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May 14, 2024 39 mins

May is Bike Month and it timed perfect to interview Dan Piatkowski on his book coming out this month titled "Bicycle City: Riding the Bike Boom to a Brighter Future." Our conversation sheds light on the power of e-bikes as vehicles for sustainable urban transport. We tackle the questions around electric vehicles and their true impact on city design, challenging the prevalent notion that technological advancement alone can solve our environmental issues. We also examine the agility of urban centers during times of crisis, drawing parallels to the rapid changes seen in response to the pandemic and the lessons we can carry forward for climate action. As we wrap up this episode, the notion of 'car light' living steers us toward a vision of cities abundant with walkable streets and bike paths that are inclusive for all. 

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Stephanie Rouse (00:00):
This episode is brought to you by Marvin
Planning Consultants.
Marvin Planning Consultants,established in 2009, is
committed to their clients andprofessional organizations.
Their team of planners hasserved on chapter division and
national committees, includingas the Nebraska Chapter
President.
In addition, they are committedto supporting their chapter in
various APA divisions.
You're listening to the Bookedon Planning podcast, a project

(00:33):
of the Nebraska chapter of theAmerican Planning Association.
In each episode, we dive intohow cities function by talking
with authors on housing,transportation and everything in
between.
Join us as we get Booked onPlanning.
Welcome back, bookworms, toanother episode of Booked on

(00:57):
Planning.
In this episode, we talk withauthor Dan Piatowski on his book
Bicycle City Riding the BikeBoom to a Brighter Future.
This was top of my must readlist this year when I saw the
Island Press list of forthcomingbooks, because it's not only a
book about biking, which I loveand do for work, but it also was
written by a former professorat the University of Nebraska

(01:19):
who left to go teach in

Jennifer Hiatt (01:20):
As I mentioned in the episode, I've never
learned how to ride a bike.
It just really wasn't on myradar as a kid and I've never
felt the need as an adult untilactually reading Dan's book.
One of the reasons, frankly,was that it just wasn't really
appealing to me for longerdistance to travel and I've
always lived like at least fivemiles from where I work and I
know that's not technically along bike ride, but it felt very
long to me.
But Dan's description of howeasy an e-bike makes a trip, I'm

(01:44):
much more open to giving it atry.

Stephanie Rouse (01:46):
Yeah, I think that's a valid excuse of not
having learned to ride a bike.
Thanks, stephanie.
And I was once in the class ofriders who felt that an e-bike
was cheating and endured somepretty hilly commutes when I
lived in Minneapolis and Omaha.
But I've since changed my tune,having purchased an e-bike last
year, and it really gave me aton more freedom to ride all the

(02:08):
way across the city to myin-laws without really
questioning it, or, in the caseof my job, moving our trail
counters around via bike ratherthan driving them to each spot,
which really felt kind of odddriving counters around that are
counting bikes.
So I feel much better aboutriding around the trails and
it's a ton easier to do it bybike.

Jennifer Hiatt (02:28):
That's really fair.
I also really appreciated Danpointing out how much
greenwashing is occurring in theelectric vehicle space.
I was of the opinion of like,oh, my next car I'll just get an
electric vehicle and totallysave the planet.
I obviously understood theautomotive industry as it
currently is, it's unsustainable.
But electric vehicles have kindof been presented to us as the

(02:48):
end-all, be-all for sustainabletransportation and such a
primary message in society thatI really hadn't stopped to think
through how it's just the samesong and a different tune and
not really solving ourtransportation problems.

Stephanie Rouse (03:01):
Yeah, and Dan pointed out one of his book
recommendations gets to thispoint of marketing and
greenwashing and how societyreally glosses over the real
impacts on some of these thingslike electric vehicles Exactly.
It's really frustrating seeingall the federal funding that's
being devoted to EVinfrastructure and tax credits
going to electrification.

(03:21):
But a much cheaper programwould just be to offer rebates
for electric bikes.
But it's been shot down timeand again, despite advocacy
efforts around them.

Jennifer Hiatt (03:31):
Which really doesn't make sense when we're
facing such an uncertain climate.
Future, exactly Without furtherado, let's get into our
conversation with Dan Piotrowskion his book Bicycle City riding
the bike boom to a brighterfuture on his book Bicycle City
Riding the Bike Boom to aBrighter Future.

Stephanie Rouse (03:51):
Well, dan, thank you for joining us on
Booked On Planning to talk aboutyour hot off the press book,
bicycle City Riding the BikeBoom to a Brighter Future.
Our audience knows thatJennifer and I are recording
from Lincoln, nebraska, whereyou spent several years as a
professor at the University ofNebraska-Lincoln, and I was
happy to see that we made itinto the book.
They also know that I'm amultimodal transportation
planner for the city, so thebook was really top of my list.

