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Conversations about Creating a Culture of Activity: Profiling the people, places, programs, and policies that help to promote a culture of activity within our communities.
Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited
00:00:00:01 - 00:00:23:14
Miguel Moravec
A high speed, roadway. Right. A high speed, car roadway is a place between places. Right. And you cannot create value. Nowhere. You need to have a destination that's worth investing in. And and slower speeds, multi-modal options. Right. Multiple ways to get to a, a walkable, main Street type area. Like, that's what creates value.
00:00:23:17 - 00:00:45:03
John Simmerman
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Active Towns Channel. My name is John Simmerman, and that is Miguel Moravec from Rocky Mountain Institute or RMI. And we're going to be nerding out on policy stuff and what we need to do to really, shift vehicle miles traveled or VMT, as it's known, really appreciate you tuning in. And we're going to get right to it with, Miguel.
00:00:45:05 - 00:01:10:22
John Simmerman
But before we do that, I just want to mention that this is the final episode of season eight. But on Friday, I will be having a live stream with the one and only Ryan Van Duzer. This is our fourth annual holiday live stream, so please tune in on Friday, December 20th. Okay, let's get right to it with Miguel.
00:01:10:24 - 00:01:14:26
John Simmerman
Miguel, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Talents podcast.
00:01:14:29 - 00:01:16:24
Miguel Moravec
Thanks so much for having me, John.
00:01:16:26 - 00:01:24:22
John Simmerman
Miguel, I love giving my guest just an opportunity to introduce themselves, sort of like a, you know, an elevator pitch. Who the heck is Miguel?
00:01:24:25 - 00:01:39:17
Miguel Moravec
Yeah, absolutely. Well. Hey, everyone. My name is Miguel Moravec. I'm a senior associate at the Rocky Mountain Institute, and I focus on policy to expand clean transportation choices. And we do that to save people money while also tackling the climate and public health crisis.
00:01:39:19 - 00:02:01:09
John Simmerman
Fantastic. The Rocky Mountain Institute, or am I? Y'all are been using the term RMI, you know, quite a bit. And we're going to dive into the organization and, and what you all do at RMI. But before we do that, I want to learn a little bit more about you. What what's your story? What's your backstory?
00:02:01:09 - 00:02:05:12
John Simmerman
What's your origin story? How did you get interested in doing this type of work?
00:02:05:14 - 00:02:23:04
Miguel Moravec
Yeah, yeah. You know, I don't think most people think of transportation when they think of climate. So we'll go back a few years. I grew up, really interested in public service. Right. My mom was a teacher, and my dad was a federal employee. And they both happened to have these transportation intersections that I think are interesting.
00:02:23:06 - 00:02:45:29
Miguel Moravec
So my mom, specifically, is a boat captain on top of being a teacher, and she's always focused on how to make, you know, the access, to, like, the captain's license more accessible. We're Puerto Rican and we speak Spanish. But the captain's exam is actually only in, English. Right. So she works with the Coast Guard to bring more people, Spanish speaking backgrounds, into the captain program.
00:02:46:02 - 00:03:03:29
Miguel Moravec
My dad, on the other hand, was a federal highways engineer, and I know that sort of put them in a box. Yeah, yeah. But I would like to say that he was, one of the more progressive highway engineers out there. You know, he actually took the train every day, to work to skip traffic. He understood, that transportation choices are good.
00:03:04:02 - 00:03:28:27
Miguel Moravec
And while he's, you know, obviously a big fan of the interstate system, he's always been skeptical of the, utility of urban highways in particular. So he's been, you know, his proudest contribution as a federal highway engineer was working to redesign, roadways where there were high crashes, often using high friction pavements. I won't get too wonky, this early on, but anyway, you can see that I had this, like, public service and transportation.
00:03:28:27 - 00:03:32:26
Miguel Moravec
You know, upbringing. So pretty early on. Yeah. And those folks.
00:03:32:28 - 00:03:58:28
John Simmerman
I love that, too. About your dad. I love the stories both of your mom and your dad, but, specifically with your dad with regards to, the work that he did and working with the federal highways, and the fact that he really did see that, you know, balance and the benefit of having mobility choice and doing what humans kind of tend to do, which is take the most pragmatic choice.
00:03:59:00 - 00:04:26:18
John Simmerman
Do you want to suffer in by sitting in traffic, or would you kind of look at what your options are? I did the same thing when I lived in Chicago. I lived on the lakefront in Chicago and, I used to joke and call it the planes, trains and automobiles, daily commute. So I would ride my little bicycle, you know, through the snow and ice, from my lakefront apartment that I was at for a couple of years.
00:04:26:18 - 00:05:02:11
John Simmerman
And then I would go to the train station, take the train, reverse commute out to Arlington Heights and out in Arlington Heights. I had my, my truck, my my pickup truck stashed, and I would then drive, the final, I think it was 3 or 4 miles over to Schomberg, Illinois, at the Motorola world headquarters, which is where I was the, wellness program manager I was building out there, health care cost containment strategies and disease prevention strategies on their 300 acre, corporate campus.
00:05:02:14 - 00:05:23:18
John Simmerman
And I was able to do that because I had mobility choice. I could get on that train and I could ride that bike, you know, you know, through, you know, it was a little rickety bike, and it only cost like $15. But that's fascinating to me that that was very much a part of your story. And his story was like being pragmatic about, you know what?
00:05:23:18 - 00:05:26:09
John Simmerman
I don't want to suffer through that.
00:05:26:11 - 00:05:43:26
Miguel Moravec
Yeah. Yeah. John. Absolutely. And, you know, I was spoiled growing up in Maryland, which has pretty good multimodal connectivity. Right. But when I went to Tennessee for school, I felt what it was like to miss all of that. Right. And I got my first job in Nashville and had to drive 30 minutes, you know, there and 30 minutes back and highway traffic.
00:05:43:26 - 00:05:51:07
Miguel Moravec
And I was like, oh my God, this this is terrible. This is expensive. And taking my time. And I can't get around it, because I don't have another choice.
00:05:51:09 - 00:05:58:16
John Simmerman
Right? Right. Yeah. No, you just mentioned Nashville. So, you were at the university there?
00:05:58:19 - 00:06:06:05
Miguel Moravec
Yeah. Vanderbilt. Where, I'm a Commodore. Double door, because I got both my undergrad and, master's there, and,
00:06:06:07 - 00:06:10:26
John Simmerman
Oh, my God, you gotta be kidding me. You guys call yourselves that? The double doors?
00:06:10:28 - 00:06:35:22
Miguel Moravec
Yeah, but it's a proud turn of phrase. And I know you've had a West marshal on the program before, and I like to consider myself a West Marshall. Civil engineer, because my undergrad was not in civil engineering. I actually, you know, I wanted to be different than my parents, especially. So I focused on, earth science and communications and physics, trying to handle, you know, the really big question facing.
00:06:35:25 - 00:06:52:24
Miguel Moravec
I was a young person once, but as a young person, I felt like, you know, the climate crisis was our generational, challenge. So I studied those things. But, spoiler alert, it turns out you have most of the science already proofing climate change. We don't need that much more science. What we need is solutions. You know, to to tackle the crisis.
00:06:52:24 - 00:07:21:15
Miguel Moravec
So I came back for grad school, after working a few jobs, sitting in traffic, and for my grad school program. Then I did civil engineering, informed with all the opinions I had from, communications and, earth science. And, that led me now to my position at the Rocky Mountain Institute. Focusing full time on the transportation sector and the biggest source of pollution and how we can expand transportation choice, to help deal with pollution from that sector.
00:07:21:18 - 00:07:34:08
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. Why don't you explain a little bit about what you meant by, that reference to to West Marshall and that relevance to, to your career path to becoming a civil engineer?
00:07:34:10 - 00:07:53:25
Miguel Moravec
Yeah, yeah. So in his book, killed by a traffic engineer, you know, he talks about how a transportation decision makers, tend to just kind of do the status quo, whatever the MCD. Oh, yeah. Great to have a photo op. Whatever the guidelines and standards suggest. Right. And there's lots of reasons for that, like liability and so on.
00:07:53:27 - 00:08:10:25
Miguel Moravec
But if you're only solving for improving speed of, you know, car flow, you miss a lot of things like, hey, what does this community actually want to really invest in? Is it the small businesses on Main Street? Or is it a train or something else? So, you know, I'm, I read his book, what's his book?
