The “War on Cars” is coming to car-centric San Diego

It’s not easy to imagine a life dependent on alternative travel in car-centric San Diego, but the creators of a podcast and a new book are coming to town to get people to try.

Creators of the “War on Cars” podcast and authors of “Life After Cars” bring their vision for an America beyond the automobile to San Diego — a hot-button issue in our car-centered region.

“If we can try to imagine a life in which car use is not mandatory for every single trip that you ever make, you can start to imagine communities even in these legendarily car-centric places like Los Angeles and San Diego, where the communities themselves are the point,” Sarah Goodyear said. “Not the cars and the streets and roads that they drive on.”

Goodyear and Doug Gordon are the co-authors of “Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile,” and the co-creators of the “War on Cars” podcast. Their North American tour promoting the book includes a San Diego stop at Adams Avenue Theater on Nov. 16.

Transportation has been a rocky issue of late in San Diego. For the second time in a decade, voters last year rejected a ballot measure for transportation improvements. And the city has raised parking fees, sparking community blowback. City development decisions geared around making dense, walkable neighborhoods easier to build, while removing parking requirements, has also been controversial.

Citywide, just 3.5% of residents commute by public transportation, below the national average. Countywide, nearly 80% of residents drive to work, compared to just 2.6% who rely on transit and 3.5% who bike or walk.

“It is a life-or-death issue, so it is incredibly serious. But the world we want to move towards is very joyful,” Gordon said. “It’s fun to reduce driving in your life and replace it with more walking and more bicycling, and even transit … And when you can add those things to your life, it just makes your life better, your community better, your relationship with your neighbors better.”

In their book and podcast, Goodyear and Gordon argue that cars do more harm than good, costing 40,000 lives a year amid rising pedestrian fatalities, compromising health with exhaust and noise pollution, and taking up valuable land space for highways and parking. 

For Gordon and Goodyear, the hidden costs of cars far outweigh the monetary costs of expanding alternative transit options,

“We could start saying, ‘You know what, we’ve tried widening highways. It never works. It never makes the traffic better,’” Gordon said. “So rather than spending a billion dollars to widen the [Interstate] 405 here, or the [Interstate] 5 in LA, what if we took that money and invested it in transit and invested it in high-quality bicycle lanes that a child or an older person would feel comfortable riding?”

They also argue that car dependency divides people rather than bringing them together. 

“What people stand to gain goes back to the traffic that you’re talking about, you know, how many people do you know who live in the Southern California community who don’t see that friend who lives in a different neighborhood because, ‘Oh my god, it’s 40 minutes if you get caught in traffic,’” Goodyear said.

While such a change would not happen overnight, they explained that little steps, such as putting a cone on a dangerous corner or organizing a bike bus for schoolchildren, can make a big difference. They hope to create solidarity at their live events through optimistic discussions of the future, Q&A sessions and time after for networking. 

“It’s not an all-or-nothing movement; it’s what if we could replace just a few trips here and there? Maybe you still drive to work because work is too far away and there’s no good transit schedule right now, but just little tweaks,” Gordon said. “Think about how much better the traffic would be if you went from that 2 or 3% of transit trips and cycling trips to 8%? That would be transformative for a place like San Diego or anywhere in Southern California.”