Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:34:18
Peter Norton
The Netherlands has made it its business to study every other country in the world. And in fact, they've had me there a few times. To my amazement. And I've asked them, I don't understand why you think you have much to learn from the U.S. when you do it so well there. And their reply consistently was, Well, if we have any success stories, it's because we really do feel like we are students at this and we study practices around the world, including practices that we want to emulate and practices that we want to avoid.

00:00:34:21 - 00:00:57:18
John Simmerman
Hey everyone, welcome to the Active Towns Channel. My name is John Simmerman and that is the one and only Professor Peter Norton from the University of Virginia, author of Fighting Traffic, and Autonorama. And we are going to be catching up. It's a long one, but it's a good one. So let's get right to it with Professor Peter Norton.

00:00:57:20 - 00:01:04:23
John Simmerman
Peter Norton, it's such a pleasure to have you back on the Active Towns podcast for the third time. Welcome.

00:01:04:25 - 00:01:08:14
Peter Norton
John is too thrilled to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

00:01:08:16 - 00:01:42:03
John Simmerman
It's always wonderful to catch up with you. It seems like we tried to do this every couple years and it's it's bizarre that I can say that. But partly, you know, it's because you were on board with me early on way back in in season one. And in fact, I'm going to pull this up. It's like, yeah, you were like episode 16, season one, and we were early in the coronavirus pandemic and we spent the time talking about fighting traffic.

00:01:42:06 - 00:02:05:11
John Simmerman
Your first book and then literally two years later, again early on, it seems like, well, not that early. I mean, Episode 105, Season three, but you had a new book to talk about, so we were talking about a ton of drama. I suspect We'll talk a little bit about both of those books, but we won't linger too much on that because that's that's the past.

00:02:05:13 - 00:02:17:15
John Simmerman
But I would love to hear from you in terms of like a little update of both of the books. And I believe fighting traffic is it's the ten year anniversary, Right?

00:02:17:17 - 00:02:25:08
Peter Norton
Well, the original hardback came out in 2008. So we're coming up on on G 16, I guess.

00:02:25:10 - 00:03:02:06
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it's probably the softcover, you know, and I noticed that because it's out on my my bookstore. So I've got it in the bookstore here. A fighting traffic. Is there a ton of Rama's there. You're mentioned extensively in Dark PR by Grant Ennis and that's also out on the bookstore. I will provide links in the video description and in the podcast show notes for your books, as well as the active town's bookstore, as well as for people who prefer Amazon.

00:03:02:06 - 00:03:22:29
John Simmerman
I've got links that I can put to those. But yeah, why don't we do this? Why don't we pause just for a second, turn the floor over to you for a very brief introduction of who the heck Peter Norton is and why We're talking again, having you on the podcast for the third time. So let me turn it over to you, Peter.

00:03:23:02 - 00:03:50:00
Peter Norton
I'm Peter Norton. I love people, friendly cities, places and streets. So I'm also historian and I try to ask, well, how did we get to a status quo that often isn't friendly to people in, in public places, cities and towns? And so that's why I wrote my first book. I wanted to know how we got to where we are today.

00:03:50:07 - 00:04:20:14
Peter Norton
That was fighting traffic. It was really about the early years of adjusting to automobiles in cities and towns in the U.S. and then in the second book, I was getting concerned about visions of the future, where it seemed like the the effort was how do we make car dependency work instead of how do we really get the places that we want and the kind of mobility that is healthy and sustainable and affordable for for everybody?

00:04:20:16 - 00:04:22:09
Peter Norton
Yes, that's me.

00:04:22:12 - 00:04:54:23
John Simmerman
I love it. And of course, you are a professor. You are at the University of Virginia and will include a link to your landing page here as well. Yeah, it's funny, when we talked about this in the second book, a ton of drama, and we went into, you know, that long history of you know the that the future thinking and we were, we're going to have all of this really cool stuff, you know, and we're going to have flying cars and and all of this.

00:04:54:23 - 00:05:32:14
John Simmerman
It was just it's it's amazing when we go back and I'm scrolling through some images here of, you know, this this concept, there's nothing wrong with like looking into the future and thinking about the future and and trying to do that. But to your point in you talk about this in the book, too, is that we were just like sort of bought into this concept that we're always going to be car dependent versus what you had just mentioned, which is, you know, what about quality of life and what about, you know, imagining a future where, you know, we're not controlled by the machines?

00:05:32:16 - 00:05:54:16
Peter Norton
Yeah. So I want to begin by emphatically agreeing we need to be thinking about the future. We should be thinking about it every day. And we should be asking ourselves what's the best future we can have? And what concerned me about a lot of those visions that you just scrolled through is that, well, for one thing, they were not coming from the, you know, the people at large.

00:05:54:16 - 00:06:17:15
Peter Norton
They were coming from the from the companies with something to sell to us. And I think their vision had a lot to do with how do we sell our products and less to do with how do we get to the future that we need, but more specifically, what concern me about those visions of the future is that they seem to be efforts to answer a question like how do we make car dependency work?

00:06:17:18 - 00:06:46:00
Peter Norton
And I think we can be asking how do we make the best future, whether it's car dependent or not? And I don't mean to say that cars have no place in the future, but but surely we can have better choices than we have now. I mean, I think when you you'll reduce our problem to its elemental level. Our problem is that we don't have those choices and I think would be wonderful if we had many more choices than we usually have today.

00:06:46:02 - 00:07:14:21
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah. And if we could encourage folks, you know, please go back and listen to or watch the two previous episodes if you haven't already consumed them. They are super fun. And we go into more detail both that first book Fighting Traffic as well as the second book on Rama. Even though it's been a while since we've actually done this, you know, the recordings and really caught up, you know, visually face to face.

00:07:14:21 - 00:07:57:01
John Simmerman
Right. Like this. And thanks to the Internets, it seems like we're we're always in touch on social media. You know, I might be amplifying or re tweeting or posting something from you on screen here for the listening audience. I've got to you're you're your ex slash Twitter page up in and that's one of the things that you and I are both very very engaged in active out on social media both you know for you hear here on X I'm everywhere, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram, I'm on threads as I'm on blue sky.

00:07:57:01 - 00:08:21:23
John Simmerman
You're on blue sky now, too. And so talk a little bit about that side of this because you're professor you're an author, but you're also very much engaged and involved in the the dialog, the conversation in the sharing of knowledge out on the interwebs. Talk a little bit about that.

00:08:21:26 - 00:08:42:13
Peter Norton
I love what social media lets me do. That's much harder to do in the usual academic channels. You know, if you publish a paper in academia, it'll take you months to get it out. And I love I mean, it's instant gratification in one way that I can post something this quickly. I also love reaching a much broader audience.

00:08:42:18 - 00:09:08:09
Peter Norton
You know, this post you've got featured right now, it begins with my observation that people in the transportation professions, you know, transportation engineers, many planners and so on, often don't get a chance to learn about the history of their field as part of their program. They may learn about it on their own, but they don't take typically courses in how we got to the status quo.

