Transcript exported from the video version of this episode - Note that it has not been copyedited

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:28:10
Andrew Bowen
So this image we're seeing is from where part of the central freeway in San Francisco used to be. And they built a park here. So and there's a play structure and a grassy area. And I went there and I was just an incredibly peaceful, you know, space. This is, I think, one of the the key examples of of how a freeway removal can be successful because a freeway has you know, there's lighting problems during the daytime and at night.

00:00:28:13 - 00:00:47:09
Andrew Bowen
There are certainly noise problems. And those things can breed. They can attract crime. You can hear somebody screaming if there was a freeway right next to you and, you know, maybe you can get away with doing some bad stuff. So this neighborhood of Haze Valley that used to have a freeway running through it has been completely transformed.

00:00:47:12 - 00:01:12:21
John Simmerman
Hey, everyone, welcome to the active Towns Channel and the Active Towns podcast. I'm John Zimmerman and that was Andrew Bohn from KPBS in San Diego. And the Freeway Exit podcast. We're going to be talking about that podcast and the six episodes in that series. It's a good one, but it is a long one, so let's get right to it with Andrew.

00:01:12:23 - 00:01:15:14
John Simmerman
Andrew Bowen, welcome to the Active Towns podcast. Welcome.

00:01:15:14 - 00:01:16:11
Andrew Bowen
Thank you so much.

00:01:16:12 - 00:01:28:09
John Simmerman
Thanks for having me here. Hey. One of the things I love having my my guest do is just give a real quick introduction to themselves. So. Well, what's your, you know, 32nd elevator pitch of who Andrew is?

00:01:28:12 - 00:01:54:03
Andrew Bowen
Okay, cool. Well, I'm a journalist. I live in San Diego. I work for the local public radio station here at KPBS. I originally grew up in California, in Northern California, and after I graduated college, I moved to Germany, lived there for six years and worked as a journalist there. It was a very formative experience and really kind of influenced how I see a lot of these issues around cities and transportation and urbanism.

00:01:54:06 - 00:02:16:29
Andrew Bowen
And I came to San Diego in 2015. I've done a lot of coverage of public transit, of freeways, the transportation, infrastructure and policy. And the reason I'm here today is to talk about my podcast that just dropped, which is called Freeway Exit, and it's about the past, present and future of San Diego's freeways. But really freeways in general.

00:02:16:29 - 00:02:28:17
Andrew Bowen
A lot of the things and the questions that we're asking ourselves here in San Diego around freeways are the same kinds of questions that we're hearing at you in metro regions across the country.

00:02:28:19 - 00:02:45:12
John Simmerman
Yeah, you know, and I'm also a native Californian, a fourth generation Southern California, Los Angelino, but I did spend quite a few years up in in Northern California. I actually grew up on a ranch in the shadows of Lake Tahoe.

00:02:45:12 - 00:02:47:00
Andrew Bowen
And then. Oh, nice.

00:02:47:00 - 00:02:53:12
John Simmerman
So far, no. What what village or what city were you in in the in Northern California?

00:02:53:14 - 00:03:15:27
Andrew Bowen
Yeah, I grew up in Santa Rosa, So it's about an hour north of San Francisco. Pretty small city. The wind industry is really big there. My dad was a vineyard manager, actually. Oh, okay. Yeah. So it's a really beautiful place to grow up. You know, I wouldn't call it quite suburban because it's kind of its own community. It's more like just a small city.

00:03:15:27 - 00:03:20:07
Andrew Bowen
Kind of. Yeah, a little further outside of the San Francisco metro region.

00:03:20:10 - 00:03:47:03
John Simmerman
Yeah, absolutely. And yes, some of the most wonderful vineyards up in that area. I have frequented many of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The whole Russian River Valley area there. And the the really the historical context of like Sonoma too. I mean that's like the birthplace of California. Many people don't realize that history of, of the actual city of Sonoma too.

00:03:47:03 - 00:03:48:15
John Simmerman
So good stuff. Yeah.

00:03:48:15 - 00:04:14:27
Andrew Bowen
There's a lot of really interesting history in San Fran in Santa Rosa where I grew up. You know, it was hit by the 1906 earthquake that really hit San Francisco really hard. But it sort of in terms of scale, you know, relative to the city size, San Francisco is even more devastated by it. So, you know, there's a lot of there's a kind of a parallel history with how the buildings look and when they were rebuilt in our downtown development.

00:04:14:27 - 00:04:15:22
Andrew Bowen
Everything there.

00:04:15:25 - 00:04:29:11
John Simmerman
Yeah. And earthquakes will come back, I'm sure, in a part of this conversation. But tell me briefly about where you were in Germany, because I just got back from Germany. I was in Leipzig. Where were you at?

00:04:29:13 - 00:04:53:12
Andrew Bowen
I so my first three years that I lived there, I was living in Cologne and working in Bonn, which is a city just to the south of it. I worked for Deutsche of the international public broadcaster, so I was working for their English department covering news in Germany and Europe at large. And then after three years in Cologne, I moved to Berlin and I spent the rest of the time there.

00:04:53:15 - 00:05:18:19
Andrew Bowen
So it was a yeah, two really, really excellent cities and kind of different sides of geographically different sides of Germany, but also very different feels in terms of the city. Berlin has a lot more expats, it's much more international. Cologne has a very strong identity of of what it is. There's a lot of history that's very particular to Cologne, and they have their own dialect, you know.

00:05:18:21 - 00:05:26:29
Andrew Bowen
So it was a really cool kind of time to see two different cities and in Germany and see the differences between them.

00:05:27:01 - 00:05:38:28
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And I have been able to spend time in both of those cities and obviously most recently in Berlin when I was in Leipzig. And have you been to Berlin recently?

00:05:39:00 - 00:05:42:18
Andrew Bowen
I was actually just there last summer. Yeah, in June, yeah.

00:05:42:18 - 00:05:48:16
John Simmerman
Yeah. It was really fascinating for me. I actually rode my bike from the airport.

00:05:48:18 - 00:05:49:22
Andrew Bowen
I saw that. Yeah.

00:05:49:24 - 00:06:19:14
John Simmerman
Know all the way into Berlin to document that for for the channel here. And it was interesting to see the, the different approach to this life on network and dealing with the roads and the streets and the highways and all of that. And it once you got into the city proper, the city center really it's an extraordinary steps being taken there in Berlin to improve the the walkability and the bike ability in the city.

00:06:19:14 - 00:06:22:00
John Simmerman
So that was really kind of cool to see that.

00:06:22:03 - 00:07:03:06
Andrew Bowen
Yeah. I mean, it's there's been a lot of change even since I left there in 2015. Yeah, new bike lanes coming online and it was a very bikeable and walkable and transit friendly city when I lived there. But they've, they've taken things even further and yeah it's, it's it's interesting to see how the debate plays out there in a in a city that's already so much less car dependent than San Diego where I live now, it's still hearing some of the resistance from folks who want to maintain their personal automobiles in the city and keep that access that there was this, um, I don't know if it's happened already, but some discussion of creating a

00:07:03:06 - 00:07:12:20
Andrew Bowen
car free zone in the center of of Berlin and what that would mean for people who currently have cars and continue to drive there.

00:07:12:22 - 00:07:24:14
John Simmerman
Well, one of the things that I think we'll get to when we start talking about car culture, too, is the fact that so much of the German economy is still centered around building cars.

00:07:24:17 - 00:07:51:12
Andrew Bowen
Absolutely. Yeah. It's a very interesting, somewhat ironic, you know, fact that a lot of the country's economy is built on automobiles. And at the same time, in other you know, in these pockets or in these cities, there is so much less need to actually use a car compared to American cities and certainly so California.

