marks, and today I'm speaking with James Wilt. James is the author of

Do Android's Dream of Electric Cars, Public Transit in the Age of Uber, Google, and Elon Musk. He's also

written for Canadian Dimension, Breyer Patch, and Passage, as well as many other publications.

You can follow James on Twitter at James underscore M underscore Wilt.

In today's conversation, we talk about how technology probably won't solve all of our

transportation problems if we still keep relying on automobiles and why instead we need

much more of a focus on transit and alternatives to cars. Tech Won't Save Us is a new

podcast, so if you enjoy what you hear, make sure to go to Apple Podcasts or anywhere else

you listen to podcasts and leave a review so more people can find us. And obviously, feel free

to share this interview because it not only helps us, but it also helps James and the other guests

who come on the show to promote their books and everything that they're doing. So thanks so much

and enjoy the conversation. James Wilk, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. It's great to have you on today.

Thanks so much for having me, Paris. Thank you. So I want to start, obviously we're in this really unique time with COVID-19, you know, spreading around the world and we're shutting stuff down to try to ensure it doesn't spread and to flatten that curve. And in response, like your book focuses on transit and transportation. So we're seeing some transit agencies eliminating fares, other transit agencies cutting back on service.

And obviously bus drivers feel particularly at risk in many cities because their passengers can come on and they can catch the virus that way.

So what's your kind of response to what you're seeing cities doing and transit agencies doing

in response to COVID-19 that's maybe positive or negative?

And what does that suggest for maybe future campaigns to make transit free,

expand transit services, things like that? Yeah, you're right that there has been a really

wide range of responses to this. Like in a number of cities across Canada, which is what I pay

most attention to. They have made,

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