00:08:10:25 - 00:08:25:18
Miguel Moravec
And I felt so seen because he was like, we should have more of these transportation decision makers from different backgrounds. And I was like, yes, that's that's me. You know, I come at this from with a very different, attitude. And I can see to how you know my own, you know, my dad has like a outlook on the world.
00:08:25:20 - 00:08:41:01
Miguel Moravec
You know, my civil engineering courses I took, especially the roadway design ones, had a certain outlook on the world. And that outlook could be broadened, right, to kind of meet the moment, of the various. I mean, yeah, there's the climate pollution issue, but there's also rising costs. There's public health. I know we'll get more into that later.
00:08:41:01 - 00:08:46:20
Miguel Moravec
But West West does a great job. And killed by traffic engineer. Really, confronting a lot of those issues.
00:08:46:23 - 00:09:15:20
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And of course, that's part of my story, too. You know, my background is in, health promotion and disease prevention, public health. And then, you know, probably about a couple of decades ago was when I really made that switch of thinking about our communities and our built environments and how that influences, our ability as a society to live a healthy, active lifestyle and specifically and how we come back around to transportation.
00:09:15:27 - 00:09:25:15
John Simmerman
Do we have mobility choice? Can we actually do the more active choices easy enough for us to be able to walk, bike and use public transit?
00:09:25:17 - 00:09:44:16
Miguel Moravec
And I have to say, you know, being on programs like this, being in the policy space, it it feels so impactful because if you scale these policies, you can address so many individual health stories, so many, mobility stories that everybody has. So, yeah, I'm just with you, I'm grateful to be here. Even though I wasn't a throwaway person from the onset.
00:09:44:18 - 00:09:48:13
Miguel Moravec
Yeah. But looking forward to keeping this, keeping us going.
00:09:48:15 - 00:09:57:10
John Simmerman
Okay, so, ami, this is the organization again, Rocky Mountain Institute, based out of Boulder, Colorado. But you are not in Boulder.
00:09:57:12 - 00:10:16:13
Miguel Moravec
Yeah, I'm Washington, DC based. We're still headquartered in, Boulder, but we've expanded, you know, even since, Yeah, I know you had my colleague Brian on, even since you spoke with her, we're now almost 800 people. All around the world, tackling this issue of, you know, accelerating the clean energy transition with our research.
00:10:16:16 - 00:10:46:01
Miguel Moravec
And, you know, we were founded actually 40 years ago. You know, during the oil crisis to answer this, this big question, right, where the oil crisis energy is in short supply. But what if we promoted energy efficiency more? Right. What would the benefits to society be if we were just more efficient with what we had? So that philosophy really influences my attitude now, focusing on the transportation sector, what would happen if we expanded the efficient modes of transportation, knowing that we have limited dollars to invest in infrastructure projects?
00:10:46:07 - 00:10:53:24
Miguel Moravec
What would those benefits to society be? So that's something that me and my peers on the US policy program are working on together.
00:10:53:26 - 00:11:31:00
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And and we'll we'll talk a little bit more about, you know, some of the fine tuning aspects and the finite details of policy and the work that you're doing there in DC and why you're based in DC and why that makes sense from a policy perspective. But one of the biggest, gripes that I've had with RMI dating back decades is that I felt like they were kind of like missing the boat and were not really seeing, and embracing the potential of active mobility, in the concept of some of the bigger things that we needed to address as society.
00:11:31:06 - 00:11:54:14
John Simmerman
And they did a fantastic job of like really pushing from the energy perspective and the electrification of fleets and things of that nature. And, and I kept harping on some of my contacts there at RMI and I'm like including Ben Holland. Ben, Ben was on the podcast back in the, the pandemic era, I think in 2021 and or maybe even late 2020.
00:11:54:15 - 00:12:19:21
John Simmerman
I think it was 2021 when I had him on. It was audio only at that point. And so there was no visual, when I had been on, but he and I would be we go way back years and we would talk about, you know, what do we need to do to help RMI understand that active mobility and land use, the way that we actually build our cities is part of the solution.
00:12:19:24 - 00:12:50:08
John Simmerman
And one of the phrases, the turn of phrases that I would use frequently is that, yes, I understand we need to electrify the fleet. Yes, full stop. And we need to decrease VMT and we need to increase in order to increase or, you know, to be able to decrease VMT vehicle miles traveled on an annualized basis. We also need to be able to do what we were just talking about is creating authentic mobility choice.
00:12:50:11 - 00:13:09:12
Miguel Moravec
Yeah. Oh yeah, I can dig into that for a second. What? We've been around a few times. I love working with him. He's now at the World Resources Institute. But yeah, let's let's just dive in. You know, off the bat, you cannot hit climate targets with electric vehicles alone. You have to incorporate, mode shift. Right. Expanding clean choices to get there.
00:13:09:14 - 00:13:32:14
Miguel Moravec
And I think the environmental community as a whole, it took time to really accept that conclusion. Right. Messaging wise, it's a challenging subject. Some people, you know, hear mode shift and think, oh my gosh, the government's going to take my car, right? Whereas, when you say, oh, well, we'll just slap a battery into, you know, the existing, status quo transportation mode.
00:13:32:17 - 00:13:52:10
Miguel Moravec
Well, that doesn't sound so radical. It sounds like it'd be easier. But to your point, you know, EVs don't solve a lot of the other problems with the transportation system. They help with cost, but are still inaccessible to a lot of people. They don't solve traffic. And they still do produce other kinds of emissions that from a public health perspective, I, you know, like particulate matter.
00:13:52:10 - 00:14:13:23
Miguel Moravec
I know that, you know, you're aware of and that need to be addressed. So, one more thing to, you know, in the history and the course of RMI, I think there was, Amory Lovins, our founder. There's actually a picture of him in the white House talking to Jimmy Carter, that we can pull up. But Amory Lovins, you know, really championed our energy efficiency, efficiency ideas early on.
00:14:13:25 - 00:14:21:15
Miguel Moravec
And as part of that, and his instinct was to say, okay, on the transportation, we'll just make cars lighter. Have you heard of the hypercar concept?
00:14:21:17 - 00:14:23:08
John Simmerman
Yep, yep.
00:14:23:11 - 00:14:43:23
Miguel Moravec
Yeah, yeah. Amory, you know, I think put some attention there on the hypercar. Which is not a bad idea. However, cars have been getting bigger and heavier and less safe, right, to collide with. So I don't know that, you know, folks would feel, too comfortable being in, like, an aluminum, you know, tiny car, on on us roadways.
00:14:43:23 - 00:15:07:13
Miguel Moravec
Anyway, and I think overcoming that inertia and looking just at the math, right, like maybe five years ago, you could have done EVs and hypercars and solved it, but we're just the vehicle stock just doesn't turn over fast enough to allow for that to be a silver bolt solution anymore. So we've come a long way. You're right that, I think our initial messaging and focus was on EVs, and hypercars.
00:15:07:13 - 00:15:29:20
Miguel Moravec
But, you know, I'm, I don't I don't think this is a, an internal only, but we have an official goal of internal, at the organization, right to promote mode shift as a complement to our electrification strategy. It's been pushed up and our leadership has realized it. And so I'm glad that RMI has, updated and really refined its approach based on the facts of, you know, what's needed.
00:15:29:22 - 00:16:01:09
John Simmerman
And to be clear to, I mean, the, the initiatives that, RMI has been involved with since the very, very beginning, are broader than just transportation. They're focused in on transportation now, because we understand that in most cases, in most situations, we're talking about, anywhere between 30 and 40% of, you know, climate emissions, you know, climate change type emissions here, carbon emissions are related to the transportation sector in one way or another.
00:16:01:12 - 00:16:21:14
John Simmerman
A lot of the work that you all are doing is, is also focusing in on, okay, how are we producing our electricity. And so it is broader than just mobility and transportation. So I just wanted to to mention that, that there's a lot of work being done. And I'm not surprised that you guys are up to 800 employees at this point.
00:16:21:16 - 00:16:45:00
Miguel Moravec
Yeah, yeah. I'll, I'll summarize to, you know, we're sort of divided into two buckets. We have our geographic programs like the US policy team, the China team, but then we have our sort of, research forward groups. You can see you have them up on the screen like carbon free buildings, carbon free electricity. And so, you know, we can combine the knowledge from both of those bases to try and scale, and get great policies out there.
00:16:45:02 - 00:17:10:03
Miguel Moravec
And you mentioned land use. I got to zoom in on land use for a second because, gosh, you can't talk about transportation without talking about land use. And one of our reports that just came out, you know, showed the potential, for smart growth land use strategies to really, decrease the need to drive and therefore decrease the need for, you know, transportation pollution, but like, also achieve things like building electricity savings, and water savings, as well.