00:07:51:15 - 00:08:01:13
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah. And for you personally, when you were over there, were you zipping around on the autobahn and driving everywhere or were you go on.

00:08:01:15 - 00:08:22:05
Andrew Bowen
You know, in six years of living there, I never once got behind the wheel of a car. I did have a bike pretty much the whole time that I was there. Mostly I walked and use transit though, and sometimes I would bike to the if that hub on station was a little bit too far to walk or if I was running late, you know, to get to work and bike to move on station up there.

00:08:22:07 - 00:08:41:02
Andrew Bowen
I really lucked out and never had my bike stolen or, you know, and I actually now that's why I did lose my front wheel once. Okay. But but yeah, I know it was, I think like the times that there was maybe once or twice when I needed a friend to help me move. And I was, you know, they rented a car.

00:08:41:02 - 00:08:54:03
Andrew Bowen
They, you know, had a car available that helped me out with that. But it was it was much more of a hassle and a pain to try and figure out how to drive there than how to just rely on everything else.

00:08:54:05 - 00:09:21:10
John Simmerman
So I suspect that this is part of your story is that, you know, after spending that time over there and having, you know, that awareness of transportation issues and mobility issues, and then you you find yourself in San Diego and re immersed in American style car culture and the freeway culture in particular in southern California and particularly in San Diego.

00:09:21:12 - 00:09:24:03
John Simmerman
That was a little bit of a culture shock of its own.

00:09:24:06 - 00:09:50:17
Andrew Bowen
Yeah, reverse culture shock, you could call it. I mean, I, you know, got off the plane, I flew into LAX and then drove down from there because it was cheaper to fly in to the big airport. But yeah, I remember, you know, renting a car and thinking like, I guess this is my life now, you know? And I still mourn like the type of lifestyle that I was able to be there, just not needing a car for my daily transportation needs.

00:09:50:20 - 00:10:19:10
Andrew Bowen
But yeah, it it's it definitely gave me a different perspective. And the other thing that happened right around when I arrived in San Diego is that the City council adopted its Climate action plan. This was in October 2015 and a basically set out these very strict, quantified goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Our largest source here in San Diego of greenhouse gas emissions is from transportation, cars and trucks.

00:10:19:13 - 00:10:47:28
Andrew Bowen
And so the strategy for cutting emissions in half by 2035 and we've actually upped that goal now since then. But the strategy largely depended on shifting people's daily commutes away from cars and toward biking, walking and public transit. There's really no solving the climate issue without also addressing the car issue. And so I got here one month later.

00:10:48:05 - 00:11:14:09
Andrew Bowen
I see the city adopts this extraordinarily ambitious plan to get more people into transit and biking and walking. And I had just come from this country where that was the norm. And I was thinking, this is awesome. Like, I'm going to be able to cover this moment where this city is in transition and, you know, they've set all of these goals and it made these promises and it's going to be great.

00:11:14:12 - 00:11:42:25
Andrew Bowen
And what I very quickly learned was that it's a lot easier to adopt goals than to actually reach them. And really crazy. But there was a real reluctance on the part of our elected officials to be honest with the public, about what those goals that they had already adopted would mean for people's daily lives. You know, people are very much wedded to their cars here.

00:11:42:25 - 00:12:09:14
Andrew Bowen
And I think for some people they like it and they want it to stay that way. And for other people, it's just kind of how they it's the culture and the society that they've inherited. And it's not something that maybe they've even thought about all that much or they've thought about maybe they've been to cities that are less car dependent and, you know, see what kinds of, you know, health benefits and quality of life benefits that that can bring.

00:12:09:17 - 00:12:46:15
Andrew Bowen
But they just haven't gotten to a place in their own minds where they can see San Diego getting to that same place. There's the the transformation that the city has to make if it's actually going to meet its climate goals is just so, so, so dramatic. And I think right now we're suffering from a lack of imagination. And that's one of the things that I wanted to kind of spark with this podcast is getting people to to at least imagine a future where things are different even if they don't see it, you know, five or ten years away, start thinking about what that future, what they want, that future look like and what will need

00:12:46:15 - 00:13:12:23
Andrew Bowen
to change in order for it to happen. And and also think about what they'd be willing to sacrifice. You know, if you take a lane of parking on a boulevard and convert it into a bike lane, or you take away travel lane away from cars and turn it into a bus lane, I you know, people might it might add five or 10 minutes to somebody drive to and from a place or it might be a little bit more difficult to find a parking spot.

00:13:12:26 - 00:13:52:05
Andrew Bowen
But you know, those things are those things like we have to we have to have an honest conversation with ourselves about what we are willing to sacrifice and what, you know, conveniences and comforts, you know, in the 21st century are just going to go away whether we like it or not. I mean, the climate crisis is really bearing down on us, staring us in the face right now, especially, you know, with all of the wildfires in Canada and the smoke affecting the eastern United States, you know, San Diego and Southern California went through that in 2020.

00:13:52:05 - 00:14:10:27
Andrew Bowen
And it was a you get a real apocalyptic feel looking out at the orange sky. And, you know, these these the the problem is going to be affecting us, whether we like it or not. And we can't just keep avoiding this conversation about, you know, the link and the nexus between cars and freeways and, you know, our climate future.

00:14:11:00 - 00:14:35:10
John Simmerman
Yeah. You know, so it hearkens back and the name Freeway, of course. And since we do have an international audience here, what we're really talking about here are these massive highways, multiple lanes, and they're called freeways because they're not told if it was a tollway, it would be called a tollway. You know, it's just it's it's an expressway.

00:14:35:12 - 00:15:06:06
John Simmerman
And so that's the vernacular that we that we ended up using here in the United States was we ended up calling them freeways. And there's some significance to the fact that they're free and there's some significance to the fact that the way that they got built out, it kind of hearkens back to a comment or a phrase that Don Shoup uses, Professor Donald Trump up in at UCLA about free parking.

00:15:06:09 - 00:15:27:15
John Simmerman
He likes to say that free parking is like a fertility drug for for for cars. It just creates more cars. And that's the same thing that happens with freeways and more freeway miles. And the induced demand of building more lanes. It it makes it that much more attractive. It's like this addiction of, oh, well, this makes it really easy.

00:15:27:15 - 00:15:53:01
John Simmerman
So more more traffic comes. And so that's one of the main challenges, of course, for a place like San Diego in Southern California and many other cities around the globe is that when we build out these expressways, we build out these freeways and we have all this capacity there. It just encourages more people to drive. I got a chuckle out of one of your episodes.

00:15:53:01 - 00:16:07:09
John Simmerman
I think it was the very first episode and really talking about the very first freeways and the fact that that very first freeway that got built in San Diego no sooner than it was built and it was like clogged because everybody wanted to check it out. It was hilarious.

00:16:07:11 - 00:16:27:18
Andrew Bowen
Yeah. I mean, if you could pull up the photo like, yeah, let's put this at the very beginning of episode one starts as So what we're looking at now is Balboa Park. This is kind of like San Diego's version of Central Park. It's the largest urban park in the city. And you can see two freeways actually that go through it.

00:16:27:18 - 00:16:50:29
Andrew Bowen
There's the one that starts on the left side of the screen, kind of makes an S-curve. That's I-5. It goes through downtown, then curves back down south. So that kind of cut off the southern edge of Balboa Park. And then you also have the 163, which is kind of the western quarter of the park, is kind of it divides the western quarter from the eastern three quarters.