00:09:08:12 - 00:09:50:28
Peter Norton
And I think that we have a lot to learn. We learned many lessons the hard way and where she's learned the lesson the hard way, you don't want to keep making the same mistake again. And so I think one way I look at what I have to offer and that one way in which I use social media is to try to bring to a wide audience the very painful and hard earned lessons of the past and sometimes also some very inspiring things from the past about movements or ideas that we've forgotten so that we have a chance to look at the status quo with some detachment without being immersed in it.

00:09:50:28 - 00:10:23:20
Peter Norton
You know, with get outside the fishbowl, so to speak, and and see things we can do differently. So recently I've been posting a lot about pedestrian control and jaywalking, which has a history that I think tells us that we've actually made walking harder. And if we learn how we made Walking harder, maybe we can find ways to make walking easier again, because walking used to be the number one mode of everyday practical mobility, and it has some obvious advantages.

00:10:23:22 - 00:10:52:20
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And, and very soon after, you know, the the bicycle became commonplace and, you know, the source was, was adopted in mass with the safety bicycle. You know, you extended your reach of being able to walk because you could, you know, travel at a slow speed on a bicycle. And you know, that was, you know, the technology, the new mobility technology of of that era.

00:10:52:26 - 00:11:25:25
John Simmerman
We had streetcars at that time as well. And then soon after, I mean, we're looking at stuff that's, you know, dated from the 1915, 1916 was the earlier post that we were looking at. And so we're seeing and you talk about this in the very first book, Fighting Traffic, is that history. Again, you're historian and so you're talking about that history of our streets and our roads and the tensions that took place, you know, as as we were adopting new mobility modes.

00:11:25:27 - 00:11:49:26
John Simmerman
And you mentioned it earlier when we were talking about a town of Rama, is that there were corporate interests involved to that were very much had stuff they wanted to sell us. And and then obviously, you know, fast forward to post-World War two, they definitely had stuff they wanted to sell as they wanted to sell suburbia. They wanted to sell not one car, but two cars, maybe more, etc., etc..

00:11:49:26 - 00:12:19:09
John Simmerman
So yeah, it's I think it's really important to to, to, to focus in on the point that what you've been doing here with jaywalking is winding it back and talking about how something that was never a crime became a crime because they wanted it to become a crime, because they wanted to have friction less mobile city and access for motor dumb and the motor vehicles.

00:12:19:11 - 00:12:53:22
Peter Norton
Yeah, I really like the way you framed this as a sort of spectrum of alternatives that people once had. Like for example, cycling goes along with walking off the electric street railways for like another way of making walking more practical because they kind of augment walking. You can walk to the street car and back. I also think it's so important for people to recognize that the dominance of driving even in dense cities was not really a democratic decision.

00:12:53:22 - 00:13:19:12
Peter Norton
It's not like we as a country sat down together and had a conversation about what kind of mobility we want in cities. Those jaywalking movements that you just scrolled through are from 110 years ago, when the vast majority of people couldn't even drive a car, let alone own one. And we're getting around on foot on bikes and by Electric Street.

00:13:19:12 - 00:13:34:28
Peter Norton
Well, railways. And so it was not a democratic choice. It wasn't science at work. It was it was a political struggle. And winners of a political struggle are not always the people who stand for what's best for us all.

00:13:35:01 - 00:14:07:07
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And just to prove that you don't only post, you know, ancient history. You're from the historical archives. Here's a photo the two posted a few days ago, and it just says priorities will try to describe this for the listening only audience says Priorities. Copenhagen, January 4th, 2024. And the photo is credited to Brian Nielsen. And I'll let you describe what this photo is.

00:14:07:09 - 00:14:31:20
Peter Norton
So we see a photograph of a view of a street in Copenhagen, a broad long street, and one part of this this mobility zone, if I can call it that, has been very carefully cleared of snow. The rest is under snow. And that part is the bike lane. And it looks to me when I look at this picture, it's as if it's saying something in words.

00:14:31:20 - 00:14:58:28
Peter Norton
And the words would be something like we think cycling is a fundamental mode of mobility in Copenhagen. It's as important and maybe even a little more important than anything else. And the fact that they have carefully cleared the snow off of the bike lane, even though snow is still everywhere else, really tells you something about priorities in Copenhagen and maybe about what we can learn from other countries.

00:14:58:28 - 00:15:01:15
Peter Norton
Examples. Yeah, yeah.

00:15:01:17 - 00:15:31:15
John Simmerman
And in looking at this image, I think I recognize where that is. So from some of my visits to the Copenhagen area and riding around on bicycle and I think it's really important to because you're illustrating in that image that, yes, there are priorities. These are decisions that were made. You mentioned earlier that we didn't really have a vote as to what we wanted and if we did, had a vote or a vote as community members, we probably would have.

00:15:31:21 - 00:16:01:13
John Simmerman
And you mentioned this in your books, we probably would have like said, yeah, we probably like this, this, this image, this, this storyline that you've sold us. But what we as as consumers, community members, we probably didn't have, You know, hindsight's 2020. We now know what the negative externalities a marginal majority really was a motor. Adam, talk a little bit about that because I think that's an important point.

00:16:01:14 - 00:16:11:17
John Simmerman
No, we weren't really, quote unquote, given a real choice in it, but it had we been given a choice, we might have actually chosen what we got.

00:16:11:20 - 00:16:39:27
Peter Norton
Well, you know, it's really interesting if I say that the status quo is not really the product of a democratic choice or even consumer preference, sometimes that gets heard as me saying people wouldn't have had cars at all or, you know, cars would be marginalized. I think the thing that I think there's a distinction that has to be made most people who could afford a car wanted one.

00:16:39:29 - 00:17:05:21
Peter Norton
And by circa 1920 or so, about half of American families could own a car. So they were very much in demand. Their attractions were very real. What I think we did not choose and what I think people actually resisted a lot is environments where you don't have a practical alternative. If you want to get anywhere, you're going to have to own a car.

00:17:05:21 - 00:17:42:23
Peter Norton
Now that situation that we are now as a country in two and to a great degree, in other words, very large fraction of Americans really don't have good alternatives to driving. That was not the product as a democratic choice. People loved their street, railways, people resisted losing them. They demanded better bus service. People have been demanding bike lanes for, you know, about 130 years and people have been demanding walkable streets that are safe, safe for children.

00:17:42:23 - 00:18:06:28
Peter Norton
Even one of the most common letters to the editor of a newspaper, which is like the social media of its day, is people saying, my children need safe places to walk and or I need a safe place to walk. And these demands really were persistent. And I don't think that the loss, the failure to deliver on those demands was at all a democratic choice.

00:18:07:00 - 00:18:36:27
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah. And speaking of which, you know, one of the common themes that comes up in our world of safer streets advocacy and mobility choice is, you know, tapping into the example of the Netherlands and the resistance that took place in the 1970s. There were multiple things happening in the Netherlands during the early 1970s, including the oil embargo and other types of protests that were happening.