(04:11):
When I saw Island Press sendout the list of their books this
year, it was definitely onethat was going to make the cut
for this year's episodes.
It was kind of strange readingthrough about Lincoln as this
positive example of a mid-sizedbicycle city, because most days
I feel like I'm really fightingan uphill battle about getting
bike lanes built.
What we're really doing well,though and you point this out in

(04:32):
the book is that we're verymuch a recreational riding
community.
We have a great trail systemand a gravel riding community
that you highlight.
How can cities like us take astrength like that and turn it
into more support for everydaybiking?

Dan Piatkowski (04:48):
So I guess, first off, thank you for having
me on the podcast.
It's really cool to be here.
The reason that I includedLincoln in the book is because
Lincoln really has all theingredients of what can be a
really fantastic bicycle city.
I agree with you in the sensethat it's kind of like I had
this frustration when I wasliving there, of all the things

(05:10):
are almost there, everything'ssimmering and there just needs
to be kind of a boiling point orsomething.
But that's also not to say thatthere aren't great things
happening, and so another reasonI wanted to include Lincoln and
to have a conversation aboutthe cities that we don't
normally think about when wetalk about bicycling is because,
even though Lincoln isn't likethe Amsterdam of Nebraska or

(05:31):
whatever I don't know what itwould be Great things are
happening, and great things arehappening in lots of places, and
I think a lot of the times itkind of doesn't break through
into the kind of the largerconversation that can be really
disheartening when you'reworking in places that are not
really well known, and itshouldn't be.

(05:51):
You know, we should be tryingto celebrate even the small
victories.
I don't mean to diminish what'shappening in Lincoln, because
these are not small victories.
There's really huge, massive,cool things happening in Lincoln
and, as you point out, yes,they are primarily in the
recreational riding universe,which is a great start, and it's
more than a great start, it's agreat thing on its own, in its

(06:13):
own right.
You know, the fact that peopleare traveling to Lincoln to
cycle there and to docompetitive events there is
incredible, it's huge, and Ithink that that in itself is a
really powerful factor intransitioning from a place
that's great for recreationalriding to a place that's great

(06:34):
for riding in general.
Is that wider attention, thatwider interest, but also that
wider recognition of the realbenefits of these types of
activities beyond the benefitsjust for those who are directly
involved in them.
I think Lincoln is absolutelystarting to see that.
Hopefully, it's one of manythings that are really pushing

(06:55):
the ball forward in Lincoln andplaces like Lincoln.
I keep referring specificallyto Lincoln, but this is
something that I think ishappening all over the Midwest,
with gravel cycling inparticular.
I think the next steps toreally move from the kind of the
recreational, focused sphere ofthings into the wider public
conscience and to make Lincolnmuch more bike friendly is, of

(07:16):
course, continuing todemonstrate the benefits of
these activities and of theseevents to the wider community,
getting more people involved,because that means it's more
people who are thinking abouthey, I can go out and ride on
gravel all weekend long, butit's still impossible for me to
safely ride to work.
That's a problem that I want totake to my city council, that I
want to take to my localleaders and demand change about.

(07:40):
And then I think the demandingchange component is where I
think the advocacy world and thepeople who are involved in
recreational riding can try tobranch out and build broader
coalitions with other groupswhose goals really do align and
overlap.

Jennifer Hiatt (07:57):
So as much as our audience knows that
Stephanie is the activetransportation person who cycles
everywhere, they equally knowthat I actually don't know how
to ride a bike.
I grew up 12 miles from anywhereon gravel and just never really
seemed like something I neededto do.
But I told Stephanie thisweekend on our way back from the
APA conference after readingyour book.
I was like, okay, I'll learnhow to ride a bike because it

(08:18):
kind of seems cool.
I'm kind of excited to likelearn to navigate a city in a
different way.
So if anybody was on the fence,pick up the book and you'll be
convinced to ride your bike too.
But one of the ideas thatjumped out at me when I was
reading through, as anon-cyclist, I picked up on the
greenwashing of the autoindustry that you discuss
through the idea of electricvehicles being the green savior

(08:41):
for climate change and such.
So can you discuss what exactlythat looks like and why the EVs
aren't the environmental saviorthat they're portrayed to be,
and how actually e-bikesprobably are better overall for
our environmental concerns?

Dan Piatkowski (08:55):
Yeah, it's like endlessly frustrating to me that
EV cars are getting all of theattention and I know I'm not the
only one.
For the book I talked to lotsof people who are advocates and
professionals working in activetransportation and working to
advocate for cycling, and it'sso frustrating that EV cars are
just they're sucking up all theoxygen.