00:16:51:01 - 00:17:14:12
Andrew Bowen
So the 163 is that freeway that goes north south here. It's in the city charter that any time you dedicate a use in Balboa Park to something that is not park land, there has to be a public vote. So in 1941, the state division of Highways was starting to plan out this future where lots of people were buying cars.

00:17:14:12 - 00:17:38:00
Andrew Bowen
And there was a belief in, you know, among our leaders that the automobile was the future. And so they wanted to build this freeway through Balboa Park. There used to be a two lane road there, but they wanted to build it into a true highway. So there was this vote in 1941 about whether or not to dedicate this park land to the city's first highway.

00:17:38:07 - 00:18:02:13
Andrew Bowen
And it passed with 89% of the vote. So that kind of, I think, speaks to this mentality that folks at the time were in, which is that the the car and the automobile and the highways are our future. This is how we're going to be getting around. And people were even willing to give up what we call our crown jewel of Balboa Park in service to that future.

00:18:02:13 - 00:18:27:20
Andrew Bowen
So yeah, yeah, it was it took a while to build that they in 1948, it finally opened. They had this procession down the highway celebrating this brand new piece of infrastructure. And then once they opened up the the on ramps, it was just flooded with cars and they were caught in gridlock. It's very ironic, you know, that as soon as the first freeway opens, we already have congestion.

00:18:27:22 - 00:19:00:06
John Simmerman
Yeah. And and that's very I think relevant to to talk about because the vision that we were we're fed and and and continued to that narrative that continued to sort of get put out there. You mentioned you know Walt Disney and and the you know the history of how the automobile in the future was was painted and they never talk about the reality of oh yeah, pollution displaced of people, of gridlock.

00:19:00:06 - 00:19:09:03
John Simmerman
You know, none of those things get mentioned. This is the oh, the wide open roads and going through beautiful parkland and Seattle. That's what you get that.

00:19:09:06 - 00:19:32:01
Andrew Bowen
Yeah You know we start episode two with this video from that it's a show that aired in the fifties called Disneyland, this before Disneyland actually opened. And the name of this episode was Magic Highway USA. So they basically asked all of these transportation engineers and people who are involved in the planning of the freeway network in the United States.

00:19:32:03 - 00:19:57:00
Andrew Bowen
What do you think the freeways will look like in, you know, in the next generation with our kids and grandkids are growing up and there are these, you know, very Jetsons style images of tubular highways going underneath the ocean and and, you know, air conditioned tubular highways through the desert. I found that particularly funny because air conditioning was pretty standard in automobiles by the fifties.

00:19:57:02 - 00:20:24:22
Andrew Bowen
So it's not enough that we have air conditioning inside the cars. We also need it outside the cars for I don't know why. I guess there was just, you know, there was a real I mean, it's we we laugh at it now, thinking how how on earth could these people have gotten it so wrong? But there was this real optimism at that time that, you know, that freeways and and cars could really carry us into the future.

00:20:24:22 - 00:20:50:12
Andrew Bowen
And there's nothing that we can't accomplish. We had just one World War two. We you know, the economy was going gangbusters. People were owning homes in greater numbers, owning cars in greater numbers. And there was just this real sense of of pride and in the progress that all of this infrastructure would bring. I actually have I got I went to the archives for the Caltrans Local District, that's the state Transportation Department for California.

00:20:50:14 - 00:21:09:22
Andrew Bowen
And they found this pamphlet for me. It's called Freeway Facts. And these pamphlets were given out to people at public hearings where they would be discussing the routing of a particular freeway. So we're going to put it here. And they had to hold a public hearing. It was very much kind of checking a box on some of the things that they discuss in here.

00:21:09:25 - 00:21:40:06
Andrew Bowen
They have a Q&A section at the ends. And and one of the things, you know, that the questions that they answer is what will the freeway do to our community? Will it cut it in two? And the answer, they say, is heavy traffic on an ordinary streets is a barrier. Experience shows that freeways actually unite communities by eliminating congestion and permitting traffic to flow freely across town at strategically located crossings over under the freeway and relieving congestion on nearby streets.

00:21:40:14 - 00:22:04:15
Andrew Bowen
So, you know, as we were building out this network of freeways, people were sold a bill of goods that this infrastructure was going to solve their problems. It was going to give them an easy commute and they were going to be, you know, this idea of congestion that we experienced on local streets where you have crosswalks and conflict points and, you know, intersections and everything, all of that was going to be gone.

00:22:04:15 - 00:22:32:08
Andrew Bowen
And we're going to be able to drive wherever we want as fast as we want. And, you know, it's going to be great. And so, you know, we I'm sure we'll have more to talk about this, but it's yeah, it was it was interesting going back in time and really listening to how our country was talking about the freeway in this moment where there was just a complete massive blindspot to all of the negative externalities that these decisions would have on people.

00:22:32:08 - 00:22:42:20
Andrew Bowen
And, you know, like you mentioned, noise fumes, division, you know, people were sold this bill of goods that was ultimately just based on false information.

00:22:42:22 - 00:23:09:13
John Simmerman
Yeah. And as far as, you know, freeways go, this particular freeway, the 163 I remember this vividly from my time in San Diego for a very short period of time. I had a shared apartment with my my sister down in Carlsbad, and I used to surf down there a lot. But as far as freeways go, I mean, this is one of the most beautiful roadways as far as roadways go, just because of the setting.

00:23:09:13 - 00:23:41:09
John Simmerman
And you can see that it has some very, very interesting architectural features to it. And it really is it's it's unfortunate that it's this roadway that, you know, high speed roadway that cuts through the crown jewel, a park. But at the same, you know, on the flipside, you tell the story of somebody who remembers, you know, the early years of of experiencing this roadway and more importantly, starts to kindle like this thought and this image of, well, what if.

00:23:41:12 - 00:23:42:28
John Simmerman
Dot, dot, dot.

00:23:43:00 - 00:24:16:04
Andrew Bowen
That's right. Yeah. So so, you know, here you have the view of the traffic going northward that bridge or sorry this I believe the southbound. Actually, I think so. The car is driving under the Cabrillo Bridge. So Balboa Park was established in the 19th century, but it really kind of most of the amenities, the museums, the different historic buildings that that were built there came in 1914 or 1915 when the San Diego hosted the Panama, California World Exposition.

00:24:16:05 - 00:24:26:21
Andrew Bowen
It's one of those world fairs that they were doing at the time. And so this bridge was built. There is an absolutely gorgeous view, and it's kind of marred by, you know, the cars. So this image here that we see.

00:24:26:28 - 00:24:27:18
John Simmerman
It's like, yeah.

00:24:27:20 - 00:24:28:03
Andrew Bowen
That's all right.

00:24:28:05 - 00:24:35:14
John Simmerman
You heard you call it marred. I mean, that's well, that's beautiful. Oh, you mean this could happen.

00:24:35:16 - 00:25:01:09
Andrew Bowen
That's right. So so there's this a Twitter account called Better Streets AI. And they take these images off of roads and freeways and use AI image generation to imagine what that street would look like if there were no cars on it. So this is an image of the ones, this same frame of the 163 freeway going south. And on the left side you have somebody on a bike and there's this little stream and a line of flowers and everything.

00:25:01:09 - 00:25:27:24
Andrew Bowen
And it kind of went viral. And, you know, it definitely started people, you know, some some people thinking about what it is that we lost when we dedicated all of this park land to a freeway. But the the gentleman that you're talking about who appears in episode one, his name's is Marsh. He's an architect here. He actually was able to sneak onto the freeway when it was closed for maintenance in 2014, so there were no cars on it.