00:18:36:27 - 00:19:02:06
John Simmerman
But one of the protests that were happening was really pushing back against what had transpired post-World War two in the Netherlands, which was the motor vehicle really taking over the space and the increase in fatalities out on the roadways and specifically fatalities of children. And so we see in screen here a couple of images that you have provided.

00:19:02:08 - 00:19:29:15
John Simmerman
And I love how you always, you know, take an opportunity to to remind folks that, yeah, we've been protesting unsafe streets for decades, dating all the way back to as we were talking about earlier, those early days of the automobile starting to wreak havoc on the streets. But walk us through these two side by side images, because I think there's a great lesson here.

00:19:29:17 - 00:20:09:27
Peter Norton
Well, just like you said, John, the Netherlands, as many people know, sets a really amazing example of of active towns, really of sustainable health, for affordable mobility for people on also safe streets where even children can navigate their own hometown, local streets in relative safety compared to the U.S. And I've been using Dutch examples for a long time in talks and papers, but I was sometimes cautioned, you shouldn't talk about the Netherlands example in the U.S. because it doesn't really apply so well.

00:20:09:29 - 00:20:27:21
Peter Norton
I mean, for one thing, the Netherlands is a very small country. And I had a I thought, a good answer to that criticism, which is to say, well, it's like it's like to New Jersey. So if we if we can make New Jersey work like the Netherlands, then you don't have to worry about how big the U.S. is.

00:20:27:23 - 00:21:07:26
Peter Norton
But another criticism I got to this example as well, the Netherlands, there's a tradition there of advocacy of organizing protests, of making demands from citizen groups. And we really don't have that in the U.S. And I partly fell for that. I was somewhat cautious about my Dutch examples after that, but I kept finding examples where American people, especially mothers, especially women, as you can see in the picture on the left, were in fact demanding streets that were safe for them, safe for their children.

00:21:07:28 - 00:21:37:08
Peter Norton
Very often at the time that picture on the left was taken in 1953. If there was a car in the family, it was typically just one car. And usually that meant that the husband or father monopolized it. So women were having to negotiate streets on foot and their children were too. And what I kept finding until I realized I was on to something quite enormous was these kinds of protests.

00:21:37:10 - 00:22:03:23
Peter Norton
They've been almost completely forgotten today, but they were very common. And I eventually I gave myself a little test story game. I would give myself the name of a city and then see if I could find if I really dug dug around some protests that had happened. And in case after case after case, I could. And so really the U.S. was ahead of the Netherlands on making these kinds of demands.

00:22:03:26 - 00:22:07:22
Peter Norton
It's just that we forgot that history in the Netherlands didn't.

00:22:07:24 - 00:22:34:06
John Simmerman
Yeah, you know, I love the fact that this is like as a historian, you're like, I need to dig into this so that you start finding material and you're just like O-M-G. I got a I got to include this now in my slides, in my presentations out on the Internet and sharing this because, yeah, I mean, we all kind of have that, that bias of thinking we're special.

00:22:34:08 - 00:22:56:15
John Simmerman
Nobody else is like us, you know? And you can, you know, dot, dot, dot, you can fill in what us is, you know, the city of Austin, Texas, the you know, you know, whatever. And again, yeah, this particular panel on the left is from Philadelphia, July 11th or 12th, 1953. And the panel on the right for the listening audience is a picture of the Kinder more.

00:22:56:15 - 00:23:48:22
John Simmerman
It's sort of a protest movement happening in Amsterdam on October 31st. It looks like it is 1972. And to your point, yes, we have that long history of protesting and increasingly I'm seeing some protests for safer streets starting to bubble back up again. We're starting to exercise our ability to to push back on the concept that we in status quo have been sort of accepting the death count of, you know, now it's in upwards of 40,000 people per year who are tragically expiring on the streets in North America, not to mention the, you know, nearly a million people having serious debilitating injuries on our roadways.

00:23:48:25 - 00:23:58:26
John Simmerman
So, yeah, it's it's kind of nice to see that we're we're starting to push back a little bit and do some protests. Not too dissimilar to what we see in these two panels.

00:23:58:28 - 00:24:24:28
Peter Norton
That's right. And I want to stress that in both cases, including the US case in this in this pair of pictures, we're seeing people who are actually breaking the law. Right. This is one way you can draw attention to a problem is through civil disobedience. We're acquainted with civil disobedience and the civil rights movement. Well, this is civil disobedience to demand streets that are safe or just even just their local residents.

00:24:25:00 - 00:24:31:05
Peter Norton
It's a very simple demand. They're saying, really, the streets belong to all of us, not just to the motorists.

00:24:31:07 - 00:25:14:04
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And this was actually a topic that Grant Innes and I talked about in the book Dark PR of the fact that, yeah, of any of these really bold movements and things that happen. You mentioned civil rights, the example of women needing, you know, being able to vote. You know, these things happen because of a civil disobedience and protest that took place and so that's that's part of the challenge in a democracy where things aren't going the way things, you know, quote unquote, should be going properly and ethically, morally, you know, you have to speak up.

00:25:14:06 - 00:25:34:20
Peter Norton
You do. And when the status quo is the problem, you have to speak up in ways that are going to be controversial. When you have a status quo, it's almost by definition going to be impossible to speak up except in ways that seem fringe at first. To many people who accept the status quo is normal because we all have status quo bias.

00:25:34:20 - 00:25:45:28
Peter Norton
We tend to think whatever is existing right now must be the norm. And so these people are really setting an example for us if we think that we need to change the status quo. Yeah.

00:25:46:00 - 00:25:59:09
John Simmerman
Yeah. And the photo that happens to be on screen right now is from North Hollywood, June 1946. So immediately post World War two and a mother is demanding safe streets. Safer streets.

00:25:59:12 - 00:26:35:20
Peter Norton
Exactly. And in selecting some pictures of this kind of protest for our conversation, I wanted to show that you could find these in big old cities like Philadelphia, but it was also in new, sprawling suburban areas like North Hollywood and other pictures will show that this is also across social classes. We see working class people, we see well-to-do people, and we see people of different races and ethnicities combining, or at least in separate protests, demanding something better.

00:26:35:22 - 00:27:09:07
Peter Norton
Although in every case, the large majority and sometimes 100% of the adult protesters in the picture are women because of the fact that from their perspective, what they're fighting for is their own and their children's right to safe streets. And given the social norms of the mid-twentieth century, the responsibility for that falls predominantly on women. In the slide you're showing right now captures something I find extremely important.

00:27:09:09 - 00:27:37:28
Peter Norton
We have a story we tell ourselves that Americans all adopted the automobile and all adopted driving as the norm by the mid 20th century. And what you've got on the screen right now is a bar chart from 1961 that shows, in fact, that about half of women at that time, 1961 in the U.S. adult women didn't even have a driver's license.