(09:15):
There's no good reason for itbecause, yeah, as you say, it's
all greenwashing.
But it's really effectivegreenwashing, and that's the
problem.
And it's really effectivebecause it's offering us an easy
solution to a complicated issue.
You know, ev cars are great inthe sense that I'm worried about
how my lifestyle impacts theclimate, but it's hard to change

(09:38):
my lifestyle.
Oh, if I just swap out to thenext model year car that has a
different engine, theneverything is better.
That's really easy to sell topeople to literally sell to
people but it's so problematicbecause it's ignoring all of the
larger impacts ofautodependence.
So an EV car is better than atraditional combustion engine

(09:59):
car because of the tailpipeemissions the emissions that are
coming out of the tailpipe asyou drive that car.
There's zero with an EV car,obviously.
So that's great, but it ignoresall of the broader impacts of
the car on our society and allthe broader negative impacts, I
should say, of the car in oursociety.
So there's the climate impacts,but there's also health impacts

(10:20):
and equity impacts of us relyingon cars, and all of that is not
the fact of the car itself.
It's the fact of designingcities around cars and so having
sprawling cities that act asheat islands.
Spending all of our money onexpensive infrastructure that
also has a carbon footprint,forcing ourselves to drive

(10:40):
everywhere means that we're notgetting exercise and daily
activity.
To drive everywhere means thatwe're not getting exercise and
daily activity, so these big,much more important impacts are
all ignored in kind of the EVgreenwashing.
I think.
The other piece of that, though,is that, in a political sense,
it's also really easy to sellelectric vehicles.
It's easy for politicians tosell big infrastructure projects
, to sell big plans, to sellribbon cuttings and all that

(11:04):
kind of stuff.
It's not quite as easy to dothat with electric bikes, for
example.
Oh yeah, the other real problemwith electric vehicles that I
don't think we're talking enoughabout is they're really heavy,
and that means they're reallydangerous when they hit people.
It also means that they tear upour roads and they really
increase the particulate matterin our cities a lot.
So sorry, that was anotherpiece.

Jennifer Hiatt (11:25):
Previously, my thought process was okay, well,
when I get my new car whichwon't be for a while, but I'll
just get an electric vehicle,like I'll feel better about it
we're getting charging stationsthroughout rural Nebraska so
I'll be able to drive home andcharge my car and all of that.
And then when you were talkingabout you know just the weight
of the battery and about youknow just the weight of the

(11:46):
battery, and I've been in apretty bad car accident.
I was hit by a car and then Icouldn't stop thinking about
like, oh God, what if that carweighed so much more than it
already does?
And so that was actually whatconvinced me, that point.
So it's not a small point thatyou're making there.

Dan Piatkowski (11:58):
Yeah, I hope that more people talk about it.
It's really terrifying,especially when we talk about
impacts for vulnerable roadusers, you know, for kids and
for older people, like this is.
I think it's really scary stuff.
But yeah, and then, on theother hand, it's like e-bikes,
which are a fraction of theprice, a fraction of the climate
impacts to produce, because, ofcourse, they do still have
batteries, but they're muchsmaller.

(12:19):
But you know, an e-bike allowsus to get away from some of that
auto-oriented built environment, to take some of that space
that we would have for parkingand for driving and for extra
lanes and utilize it in muchbetter, more interesting, more
dynamic and more productive waysthat also help us fight things
like climate change.

Stephanie Rouse (13:10):
Yeah, the cost piece of that always gets me,
because we at a city level arereally investing into EVs and we
did an EV readiness plan andreduce the amount of vehicles on
the road, but we're insteadfocusing on the really high
dollar EV vehicles instead thatare becoming more of an equity
issue too.
I mean, a $3,000 e-bike isstill not a super affordable
means of transportation, butwhen you compare it to a $30,000
or $40,000 or $50,000 vehicle,it's way more affordable to get
around the community andLincoln's really pretty flat
until you get to the edges oftown.
I think a better program toinvest in.

Dan Piatkowski (13:29):
I totally agree.
And you have a question lateron about this, about sort of
finding money to pay for bikeprojects and it's like man, we
are just throwing so much moneyat things that are just yeah,
it's just such wishful thinking.
So Peter Norton's bookAutonorama he talks a lot about
this techno-utopianism intransportation and always being
sold on the next big technologythat's going to fix all of our

(13:52):
problems.
And I definitely wouldrecommend that your listeners
check that book out, if theyhaven't already, because it gets
at a lot of the history ofthese things and how it's been
kind of a consistent narrativein transportation that we really
have a lot of the answers infront of us and you know it
doesn't take a PhD to know why alot of people don't ride a bike
in a lot of places in the US.
You know, but somehow we stillare kind of taken in by these

(14:14):
false narratives of technologysaving us.