00:25:27:24 - 00:25:47:03
Andrew Bowen
He kind of snakes through these barriers that that have been set up to keep people off the freeway and just kind of stood there and listened to the birds chirping and the smells and listening to the silence and everything. And it was it planted a seed in his mind that really got him thinking over over a longer period of time of, you know what?

00:25:47:03 - 00:26:11:03
Andrew Bowen
If we could take back this space and actually reimagine this freeway that we didn't decide that it should get built here? This is just something that we inherited from a past generation. And so he's you know, he's basically been trying, you know, talking to friends, trying to get people to at least imagine this this type of future where maybe someday we will have have improved our public transit system.

00:26:11:03 - 00:26:27:27
Andrew Bowen
We'll need made more walkable and bikeable streets. And and, you know, this piece of infrastructure that currently we dedicate to traffic and getting people in and out or through the park, but not to it, maybe someday we could take that space back and create something beautiful that people would really love.

00:26:27:29 - 00:26:51:25
John Simmerman
Yeah, I didn't realize that this was a better streets. I did have Zach on to talk about the fact that doing these images, you know, the images really, you know, kind of helps people reimagine what these spaces could be. So, you know, you take this and you turn it and say, oh, but it could be this. It's like, oh, wow, yeah, I get that.

00:26:51:25 - 00:27:16:26
John Simmerman
And they do go viral, which is really, really nice to see because it becomes very refreshing to see the opportunity of, you know, hey, let's, let's imagine that it doesn't have to just be this paved over landscape of motor motorhome. It could be something that, you know, hearkens back to maybe some of the original visions of of beauty, you know, in that particular area.

00:27:16:26 - 00:27:27:03
John Simmerman
And like you said, you know, most, you know, Balboa Park, most of that stuff was in place, you know, 100 years ago. So. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Incredibly important. Yeah.

00:27:27:05 - 00:27:53:09
Andrew Bowen
So so these are some images of of what the park looks like or what that canyon looked like before the freeway was built. So as I mentioned, there was a very rudimental tree, It might have been even on paved road on, on the side there, but the rest of the canyon was just greenery, vegetation. And there was this lily pond right underneath the Cabrillo Bridge that provided a really beautiful reflection of the of the bridge in the sky and everything.

00:27:53:09 - 00:28:16:14
Andrew Bowen
And this was, you know, created that the lake was manmade, but it was a really beautiful kind of setting. And if you go there now, you know, you hear the noise from the traffic and and it's just not quite as peaceful. But one of the things that these images are, I think they definitely sparked people's imagination. But seeing it in real life without cars is something it's just a different level.

00:28:16:14 - 00:28:40:22
Andrew Bowen
Yeah. And I don't know if you can pull up the video that there's a clip that I have and hopefully we can hear the sound also, but that this the clip is from episode six, and it's this guy, Brad Marsh, the architect who is talking about temporary closures of freeways and basically how you don't have to shut a freeway down, totally decommission it right away.

00:28:40:27 - 00:29:00:24
Andrew Bowen
You can have a temporary closure where it's shut down for just a couple of hours, maybe a day, have an event and, you know, make an event out of it and get people to see and experience this space on a temporary basis in a way that they never have before. So this video here is is something that they did this on a different freeway on the 15.

00:29:00:27 - 00:29:25:19
Andrew Bowen
And you can go ahead and play it if you if you can. It's the sound isn't really all that important. But, you know, people are banking on the freeway and there's this exit sign above. Their kids are walking and riding scooters. There were families there, you know, picking up trash. And it was just a really beautiful moment where and there's me, you know, with my recorder gathering some tape.

00:29:25:22 - 00:29:35:11
Andrew Bowen
It's a beautiful moment to witness all of these people who have never experienced a freeway like this before. And and we just do this.

00:29:35:13 - 00:29:36:15
John Simmerman
This is it, right?

00:29:36:18 - 00:29:48:12
Brad Marsh
What we've given up and through that feeling that they have ownership over it and that they can perhaps have a little more control over that part of their environment, which has been reallocated to some of the use.

00:29:48:12 - 00:30:37:14
John Simmerman
Right. Traffic. Yeah, I think it's so incredibly important for us to be able to have these moments to experience our streets or street spaces, even freeways, even highway is without that constant noise. And I launched my podcast in the the lockdown during the during the pandemic, and I would be bringing people in from around the globe. And it seemed like every single episode there was some comment about how amazing it was to have a, an opportunity to experience the community, to experience the streets without the automobile noise.

00:30:37:20 - 00:30:57:06
John Simmerman
And so I think you're absolutely right. I mean, those those are golden moments when you do have that opportunity to experience those highways, the streets, those spaces, and not have that constant automobile noise where you can actually hear people talking and in birds chirping.

00:30:57:09 - 00:31:14:27
Andrew Bowen
Yeah. I mean, there was this moment when I was on the 15 during that temporary closure and it was done. It wasn't sort of just to close the freeway that Caltrans was the State Transportation Department was doing some maintenance on the other half of the freeway that they opened up, the half that wasn't under maintenance for people to walk on and bike on.

00:31:14:27 - 00:31:40:07
Andrew Bowen
And there was this moment where I heard these birds chirping and, you know, it was just like you don't get to experience. And San Diego has, I think, a really beautiful union between natural settings and urban settings. We've got a lot of canyons where there was never any ability to develop them. Some of them were turned into freeways, actually, but the canyons that were preserved, you know, they're little, these little pockets of nature.

00:31:40:07 - 00:32:12:29
Andrew Bowen
And sometimes they go right up to the freeway. But we have these these pockets of nature where we can experience the the the the the flora and fauna and see, you know, what our city used to be before it was really turned into a car city. And, and the noise from freeways drowns all of that out and you know, having just a brief moment where you get to experience it in a different way, I think starts to change people's minds.

00:32:12:29 - 00:32:46:25
Andrew Bowen
I saw that, you know, I said there were a lot of staffers from the state Transportation Department who were at this freeway closure, and they were seeing all of these people, you know, totally amazed by by the ability to experience this space in a completely different context. And they saw how much people loved it and they're aware of how much their infrastructure has impacted people's lives and really divided communities and and displaced people and left people with, you know, air pollution and noise.

00:32:46:25 - 00:33:08:24
Andrew Bowen
And and I think that they see these sort of temporary closures as a way to maybe engage the community in a more positive way and help people feel like they have ownership over this space. I mean, it's public lands. You know, this is this is land owned by the government, which, you know, we the people ultimately are the government serves at our our pleasure.

00:33:08:24 - 00:33:19:13
Andrew Bowen
And so, you know, I think people see this is like a space that somebody else that belongs to somebody else, but it is actually ours. And we can decide what we want to do with it.

00:33:19:15 - 00:33:45:01
John Simmerman
Yeah. And, and we both sort of mentioned that, you know, these highways, these freeways were built right through the hearts of neighborhoods and had profound impacts. And continue to have profound impacts on the health and well-being. And in several of your episodes, you highlight a couple of different themes. When you highlight the themes of freeways that didn't come into fruition.

00:33:45:01 - 00:33:55:28
John Simmerman
But you also highlighted, you know, some of the negative externalities that are that are happening. I think this is an elementary school. What's the story behind this one?

00:33:56:01 - 00:34:23:13
Andrew Bowen
Yeah, So this this photo is of a bunch of elementary school kids. It's a large photograph with a wide angle. They're all in rainbow colors and they're standing together in the shape of a heart. So this is Cesar Chavez Elementary School. It's in a neighborhood called South Crest. And in the late sixties, the city of San Diego and the state Division of Highways signed an agreement to put a freeway through this neighborhood.