00:27:38:01 - 00:28:02:12
Peter Norton
And so this story we're getting, basically everyone was driving by the mid-20th century tells us that by everyone, the word everyone we were that was really just referring primarily to men. And it's it shouldn't come as a surprise to us anymore that this is a bias woven into any setting where we don't have some diversity of views.

00:28:02:14 - 00:28:32:26
Peter Norton
We have the dominant group thinking that the norm is whoever they are not out of maliciousness, but just out of the biases. We all have. And so stories that everyone was driving by the mid 20th century really leave out about half of women or really more than half of women. If you if you consider that a lot of women who were licensed to drive did not have access to a car every day because their husband was likely to be monopolizing it most of the time.

00:28:32:29 - 00:29:01:01
John Simmerman
Yeah. And of course, motor them being that group that wants to sell us these things. They even started in post-World War two starting, you know, to market to women and starting to, you know, encourage that purchase of that additional vehicle. I think they were even, you know, outwardly marketing the station wagon as like the family vehicle, you know, so that you have your freedom.

00:29:01:04 - 00:29:41:17
Peter Norton
They were very definitely, especially by the 1950s, you see a very definite effort to pitch automobiles to women and to promote the idea of the two car family, to promote the idea that the way you keep your kids safe in getting around town is to actually drive them around town. Now, we it's become so common, so ubiquitous now for parents to drive their children to everyday destinations that we forget that that was a decades long struggle where the default position was really how do we make it possible for children to navigate their own communities on foot or on bike or by bus?

00:29:41:20 - 00:30:05:28
Peter Norton
We have to, to a great extent, at least, given up on that struggle. And I hope that by bringing that struggle back to our attention now, we can see that actually the status quo of a couple of generations ago was that children should be able to get around, go to a friend's house, get to school without depending on a parent driving them.

00:30:06:00 - 00:30:24:15
John Simmerman
So, Peter, we were just talking a little bit about, you know, some of the historical context. And we've used the term motor motorhome a few times. I know that you talk about this in your book, Fighting Traffic. That first book, but why don't you give the historical context between of that term motor them?

00:30:24:18 - 00:31:01:20
Peter Norton
Well, first I find it really useful because the alternative is to say something like coalitions of industry groups, including manufacturers, etc., and that's really clunky. So I was really delighted to find when I was writing Fighting Traffic this term, it really fell out of use by the 1950s or so, but it originated circa 1900 in newspapers, and by 1910 or 1920, most newspapers had a Sunday insert, a Sunday section usually called automobiles and that Sunday section would have a lot of news about automobile companies.

00:31:01:20 - 00:31:29:14
Peter Norton
Either it was promotional material purported or presented as if it were news and very often the news about what the companies were up to, not just the manufacturers, but also the tire companies, the parts makers and so on. Was mosher them. And I found it a really nice way to have one word that stands in for this whole team of allies working for a future where you could sell more cars.

00:31:29:16 - 00:32:03:28
Peter Norton
And a real turning point in this term's history was in the 1920s, the early 1920s, when the American Automobile Association came under. Its president. Thomas Henry, said, You know, we're really going to promote a future where driving is everywhere and he began calling the American Automobile Association organized motor them. So motor dumb was a very common word in the in the newspapers by the twenties, but it fell out of favor in the forties and fifties.

00:32:04:00 - 00:32:11:05
John Simmerman
Yeah. And now I use it as as a not so flattering description of that coalition.

00:32:11:07 - 00:32:35:27
Peter Norton
I'm pleased to say that after I put it in fighting traffic and started using it, it got picked up by a few people and I think it's a really apt term and I don't mind if it has a somewhat negative connotation because some of what motor time has done to promote driving really needs to be revisited. And if that helps us question some of these business agendas, that that's to my view, for the best.

00:32:36:00 - 00:32:50:05
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah. And you're so diplomatic there when you say some of what they have done, because you're right, because, you know, motor vehicles are so much a part of, of our life and so it's not all completely negative.

00:32:50:07 - 00:32:55:23
Peter Norton
That's right. I think automobiles are a useful tool. It's not an all purpose tool, though.

00:32:55:29 - 00:33:24:02
John Simmerman
And as I take a sip of my tea here with my streets are for people mug, I want to point out that, you know, the streets, you know, were you know, for people for literally thousands of years, you know, the street that place where people came together, social interaction took place, commerce took place. You know it really was where society came together.

00:33:24:02 - 00:33:57:20
John Simmerman
It was also where kids played. And so what we have on screen now is an image that you provided that talks about how mothers are protesting a fatal in their blocking a fatal place. Street Talk a little bit about this historical context of the fact that that's part of why the parents were coming out, the mothers were coming out to protest, is that this is exactly what happened, you know, a couple decades later in the Netherlands, where those mothers were like, stop to kinder.

00:33:57:20 - 00:33:58:27
John Simmerman
Maude.

00:33:58:29 - 00:34:34:10
Peter Norton
Yeah, I mean, to begin with, I think that we could take some pride in this country for being ahead of the Netherlands on these demands, she said. The never in the Netherlands, the demands got a lot more in terms of results, but we were ahead of the Netherlands by a couple of decades in these kinds of demands. I also think that or one of my purposes in choosing pictures like this one where we see in a New York Daily News photograph, we can see mothers blocking a street to demand safer streets for children.

00:34:34:13 - 00:34:56:08
Peter Norton
I'm hoping that a picture like this confronts us with the question how do we respond to the fact that our streets are too dangerous for children? And the reason why I want to confront people with that question is right now our predominant answer is to to tell parents, never send your child into a street, never send your child to a destination that's more than a block away.

00:34:56:11 - 00:35:20:05
Peter Norton
And these mothers are telling us, well, maybe the thing to do is to demand safe streets, because nobody in these pictures is blaming the mother or the parent whose child was injured or killed. They are asking their cities for four streets that are safe for all of the city's residents, including their children, and including adults who don't drive.

00:35:20:07 - 00:35:44:12
John Simmerman
You know, in this particular image here, I'm going to pull back just a little bit, make sure we got all the wording in here on the description is a great example of what we end up seeing in so many of our cities is that infrastructure gets built and it's it's auto oriented infrastructure. And by the way, you know, people who are outside of the motor vehicle, they're an afterthought.

00:35:44:12 - 00:35:48:18
John Simmerman
And that's exactly what played out here in 1951.

00:35:48:20 - 00:36:12:25
Peter Norton
That's right. And that's exactly the point. I was hoping this picture would convey. So I love hearing you express it just just the way I would have, which is the authorities in this area near Pittsburgh have put in a bridge with approach roads and there's no sidewalk at all. And we're so used to that in 2024 that we would perhaps hardly notice the omission of the sidewalk.