Stephanie Rouse (14:17):
Yeah, such a simple solution that's been
around for hundreds of years.

Dan Piatkowski (14:21):
Yeah, absolutely .

Stephanie Rouse (14:23):
So you discussed this idea of latent
demand in the world of bicycling, evidence by the pandemic bike
boom, and we definitely saw thishere in Lincoln, where our
trails saw crazy increases inwriting in 2020, 2021.
But then we also kind ofreturned to somewhat of a
business as usual after that.
The last couple of years we'veseen fairly similar rates on our

(14:43):
trail system as we did beforethe boom.
How can we still use thisprevious bike boom during the
pandemic to communicate to ourelected officials that the
demand really is there?

Dan Piatkowski (14:53):
Yeah, it's such a good question because it's
really disheartening to see howmany places have so easily
reverted to old habits.
That evidence is still there.
Of course, it's always gettingolder, but it's there.
It just needs the right, I think, the right audience to hear it.
The other thing that might helpelected officials put it

(15:13):
together and put together thereasons why it matters so much
is that people, I think, basedon the experience of those who
were able to ride more duringthe pandemic, the experience of
those who were able to workremotely, the experience of
those who were able to not spendan hour of their day or more
commuting back and forth in themorning and the afternoon, that

(15:34):
was a really powerful experienceand a motivator, I think, to
make people think about howtheir communities can work very
differently and how their dailylives can work very differently,
very differently, and how theirdaily lives can work very
differently.
I think it's kind of amotivator to convince elected
officials to invest more in thelocal community and neighborhood
amenities.
It still always requires achampion more realistically,
champions to get electedofficials to hear these things,

(15:56):
and I guess that's the hardthing about data is people can
always ignore it in favor ofwishful thinking.

Jennifer Hiatt (16:03):
In the US we design our transportation
systems to move as many cars aspossible, as quickly as possible
.
I was even sitting in a meetingone time where a traffic
engineer used the term.
We have some cars leaving theroad instead of we have people
driving off of the road orwrecking or whatever.
We know in this conversationthat that's a crazy way to
design for safety, but we haveto convince other people that

(16:26):
it's a crazy way to design forsafety.
So how can a systems approachyou discuss in the book solve
our road safety problem?

Dan Piatkowski (16:33):
Yeah, yeah, it's amazing to me the ways in which
we are just okay with thesystem as it is.
I'm not a safety expert, but Iincluded it in the book because
it obviously is meaningful withany transportation discussion,
walking and bicycling and safety.
When it comes to walking andbicycling, and in doing that
research, one of the things thatI found out was well, that I

(17:05):
guess I didn't find out butreally started to understand is,
when we talk about safety inthe US, or when we talk about
addressing safety in the US, weuse an individual perspective
where we say, okay, this personwas driving drunk, this person
was not paying attention andthat's what caused this crash
that maybe killed people orwhatever.
We don't stop and think like,what's the system that allowed

(17:27):
all this to happen?
You know, our only mechanismfor addressing those sorts of
things is to try to punishpeople after the fact and use
that punishment as sort of alike a fear-based motivator
right To switch to the kind of asystems-based approach to how
do we deal with traffic safety.
That could be things like youknow, how do we make sure that

(17:48):
crashes don't happen to beginwith?
How do we make sure that, evenif crashes happen, they're at
such low speeds that theproblems from them are going to
be so minimal.
And that's something that theVision Zero approach is really
good at and really good atarticulating, and a lot of that
has to do with, obviously,lowering speeds in our cities
not just in our cities, buteverywhere.
It also means making moredynamic environments.

(18:10):
You know, there's thisinteresting effect where when
you're driving through an areaand the less safe it feels, the
safer it actually is.
A journalist named TomVanderbilt wrote a great book
called Traffic.
I think it was probably about10 years ago, and he talked
about how Sweden changed fromdriving on the left side of the
road to driving on the rightside of the road to come in line
with the rest of Europe andthis was in the 60s or 70s and

(18:34):
how, rather than that causingtons of accidents and crashes,
there was actually a massivedrop in crashes directly after
they changed from one side ofthe road to the other, and that
crash rate didn't go back up tonormal until.
It took like a year orsomething to get to that point.
And that's because everybodywas paying attention, everybody
was a little on edge, everybodywas a little focused, a little

(18:54):
more focused, and so I thinkthat that's always a helpful
story for me when it comes totalking to people about safety.
It's also a good argument forslower streets, but also for
multimodal streets.
The more people and the morethings going on and the slower
the speeds of everybody, thesafer an environment is going to
be.

