Victory?
The War on Cars
The War on Cars, LLC
4.9 • 937 Ratings
🗓️ 22 May 2020
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As cities around the world have gone into lockdown and instituted social distancing measures to slow the spread of the covid19 pandemic, something unexpected has happened: We've gotten an impromptu demonstration of the benefits of living with fewer cars and less driving. Seething gridlock has vanished, smoggy skies have cleared, global carbon emissions are way down, and forward-thinking mayors are rapidly re-programming their streets to give human beings the space that once belonged to motor vehicles. Is the world witnessing the wrenching, difficult birth of the car-free city? Or are we merely living in the brief moment before cities snap back into even deeper automobile dependence, the car serving as the ultimate personal protective equipment? Plus: We hear from City of Oakland Transportation Director Ryan Russo.
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Show Notes:
New Yorkers Are Thinking About Getting Cars Because of COVID-19. (Vice)
Oakland banishing cars from 74 miles of city streets. 'Oakland Slow Streets' will open 10% of city's roads for cyclists, pedestrians (Mercury News)
Urban planner Mike Lydon is keeping track of all of the cities launching #Covid19Streets.
Cities Close Streets to Cars, Opening Space for Social Distancing (New York Times)
To help get essential workers around, cities are revising traffic patterns, suspending public transit fares, and making more room for bikes and pedestrians (CityLab)
This episode was edited by Ali Lemer. Newsreel voiceover by Mike Rock. Parody ad voiceover by Leora Kaye. Newsreel and parody ad production by Curtis Fox.
Find us on Twitter: @TheWarOnCars, Aaron Naparstek @Naparstek, Doug Gordon @BrooklynSpoke, Sarah Goodyear @buttermilk1.
Questions, comments, ideas, complaints? Shoot us an email: thewaroncars@gmail.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Victory in the war on cars is suddenly within reach. |
| 0:07.0 | With livable streets advocates on the march, the forces of motoredum are on the run. In the European Vider, the cities of Paris, Milan, |
| 0:17.6 | London, Vilnius, and countless more have rapidly deployed bike lanes and banished cars. On the Western Front, children |
| 0:26.8 | frolic on the slow streets of Oakland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Calgary, while the people |
| 0:32.4 | of Cincinnati enjoy El fresco dining in what used to be parking spots. Sounds tasty. |
| 0:38.0 | Want to buy a bicycle? Better hurry. There's a nationwide shortage. |
| 0:43.0 | Meanwhile, in West Texas, shell-shocked frackers will pay you to roll away a barrel of crude. |
| 0:50.0 | What's that? No smog in Delhi or Bangalore? That's right. And Los Angeles breathes easy under |
| 0:57.0 | crystalline blue skies. Finally, no traffic on the 405 or the 10. But pockets of resistance remain as New York City Mayor Bill |
| 1:07.1 | Diplasio drives to the park in his SUV convoy, a growing chorus of citizens clamor for open streets and Chicago's glory |
| 1:16.4 | life has closed lakefront trails to people on bikes and foot say it isn't so |
| 1:21.6 | with more work to do but victory close at hand, humanity fights on |
| 1:27.4 | against the tyranny of the automobile. Hello and welcome to the War on Cars. I am Aaron Napersack and I'm here with my co-host Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon. |
| 1:45.5 | Hey, how are you? Hello there. Hey, good. How are you guys doing? |
| 1:50.3 | Sorry, bad question. |
| 1:51.3 | Not the way to greet someone during the pandemic. |
| 1:57.0 | What I've learned is instead of saying how you're doing, a good thing to say is, |
| 2:01.0 | it's nice to see you, because then you don't force the person to have an awkward well you know how how we're all doing these days basically. |
| 2:09.6 | It is really nice to see you. Yes it is nice to see both of you. It is nice to see you |
| 2:15.0 | guys too and you know congratulations on winning the war on cars it sounds like |
| 2:20.4 | from that from that newsreel we are well on our way to victory here. |
| 2:24.6 | Yeah, you know if you disregard the tens of thousands of deaths that we've had in the United States |
... |
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