00:36:12:27 - 00:36:52:20
Peter Norton
But here we see parents, almost all mothers. As a father, I'm relieved to see there is one father present to are blocking this access road to a new bridge, saying you're not done with your job Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, until we have sidewalks so that our children can safely cross this bridge and not just motorists. So, again, it's it's a my hope is to confront us in 2024 with questions that we sometimes now forget to ask questions like do we have infrastructure when the infrastructure only accommodates cars?

00:36:52:20 - 00:36:55:27
Peter Norton
Are we are we not? Don't we have more work to do?

00:36:55:29 - 00:37:28:05
John Simmerman
Yeah, you know, and we get to other issues that come along with what we were talking about in the beginning, which was jaywalking and how, you know, getting around on foot across our public spaces suddenly becomes illegal if you don't do it just the way that you should. And and then we will end up having other types of things that take places, you know, as because one of the things that motor team did was was say, you can't just cross anywhere.

00:37:28:05 - 00:37:56:01
John Simmerman
You have to only cross at the crosswalks and in in and when we tell you to do it in. But oftentimes when we look at what our built environment is, there's there's no true safe crossings because the roads are so incredibly wide. Or if there are safe crossings, there's so incredibly inconvenient. They're far apart. It's like a half mile before you get to the next official crossing.

00:37:56:08 - 00:38:22:14
John Simmerman
So it's interesting, in 1952, we see this one, you know, the protesters, she's she's holding up a sign that says Safe crossings for you and I. And so he's just like, okay, way back in 1952, they're also talking about, you know, street lights and safe crossings. It seems like we just haven't really learned from our past experiences. Peter, help us out.

00:38:22:16 - 00:38:46:06
Peter Norton
We still see the same debates. We still see the same kinds of demands. I think, though, there is there is an important difference, which is, you know, where is what we would call the mainstream position and the mainstream position today. I fear, is one that says, well, really we have to accommodate drivers. And if you want to get to a destination safely, you need a car.

00:38:46:06 - 00:39:17:19
Peter Norton
And if you want your child to get to a destination safely, you need to drive the child there. And so these pictures are reminding us that actually the status quo, the mainstream view, whatever you want to call it, of about 70 years ago was we don't have our job done as a city until we've made sure that everyone, including children, can get where they need to go, at least locally, in a safe way.

00:39:17:21 - 00:39:36:25
Peter Norton
So, yeah, there is continuity. There are these demands. Today, Families for Safe Streets is setting an amazing example in this kind of advocacy. But this is this is really mainstream position of 70 years ago, not not the advocacy position that it is today.

00:39:36:27 - 00:40:09:05
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And back in that era, I mean, when we look at the number of kids who would walk and bike to school back in the day when we're looking, you know, we're in the rearview mirror now looking at 70 years ago and we're but when you looked at, you know, the reality, the actual data and statistics is that, you know, part of the reason why the casualty rates were so high with, you know, with children is that children still were walking and biking to school in those times.

00:40:09:06 - 00:40:34:06
John Simmerman
Our neighborhood schools were still very much a thing. And in and I think that that's it it bears repeating the fact that, you know so much has really changed and we've we went from seeing, you know, over 50% of kids walking and biking to school to now in in some communities, you know, less than 10% doing so well.

00:40:34:06 - 00:40:59:27
Peter Norton
As you said, John, it can be much harder, even apart from the dangers of motor vehicles for a child, including a high school kid, to get to school on foot or on a bike, the distances alone are daunting. I'm not sure how feasible it is to undo that, but at least we can make a beginning at trying to.

00:41:00:00 - 00:41:09:23
Peter Norton
And very often, even when the school is in range, we see parents feeling like their only safe choice is to drive the child there.

00:41:09:26 - 00:41:26:01
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. No, you're a parent. And so you, you've you've probably experienced this to some level. Talk a little bit about that personal sort of experience of of raising a child in in the 21st century where we're at now.

00:41:26:03 - 00:41:51:28
Peter Norton
Absolutely. So my children were born right around the turn of this century. So they grew up in this car dependent world. I happen to live in a or next to a city, Charlottesville, that does have a lot of walkable areas within town. But given the geography of where we were living right outside town, we did find we had to drive our children to a lot of places and I didn't.

00:41:51:28 - 00:42:21:17
Peter Norton
I was not happy about it. But given the safety imperatives, this is exactly what I felt I had to do. Now, once the children were all around 12 or so, if I had to drive one of my kids somewhere, I would drop them off a few blocks away. And to the frustration of my younger one, my older, older son was was more accommodating of this and just say, you know, try walking a few blocks and see how that works for you.

00:42:21:17 - 00:42:33:07
Peter Norton
And of course, I began by guiding them a lot about how to cross the street safely. But it was my attempt at a compromise and not a compromise. I was very happy with. So.

00:42:33:09 - 00:43:03:10
John Simmerman
Yeah, and just to be clear, these protests continued. So this wasn't just the 1940s, 1950s type of thing. This is a photo on screen here in Philadelphia again on July 31st in 1968. And so these street protests, you know, really continued for some time based on the research that you did. When did when did our protests for Safer Streets kind of like die down?

00:43:03:10 - 00:43:20:18
John Simmerman
Was it later in the late seventies and into the 1980s? I can't remember hearing anything of of major protests at a national level or even at a big city level. You know, in the nineties we see them now as we talked about. But yeah.

00:43:20:21 - 00:43:42:01
Peter Norton
So I was born in the sixties and I don't personally remember protests of this kind. And that has to do with the fact that as I was growing up in the seventies, they really were becoming rare. Now I do find evidence of them continuing into the late seventies, but I think a couple of things happened that really put an end to these kinds of demands.

00:43:42:03 - 00:44:15:00
Peter Norton
One of them is that the predominant response to the real danger shifted from how do we make streets safe for children to how do we ensure that every family has has the means to drive their child to and from school? And I think you can actually sort of see this visually in the development of the automobile. The the minivan really proliferated in the eighties, and it was the family friendly car.

00:44:15:00 - 00:44:44:07
Peter Norton
And it was if you were a family with a few children, it was a convenient way to sort of provide your own family shuttle service for children. And this is, of course, partly a response to marketing from motor home that's making sure that it helps people frame this problem not as making streets safe for children, but rather is making sure every family has a car they can use for for guiding children.

00:44:44:10 - 00:45:11:06
Peter Norton
It also, though, it's certainly not just due to that, it's also due to parents. And besides the danger of motor vehicles we see in the seventies and eighties, a real rise in the perceived danger from children, from strangers, stranger danger, naturally, this while this risk is incredibly small, you know, the risk of abduction or something like that is incredibly small.

00:45:11:09 - 00:45:50:27
Peter Norton
Any parent will instant say, as I would, that even a vanishingly small risk of abduction is so horrifying that you will do anything to prevent that. So those kinds of stories got relatively little press coverage, but then some high profile cases, particularly in the eighties really convinced people that the responsible parent is the parent who drives their children to destinations and the irresponsible parent is parent who has their children be what we would call a free, free range children.