Stephanie Rouse (19:13):
I'd heard that story before and I was trying to
remember where, and I think asimilar.
The chaos is what makes peopledrive better was in Chuck
Marone's book, talking aboutimmigrant population that just
doesn't obey traffic laws andwould just kind of cross the
street on reds, and everyone gotused to that, and so they just
slowed down, paid more attentionand drove better as a result,

(19:34):
whereas here, yeah, our approachis we know people are going to
be bad drivers, so let's doeverything we can to make it
easier for them to drive fasterand account for things.
I hate the term fixed hazardobjects.
When we talk about a tree, itdrives me nuts.
So it is encouraging, though,that there's so much federal
funding out there for VisionZero plans and communities.

(19:55):
I think there's like five orsix that got awarded just in
Nebraska alone, so a lot ofcommunities are going to be
switching over to this safesystems approach, and hopefully
it'll actually be implemented inour work across the nation too.

Dan Piatkowski (20:09):
Yeah, that's something that is even you know
just in the course of the lastyear or whatever, that I've been
working on this book.
It's amazing to see theprogress in Vision Zero and also
just a lot of great books.
It's hard to keep track of allthe fantastic safety books that
have just come out, and I thinkeverybody's understanding of why

(20:29):
our roads are so dangerous hasjust really increased
dramatically.

Stephanie Rouse (20:33):
So the pandemic showed us that we can change
really fast when we need to.
And climate change, while it'sbecoming more front of mind and
a lot of communities are reallyfocusing on how we address it,
it feels so slow compared to therapid changes that we made
during the pandemic.
How can we get cities to changejust as quickly when there
isn't this looming public healthcrisis?

Dan Piatkowski (20:56):
Yeah, I mean the short answer is we got to stand
up and shout really loud, right?
I wrote the book because Iwasn't really sure if cities
could change quickly and in thecourse of my research I
convinced myself that yes, giventhe right circumstances and the
political will, places canchange.
But addressing that politicalwill component is certainly, you

(21:18):
know, the million dollarquestion.
I guess for each one of thesequestions I'm going to probably
plug a different book, it seemslike, because I just realized
well, it's booked on planning.

Jennifer Hiatt (21:28):
I think that's totally fine.

Dan Piatkowski (21:30):
Okay, awesome.
So your listeners shoulddefinitely check out dark PR by
a guy named Grant Ennis, and youknow he talks about the ways in
which public relationscampaigns have kept us from, or
distracted us from reallychanging things like road safety
or addressing climate changeand things like that.
And one of the things that hetalks about at the end of his

(21:51):
book is that nothing affectschange the way that effective
organizing and, you know,effective advocacy does, and
that's how to go about it.
The difficult thing is,obviously, how do you get a lot
of people who have busy livesand have lots of things to do
all the time to organize, tomake change and to affect
something that, while it is anexistential crisis, it's also

(22:14):
something that on a day-to-daylevel you can kind of ignore.
But I think that in the lastcouple of years especially, it's
becoming a lot harder to ignorethat and increasingly,
especially in agricultural state, climate change is so real it's
affecting bottom lines like alot of people in a lot of places
never thought it would.
So I think that you know thewill is there.
I think it needs to bechanneled.

Jennifer Hiatt (22:39):
Not really transportation related, but I
always found it very fascinatinghow quickly Nebraska's stance
on global warming technicallyfirst before climate change rate
shifted really quickly as soonas the farmers stepped in and
were like no, no, listen, weactually have some problems.
Our growing seasons arechanging, we're getting wetter
in the spring and drier in thefall and we need to try and
shift that.
I'm not saying that we're aprogressive state on this by any

(23:01):
means, but it wasn't untilfarmers out in western part of
the state were like no, we'vegot issues out here that any of
our state representativesstarted listening to us.
So listen to the farmers.

Dan Piatkowski (23:12):
Yeah, no, I totally agree.
So, first off, I guess I useglobal warming and climate
change interchangeably sometimes.
Sometimes I actually likeglobal warming.
I feel like it sounds moreserious and impactful.
You know, I've always lived inblue islands and red states,
kind of been where I've livedand where I've worked for most
of my career before moving toNorway, and I was always struck,

(23:33):
and still always struck, by howmuch overlap there is in what I
think about and what I thinkabout when it comes to good
urbanism and what so many peoplein rural areas think about.
Both of us hate the suburbs,both of us hate sprawling
developments that becometerrible uses of our land and of
our natural resources and allof these things.
So I mean, that's another wayin which there's just there's a

(23:53):
lot of overlap that I think getslost sometimes.