00:34:23:15 - 00:34:49:01
Andrew Bowen
There were parts of the city that were developing on the east, and they wanted a fast freeway connection to get those new suburban style neighborhoods into downtown. So they had planned for a freeway to go through this neighborhood. And I the following the year after that, I think it was actually 1968. The following year, this district got its San Diego, got its first black City Council member.

00:34:49:01 - 00:35:16:13
Andrew Bowen
His name was Leon Williams, and he basically started organizing this community and, you know, getting people trying to empower people, as, you know, get them to think, hey, the state has this plan, the city has this plan. But, you know, this is me interviewing Leon Williams that he's 100 years old now. You know, this this government is serves at your pleasure and you have a say over what happens here.

00:35:16:13 - 00:35:46:24
Andrew Bowen
And so that started this very long campaign that was part of the freeway revolts, a very national movement that was kind of a backlash against the boom, the freeway building that started in the fifties. So San Diego's own freeway revolt was ultimately able to stop this this freeway from from getting built through the neighborhood of South Crest. And so what happened next was the state had these 66 acres of land that they had just purchased and and had cleared, torn down all of these buildings.

00:35:46:26 - 00:36:14:19
Andrew Bowen
And, you know, they were ordered to sell the land back to the city and the city would then redevelop it. And that elementary school is one of the things that ultimately got built on that land. There are also parks there, quite a bit of housing. There was a shopping center with the neighborhood's first grocery store and more than 30 years on this area is, you know, big parts of southeastern San Diego where this freeway would have been built, are considered food deserts.

00:36:14:19 - 00:36:23:25
Andrew Bowen
And there's not a lot access to fresh and healthy food. And and now that neighborhood has that amenity. And it's all because, you know that that freeway was not built.

00:36:23:28 - 00:36:33:06
John Simmerman
Yeah. And this is an image of of an older woman in front of her doors in the same that same neighborhood expressway.

00:36:33:09 - 00:37:07:00
Andrew Bowen
This is actually no so this is Adriana Diane Turco or Adriana saltonstall is now her name that she is is but she was the first woman to ever lead Caltrans, the State Department of Transportation. She was appointed by our governor, Jerry Brown, in the seventies, and she came in at a time when there was lot of disruption to this whole in this freeway industrial complex, you could call it, so that the federal government, starting in the fifties, had just been giving states huge subsidies to build freeways.

00:37:07:07 - 00:37:32:09
Andrew Bowen
And by the seventies that money was starting to disappear. And all of the subsidies that we had counted on from the federal government were drying up. So that led to this system that we still had to maintain with a huge shortfall. So she was given the task of trying to figure out how do we get our highway program in financially sound position so that we can at least maintain our freeways.

00:37:32:14 - 00:38:07:14
Andrew Bowen
And that should be our first priority, maintaining what we've already built. And then if we have some extra money left over, then we can talk about building more freeways or widening the ones that we have. So she came in in the mid seventies, faced a lot of of opposition from the contractors that were getting all the money to build these freeways, the labor unions that were hired to actually do the work, the developers that were building the suburbs, that that provided huge amounts of profit to, you know, that were only developable because there were freeways that would connect them to the actual cities and job centers.

00:38:07:16 - 00:38:34:18
Andrew Bowen
And so I found her. And in Sacramento, she's lived a very private life for the last couple of decades. But, you know, was was really at the center of this debate over freeways in the 1970s and eighties and was actually able to make some progress and really set Caltrans on a different path where they started to think more about transportation and mobility rather than just highways and cars.

00:38:34:24 - 00:39:00:12
Andrew Bowen
And so she got them to start funding more public transit, more bike infrastructure, and just started trying to at least trying you know, it's been a it's a journey. It's still ongoing, trying to get that agency to think about how it can actually maintain a balanced budget with maintaining all of the infrastructure that we have, which right now is is in pretty bad shape, frankly.

00:39:00:12 - 00:39:06:09
Andrew Bowen
There's a lot of repair work that needs to be done on the freeways. And you know that that money has to come from somewhere.

00:39:06:11 - 00:39:22:17
John Simmerman
Yeah, And that brings us around to also, we had promised that we would talk a little bit about the earthquake. So in 1989, we obviously had another very big earthquake in the Bay Area and in San Francisco and of course, the Nimitz Freeway came down.

00:39:22:18 - 00:39:44:17
Andrew Bowen
Yeah, So so it's kind of a so the Nimitz Freeway was in Oakland to the east of San Francisco. That freeway pretty much totally collapsed during the earthquake. Yeah, the Embarcadero Freeway didn't totally collapse, but it was very severely damaged. And what they ended up doing with the Nimitz for you, it was just rerouting it. So they, they didn't really actually remove any freeway miles from the network.

00:39:44:20 - 00:40:12:12
Andrew Bowen
But what happened with the Embarcadero Freeway was the city of San Francisco was just forced into this conversation by a natural disaster to decide, is this freeway worth keeping or are we willing to spend, you know, hundreds I don't know exactly how much higher, so I shouldn't speculate. But are we what, in today's dollars, it would probably be hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild this freeway to a high higher seismic standards.

00:40:12:12 - 00:40:41:11
Andrew Bowen
So, you know, the next earthquake comes along and it's able to withstand that pressure? Or are we willing to say, no, this freeway is not worth building, let's just tear it down and figure out something else to do with all of this land? And so the city, after a very intense political debate and and a lot of dissent from from residents of the city and also state transportation officials decided, no, we need to tear this freeway down.

00:40:41:11 - 00:41:06:20
Andrew Bowen
And so what we're seeing here is the sort of monument to what the freeway know, the freeway that used to be and if you go there now to to the Embarcadero and San Francisco, it's a thriving tourist destination. There are beautiful panoramic views of San Francisco Bay and the bridge is across the bay and different islands in the bay and public art.

00:41:06:22 - 00:41:40:06
Andrew Bowen
There's bike lanes and a light rail line. And this is what the city chose to to put in place of a freeway. And it's it's been a success, I think, beyond what anyone anticipated at the time that, you know, that the city would be able to remove this freeway from the network, there wouldn't be total traffic chaos that people would figure out still how to get from point A to point B And, you know, you can build something really beautiful the in place of the freeway, which was a real blight on the neighborhood, you know, a fumes, noise.

00:41:40:14 - 00:41:45:29
Andrew Bowen
It was there was crime, you know, it was just a really seedy place to be. And now it's it's a real destination.

00:41:46:01 - 00:42:09:20
John Simmerman
Yeah. And to be clear, I mean, this all zoom in on this. It was a double decker freeway. So when we say it collapsed, just like the Nimitz across the bay there, these were double decker things that just they collapsed upon themselves during the earthquake. And it was a it was a controversial freeway when it was built there on the in the Embarcadero area.

00:42:09:27 - 00:42:33:21
John Simmerman
Because you can see in the background here, that's a pier. This is all waterfront area. I mean, there's no reason that a freeway, a highway and expressway should be built in that area to begin with. And I believe San Francisco was looking at making it even more people oriented because you can see in the background here that there are still quite a few lanes of traffic.

00:42:33:27 - 00:42:58:08
John Simmerman
You would mention there's there's bike lanes and there's a pedestrian realm. But they're leaning heavily into the fact to make it even more pedestrianized, even more people oriented, because what we experienced from from that example of a natural disaster happening is the magic evaporation of traffic, because we always assume that there's going to be massive gridlock and the world's going to come to an end.