00:45:51:00 - 00:46:07:09
Peter Norton
But I'm glad to see that free range child rearing has been making a small recovery because I think this is a vital part of growing up as a child and as developing some self-efficacy as a child. Yeah, you.

00:46:07:09 - 00:46:32:29
John Simmerman
Know, and the data is quite clear on that. The data is also quite clear to in the fact that the rates of adoption of abductions really have never really changed. It's not like we're getting more of them. And we had a, you know, on an outlandish number of increases of abductions. But what did change was the media coverage of them and making it seem like it's way more than it is.

00:46:33:06 - 00:46:53:17
John Simmerman
And the data also still says that of the abductions that do take place, it's most likely actually not a stranger at all. It's actually somebody who's close to the family. So in this particular image that is on screen right now is from to your point is from the late 1970s. And so it did kind of chug along for a while.

00:46:53:20 - 00:47:05:14
John Simmerman
It's funny, too. You mentioned the minivan. I chuckle and say, yeah, the minivan was just motor Adam's, you know, new version of what they were promoting in the 1950s, which was the station wagon.

00:47:05:16 - 00:47:24:07
Peter Norton
That's right. And the minivan is like a station wagon, but much easier to manage child booster seats in or baby seats because the station wagon you had to bend down. And it was awkward to put the seat in and the the minivan was up higher was much easier to put your child safety seat in that.

00:47:24:09 - 00:47:46:27
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. We've got the a mobility pyramid here on screen. Let's talk a little bit about this, because I think this is a rather insightful point to kind of bring up in in talking about the way we view mobility and how we get around.

00:47:47:00 - 00:48:37:06
Peter Norton
Yeah. I mean, if you if you think about what our most basic problems in transportation are, I think of three in particular. One is traffic congestion, the other is traffic safety, and a third is the greenhouse gas emissions attributable to road transportation, which in the U.S. are quite high. And in the more than 25% range. And what strikes me is that when we look at these incredibly important problems where our lives, our futures, our economies, our well-being are all deeply at stake in intertwined ways, We tend to keep looking for high tech ways to keep private cars near the top of our priority list.

00:48:37:08 - 00:49:09:19
Peter Norton
And I wonder why invest all of this effort into somehow hoping that we can somehow make car dependency sustainable, spatially efficient, safe for the people in the vehicle and for the people outside of the vehicle. If when we look at the the mobility pyramid, the way we would like to see it arranged and in this this depiction walking is that the top cycling and micro mobility is second and public transit transportation is third.

00:49:09:21 - 00:49:46:11
Peter Norton
Well, those modes of transportation give us everything. So walking and micro mobility and cycling and public transportation are all safe. I mean, if they're dangerous, it's they're dangerous because of private cars, not because they're dangerous in themselves. They're all very sustainable, especially walking and cycling in terms of, you know, greenhouse gas emissions attributable to them. They're all subject to technological improvements, like, for example, an electric bicycle can give you an amazing possibilities.

00:49:46:14 - 00:50:15:00
Peter Norton
And they're also all incredibly good in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. So if we just orient our priorities, well, it's win, win, win all the way. And I would like to see us shifting our efforts to get more efficient, safer and more sustainable mobility in ways that align with what you like to talk about in active towns, which is people getting out and moving.

00:50:15:02 - 00:50:41:24
John Simmerman
Yeah, you know, and for the listening audience, yeah, this is the mobility pyramid of the pyramid is actually turned upside down. So the big thick portion of it, which is Peter you just mentioned, is, is predominantly the largest section of it is walking and then the, the pointy end of it where we are going to do it, much less would be, you know, train or travel by a plane.

00:50:41:27 - 00:51:09:26
John Simmerman
And so and we're we're we're recording this on January 11th. This is going to be going out to you all in the public on the 31st. So 20 days later, we're we're right now hearing every single day about the challenges with the Boeing 737 max nine, because it had a door plug fly out. And, you know, we're before you know it, we're going to have like congressional hearings on this.

00:51:09:26 - 00:51:34:17
John Simmerman
And it's going to be it's incredibly serious and it is incredibly serious. We have a wonderful track record of safe flight, and we haven't had a fatality in in quite some time from an airliner crash. This was a near miss. And having had part of the fuselage, a door plug fly off mid-flight at I think it was 16,000 feet elevation.

00:51:34:17 - 00:52:14:14
John Simmerman
It wasn't quite at full elevation. Talk a little bit about this context, because, you know, what we see is a mobilization of of, you know, the the powers that be the NTSB is is mobilized to deal with this. And yet every day, day after day, we have a mid jet size aircraft crashing every single day. When you look at the fact that somewhere between 100 and 115 people perish on our roadways, But it doesn't it's not front frontline news.

00:52:14:14 - 00:52:19:21
John Simmerman
It's it's not leading the news. And it maybe should be.

00:52:19:24 - 00:52:47:19
Peter Norton
I think it should be for sure. And, you know, one reason why it's not, of course, is if two if a plane crashes, you're likely to lose a large number of people at one moment in one place. And that naturally grabs attention. While our deaths on the roads are diffused and and scattered among many much smaller horrors, I almost I almost call them incidents.

00:52:47:22 - 00:53:24:16
Peter Norton
These are horrors for the people involved. If we are serious about safety in aviation, we should be serious about safety. Where people are actually traveling vastly more often, which is on in our roads. We do respond to safety, but I fear that our responses are not have proved to be not the best that we could could offer. For example, when a certain part of a roadways been shown to be a place where crashes happen, very often, the response is to design the roadway so that it's more forgiving.

00:53:24:18 - 00:53:57:21
Peter Norton
And that then means that people will feel safer going faster and we end up with an effect where we're negating some of the safety benefit by faster driving. We see also people driving more and more. So we have a paradox right now where the amount of driving each person is doing is going up and has been going up to the point that even if each mile driven is safer, the total safety benefit is not improving because we're driving more.

00:53:57:23 - 00:54:41:01
Peter Norton
Another response is to try to use technology to make driving safer. There's certainly a lot of things we can do with technology to make driving, but a lot of what gets sold to us as safer. Driving through technology has more to do, frankly, with selling tech than with making driving safer. And you've just put up an ad that was that cruise put out last spring in a bid to promote Robotaxis in San Francisco with the headline Humans are terrible Drivers and by implication, the viewers supposed to conclude, well, therefore, robot cars are likely to be safer.

00:54:41:03 - 00:55:07:24
Peter Norton
And actually, you know, as we've partly learned over the last few months, this isn't true unless we make the cars so cautious that they're not practical to use. We've you know, you can have a safe robotaxi if it goes frustrating, least slow and stops for every everything that has a slight chance of being an obstacle. So there are real limits to what we can do with technology.

00:55:07:24 - 00:55:20:18
Peter Norton
It can do a lot. We should do everything the tech has to offer, but a lot of the tech that's being sold to us today has to do with driver convenience rather than with actual traffic safety.