Jennifer Hiatt (23:57):
I agree the urban-rural divide shouldn't be
as wide as people perceive it tobe.
I worked in small towns beforecoming to Lincoln, so I feel
that very deeply.
To build off of Stephanie'spandemic question, do you know
how all the quick changes fromthe pandemic were funded and if
that type of funding is stillavailable?
Because Stephanie and I bump upagainst this question with all

(24:19):
of our projects.
Kind of the split is that shesort of designs and thinks those
things and then I'm on thefunding side of it.
So I'm always trying to figureout how we can use our incentive
based tools and we do use thosetools as best that we can.
But there just doesn't seem tobe money available for this type
of development and very few ofour developers are that kind of
forward thinking that they'rewilling to invest in it.

(24:40):
So how can a city try andfinance this kind of
infrastructure?

Dan Piatkowski (24:45):
I have no idea honestly, you know, mostly
because I haven't worked in inthat side of planning, you know,
and the financial side and allof that is just.
It's something that I didn'tunderstand well when I lived in
the US and it's something thatI'm like purposely trying to
forget because I found it soinfinitely frustrating now that

(25:06):
I don't live there.
But, that said, it's always soinsane to me how we can always
somehow find money for terrible,backwards, useless road
projects and for street wideningprojects and for parking lots
forever, but we can't find theminuscule percentage of that
money that could be used forbike and ped infrastructure.

(25:29):
So it's just sort of thiscolossally infuriating thing.
To use Lincoln as an example,the South Beltway Loop that
money came from somewhere.
Obviously its route to funding ahighway project was pretty
circuitous and it's kind of hardto bring back to the local
community.
But that's part of the problemwith transportation funding in

(25:49):
general is it kind of gets lostin this federal washing machine.
And then there's these stateand local issues.
When the reality is, when itcomes to paying for your buck,
investing in bike ped projectsis always a better investment.
I'm not answering your question, but I think I'm more just
ranting.

Stephanie Rouse (26:06):
And I'll rant along with you.
It is so funny because I'll getback from like a conference or
something.
I'm like, oh, we could usehighway safety funds to do some
of this pedestrian bicycleinfrastructure.
And then I'm told that, oh no,we're already doing that for
this other roadway safetyproject for cars.
And then at the federal levelyou have grant funding coming

(26:27):
out very minimally.
But then there's finally onethat's focused on active
transportation, the activetransportation infrastructure
investment program.
But they set this minimum of$15 million projects.
I'm like that doesn't helpthese smaller communities like
us out.
How are we going to come upwith a $3 million match?
And the amount that they haveset aside is like we maybe get
two or three communities help.
So it's very frustrating thatthere's all this money out there

(26:50):
for road projects and electricvehicles and we can't even get
an e-bike federal program set up.

Jennifer Hiatt (26:58):
And very importantly, in Lincoln, you're
one bypass behind.
We've moved on to the Westbypass now.

Dan Piatkowski (27:04):
Oh, of course.

Jennifer Hiatt (27:05):
Of course.

Dan Piatkowski (27:08):
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, it's like for
non-transportation people.
The types of amounts of moneythat we're throwing around sound
crazy.
But yeah, it's like you can doso much when it comes to bike
ped projects for a couplehundred thousand dollars, but
you can't even get started onroad projects for that amount of
money, and it's just, it's wild.

Jennifer Hiatt (27:26):
We were just talking about one small road
here in Lincoln, somedevelopments happening and it's
driven by state requirements,city requirements and then
private infrastructure and weall gathered up together in a
room to talk about.
You know, okay, what do we needhere?
We didn't even include a trailsperson at this point.
It's so far to the north.
What was the point and thenumber that we came up with for

(27:49):
just a few miles of road and anintersection was that we were
going to need almost $100million of infrastructure for
turn lanes and $100 million foran intersection and a few miles
of road.

Dan Piatkowski (28:04):
Yeah.

Jennifer Hiatt (28:04):
Why.

Dan Piatkowski (28:06):
You know, and so , in contrast, you were just in
Minneapolis for APA, and so solong ago at this point, over a
decade ago, when I was workingon my PhD, I was studying the
non-motorized transportationpilot program, and that gave
four communities in the US $25million each, and Minneapolis
was one of those communities,and they were given $25 million

(28:28):
to invest in bike ped projectshowever they saw fit, and they
invested really heavily in apublic works department that had
bike ped people embedded withinthat department, and in so
doing, they really what was ahuge amount of money still is a
huge amount of money for bikeped projects, but it's nothing
when it comes to other types ofprojects really set the Twin

(28:49):
Cities on the path to nowleading the nation not that many
years later in terms of bicyclefriendliness, and so, yeah,
it's crazy what even smallamounts of money can do for
cities.