00:42:58:08 - 00:43:38:21
John Simmerman
And I can remember all the visions of Carmageddon that were going to happen, you know, during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. And it's like, yeah, it doesn't happen. And so when things like this happen, there is this sort of this magic evaporation of of traffic because humans, you know, make decisions and they do practical, pragmatic decisions. If you give them, you know, again, going back to induced man, you give them open lanes and and make it easy for people to drive, people will drive if you make it a little less easy or if circumstances make it a little less easy, they find another way around, which is one of the key points.

00:43:38:23 - 00:44:05:12
Andrew Bowen
Yeah. I mean, this is a concept that we we talk about in episode five is the inverse of induced demand, which is traffic evaporate. You know, if people are anticipating congestion will be really bad during a certain hour, they will avoid driving in those areas if they can. You know, sometimes there's a short term impact on traffic. Traffic might get worse for a period of time as people are trying to figure out how do I adjust my own behavior as to this new reality.

00:44:05:14 - 00:44:30:18
Andrew Bowen
But here we're seeing an image of the central freeway, which a portion of which was also taken down after the earthquake, but most of which still remains in the city today. And there is a movement in San Francisco to finish the job, essentially of what the earthquake started and remove the rest of the central freeway. And there are lots of ideas of what they could do with that space in certainly built housing.

00:44:30:18 - 00:44:53:20
Andrew Bowen
San Francisco has a massive housing shortage and it's causing a lot of problems there. They could build an elevated linear park, keep parts of the freeway in place. One of the interesting things about the Embarcadero Freeway is I went around there and talk to a bunch of tourists and locals and everything, and a lot of people had no idea that there used to be a freeway there because the city did such a good job of getting rid of it.

00:44:53:25 - 00:45:12:09
Andrew Bowen
And so here with the central Freeway, one of the ideas that some of these advocates are talking about is, you know, maybe keep parts of the freeway in place so that we can remember what happened here and and what this used to be. And, you know, if the project is successful, you know how much better things are now without the freeway.

00:45:12:11 - 00:45:52:10
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And I think this is a good opportunity to bring up and talk a little bit about the Congress for the New Urbanism has a program essentially is called Freeways Without Futures. And so every couple of years they come out with a list of, you know, sort of the top ten or whatever it is I'm not sure what it exactly of the freeways without features and and talk a little like have you know sort of some open dialog and discussions about the fact that, you know, many of these freeways are problematic.

00:45:52:13 - 00:46:16:23
John Simmerman
Many of them were built, you know, on premises and through, you know, neighborhoods. And many of them aren't even necessary. And so it's we have several in addition to the Embarcadero Freeway around the globe, including, you know, a massive freeway that was restored to a river in in Korea.

00:46:16:25 - 00:46:17:12
Andrew Bowen
South Korea.

00:46:17:12 - 00:46:46:21
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah. And South Korea. And and of course, recently in the last couple of years, we have seen the return of a canal in Utrecht. And I've documented that several times. That process of, you know, it was once a canal, then they turned it into a highway and now it's back to being a canal. So it is it almost seems like heresy to to say, oh, freeways, you're talking about tearing out infrastructure and freeways.

00:46:46:21 - 00:47:24:15
John Simmerman
That's like, well, yes, but there's some precedent to it and there's some reason why we should do this. And so I will include a link to this episode, to this particular page. And you can you can scroll down and take a look at it. And and you can see here in the 2023 list, we've got, you know, several of them, including the notorious Interstate 35, which does exactly what we're talking about here in criticizing, is that these freeways were built right through the middle of vibrant downtown areas in many cases.

00:47:24:18 - 00:47:54:20
John Simmerman
And oftentimes those people who got displaced so that the land, you know, could you know, be built, you know, could be developed as freeways. And you mentioned this earlier, Oftentimes those were the underserved populations were the black and brown neighborhoods. The the the the lower income neighborhoods that, you know, they just ran, you know, they bought up those houses, condemned them and ran the freeway through.

00:47:54:27 - 00:48:33:20
John Simmerman
So there's there's some unfortunate history there as part of this narrative. And you cover it all quite beautifully in in in your episodes. You also covered the concept of capping some of these freeways. And and that's one of the discussions that's happening in in Austin. And one of the reasons why I wanted to bring the freeways out of future and and and bring up Austin specifically as an example, because that's one of the debates that's happening is is saying, well, okay, what if we just we still expand it, but we bury it and, you know, and put a park on top of it and do some stuff like this.

00:48:33:20 - 00:48:40:20
John Simmerman
But I believe Ted started saying, well, you can do that, but we're not going to pay for it. You have to come up there on money.

00:48:40:23 - 00:49:01:19
Andrew Bowen
Right? Well, and that's the real that's I think the real challenge with freeway lids. I mean, they're a a very elegant way to kind of put the freeway out of sight, out of sight, out of mind, at least for a very limited space, you know, But and we have a freeway led park in San Diego. It's in City Heights.

00:49:01:19 - 00:49:25:25
Andrew Bowen
I didn't manage to get a photo of that for this, but it's a very beautiful park in a neighborhood that was divided by a freeway. And, you know, it's an incredible community asset and a nice way to mitigate some of the harm that this freeway caused the community. But there are still seven, eight blocks of that freeway without a lid on it, a lid on it that are also causing a lot of problems there.

00:49:26:03 - 00:49:49:00
John Simmerman
And it's a temper. It's a temporary thing, too, because, you know, at some point in time that freeway, that highway is still is going to open up. And and the the key thing to that is we're not inconveniencing the drivers. It's like the same weather in Dallas with Clyde Warren Park. You know, there's a wonderful, beautiful open space and public realm there and that's beautiful.

00:49:49:02 - 00:50:01:29
John Simmerman
But then it's just a few hundred yards down here. It opens up and then, you know, all that noise and all that pollution is then being subjected to the residents, you know, not in that cap area. So.

00:50:02:02 - 00:50:30:27
Andrew Bowen
Yeah. So this image we're seeing is from where part of the central freeway in San Francisco used to be, and they built a park here. So there is a play structure and a grassy area. And I went there and I was just incredibly peaceful, you know, space. This is, I think, one of the the key examples of of how a freeway removal can be successful because a freeway has you know, there's lighting problems during the daytime and at night.

00:50:30:29 - 00:50:51:03
Andrew Bowen
There are certainly noise problems. And those things can breed. They can attract crime. You can hear somebody screaming if there was a freeway right next to you and, you know, maybe you can get away with doing some bad stuff. So this neighborhood of Hays Valley that used to have a freeway running through it has been completely transformed. It used to be a hotbed for crime.

00:50:51:03 - 00:51:16:08
Andrew Bowen
And after the freeway was removed, there were more, you know, local businesses, shops, cafes and restaurants that started moving in. More housing got built there. And, you know, and this park, of course, and it's, you know, sort of the I think, politically more difficult or it's a harder sell politically to just say remove the freeway from the network and figure out something else to do with that land.

00:51:16:10 - 00:51:45:04
Andrew Bowen
The lands are, I think, an easier political answer, but also more difficult in a sense, because you have to figure out how to pay for them. And many of them are just extraordinarily expensive. There's a program that in the United States we last year, the year before President Biden passed this law to fund increase infrastructure funding. And that law established a program with the federal Department of Transportation called Reconnecting Communities.

00:51:45:04 - 00:52:15:01
Andrew Bowen
And this the state, the federal government is just giving out money to state governments and local governments to try and repair some of these harms that that transportation infrastructure caused communities and some of the projects that are getting money could be freeway lids on freeway lids could be up to $1,000,000,000. And this program has $1,000,000,000. So, you know, there's not it's not really a scalable solution to all of the the damage that that freeways caused in many communities.