00:17:10:05 - 00:17:20:05
Miguel Moravec
So that that report, definitely made the rounds was on Doctor Voltz, a friendly, podcast peer and, a few others. I think it's worth pulling up.
00:17:20:08 - 00:17:47:02
John Simmerman
You know, and what I've done is, on screen here just for the listening audience as well, is, I pulled up, the fact that the RMI website is just a treasure trove of resources. So you have lots and lots of position, papers and reports and research and analysis. And so that's what we've done was we've kind of clicked on here and, as you mentioned, there's many different reports that you guys have have produced and put out there.
00:17:47:05 - 00:18:08:25
John Simmerman
I'm not sure that we're going to be able to easily find it right here, but maybe we can come back to that in just a moment. I did want to, though, pop on over to this one, which we do have queued up and ready to go. And that is, taking a look at, this particular, is this a report or just a position statement?
00:18:08:27 - 00:18:11:26
Miguel Moravec
It is a blog about a tool that we published, I think. Perfect.
00:18:11:26 - 00:18:14:05
John Simmerman
Okay, take it away.
00:18:14:08 - 00:18:34:11
Miguel Moravec
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, great. I love this one, John, because, yeah, I helped lead the development of this particular tool. But, you know, we we noticed that a lot of the conversation and right, just as much as you pointed out earlier was about, you know, oh, like, well, if you want to reduce this many GHGs, greenhouse gas emissions, you know, EVs are going to be a lot of that.
00:18:34:11 - 00:18:53:00
Miguel Moravec
But we said, hey, you know, decision makers don't talk in GHGs and the public doesn't think in GHGs. Right? Like everyday average folks are thinking about like, what are the kitchen table benefits that matter to me? And I'm going to get me excited about trying something new. So, you know, the yes, that's household cost savings, but that's also cleaner air.
00:18:53:00 - 00:19:18:10
Miguel Moravec
That's also, you know, healthier lifestyles. And so we took a methodology from, you know, your home state of Colorado and scaled it to all 50 states. Basically, we said if if all 50 states could achieve modest, vehicle miles traveled reduction. Right. So, like, if you didn't have to drive, like 1 in 5 of your car trips, for example, what would the benefits to you be as an individual?
00:19:18:13 - 00:19:36:15
Miguel Moravec
You know, certainly I knew when I moved from Nashville to, Tennessee to Washington, DC, I was able to sell my car and like I noticed I had a lot more money because I wasn't spending 3 to 400 bucks a month on gas. But even just taking, less trips, having transportation choices, you don't have to sell your car, can save a lot of money and cause all these other outcomes.
00:19:36:22 - 00:19:50:24
Miguel Moravec
So we made this calculator, we published it, and, let's click on, Illinois. That's a good that's a good, example state here. That that map is interactive if you. Yeah. Perfect. So, you know, we found that if, that.
00:19:50:24 - 00:20:00:29
John Simmerman
Was a good geographic test, by the way, that I knew which state was Illinois. I mean, having having done that reverse commute from Chicago.
00:20:01:01 - 00:20:16:24
Miguel Moravec
Right, right. I thought it was a safe choice. Yeah. For you, you can see right there the headline is, hey, you know, if you just give your folks more options, you know, measured by this proxy of VMT reduction, you unlock about $2,000 a year of of household savings.
00:20:16:27 - 00:20:19:22
John Simmerman
And that's zoom in on the air right here now, too. Yeah.
00:20:19:24 - 00:20:41:15
Miguel Moravec
Boom. It's an eye popping number. I think people are skeptical of it at first. Like, whoa. That's that's big savings. But, if you, if you actually factor in the total cost of ownership. Right. For, owning, operating and maintaining an automobile, according to the New York Times, that's $12,000 a year, right? You add up all the gas bills and, you know, oil changes.
00:20:41:23 - 00:20:59:23
Miguel Moravec
It's 12,000 a year. So it stands to reason that, you know, even just a modest amount of mode shift would save you thousands of dollars. We have a breakdown of this stat. A little lower down, in the blog that I think is fun and worth looking at. Illinois is on there again, but you can look at the whole US average there.
00:20:59:23 - 00:21:22:04
Miguel Moravec
You know, the average U.S household also sees about that $2,000, saving mark. And about a third of that comes from, fuel and vehicle maintenance. But a lot of that also comes from avoided, depreciation, which is a direct cost, that people don't, you know, pay with their credit card, but certainly hits their wallets when they go in to trade their automobile.
00:21:22:07 - 00:21:26:18
Miguel Moravec
You know, what's the number one thing, like CarMax looks at when you're turning in your car?
00:21:26:21 - 00:21:28:17
John Simmerman
Yeah. Number of miles on it.
00:21:28:19 - 00:21:50:22
Miguel Moravec
Yeah. They look at the odometer. Exactly. Right. So if you can avoid over, you know, the years and years that you own your car, even a modest amount of miles, you get more money, for that next vehicle purchase or whatever else you want to, put that cash towards. So, we, we used, you know, we have an awesome data set, at RMI, thanks to the federal government having lots of open source information.
00:21:50:27 - 00:22:17:24
Miguel Moravec
So we had, like, fuel prices, you know, based on your state, we had the electricity prices, too. If you, you know, had an electric vehicle, and we also had at you just roll down to, the, you know, fatalities section. We also had information about, vehicle fatalities and states. So, let's, let's go into the public health aspect of this, you know, 40,000 Americans a year die in car crashes.
00:22:17:24 - 00:22:41:15
Miguel Moravec
That's, you know, five times more than all, US service members that have died in, post nine, 11 wars. It's a lot of Americans, and, by most shifting to, you know, anything else, really? You know, busses are ten times safer per passenger mile. In terms of fatalities, rail is 18 times safer, like, you know, signing up for that, I want to be on the train.
00:22:41:15 - 00:22:51:26
Miguel Moravec
Right. If you if you make these even modest, mode shifts, you know, you see a lot of avoided fatalities, because the transportation system safer.
00:22:51:29 - 00:23:25:00
John Simmerman
And it's interesting to that. You also kind of framed the, the cost analysis as something that's relevant to kitchen table sort of discussions and, and concepts. And it brings us back around to, your dad's decision to, you know, take the train in, and my example of, you know, taking the train and combining that with other modes, including my little rickety bicycle, is that we there's a pragmatic side to this that also is related to what I call the Pita factor.
00:23:25:00 - 00:23:49:22
John Simmerman
The pain in the ass factor. And so if if driving a vehicle is a pain in the ass because of gridlock and in transport, you know, and congestion on the roads, or is, you know, a pain in the ass because of the cost of the pump and the depreciation of the vehicle and all these other things that are adding up, we start to understand that, you're absolutely right.
00:23:49:23 - 00:24:36:13
John Simmerman
We're not thinking in terms of GHG numbers. And, and we have as humans, we don't have a really good grasp on, really thinking about the benefit, the cost and benefit of, our health. But based on the decisions that, that we make, and really think of it, and one of the reasons why I hone in on that is, as a public health professional, I can tell you that even though I cut my teeth on doing our allies, of, you know, programs and initiatives that we did that, you know, showed impressive returns on investment, for every dollar we put into health care, you know, cost containment strategies and health promotion,
00:24:36:16 - 00:25:02:12
John Simmerman
we saw a $2.51 return on every dollar. That didn't matter. People didn't care what really cared. I mean, the companies cared because they were footing the bill for the health care. And we're talking fortune 500 companies, so they're self-insured. So every single dollar spent in health care is, you know, money sifted out of their profit margin. What people care about is that immediate return.
00:25:02:14 - 00:25:41:15
John Simmerman
Is it less of a pain in the ass? Does it make me feel a little bit better that I'm getting some fresh air in the morning, versus feeling like I'm, you know, ready to have road rage behind the wheel. And so, I think that that's one of the key things, especially in, you know, we just came out of the election season and, I think one of the things that we really learned from this, this election is that that kitchen table sort of issues and the pain that people are feeling within their household is significant to, you know, how they vote, whether at the national level or the local level.
00:25:41:18 - 00:25:51:07
John Simmerman
And I think we did even see that in Nashville. I think we saw a transit, you know, package. You know, pass a sales increase pass right there in Nashville.
00:25:51:09 - 00:26:15:21
Miguel Moravec
Yeah. Yeah. So many follow ups. I'll just quickly say on the national referendum, you know, Mayor Freddie O'Connell ran on that platform. He said, let's boost the bus, choose how you move. That was a core part of his platform because people get transportation is expensive. Number two, you know, expense after your housing. But unlike your housing, you know, if your, if your car breaks and you don't have choices, you're, you're in trouble, right?