Stephanie Rouse (29:00):
Yeah, and I think some of the issue with us
not being able to get theprograms and the funding at
federal, state, local levels forbike infrastructure is because
we have such a car dominatedculture in the US that is, let's
build things quickly, cheaply,move cars as fast as possible,
and the approach embedded in thetransportation planning field
ignores that people need andwant choices, and how we choose

(29:23):
to travel is more complex thanlet's just get in a car and get
there.
How do we rid our profession ofsuch an entrenched idea that
designing for cars and movingcars quickly is the only way to
go?

Dan Piatkowski (29:36):
It's something that you know.
On the one hand, it definitelydepends on incentives.
You know, historically speaking, the incentives for how we
design and plan transportationhave always been based around
speed, and you know the utilityof getting to places quickly so
that you can engage in, you know, economically important and
useful activities you know.
So part of it, I think, isthere's a systems aspect that we

(29:59):
need to talk about how tochange the way that we measure
the success or failure of givenprojects.
But the other thing about itthat I think in a much bigger
picture is, like you know, I'mcertainly not the first person
to make this point, but it's sosilly how everybody goes on
vacation to walkable places.
Actually, I think it was in theWalter White documentary that

(30:21):
was done in like the 1960s orsomething about public spaces,
where he mentions about howpeople go to places like
Disneyland to experience awalkable place where you can
actually stop and stand andspend time in and it's nice.
Everybody spends thousands ofdollars to go on these vacations
and nobody ever thinks that,hey, we could just do that in

(30:43):
our own cities and towns.
Squaring that circle is alwayssomething that I'm shocked
doesn't get more attention.

Jennifer Hiatt (30:51):
Shameless plug on our behalf, but you could
100% learn about William Whiteand his American urbanist by
listening to our Februarypodcast.

Dan Piatkowski (31:00):
That's great.

Jennifer Hiatt (31:01):
You make the point in the book that it's not
just the planning professionactually that needs to be rid of
such ideas.
Car culture has permeated everyarea of our political system as
well, and car lobbyists arepushing out every other voice,
especially in the newinfrastructure and climate bills
this year and I was verydisappointed to see the act of
transportation really didn'tmake it into the infrastructure

(31:22):
bill.
How can we as planners, butjust generally also as public,
make sure that lawmakers arehearing every perspective in
this conversation, from top tobottom, federal to local?

Dan Piatkowski (31:36):
Yeah, so I was also.
Really I continue to bedepressed by the challenges to
get things like e-bikeincentives through.
But yeah, I think, to make surethat lawmakers hear us, you've
got to be louder, and that'sunfortunately the reality there.
But yeah, it's also.
It's really difficult.
We're at a time where it'sreally hard to be heard over the

(31:57):
voice of all of these things,and especially the car lobby
right now.
But it's funny to be heard overthe voice of all of these things
, and especially the car lobbyright now.
But it's funny, you know.
I mean I did a presentation acouple weeks ago and I just
started putting together,looking around on the internet,
to put together this list of carmakers who are now making
e-bikes and through like allsorts of Reddit posts and
everything else, it's 15 or 20different car makers are now

(32:18):
making e-bikes and some of themare actually making real ones.
Others are making gimmicky ones.
But I think that obviously theauto industry is nervous and
they should be looking at e-bikesales they really should be and
so I think that again, it'slike all the ingredients are
there.
There needs to be this finalpush to get things to be heard.

Stephanie Rouse (32:38):
While it is Bicycle City, a major focus of
the book isn't necessarily justhow to make's ability to drive,
but just making it a smalleremphasis in our cities, which to

(33:06):
some is still the end of theworld, but for a lot of people,
car light is a better term.
Have you seen this way ofapproaching the conversation
received by the public?

Dan Piatkowski (33:16):
Can you all tell me what the response is after
this podcast goes up?
What the response is after thispodcast goes up?
Yeah, it's.
I haven't tested this term out,you know, as you say, it's
super like agro car people getriled up at anything, you know,
and there's no calming them andthere's no room for a rational

(33:37):
conversation there.
But the reason that I like theterm car light and I've started
using it is because it's justrealistic.
You know.
It's accurate.
It's an honest description ofwhat the goals that I'm
advocating for include.
I like car light as a termbecause it's more options.
It's about better, moreprosperous places.