00:52:15:03 - 00:52:55:24
Andrew Bowen
But in this case here, a freeway removal provides not just the elimination of all of those negative externalities on a larger scale, but it opens up a lot of new land for a government to decide what to do with. And, you know, once you get people, I think thinking and talking about what opportunity is a freeway removal could have, you know, sometimes their minds might be a little bit more open to it and, you know, thinking, well, sure, I wish my neighborhood had a park or I wish my neighborhood had more affordable housing, you know, So if if I could say goodbye to this freeway and get something else that I really want in exchange,

00:52:55:26 - 00:53:00:05
Andrew Bowen
you know, maybe that that could change somebody's mind.

00:53:00:08 - 00:53:05:16
John Simmerman
Yeah. So from this to this.

00:53:05:19 - 00:53:06:08
Andrew Bowen
Right.

00:53:06:10 - 00:53:28:08
John Simmerman
I for for the audio only audience, we're just flipping through these two images of the central freeway and the portion that's still up and the fact that it's just you know, it's it's an overpass area of the freeway. There is somebody on a scooter in a bike lane down below it, but it is just this paved over landscape.

00:53:28:10 - 00:54:11:00
John Simmerman
I like to call it a hellscape versus a park, a playground fountains and other things happening here, but more importantly, housing and vibrancy and vitality happening. And so you're starting to like, again, stitch back together as a community. And and this was the video clip that we had played earlier. And I think that it's it's probably a good point in time for for us to button this up and and give you a chance to really cover anything that we haven't yet already mentioned about the series.

00:54:11:03 - 00:54:35:00
John Simmerman
I think it's just is beautifully done. You've done a wonderful job. You're clearly a professional at doing this whole journalist thing. And it the stories, the story arc is fantastic, but this is a lot of work. This is, you know, to be able to do this. What's the future of of of the series? It's a six part series now.

00:54:35:00 - 00:54:47:06
John Simmerman
This was season one. It's wrapped up. People can binge listen to it at this point in time. So why don't you just kind of give us an idea as to what the future of freeway exit is going to be?

00:54:47:09 - 00:55:10:24
Andrew Bowen
Yeah. So I'm, you know, back to my regular reporting job at KPBS Now with this podcast or the first six episodes have been wrapped up. Just today, I'm actually covering a bus driver strike and how our local transit agency is going to be dealing with that. So, you know, I'm going to be basically balancing all of those daily reporting duties with trying to keep the podcast alive and maybe switching up the format a bit.

00:55:10:24 - 00:55:27:26
Andrew Bowen
You know, these are all, you know, as you mentioned, pretty highly produced with a narrative arc. And and I have a lot of interviews that I did for this podcast that didn't make it into any episodes. So I'm going to be digging some of those some of that tape that was just left on the cutting room floor and repackaging them.

00:55:27:26 - 00:55:50:14
Andrew Bowen
You know, I interviewed quite a few elected officials and public officials or government officials in San Diego in the region who said some pretty interesting and provocative things about this, this whole idea. And so we'll be keeping the podcast feet alive. Definitely. I hope folks will hit that follow button. If you like it, give me a five star ratings and tell your friends about it so that more people can hear about it.

00:55:50:16 - 00:56:14:29
Andrew Bowen
And it's it's been very well received so far. So I've been really happy with it. And this question of of the future of our freeways is very much of the moment. We in San Diego are developing our our next regional transportation plan, where we're kind of laying out all of the projects and policies in the next 15, 20 years that will get us to our goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions.

00:56:15:06 - 00:56:38:04
Andrew Bowen
And the reality is beginning to sink in that, you know, every time we widen a freeway, we can't just assume that it won't increase, drive it driving and traffic will get better and stay that way. It's actually going to be setting us back in terms of our climate goals. And so our elected officials are being kind of forced to confront some very uncomfortable truths about this network that was built.

00:56:38:04 - 00:57:07:16
Andrew Bowen
And and it's causing a lot of stir here politically. There are a lot of people who are really they just want the government to keep building freeways and keep widening them kind of based on this false understanding of that, how that might actually solve their problems when we we know it won't, unfortunately. So yeah, I'll be keeping the podcast feed alive and fresh and people can follow me on Twitter at AC, BO and and I, you know, I tweet about a lot of these daily kind of debates that we have in San Diego.

00:57:07:16 - 00:57:19:25
Andrew Bowen
And, you know, appreciate also if folks are able to donate to KPBS. We're a nonprofit news organization and we are able to do this work thanks to the generosity of our donors. Yeah.

00:57:19:27 - 00:57:52:08
John Simmerman
And one of the interviews that you had in the series was my good friend and fellow former guest here on the podcast in in Bruce Appleyard, Professor Appleyard. And of course he he rises bike, he tries to ride his bike to San Diego State University. And you know, we talked a little bit about the fact that, you know, we understand that there is going to be this this balance in a place where automobiles are going to be around for a while.

00:57:52:08 - 00:58:22:28
John Simmerman
They're not just going to magically go away. And we know that a a large number of potential trips that could be shifted over to active modes, the bicycle, especially now with the advent of and really the prolific operation of electric assist bikes, you know, it's that magical sort of distance and what better place in terms of climate than San Diego to be able to act to have, you know, partake in active mobility.

00:58:23:00 - 00:58:48:19
John Simmerman
So, you know, in that sort of realm of, you know, five or six miles or less, those are a lot of trips that can be off shifted over. And and so I think there's a great deal of opportunity for all us and for cities to be able to really think about strategically. It's like, okay, you know, there's going to be a place for the automobile, there's going to be a place for transit.

00:58:48:21 - 00:59:10:28
John Simmerman
And, you know, where's what's this balance going to be? But how many of those trips, daily trips that are being made are in that sweet spot of being able to off shift towards an active mobility mode, like on an electric assist bike or or acoustic bike to might be fine if you're not having to do a bunch of hills and that kind of fun stuff.

00:59:11:01 - 00:59:35:13
John Simmerman
Do you get the sense that that that's part of your the the environment there in San Diego is also you know, starting to to to grapple with those discussions because having spent some time in, you know, in that area in and a lot of time in California, we would use the freeway when the freeway, you know, served us well.

00:59:35:13 - 00:59:57:01
John Simmerman
And it was inconvenient for us. But, you know, you know, oftentimes if it's if it's not convenient, you know, we've taken a different route here in Austin. I almost never get on one of the freeways because I know that getting on my bike is the best way of getting around. I've got a network that I can lean into.

00:59:57:03 - 01:00:06:19
John Simmerman
So do you get that sense that as San Diego is having that discussion as well as sort of questioning the freeway network?

01:00:06:21 - 01:00:34:19
Andrew Bowen
Yes. I mean, it's it's a city in transition right now. And I think we're witnessing some of the pain of that transition. You know, a lot of folks are really unhappy with the bike lanes that the city has built and are letting our elected officials know about it. And so I think right now we're seeing a bit of a pullback on on some of the more ambitious transportation policies and projects that that our government has been pursuing over the last couple of years.

01:00:34:22 - 01:01:17:06
Andrew Bowen
But, you know, the that things are changing. I mean, the the the pandemic definitely got folks interested in trying new ways to get around. We're also, you know, kind of transitioning from a very suburban style city with single family, neighborhood, single family home neighborhoods in the actual urban environments, transitioning from that model of land use into something where there are more apartment and condo buildings and folks can, you know, when there's a greater density of that's able to support both the infrastructure and businesses so that people could maybe walk to the grocery store instead of driving or take a bike to a grocery store.