00:26:15:24 - 00:26:31:15
Miguel Moravec
So love what mayor O'Connell did there in Nashville. More than 80% of transit referendums that were on the ballot, this November passed. It's like people want this. People want the choice. But a quick aside on the public health, part of the pain in the, pain in the ass factor that you were to evacuate.
00:26:31:18 - 00:26:31:26
John Simmerman
It goes.
00:26:31:26 - 00:26:52:16
Miguel Moravec
Both ways, doctor. For walking, too. So, you know, when I was in Nashville, mayor O'Connell, you know, I lived in a, suburban home, you know, kind of isolated. It was a arterial, fast moving road. Right? So it's kind of a pain in the butt to go for a walk. If I didn't want to hear a traffic or a brief tailpipe pollution.
00:26:52:18 - 00:27:05:17
Miguel Moravec
Whereas in Washington, DC, where I'm very privileged and, like, just grateful to be here now, I got one of these little Fitbits and just by existing in the city, I walk 10,000 steps every day. Yeah, right.
00:27:05:20 - 00:27:31:04
John Simmerman
Well, let me let me ask you a follow up based on that. Yeah. Because because you are doing it. You've got a Fitbit and I've got a smartwatch Garmin on that also measures my steps. That's part of what I talk about in terms of, of how we measure things and what we measure is important. And what you're about to talk about is a little bit about the modern gamification of life.
00:27:31:06 - 00:27:34:11
John Simmerman
So talk a little bit more about your steps. Yeah.
00:27:34:14 - 00:27:51:22
Miguel Moravec
Yeah. Well, you know, in Nashville, especially when I started the job with RMI, I was remote. Right? So I would wake up, shuffle to my desk, you know, if I took the initiative, I would maybe go for a walk or something. But most of my days were pretty much, you know, in my cul de sac.
00:27:51:25 - 00:28:14:01
Miguel Moravec
So it was extra effort. It was a struggle, to hit my, you know, 10,000 steps. You know, even if I really wanted to, whereas due to the built environment of DC, you know, and due to the fact that RMI does have an office here, whether I'm walking around the corner to get groceries or I'm biking into work, the the built environment is just it's so fun.
00:28:14:08 - 00:28:24:08
Miguel Moravec
John, it's it's fun to move around here and, you do not have to spend, you know, 20 bucks to fill up on gas, but, you know, maybe I rent, an an e-bike or just use my own two feet. I can walk.
00:28:24:11 - 00:28:49:18
John Simmerman
Yeah, but, I mean, come on. McGill, you got to get real. I mean, here, now you're talking all this fluffy stuff of having fun while you're getting questions. Come on. It's interesting that you mentioned fun. And then in that same breath, you not only walking and being able to see amazing places and and that's that's a big part I think of from a standpoint of making, active mobility truly meaningful.
00:28:49:21 - 00:29:14:00
John Simmerman
Because in order for it to be truly meaningful, we need to get encourage more people to feel like a it's possible. And to it's actually pleasurable because it actually if it is pleasurable, more people will do it. And we talk a lot about making sure that you're not, quote unquote, just doing the bare minimum of creating sidewalks, the bare minimum of a bike lane.
00:29:14:07 - 00:29:47:04
John Simmerman
You know, it needs to be safe and inviting. And that inviting aspect of it helps make it a little bit more pleasurable. I talked frequently on the pod here about the our need to be able to understand where those pleasurable routes are. And I use the example of, you know, it would be great if we had route mapping programs that could not just be the quickest from A to B, but maybe the most pleasurable, you know, where where are the wildflowers in bloom?
00:29:47:04 - 00:30:05:01
John Simmerman
You know, tell me, I want this, I want I want a smile on my face, just like your smile there. The other thing I wanted to mention, though, real quick before I forget, is, yes, we had your colleague, Brynn, Greenwald. And, she was working on also a calculator on the, e-bike. Benefits of e-bikes.
00:30:05:07 - 00:30:31:23
John Simmerman
But fun kept coming up in that conversation, too, because, like you, as you just mentioned, alluded to it. It's fun to get on a little e-bike and change that ride and get a little boost and be able to maybe go farther than you would otherwise. And maybe it's even replacing a car trip, because maybe you're getting on an e-bike shared bike system versus hailing an Uber or Lyft.
00:30:31:26 - 00:30:52:24
Miguel Moravec
Yes, I'm I'm very bullish on e-bikes. You know, the evidence shows they are cutting into single occupancy car trips. You know, two thirds of car trips are less than five miles. And that's prime range for an e-bike as brand. I know I mentioned on the podcast, with you, but also one of the really nice things about e-bikes is they, you know, reduce emissions and cost out of the box, right?
00:30:52:24 - 00:31:08:25
Miguel Moravec
You don't have to wait ten years for the transit line to be built so long as you have, you know, the relatively, cheap compared to other infrastructure. So long as you have safe pathways to bike, you can replace a lot of car trips. Right there. And and it's these incremental changes, right? We're not talking about taking cars away from people.
00:31:08:25 - 00:31:33:14
Miguel Moravec
We're just talking about giving you more choices for, you know, the trips that you might enjoy doing on an e-bike. It says marginal changes that can really help us stay climate aligned while unlocking all these, health and, cost savings. Really quick. The second thing I just got to mention, I was biking back with my coworker, literally yesterday from the, RMI office, and she said, hey, you know, we can cut through, you know, Pennsylvania Avenue.
00:31:33:14 - 00:31:52:10
Miguel Moravec
They have a protected bike line in the middle there, to get home fast. This. And I said, no, I want to do the National Mall route because you get to go past the white House, the Washington Monument, and, the United States Capitol on our way back to, the Eastern Market area of D.C.. And it's like, I know it takes longer, but I'm happier after that route.
00:31:52:10 - 00:31:56:15
Miguel Moravec
It's fun. I'm less stressed. And I'll add, you know, three minutes to my commute to do that.
00:31:56:15 - 00:32:21:09
John Simmerman
So let's talk a little bit about that, because I think that that's one of the things that our scientists and, and researchers and I have a previous career in doing hardcore science research, is that oftentimes we just don't even think about getting creative of how to capture and measure what you just described of. I know it's going to take longer, but I'm going to feel better.
00:32:21:09 - 00:32:34:07
John Simmerman
And that's one of the biggest challenges that we have of being able to account for, that pleasure, that sense of joy, that reducing the factor.
00:32:34:10 - 00:32:35:07
Miguel Moravec
You know.
00:32:35:09 - 00:33:00:06
John Simmerman
It's it I think that as researchers, we it's not to say that we have to measure everything, because ultimately, one of the true measures of whether being success, we are being successful as municipalities, as cities, as states is as a nation, at creating a safe and inviting environment for people to partake in. Active mobility is we will see that in the numbers.
00:33:00:13 - 00:33:19:01
John Simmerman
We will see more people partaking in it. But I love that concept of wouldn't it be nice if we can kind of like, get an idea, an inkling of how important that is for people to take a three minute longer route? That's a little bit more pleasurable?
00:33:19:03 - 00:33:40:10
Miguel Moravec
Yeah, I, I so agree and I, you know, to expand on that, you know, following where there's already excitement about, car alternatives especially is so key and, and you know, it basically every state, or city that puts up an e-bike rebate program, it sells out immediately because there is so much interest, in adopting that mode of travel.
00:33:40:12 - 00:34:00:20
Miguel Moravec
And, one more anecdote. Representative Larry Kraft from Minnesota, shared this, and I'm going to borrow it from him. But he, he calls it the green little secret. Where the cleaner modes of transportation, like, you know, biking. One of the great outcomes of them, in addition to being less polluting, is like, they're more joyful.
00:34:00:20 - 00:34:22:16
Miguel Moravec
You never have road rage walking next to someone on a sidewalk or biking, you know, stopping at a light on a on a bicycle. It's, you see, a real person next to you, right? Instead of this big, intimidating metal box. So I think by default, the cleaner modes of transportation are almost always going to be, you know, more joyful so long as we can make folks feel safe on them.
00:34:22:18 - 00:34:44:22
Miguel Moravec
We already seeing the pent up demand, you know, being unleashed, with some of these state programs, like, let's just let's just keep funding those programs to get more and more people that, that chance. And that's another big, you know, thing that I focus on. And it's like, it'd be great if we had unlimited money and could, you know, keep doing lots of roads and lots of trains and lots of bikeways.