(33:58):
It's not about taking somethingaway from people.
That's not realistic.
I recognize that cars are useful, valuable transportation tools
that we've just overutilized andrelied upon a little bit more
than a little bit too much forquite some time, but there's no
reason to just throw them awaycompletely.
You know it's like it's theargument of I can love cars but
also hate traffic and do thingsto address traffic, and so I

(34:21):
think that's the root of thatcar light terminology.
The other thing, though, aboutit is trying to bridge some of
the divides that I think arestarting to spring up between
people who are advocating forwalkable and bicycle places and
people who, maybe because ofdisability or other reasons, are
not able to take full advantageof places that are car-free,

(34:44):
and so I want to make sure thatyou know car light, I think,
means getting rid of the excesscars and maintaining them for
those who need them and for thepurposes that they're useful and
important.
So I think that that's anotherimportant issue that I think
gets ignored a lot, and you knowI mean I hope that you have a
whole other podcast aboutableism and active
transportation, because that'ssuch a huge issue as well, and I

(35:05):
can recommend a book for that.
It's either just come out orwill is about to come out is
Anna Zivart's book when drivingis not an option.

Jennifer Hiatt (35:13):
So we have discussed many amazing books
throughout this entire episode,but our final question always is
because this is book onplanning what books would you
recommend others check out?

Dan Piatkowski (35:24):
So this is probably the question that I've
spent the most time with.
You know, it's like asking,asking somebody for a mixtape or
something.
You know I'm such a nerd and soI read a lot, so from the
interview to this point Imentioned Traffic by Tom
Vanderbilt.
There is West Marshall's,killed by a Traffic Engineer,
dark PR by Grant Ennis, peterNorton's Autonorama, anna

(35:45):
Zivart's, when Driving is Not anOption.
Those are all the kind of theplanning specific or the sort of
related to the planning sphere.
But I always have really beeninto science fiction and well,
one of the motivators for thebook was what would be called a
critical utopian literature, andthat's literature that grapples
with how to make better futures, rather than dystopian

(36:09):
literature and dystopian sciencefiction, which I think gets all
the all the attention in thepopular press.
But critical utopian literaturein some ways it starts and ends
with, like the incredibleUrsula Le Guin and the
dispossessed.
But also read William Gibson'swork, any of it, all of it, it's
all great.
And for a more recent persondoing critical utopian

(36:30):
literature, check out CoryDoctorow.

Jennifer Hiatt (36:32):
So I have been waiting for three seasons for
someone to bring up fiction aswell as nonfiction.
When we ask this question, Ijust think that it's so
important.
Planning exists in so manyfiction novels and nobody has
brought it up.
Thank you, yay.

Dan Piatkowski (36:50):
I'm so glad I could because, yeah, you know,
long before I cared at all aboutbicycles, I cared about cities.
And I cared about citiesbecause I read about them in
books.
And so, you know, before I knewwhat being a planner was, I was
reading books as a kid.
And so, you know, before I knewwhat being a planner was, I was
reading books as a kid.
So, yeah, I'm so glad that thisbecame part of the podcast.

Jennifer Hiatt (37:07):
I agree.
I grew up in a village in themiddle of Nebraska with 400
people, and our big trips weremaybe to Denver or Lincoln.
We never went to Omaha, and sothe only way I got to experience
city life is through readingabout it.

Dan Piatkowski (37:24):
Yeah, as a kid who grew up in the suburbs of
Phoenix, that was the way that Iwas able to escape that pretty
monotonous environment.
So I'm with you.

Stephanie Rouse (37:33):
Well, I don't want to take up too much more of
your time because you're aboutto start your weekend, as
Jennifer and I are just gettinggoing on our Friday, but really
appreciate you talking with usabout your book and excited to
see Island Press's publishing ofit.
It should be coming out nextmonth.
When does the book get released?

Dan Piatkowski (37:52):
Yes, it comes out the end of May.

Stephanie Rouse (37:55):
Perfect time to wrap up Bike Month.
Thank you so much for talkingwith us today.

Dan Piatkowski (38:00):
Yeah, thank you both.
Great to be here.
You so much for talking with ustoday.

Jennifer Hiatt (38:03):
Yeah, thank you both.
Great to be here.
We hope you enjoyed thisconversation with author Dan
Piotrowski on his book BicycleCity Riding the Bike Boom to a
Brighter Future.
You can get your own copythrough the publisher at
islandpressorg and check out theother great titles we've
covered while you're there, orgo ahead and click the link in
the show notes.
That will take you directly toour affiliate page.

(38:23):
Remember to subscribe to theshow wherever you listen to
podcasts and please rate, reviewand share the show.
Thank you for listening andwe'll talk to you next time on
Booked on Planning.
Thank you.
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