01:01:17:08 - 01:01:41:22
Andrew Bowen
So, yeah, I mean, we're we're talking about it. We're thinking about it. You know, it's by no means consensus here. And I think that what's really been missing from the conversation, from my perspective, is just an honesty with the skeptics of this transition, that, yeah, maybe you will drive, maybe you will have to add another five or ten or 15 minutes to somewhere.

01:01:41:26 - 01:02:10:26
Andrew Bowen
You know, if you're trying to get somewhere by car because, you know, we have invested all of our energy and time into making things as easy as possible for drivers at the detriment of all other types of of mobility. And so, yeah, you know, we're I think I'd like to see and what I'm trying to start with this podcast and with my reporting in San Diego is trying to get people to think about that word of sacrifice that maybe you won't bike.

01:02:10:26 - 01:02:49:05
Andrew Bowen
Maybe you're because you're able to or because of where you live or some other factor. You're not personally benefiting from this infrastructure, but there are real benefits to, safety and to greenhouse gas emissions that we can't just pretend don't exist. And if you're if if we're willing to to give up some conveniences and do it in a more sort of orderly way right now, while we still have a little bit of time before the climate catastrophe really makes things hard for us, then maybe we can create a better future for our kids and grandkids.

01:02:49:07 - 01:02:49:29
Andrew Bowen
Yeah.

01:02:50:02 - 01:03:23:28
John Simmerman
And kids and grandkids is what it's really all about, too, because I talk about this all the time, is that if you're going to encourage people to partake in active mobility and start walking and biking to more meaningful destinations, it has to be truly an all ages and abilities type of of network and facilities. It's it's best if you think that, you know, you know, people who aren't confident sporty riders are going to take the lane you know the whole vehicular cyclists movement that's really still strong in San Diego is just has got to die.

01:03:23:28 - 01:03:53:24
John Simmerman
It's just it's a distraction. And you need to be able to, you know, kind of follow the lessons from the European, you know, cities that we had mentioned earlier, including, you know, many of the cities in Germany are Munsters is a great example of, you know, cities that have built out a good network. And then in addition to, you know, Copenhagen and also in the Netherlands, we know what works, and that is building an all ages and abilities network of active mobility facilities.

01:03:53:26 - 01:04:05:07
John Simmerman
And that helps encourage people to make more daily trips, especially in that sweet spot, that zone of five miles, six miles or less. And that's the magic thing. That's what we have to be able to do.

01:04:05:09 - 01:04:34:21
Andrew Bowen
Yeah, I think the one challenge that's somewhat unique or, you know, different about San Diego compared to a European city is that we are extremely spread out. You know, the city was built around the car and so we have very low density spread out neighborhoods. And so, you know, building a network of of protected bike lanes that that would serve, you know, a six year old or eight year old in the same way that they would serve a 45 year old, you know, physically fit person.

01:04:34:24 - 01:04:58:23
Andrew Bowen
That requires taking a lot of space away from cars. And it's you know, that then and it requires a real commitment to sticking to that vision of a complete network that connects the entire city. Right now, what we've seen as there are little strips of bike lanes here, and then there's another one there and then it disappears. And then you have to share a lane with cars for a while in some really dangerous environments.

01:04:58:29 - 01:05:25:16
Andrew Bowen
And so you know, because San Diego has so much farther to go than a lot of the other cities that have been able to build this infrastructure quickly. And successfully. I think it's just creating more opportunity for hesitation and stops and starts from our leaders. Because, you know, in the interim, well, you have, you know, a bike lane here and a bike lane there, but nothing connecting the two of them.

01:05:25:18 - 01:05:43:28
Andrew Bowen
There isn't the ridership that there might be if that network if we could just snap our fingers and build a network, you know, from overnight. And so that's then just creating a lot more skepticism and giving fodder, I think, to the people who who don't see any point in bike lanes. And they'll be driving by them and seeing them empty and stuff.

01:05:43:28 - 01:06:09:19
Andrew Bowen
And it's a it's a and like I said, you know, we're in this moment of transition where we've just been completely invested in the automobile for so long, for so many decades. We're just beginning to to wean ourselves off of that bit by bit. And, you know, it takes a lot of courage and a lot of commitment from elected officials who are willing to take the hits.

01:06:09:19 - 01:06:35:08
Andrew Bowen
But ultimately, you know, we've we've had this debate already. We've already decided as a city that we cannot continue to to keep investing in in automobiles and and the infrastructure that supports them because we are we care about climate change and we care about creating a better planet. So that debate has already happened. But, you know, when it comes to bringing that vision into reality, that's where we're seeing a lot of that hesitation.

01:06:35:08 - 01:06:44:23
Andrew Bowen
And sometimes things fall apart. Our might get watered down to the point that it doesn't really help anybody. And that's that's not a great outcome.

01:06:44:25 - 01:07:14:07
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah. And I feel for you because we're in the same boat here in Austin, Texas. We're about the same, same area in terms of square miles of the within the city limit. I think we're within a few miles of each other in terms of that over 320 some odd square miles. And it is a significant challenge. And to your point, Denver's also experiencing this, too, is, you know, you've got the buildout of some high, you know, high comfort protected facilities.

01:07:14:09 - 01:07:56:05
John Simmerman
But if they're not connected, then there's a real pressure, you know, you know, from the, you know, skeptical, you know, motoring public of saying, well, why are we investing in this if it's not being used? One of the really creative things that's happening in Denver is the Vamos initiative, where they're looking at the grid of the the quiet streets and saying, well, hey, this is a great way to accelerate and get a high comfort bike network in place right away without a lot of cost and a lot of a lot of time without a lot of time because these are relatively quiet streets and with some traffic calming, some traffic diversion, there could be just

01:07:56:07 - 01:08:19:10
John Simmerman
beautiful and delightful places for all ages and abilities to be able to use. So I'm hopeful that more cities will be able to emulate that very creative plan. And because it goes hand in hand with the the protected facilities, the separated facilities. So we will keep our fingers crossed and to be continued, very good. Hey, Andrew, again, absolute pleasure.

01:08:19:12 - 01:08:37:24
John Simmerman
And for folks, please be sure to subscribe to the podcast. A freeway exit and don't forget to rate it and also subscribe to it. I believe both Apple podcasts and Spotify are where you're able to do those ratings of.

01:08:37:26 - 01:08:41:07
Andrew Bowen
Wherever you get podcasts, you can find freeway exit.

01:08:41:10 - 01:08:44:20
John Simmerman
Test it. Very good, sir. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers. Yeah.

01:08:44:23 - 01:08:46:10
Andrew Bowen
All right. Thank you so much for having me on.

01:08:46:15 - 01:09:01:29
John Simmerman
Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in and hope you enjoyed this episode with Andrew Bowen. And if you did, please give it a thumbs up or leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, be honored to have you subscribe to the channel. Just click on that subscription button down below and ring the notifications bell.

01:09:01:29 - 01:09:24:26
John Simmerman
And if you're enjoying this content on the activities channel, please consider supporting my efforts by becoming an active town's ambassador. You can do so via Patreon. Buy me a coffee. Buying things from the active town store. Actually making a tip right here on YouTube. Just click on that button down below. As well as making donations to the nonprofit, every little bit adds up and as appreciated.

01:09:25:00 - 01:09:48:18
John Simmerman
Well, 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 to the nonprofit and purchasing things from the active town store, every little bit adds up and it's much appreciated.

01:09:48:20 - 01:09:49:27
John Simmerman
Thank you all so much.