00:34:44:25 - 00:35:02:26
Miguel Moravec
But at the end of the day, policymakers have to make a choice. They have to do some triage. Right. And our default in this country is not, you know, the majority of the investment doesn't go to these great clean transportation choices. It goes elsewhere. And that that's a whole section I could, I could talk about for a minute.
00:35:02:28 - 00:35:10:21
Miguel Moravec
But I'll, I'll let you respond to maybe that tension and what where you've seen that tension between, roadways and these clean transport choices.
00:35:10:24 - 00:35:42:07
John Simmerman
Well, I think and one of the things that I'd like to do is turn it into a positive. Well, let's start with, with with this graphic in this particular image here, because I think this kind of sets us up to talk about induced demand. And, and RMI was, was instrumental in helping the state of Colorado, deal with a potential expansion of, I-25, which, of course, is the interstate that kind of does a little loop around the downtown area.
00:35:42:10 - 00:36:12:10
John Simmerman
And, RMI, along with some other folks, bicycle Colorado and some other institute towns, you know, kind of leverage some of these calculations that you all are working on and basically be able to call out, the fact that, no, simply adding miles is not going to help from a climate impact. And in fact, it it will definitively have adverse climate impacts.
00:36:12:12 - 00:36:54:28
John Simmerman
And but when I really the way I want to sort of pivot this in and make it a positive is the fact that induced demand can be applied across all of our mobility choices. And a big part of what I try to emphasize from a human behavior perspective is that if we are able to actually build out active mobility systems and we build out the quote unquote lane miles of, being able to walk and bike to meaningful destinations and create and hopefully truly making them safe and inviting and joyful and interesting, being able to take that more joyful route and beautiful route.
00:36:55:00 - 00:37:03:25
John Simmerman
We will also get more traffic using that mode. In other words, we can induce the demand. We want to actually see.
00:37:03:28 - 00:37:22:25
Miguel Moravec
Yeah, if you build it, they will come. And I think one of the most recent examples is Paris. You know, during the pandemic under Mayor Marielle Doggo built out so many bike lanes, right. There wasn't as much car travel during the pandemic. So they, converted and built out so many bike lanes. And now you see in Paris, which is an amazing statistic, I'm like, I'm excited.
00:37:22:25 - 00:37:40:07
Miguel Moravec
Just even saying it. There are more bike trips in Paris than car trips. And the population of Paris, you know, is a majority non car owner. So I think that's, you know, a great example of like induced demand works both ways. If you build it, they will come for bikes. But also is true of cars.
00:37:40:07 - 00:38:03:23
Miguel Moravec
But, you know, one of the issues with cars is I've been I've been that traffic. Right? I have been that traffic commuting to work like it's not fun. But even if you, you know, prefer or need to drive, you know, you should want the, the actual methods that reduce that traffic and will get you to work faster in your car involved getting other drivers off the road right into other modes of transportation network for them.
00:38:03:26 - 00:38:31:03
Miguel Moravec
So, you know, I'm going to, we talked about like sort of the feelings of convenience, right. I think a lot of, Americans still believe that. Oh, if I just add one more lane, you know, intuitively, that should mean that all car traffic moves faster. But like, that is not the reality. We've we've seen it, you know, proven, again and again and research those new lanes are basically free real estate that fill back up and about, you know, 5 to 10 years.
00:38:31:09 - 00:38:54:20
Miguel Moravec
I mean, that's not even counting all the traffic, you know, that was generated from constructing the new lanes. But there's a great there's a great graphic from, transportation for America. Let's let's pull that up. I am totally for the goal of reducing car congestion, right. Like, everybody should be able to get around quickly. But there's this there's this, false premise that folks are being sold, that if you just add another lane, traffic is going to go down.
00:38:54:20 - 00:39:26:18
Miguel Moravec
This graphic here shows that even though the US has added more, urban lane miles, than, you know, population has grown, a traffic is actually gone up 144%, which is just absurd. Right. We spend billions and billions and billions of dollars on these new lane miles. It's like a quarter of the new, surface transportation spending from the bipartisan infrastructure law is on expanding roads, but we already have a complete interstate system.
00:39:26:21 - 00:39:53:00
Miguel Moravec
We know that lane miles will not reduce traffic. And those dollars, you know, being dedicated to new me miles, could, you know, instead be spent on so many new clean transportation choices from active to public transit? You know, from new rail. It's it's a choice where those dollars go. So, I mean, if there's if there's one thesis I have today, it's, it's stop spending those dollars on, on New Lane miles interstate system is done.
00:39:53:00 - 00:39:58:09
Miguel Moravec
Let's let's pivot. Let's meet the 21st century moment and give people choices.
00:39:58:12 - 00:40:28:20
John Simmerman
Well, I think that that says it all right there. He always thank you so much for joining me. I put a fine point on that full stop. Can't stop spending miles on it. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. As somebody from, originally from the Los Angeles area, I can remember the number of times that we've increased the number of miles, lane, miles on, the 405 and the most recent, you know, multi-billion dollar expansion of adding lane miles to to the 405.
00:40:28:23 - 00:41:08:29
John Simmerman
And it got us maybe a reduction in gridlock for like 18 months, maybe not even that. In other words, a big part of the challenge that we have when we look at the motor vehicle for transportation system and single occupancy vehicles being the primary challenge that we have is in part the the geometry free, the space inefficiency of doing it that way, and especially with carb load of us getting, you know, ten, 20, 30, 40% bigger with our single occupancy, vehicles.
00:41:09:06 - 00:41:40:07
John Simmerman
It just exacerbates that problem is of that it's a spatial, spatial issue. I spent a lot of time in the Netherlands. I take a lot of time looking at how there are overlap of mobility networks and systems work, and how mobility choice really then reflects in, people being able to drive if that's what they want and need to do, or walk to transit and use transit or bike to their destination or to transit.
00:41:40:13 - 00:42:21:23
John Simmerman
They're combining all of these different things. And so there's, there's also redundancy in in networks and options. You know, do I want to, you know, ride to this destination or do I want to take transit or do I want to drive. That's redundancy of mobility choice. But then there's also integration of these same networks of saying, I'm going to ride or walk to my transit stop and then, you know, be at or transit, you know, get on point and then take that to a different destination and then be able to shift to a different mode, whether that is getting on a bike, share bike or walking to the final destination or getting on to a
00:42:21:23 - 00:42:41:25
John Simmerman
different type of transit. You know, maybe I'm taking the train and the train from Utrecht to, to to Amsterdam. Then I get on a tram and, you know, a streetcar line and go to my final destination. So my point is, is that we we it's not an either or, and it's not a quote unquote war on cars.
00:42:41:27 - 00:43:09:06
John Simmerman
It's what I like to say is it's the ultimate in freedom and choice, of being able and this is a common theme ever since the very beginning, opening lines of talking about your dad and being able to choose the most pragmatic choice for him in that situation. And so I really do, and that's part of the reason why I'm branding now, from an active towns perspective, you know, protected bike lanes, safe and inviting infrastructure for walking and biking.
00:43:09:13 - 00:43:11:14
John Simmerman
They're freedom lanes.
00:43:11:17 - 00:43:49:23
Miguel Moravec
Yes, absolutely. And don't forget Hero Lanes for busses, too, because those are great lanes for emergency vehicles to to roll past traffic. I want to I'm glad you mentioned the example of the Netherlands, because, they're, they're they're taught different. Right. And there's the Department of Transportation, you know, have champions for all types of mobility. And I think that, you know, it's it's really hard to do that in the US because our momentum, the way we've staffed up, our Department of Transportation, both at the national and state level, leans heavy on road expertise and very light, on, you know, all the other, modes of transportation.
00:43:49:23 - 00:44:03:26
Miguel Moravec
So I want to use this opportunity to talk about a good example, here in the US, in your state, Colorado has these champions all the way up to the governor, your governor, you know, Governor Polis was out.
00:44:03:29 - 00:44:21:11
John Simmerman
And just so you know, that the Colorado is my adopted state. I'm actually in Austin, Texas. And so I'm not going to we can't we can't make that confusion that my governor is doing much. But yeah, I spend a lot of time in, in Boulder and a lot of time in Colorado. And I used to live there. But yeah, I have oh.
00:44:21:11 - 00:44:26:02
Miguel Moravec
I understand, I always you might get around there so. Okay. Yeah.
00:44:26:05 - 00:44:34:15
John Simmerman
I just don't want anybody to get confused to think what we're talking about. Governor Abbott here in Texas. Yeah. That would not get clarification.