00:55:20:21 - 00:56:02:24
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah. And again, you alluded to it there. You know, the unintended consequences of getting these things out there, they're no longer out there. Cruise has actually pulled their their vehicles off the road. There were some pretty high profile situations of fortunately not massive losses of life. But to your point, they were like they would get confused. They were literally in the middle of an intersection blocking the emergency vehicles from getting to where they needed to go and it got to the point where, yeah, this is rather clear that this technology isn't there yet, though.

00:56:02:24 - 00:56:21:13
John Simmerman
You talk about this extensively in your book written drama is that that's been the promise is that technology is going to save us, that it's just around the corner. It's just around the corner. It's just around the corner. So I'm going to let you, you know, in the context of what we're talking about here, address that briefly.

00:56:21:15 - 00:56:50:08
Peter Norton
So a lot of people have been asking questions about why so-called autonomous vehicles have been a disappointment now for more than ten years, maybe up to 20 years, depending on where you start the timeline. What I've been trying to to show is that actually they've been failing us for about 90 years. If you go back to when motor Freedom was first promising, that technology would make fool proof highways, that was the original promise.

00:56:50:08 - 00:57:16:11
Peter Norton
Going back to the 1930s, fool proof highways would eliminate crashes, supposedly. Of course, what they really do is encourage people to drive faster, which means that you may have fewer crashes, but the crashes are worse, and so you're not really getting ahead of the curve that way. So what I'm sometimes then misunderstood to be saying, you know, don't trust technology or are misperceived as a Luddite.

00:57:16:14 - 00:57:39:15
Peter Norton
What I'm really saying is amazing. Technology is amazing and it has a lot to offer, but it doesn't make car dependency work. We need to be using technology for what it's best at. And even a robotaxi that is relatively safe is not necessarily affordable. We've had the illusion of affordable robo taxis because the companies operating them are willing to lose money on them.

00:57:39:18 - 00:57:57:00
Peter Norton
But if they're going to have a future, they have to be somewhat profitable. At least They also don't solve the problem of the fact that they're an energy intensive way to move people and especially demanding a way to move people. I'd really like to see us looking at other possibilities.

00:57:57:02 - 00:58:12:11
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And we have on screen now just a real quick Google search of Eve and see what pops up. Walk us walk us through what we're we're we're glancing out here for the listening only audience.

00:58:12:13 - 00:58:38:17
Peter Norton
So there's that There's a term in widespread use. It stands for electric vehicle. And for some reason when we and I'm including I'm including myself here, when we hear the word easy electric vehicle, we tend to picture a car, ordinarily an SUV with a big battery, but about £1,000 or more battery in it. And that's an easy or an electric vehicle.

00:58:38:17 - 00:58:58:22
Peter Norton
And these are supposed to be great things because of the fact that they don't have a internal combustion engine. They don't burn fossil fuels in the engine. And I agree, we need that kind of easy. That kind of easy definitely has a place. But how strange it is that that's the go to definition in our minds for easy.

00:58:58:25 - 00:59:40:07
Peter Norton
And I think the way you can tell that it's the go to definition is that if you type easy into a Google image search, the images that come up are all SUVs with batteries. All right. So what is right here? Exactly. So what I tried to do in that second easy slide is take a Google image search that I would like to see so that the image search that you've got up now, which shows a pretended result of a Google image search for EVs, it shows you trains, it shows you trams, it shows you street cars, it shows you electric bicycles, it shows you electric scooters.

00:59:40:09 - 01:00:18:28
Peter Norton
It even shows you electric trolley busses with the overhead wires. And my point here is to say, look, if we can understand the term EV more inclusively, we have a much bigger toolbox with more tools to choose from, including tools that may be better for the job, depending on the job that we're talking about. So I would like to see us get to a place where a Google image search for EV shows us what I pasted together in this fake Google image search where we have electric bikes and electric trams and so on, because there's some wonderful results to come from this.

01:00:19:04 - 01:00:44:04
Peter Norton
So the electric bikes, yes, they have batteries, but those batteries are, you know, much less in mass than the battery it takes to move an SUV in an SUV, the battery is moving. I've seen that. But at least 95% of the energy is moving the vehicle and not the passenger. If there's one passenger on a bike, more than 50% of the energy is moving.

01:00:44:04 - 01:01:14:25
Peter Norton
The rider. If you have an electric train or an electric tram, you don't even need a battery at all because you can draw your current from wires. And batteries are a terribly difficult thing to produce for lots of reasons that most of your listeners probably know know some things about. So we can have the electric mobility future we need, and that's sustainable health for affordable and inclusive if we broaden our definition of EV.

01:01:14:28 - 01:01:53:13
John Simmerman
Yeah and two thoughts come to mind on on that too is that in the case of like the electric assist bicycle, it's like it's a little bit of a boost there for when you need it, but otherwise you are, you know, able to, you know, be, you know, pedaling and so you're able to contribute. The second thing that comes to mind is I have an addition request for a different electric mobility vehicle for you to put into this is a Google Google image of a a person with a mobility device like a person, you know, needing you know, an electric wheelchair type electric scooter, which is one of the things that we end up seeing.

01:01:53:13 - 01:02:32:19
John Simmerman
We had mentioned earlier, you know what it's like there in the Netherlands these days. And also you have that image from Copenhagen is that when we see these protected and separated all ages and abilities, facilities, mobility facilities that are inherently safer or even streets that are inherently safer for for people to get around by walking, biking and using mobility scooters, we see that the disabled individuals who need an electric assist, an electric mobility device, they're able to use these facilities as well.

01:02:32:22 - 01:03:05:03
John Simmerman
And it's in it's preferential to the older historic, you know, sidewalks because it's not smooth. And so they are able to, you know, have that empowerment there. Their ability to get around is enhanced. And that's a mind shift for a lot of us in North America, where oftentimes our biggest critics of putting in mobility facilities is from a disabled community that feels like the only way they can get around is to drive a car.

01:03:05:05 - 01:03:22:19
John Simmerman
But there's plenty of people who have mobility issues that also can't drive. And so we need to be able to create more inclusive mobility systems in networks, you know, for people to be really, truly all ages and all abilities.

01:03:22:22 - 01:03:57:27
Peter Norton
John, I'm so glad you brought that up because for one thing, it it beautifully illustrated the fact that when you have one person or a team of people who are all from similar backgrounds thinking up ideas together, there are going to be biases that result. And, you know, as a as a abled person who can walk easily, you know, it was evidently harder me to recognize that, of course, a scooter for a person with limited walking ability is definitely an easy and belongs on any easy result list.

01:03:57:29 - 01:04:40:17
Peter Norton
But another really important thing about what you had to say here is that right now robotic vehicles are being sold as the way of that. We will make mobility accessible to all, including people who have disabilities. But my my fear is that messaging is it would be a very long wait till we have the kind of mobility that that people would need coming from robotic vehicles when there's things we can be doing right now to make places accessible to people on scooters or other by other means besides driving, especially for people who can't drive because of a disability.