00:44:34:18 - 00:44:53:09
Miguel Moravec
I would not, hold him up as a positive example, but, let's let's pull up, you know, there's a New York Times front page here. So this is really exciting. Ben Hollins and here Megan Kimball is the author, another, previous guest of yours. Yeah. Colorado wants road less traveled. Front page of the New York Times this summer.
00:44:53:11 - 00:45:16:13
Miguel Moravec
Describing this game changing, policy that, that said, hey, wait a minute. We have a pretty much complete interstate system. What if we actually shifted the dollars, to more closely match, like, some, you know, what folks in the Netherlands are doing? What if we prioritized mode shift to hit our climate targets, but also lower costs for Coloradans?
00:45:16:19 - 00:45:42:09
Miguel Moravec
And if you, go to the next slide here, you can see Governor Polis, you know, sort of championing that policy. As part of this big, transportation funding package. This was passed in 2021. And, you know, it was the result of so much effort from advocates like conservation Colorado, and sweep, and others.
00:45:42:12 - 00:46:15:00
Miguel Moravec
You know, who really said, you know, this is what we want. We want that choice, you know, abundant, transportation system. So to go forward, just one more visual. I'm really excited that this policy actually has teeth and change some things. That's amazing. And, US Department of Transportation, land, and it shipped it over a billion and a half dollars away from, you know, some of the highway projects you were talking about in Denver and put them into five whole new, BRT bus rapid transit corridors.
00:46:15:00 - 00:46:38:22
Miguel Moravec
It put, you know, $900 million into expanding existing transit networks. So you could have that completeness that you were talking about. Right. So that's a truly, multi and intermodal system. And then it also gave localities incentive. It kind of gave them points if, you know, if a, if a town in Colorado said, hey, we're going to do transit oriented development, we're going to put housing right next to this light rail station.
00:46:38:22 - 00:46:56:24
Miguel Moravec
So it's really easy to use, PDA factor. You know, counties got a credit for that. So this was like a big deal. A few other states have tried, you know, mode shift policy to less success. But this really, you know, they're still building some roads in Colorado, right? I'm not saying everything's perfect there.
00:46:56:26 - 00:47:33:05
John Simmerman
Yeah, but in fact, I was just going to just going to say that because the status quo over the past 80 to 100 years has really been build more roads, build more lanes. In the early days, it was like literally, okay, this newfangled automobile thing, this is kind of cool. We need to have more roads, etc.. A lot of people don't know that the, American Wheelman Association, now, the League of American Bicyclists, they actually were the ones that called for the first paved roads because they, at the time they were riding around on bumpy cobble roads and, and dirt roads and just like we need I didn't know their surfaces.
00:47:33:05 - 00:48:02:20
John Simmerman
And so they really, helped the road paving, thing, but yeah. Motored took over Peter Norton, documents this as a historian. Documents as quite well. But the reality is, you're absolutely right. We're still so addicted to the status quo of building more lane miles. And right there in Denver, right there in Colorado, we've got, you know, a roadway expansion going out to Dia, the Denver International Airport.
00:48:02:23 - 00:48:44:25
John Simmerman
And it's just mind boggling because that also has a light rail system, has a train, you know, going out there. But the it's really, really difficult. And part of the reason why it's so difficult is because there's so much pressure on the politicians and the leaders within our cities and our regions and our states. To be seen as doing something to bring relief to the Pita factor, which is, you know, gridlock and congestion and feeling like you're you're stuck in traffic.
00:48:44:27 - 00:49:06:26
John Simmerman
I would argue from a human behavior perspective that one of the factors that led to my getting on the train, using my bike, getting on the train, and then getting my way out to Arlington Heights before getting in the car was the Pita factor, because it was a pain in the ass. I thought I did the pragmatic choice.
00:49:06:26 - 00:49:40:03
John Simmerman
Your dad did the same thing. And so I think that a lot of cities and states give up on the fact that it's actually good that we have some gridlock because you'll have a self-correcting system. And this is also the reason why, from a human behavior perspective, why we see, behavior change and mode change when things get really painful for instance, like the Embarcadero Freeway coming down in the in the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989.
00:49:40:06 - 00:49:54:22
John Simmerman
And you had major, you know, you know, basically freeways completely collapse. And then they still to this day, they really don't know where all that traffic went. Is the great traffic at the. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
00:49:54:25 - 00:50:13:17
Miguel Moravec
Yeah, yeah. Jinx. Indeed. I and I was just going to say, you know, this, this pita factor, the pain in the butt factor. It also applies to policymakers. Right. Like a lot of policymakers might personally believe that, the best thing to do is expand transportation choices. But this is where I'll bring in federal funding.
00:50:13:19 - 00:50:36:00
Miguel Moravec
A lot of that money is, like, tied up and can only be spent on roadways. Right. So, you know, going back to our history lesson, the highway Trust fund, was created, you know, decades ago, back in the 50s to build out this interstate system. It was supposed to just be, like a one time thing, like, here's the money to build it, and then the gas tax will maintain those roads, and we should be good.
00:50:36:00 - 00:50:56:04
Miguel Moravec
That was the whole point of the trust fund. But not only has the gas tax failed, to, you know, pay for, roadways because of what, a combination of things it hasn't been tied to inflation for like 30 years. So it's missing a lot of dollars there. But also, you know, if if, you're a state decision maker, right?
00:50:56:04 - 00:51:27:11
Miguel Moravec
And you want to do something to improve congestion for your, constituents, you would have to raise new money in most cases to pay for the operations of a transit system, whereas, you know, the federal government will pay, like, up to 90% of a new roadway project, if that's what you go with. Right? So if, if, if, if, if you're thinking pain in the butt, like, okay, how do I you know, how do I take on congestion, you're going to take those plentiful and and basically free dollars from the federal government, right.
00:51:27:13 - 00:51:55:04
Miguel Moravec
And just build out more roadways because you're not incentivized or nudged to, you know, like raise a new tax or find revenue from somewhere else, to boost and build out the transit system. Now, I, I should qualify that some highway trust fund dollars can be spent on transit capital expenditures, right. But, you know, outside of Covid relief, normally you can't spend these, federal dollars on transit operations, so you can't spend them on, like, making the transit so frequent that it's convenient.
00:51:55:06 - 00:52:18:14
Miguel Moravec
And not a pain in the butt. And that, you know, that that sliver of transit funding is much smaller than what the states, are being handed in terms of, federal dollars. So policymakers, you know, have a pain in the butt factor, too. And, there's a lot of great things about how Colorado, passed their own policy to make it, you know, to kind of make it.
00:52:18:16 - 00:52:47:15
Miguel Moravec
Yeah, I want to if it makes it easier, but, you know, put more nudges, built in to meet these climate goals, and also centered the benefits of meeting the climate goals, that the, the state dot cdot released a a cost benefit analysis. It's what we based smarter modes on. But they released a cost benefit analysis showing that if they hit, the state climate goals and improved transportation choices, commuters would see a net $40 billion of benefit.
00:52:47:18 - 00:53:14:12
Miguel Moravec
And most of that is from, you know, less gas and less car crashes. So, I think leading with that approach. Right. Streamlining the access to, federal and state funding, and, and nudging policymakers, whether it's climate or just cost savings, just finding a policy levers to, to get them to think about those factors, to price them in, is a great strategy to, you know, actually promoting these large scale changes that we want to see.
00:53:14:15 - 00:54:07:08
John Simmerman
You know, and, and again, you know, going back to our discussion about those, you know, kitchen table sort of issues and things of that nature, again, leading with public health, leading with, fatality reductions and crash reductions and leading with, greenhouse gas emissions just doesn't resonate typically around that kitchen table. So I think it's one of the biggest challenges that we have to of like understanding that we may not lead, you know, to be able to successfully move forward with strategies to address these things, these big, huge nuts that we need to crack of, you know, climate change of public health crisis, of, you know, crashes and fatality crisis, you know, a roadway
00:54:07:08 - 00:54:47:06
John Simmerman
safety crisis, you know, able to hit all of these things that we need to do. We need to also make it be something that is understandable and attractive to, you know, to people everyday people around their kitchen table. So that they can understand the connection of these things. One of the things that popped into my head as you were just describing, you know, that challenge that we have and, and really kind of how we evolved the concept of building up the interstate system and then it then it sort of penetrated into the urban environments, which just shocked the hell out of Eisenhower when he found that out.
00:54:47:09 - 00:55:19:15
John Simmerman
And we talk about that in other podcasts. And you can if you're really interested in that, you can dive deeper into understanding that wasn't his envisioned. You know, his plan. It's all about being able to mobilize troops and get them across the continent. But one of the things that popped into my head was going back to the Dutch example is the fact that when you have these overlapping networks and the redundancy and the integration and things are working well, oh, by the way, they also have the highest level of driver satisfaction.
00:55:19:17 - 00:55:45:28
John Simmerman
So again, it's not about a war on cars and a war on drivers. It's what I like to call it's it's like really doing what we can to reduce that level of car dependency. So the people who really do need to drive or really want to drive or really enjoy driving still have that as an option. Again, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier is freedom and choice.
00:55:46:01 - 00:56:05:12
Miguel Moravec
Yeah. I mean, you know, if you're on, the highway to downtown DC, you want my dad on that train, right? That's less traffic for you. You get there sooner. All network starts somewhere. I want to really zoom in on that for a second, too. And I think one of the most promising kitchen table like, readily available ideas of where to start these changes is the school.
00:56:05:15 - 00:56:26:00
Miguel Moravec
Right. So many folks, have, parents now are dropping their kids off at school. There's less and less bus ridership and parents are sitting in lines for hours. Right. It's like dominating their, work week, dropping kids off. And, so, you know, not only is this a time waste, but the number two cause of fatalities for young people is car crashes.
00:56:26:00 - 00:56:48:05
Miguel Moravec
Right? And that includes pedestrians getting struck, sometimes outside of schools. But, if you know, a lot of states, what they're doing is dedicating money to start these, you know, complete, mobility networks with the notes being schools. So that number one, you can get parents, who want to skip the car line, you know, onto a bicycle with their kiddo, skipping that line, feeling good.
00:56:48:05 - 00:57:04:19
Miguel Moravec
And, getting kids, to to their, you know, first class. But number two, you also have a huge opportunity that, you know, the youth of the next generation. If you teach children how to ride a bike. Whether it's through the school program or so, they can get, to school on their own. You've now, shown that.
00:57:04:19 - 00:57:17:26
Miguel Moravec
Hey, another way is possible, right? Like I grew up in suburbia I never even dreamed of, you know, biking anywhere as a as a trip option until, I was exposed to DC and said, wait, like, this is a great way to get around.
00:57:18:03 - 00:57:22:29
John Simmerman
Yeah. And that brings us back to what you were talking about earlier, too, is the importance of land use.
00:57:23:01 - 00:57:43:18
Miguel Moravec
Yeah. Yes. Oh, yeah. And I think, you know, voters, constituents, neighbors are more willing to say, hey, let's let's try a bike lane to get kids safely to school. Right. And we start there at these nodes. You have a network so you can get, you know, folks from their homes to school easier. And then you can build out, once people are starting to see the benefits when kids come home happy.
00:57:43:18 - 00:57:46:04
Miguel Moravec
Right. Because I had a fun day at school and a fun bike ride home.
00:57:46:10 - 00:58:08:08
John Simmerman
Well, I'm glad you mentioned, you know, school streets as well. I'm going to pop on over to my playlist, from Paris. We talked a little bit about Paris earlier, and we talked about the incredible transformation that's been going on there. I've been documenting Paris, since 2015, and I've got 21 videos, out there, in my, my playlist.
00:58:08:15 - 00:58:38:06
John Simmerman
But at the very, very end of that playlist is, a tour that I did, in the neighborhoods over there. And we ended up looking at, a delightful, school street program and installation. It's actually a permanent installation. And what's really amazing and in fact, is probably even more powerful, than the, it's even more powerful.
00:58:38:06 - 00:59:04:11
John Simmerman
And this is, is actually part of it is rolling into this beautiful permanent installation of a school street. And so a lot of times the school street installations are temporary. They go up, there's a blockade, and, and and then this is a very, very brief thing. This is a professor Billy Fields from Texas State University talking about what we just rolled through.
00:59:04:13 - 00:59:27:02
John Simmerman
I think that this is actually even more impactful and more impressive that Paris has achieved. I think their well over 200 school streets that have been installed at this point. I make the point in one of my earlier videos in Paris that their major streets are still car choked, even though the the press is is like, oh my gosh, you got to see it.
00:59:27:02 - 01:00:04:00
John Simmerman
It's amazing. I can tell you one, one month prior to the Olympics this year, I was there and it was still, you know, gridlock, horns blaring, way too many rideshares, way too many taxis, well, way too many commercial vehicles. But then literally one block off of some of these main streets, you find these which are absolutely delightful. And I think that that's one of the sort of untold stories about the the you know, the Paris experience is that these side streets, these, these more people oriented streets, and then the school streets are really shining.
01:00:04:00 - 01:00:13:24
John Simmerman
They're such a great example for all of us to be embracing. There's no reason why any elementary school should be a traffic sewer.
01:00:13:27 - 01:00:22:05
Miguel Moravec
That's absolutely right. Yeah. If you're serious about Vision Zero, don't put a 40 mile per hour arterial anywhere near a school pedestrianized that thing.
01:00:22:05 - 01:00:26:21
John Simmerman
Well, if you're young, if you actually care about children.
01:00:26:24 - 01:00:29:01
John Simmerman
Don't torture them, you know?
01:00:29:04 - 01:00:46:06
Miguel Moravec
Yeah. Right. Yeah. The human element of driving. Right? If you're, you know, driving a two ton box of metal around and we're distracted as ever, or even if you're not distracted, we're just we're fallible. Right? Right. And why not be on a bicycle? Where. Oh, oops. I bumped into your, you know, your bike tired. You know, maybe I gave you a bruise, pops.
01:00:46:06 - 01:00:56:02
Miguel Moravec
Right? That's what we're talking about. It's the worst case scenario here. Compared to, you know, what we've seen with increased hood heights and larger and larger SUVs and trucks. Anyway, I.
01:00:56:02 - 01:01:25:13
John Simmerman
I want to be clear to you. I want to be clear, too. I'm not blaming parents at this point. No, I really want to make sure that we understand that what we're talking about here in fact, this is a great example. We should probably close this out with the fact that, you know, a big part of what Wes Marshall is talking about in his book, killed by a traffic engineer, is that Motor dam wants us to respond to this by blaming victims or blaming the drivers.
01:01:25:16 - 01:01:46:17
John Simmerman
And what we really need to focus in on is building the environment that really gives us the behavior that we want to see, and we can do that. A school street is a great example of, you know what, there's no reason why we're trying to force fit, you know, motor vehicles into this environment. Let's put a safety zone around this.
01:01:46:17 - 01:02:28:10
John Simmerman
And in these examples, they become extensions of the school and become park like, and it's truly, truly, you know, a brilliant way to go about it. And for me, it's easy. It's low hanging fruit. It's not that expensive to do this type of stuff. And the final thing that I'll say in my monologue here is that a lot of the stuff that we've been talking about, of trying to encourage, the increase in infrastructure, the increase in lane miles for active mobility options is dirt cheap compared to what we're spending on motor vehicles.
01:02:28:12 - 01:02:52:10
Miguel Moravec
Yeah. For that, for that billion dollars that, you know, would have gone to a few miles of land expansion, you can have every school in your state, you know, have some sort of protected, walking and biking infrastructure that we that we know will keep children safe. Right. So that's that's a really, powerful point, to leave on, for, you know, you know, this, this, this clean transportation, discussion.
01:02:52:10 - 01:03:12:20
Miguel Moravec
But one more thing to if if we have a moment that I want to introduce, you know, is, yes, there's, like, doing the right thing for doing the right things. Reasons. That's one imperative, but I also, I would be, reluctant to leave this conversation without talking about how great, clean transportation choices are for economic activity.
01:03:12:20 - 01:03:29:00
Miguel Moravec
Right? Because I know a lot of people being like, yeah, like I put a bike lane everywhere, but, like, what if customers don't show up because that bike lane is there? And this brings me to a fact that I just love sharing from the World Economic Forum of all of the land, in US metropolitan cities. Right?
01:03:29:03 - 01:03:53:20
Miguel Moravec
Really, only 1% of that is is walkable, right? Where you feel comfortable walking. There's sufficient investment infrastructure, but that 1% of US city land generates 20% of all US gross domestic product. All of it. Which is amazing, right. Like we that's that's really good for business. Like what's happening here. And, I want to just walk through the example of Arlington, Virginia.
01:03:53:20 - 01:03:58:07
Miguel Moravec
I think that's where I'm going to leave on, and that's the next visual.