01:04:40:19 - 01:05:06:18
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. I'm going to pull up my my landing page for my website here simply because the image that I chose to use for this is at a university. This is at t u Delft in in the Netherlands and it's a great photo. I love this particular image because we have automobile infrastructure in the bottom left. This is where the motor vehicles are able to travel.

01:05:06:20 - 01:05:35:25
John Simmerman
Then you have a two way cycle track where we literally see it just packed full of of students and professors and other people getting to their meaningful destination. This is the morning commute, getting to the university. And then on the other side of the trees is the sidewalk. A very wide and generous sidewalk. And so when we hear the term complete streets, the vision that I have for a complete street is this.

01:05:35:27 - 01:06:05:08
John Simmerman
And I think that we, you know, need to be able to be okay with learning from other communities, other societies like the Dutch that are proving that if you build it and it's the right it and you support it with the software, the policies and and programing to activate the right it the hardware, magical things can happen just like what we see here in this image.

01:06:05:11 - 01:06:40:10
Peter Norton
That's right. And the Netherlands has made it its business to study every other country in the world. And in fact, they've had me there a few times to amazement. And I've asked them, I don't understand why you think you have much to learn from the U.S. when you do it so well there. And their reply consistently was, Well, if we have any success stories, it's because we really do feel like we are students at this and we study practices around the world, including practices that we want to emulate and practices that we want to avoid.

01:06:40:10 - 01:06:47:02
Peter Norton
So I would like to see North Americans learning from other countries, just as you say.

01:06:47:04 - 01:07:00:10
John Simmerman
Yeah, fantastic. Peter, we've come to the end of our discussion, but before we wrap it all up, is there anything that we didn't talk about yet that you want to leave the audience with?

01:07:00:12 - 01:07:33:21
Peter Norton
I would just like to say that if we're going to have the future that we need and that future generations need, we just had the hottest year on record in 2023. If we're going to respond to that effectively, if we are going to have a healthier population, if we're going to actually reduce the number of people injured and killed in our highways instead of just making each mile of driving safer, actually make the whole transport system safer.

01:07:33:23 - 01:08:01:09
Peter Norton
If we are going to be more equitable in our society so that people can afford the mobility that they need for work and for other purposes, if we're going to have those things, we need to put walking, cycling, micro-mobility rolling public transportation back at the top of that mobility pyramid where they belong and where in fact they used to be.

01:08:01:11 - 01:08:09:24
Peter Norton
And I think we can do it if we are not distracted by the promises that technology will magically solve all of our problems.

01:08:09:27 - 01:08:47:02
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And I did take that opportunity to throw onto the screen here. The per capita carbon dioxide emissions attributed to road transport circa 2018. I heard the data coming out yesterday that we did see some improvement on our carbon dioxide from the transport section. I, I think it was yesterday that came out. But to your point here is that we're just ridiculously off the scale in terms of our contribution to, you know, global warming in in this context.

01:08:47:04 - 01:09:00:20
Peter Norton
And our best opportunities and is to find ways to have a future where we don't to drive as much we're driving as a choice and not a practical daily necessity for everyone or nearly everyone the way it tends to be now.

01:09:00:22 - 01:09:25:02
John Simmerman
Yeah, you know, and again, this is per capita, so this is per person the level of emissions that are that are happening here. Talk a little bit about as a closing thing this slide and because you in your closing statement there, you mixed them both. You talked about the fatalities, but you also talked about the challenge of global warming.

01:09:25:02 - 01:09:31:18
John Simmerman
So I don't want to not give this particular slide from the National Academies of Sciences ago.

01:09:31:20 - 01:09:57:24
Peter Norton
So right now, the USA has a very bad traffic safety record relative to other high income countries. It's at the bottom of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development countries. So are that's a nice proxy for high income countries. And that's not for lack of trying. It's because what we try to do in response to traffic dangers is has not been working.

01:09:57:28 - 01:10:22:26
Peter Norton
What we've tried to do in response to traffic dangers predominantly is to build road infrastructure that's more forgiving of of driving. And in so doing, we encourage people to drive faster. And not only that, we actually kind of compel people to drive long distances and drive faster because we don't have enough affordable housing at the destinations where people need to be.

01:10:22:28 - 01:10:47:24
Peter Norton
And so instead, people have to live far from work in order to have the affordable housing that they need. And I think this graph, this problem beautifully, because the red bar, which shows you a declining fatality rate, that is the number of deaths per million miles traveled, does in fact, have a encouraging trend, although that flattens out in recent years.

01:10:47:26 - 01:11:17:08
Peter Norton
But it is negated by the fact and the reason the fatality numbers stay so high is not just due to population growth, it's due to the fact that people have been driving a little more every year because we have engineered an environment for them in which driving is a practical necessity for many people and which and in which driving more and longer distances every day is often a practical necessity of just meeting the daily needs of living.

01:11:17:11 - 01:11:27:09
Peter Norton
I think we can have a better result if we strive to have a future where driving is less necessary every day for most people.

01:11:27:11 - 01:11:46:08
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah Very well said. Peter, thank you so much. It's always a joy having you on the podcast. Is there any of the very, very last thing? Is there anything happening in the future, a new book or anything that we need to be keeping an eye out for?

01:11:46:10 - 01:11:58:20
Peter Norton
I've always got a lot of little projects going at the moment. Nothing like a book, but yeah, nothing. I will feel nothing I can sort of single out to call your attention to.

01:11:58:23 - 01:12:15:23
John Simmerman
Okay, well, you know what to do. Because when you do have a book that you want to get out or a report that you want to talk about, you hit me up because I'd love to have you back on. My favorite guest ever. Obviously the third time again. Peter, thank you so very much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.

01:12:15:26 - 01:12:20:06
Peter Norton
John, It's been a great pleasure. It's a thrill to be with you. Thank you for having me.

01:12:20:08 - 01:12:37:02
John Simmerman
Hey everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Professor Peter Norton, and if you did, please, they give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, I'd be honored to have you subscribe to the channel. Just click on that subscription button down below and ring the notifications bell.

01:12:37:08 - 01:12:58:02
John Simmerman
And if you're enjoying this content, please consider supporting my efforts on Patreon Buy me Coffee YouTube Super. Thanks for below. As well as buying things from the active town store, get some really cool stuff out there, including brand new coffee mugs strips for people in black. Also enjoy as always. Every little bit adds up and is much appreciated.

01:12:58:05 - 01:13:23:23
John Simmerman
Hey, thank you all so much for tuning in. Until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers. And again sending a huge thank you to all my active towns. Ambassadors supporting the channel on Patron Buy me a coffee YouTube super thanks. As well as making contributions, the nonprofit and purchasing things from the active town store every little bit adds up and it's much appreciated.

01:13:23:25 - 01:13:25:03
John Simmerman
Thank you all so much.