01:03:58:09 - 01:04:28:03
John Simmerman
Before we get to that, I just want to I just want to take a sip of my coffee mug here. Absolutely. I mean, and that's that you're hitting on one of the things that the whole reason I came up with this, this phrase, streets are for people. And I put it on coffee mugs. I put it on hats, I put it on t shirts is because I want to emphasize the fact that what our streets for, you know, Chuck Brown talks about the difference between a street and a road and the street road of hybrids, which ends up being a mash up, which is called a road.
01:04:28:06 - 01:05:05:05
John Simmerman
When we think of what streets are, our streets have literally been around for thousands of years. It is where we have growth, wealth, you know, wealth growth. We this is where human vitality happens and commerce happens and all of that. So this does not surprise me at all that this land generates 20% of the U.S GDP. It's because this is what humans did is we we came together in our streets, which, you know, basically evolved from original pathways, which then, you know, became part of our clusters of houses and villages.
01:05:05:07 - 01:05:13:09
John Simmerman
And so it's where stuff happens. It's where real life happens. Therefore, streets are for people.
01:05:13:11 - 01:05:32:11
Miguel Moravec
My my mom agrees with your, streets are for people. My guts. It's the truth. And it's where value is created. Yeah, yeah, value is created where the people are and where people want to be. So let's. I want to talk an end on this case study from Arlington, Virginia. Right. So Arlington, Virginia, 30 years ago, some policymakers made a choice, right?
01:05:32:11 - 01:05:52:26
Miguel Moravec
And this is always a choice. They said, hey, you know, for a lot of reasons, we want to make, Arlington County more walkable. So they converted just 10% of, the county's land mass to a walkable urban area, near transit. They do that with zoning changes that I know you have other episodes on, but they did that, decision.
01:05:52:28 - 01:06:22:12
Miguel Moravec
So, because of that decision 30 years ago, that 10% sliver of land more than doubled its tax revenue, you know, to the county went from 20% of the county's, tax revenue to over 50% of it, just a small little area of walkable land. Now, why is that? We'll go forward one more. You know, in addition, to, you know, the fact that, you know, this is a transit service community where people have more choices, or in other words, people's this is where I get wonky for a second.
01:06:22:12 - 01:06:44:28
Miguel Moravec
People's VMT per capita decreased, right? Because they didn't have to drive as much. You know, it turns out people want to be in these clean air, walkable communities and, where they have, because they have lower transportation costs. Again, transportation number two, biggest bill that most people, you know, hit with when you give that money back to people, they'll spend it on consumer goods.
01:06:44:28 - 01:07:05:21
Miguel Moravec
They'll spend it on Main Street, right. And they'll pay a premium on main streets, to go, shop at your mom and pop shop because, you know, they have more money, on hand. And when they are shopping more and buying more and paying these premiums to be in this really desirable area that, you know, is, is a, a boost to, tax revenue for your local government.
01:07:05:21 - 01:07:23:01
Miguel Moravec
Right. And then the local government can do things like instead of blowing that money on, roadways, they can invest it, you know, not not that we should say blowing money on roadways, but just like it is very expensive to maintain, roadways because they are one of at least efficient, you know, per acre, modes of transportation.
01:07:23:01 - 01:07:57:09
Miguel Moravec
Right? They can invest that money back into education and other things that make a city desirable, to the point, that you advance to hear that. Like when there was a nationwide search, Amazon announced, hey, we're going to have a headquarters 2.0. It's going to be a, you know, big billion dollar investment. They selected Arlington specifically because of its access to mass transit, because even, you know, big corporations understand that the talent it's going to be, in desirable communities, that are walkable, transit served, and, and have great government services.
01:07:57:09 - 01:08:15:25
Miguel Moravec
So, you know, I leave with this example because we can talk about all of the moral imperative to do this, all of the health imperatives, but it's also like an economic make sense imperative to, you you have a walkable transit to our community. You make that policy choice and you get more Main Street business, opportunities and corporate investments.
01:08:15:25 - 01:08:32:15
Miguel Moravec
That's it's been proven time and time again. I've spoken with some saltier cities, who did not get that investment and recognized. Hey, you know, they said RMI what do we do, on this transit front to try and be more, you know, aperta or, you know, appealing. Excuse me. That's a better word. Appetizing for food.
01:08:32:15 - 01:08:37:14
Miguel Moravec
Appealing is for businesses, more appealing, to, you know, this kind of investment.
01:08:37:16 - 01:09:09:19
John Simmerman
Yeah. And I think that's a really good point to, to kind of wrap this up with is that. Yeah. I mean, having walkable, bikeable transit served communities and cities is good for business, too. It's good for the economy. It's not in conflict with unfortunately, there's oftentimes this narrative that, more cars equals more business. And that's unless you're in a specific type of scenario that is not the case.
01:09:09:22 - 01:09:40:04
John Simmerman
You know, having a, a traffic sewer running through the middle of your delightful downtown area just means you have a lot of cars flowing through, not necessarily flowing to and stopping and staying. Plus, you're compromising, especially when we see what happened to many main streets is when they became quote unquote, state highways. And they expanded from one lane in each direction to two lanes in each direction.
01:09:40:06 - 01:10:03:06
John Simmerman
It became to the worst of the worst, because then you have again that traffic sewer aspect. It's also one of the most dangerous types of of roadways that exists is a high speed, wide, you know, four lane road that has terrible performance on a, injury and fatality perspective. But it also kills businesses because who wants to actually be there?
01:10:03:07 - 01:10:41:19
John Simmerman
Do you want to sit in an outdoor cafe at a delightful restaurant, and sucking in, you know, all that pollution and noise and attitude and, one of the misperceptions and myths that kind of bubble up and emerge through a lack of understanding is that putting a bike lane in inner city is bad for business when the exact opposite is the case, which is what you were just alluding to, is if we make our communities where walkable and bikeable and can be accessed, accessed through transit, it's good for business, not bad for business.
01:10:41:21 - 01:11:02:10
Miguel Moravec
Absolutely. That's that's why a walkable areas are so much of U.S GDP. And I want to use another turn of phrase to really cement this concept like a high speed, roadway. Right? A high speed, car roadway is a place between places. Right. And you cannot create value nowhere. You need to have a destination that's worth investing in.
01:11:02:12 - 01:11:30:06
Miguel Moravec
And and slower speeds, multi-modal options. Right. Multiple ways to get to a, a walkable, Main Street type area. Like, that's what creates value. And you can never have value in high speed. You know, cars are sort of opposing, right? It's fine to have interstates. It's fine to have roadways to get between places, but you have to have these destinations that are people centered, to create value and to really, you know, propel businesses forward.
01:11:30:06 - 01:11:35:11
Miguel Moravec
So, the corporates know it, you know, we know it. And it's just about getting the message out now.
01:11:35:13 - 01:11:56:04
John Simmerman
Yeah. Well, and that's what we're doing right now is we're getting the message out. Folks, if you've enjoyed this, please be sure to pass it along, so that we can get this message out to more people. It doesn't do us any good if we're just bouncing around these ideas within our urbanism and active mobility, bubble. And so share it with friends, share it with family members.
01:11:56:04 - 01:12:02:06
John Simmerman
And, Miguel, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast. This has been an absolute joy and pleasure.
01:12:02:08 - 01:12:19:27
Miguel Moravec
John. The pleasure was mine. I love talking clean transportation choices and I'll plug the RMI Smarter Modes calculator one more time if you want to see the benefits in your state. If you could just achieve a little bit of mind shift what that might mean for your kitchen table benefits. Just Google search RMI smarter modes. John, this is a treat.
01:12:19:27 - 01:12:20:16
Miguel Moravec
Thank you again.
01:12:20:24 - 01:12:35:25
John Simmerman
He thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode with me. Go. And if you did, please give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, I'd be honored to have you subscribe to the channel. Just click on the subscription button down below and ring that notification bell.
01:12:36:00 - 01:12:57:15
John Simmerman
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01:12:57:15 - 01:13:25:02
John Simmerman
Okay. Commercial done. Thank you all so much for tuning in. I really do appreciate it. And again, another reminder, please join Ryan and I in our holiday live stream the fourth annual holiday live stream on Friday, December 20th. Okay, until then, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers and again, sending a huge thank you out to all my Active Towns Ambassadors supporting the channel on Patreon.
01:13:25:02 - 01:13:35:03
John Simmerman
Buy me a coffee YouTube. Super! Thanks! As well as making contributions to the nonprofit, every little bit adds up and it's much appreciated. Thank you all so much!