Mondays 161: After the Election with John Simmerman
November 12, 2024
John Simmerman of Active Towns joins the Mondays Show post election to talk about some of the transit wins. We also look ahead and wonder if LA really could go car free for the Olympics and whether Canada is ready for high speed rail.
Below are the show notes and items we chatted about on the show with John. You can also find this show on YouTube!
Voters pass Denver 7A – Colorado Sun
Nashville voters pass transit funding – Nashville Tennessean
Columbus passes transit measure – Columbus Dispatch
Washington voters save climate bill – Associated Press
Cobb and Gwinett transit measures fail – Saporta Report
LA County homeless funding tax passes – Los Angeles Times
Will LA Olympics go car free? – Slate
Canada will announce high speed rail plans – CBC News
Below is an unedited AI generated transcript:
[00:00:00] Jeff Wood: This is Monday’s at the overhead wire sponsored by our super generous patron supporters. I’m Jeff Wood, your host and joined by John Simmerman. Hey, John, how are you doing? [00:00:07] John Simmerman: Pretty darn good. Good to see you again. [00:00:09] Jeff Wood: Good to see you too. I’m so glad to have you on the show. Finally, I feel like this isn’t been in my head to do for a really long time. And then finally, we’re getting to we’re getting to chat with each other on the Monday show. So I really appreciate you coming on. [00:00:22] For folks that might not be familiar with you, maybe you can give us a little bit of a background on what you’re doing and what you’re up to these days. Obviously I was just on your show talking about our 500th episode. So thank you very much for having us on. You’ve been doing some really great stuff for the last several years. [00:00:34] And I just wanted to share that with folks. [00:00:37] John Simmerman: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you very much for inviting me to be on the Monday show. It’s always it’s always fun being on on podcasts as a guest that you listen to all the time. So I’m always I’m a frequent weekly listener of the Monday show Mondays on the overhead wire, as well as the talking headways. [00:00:54] Podcast. So thank you so much for doing that. Yeah. I like to tell folks that I am a veteran health promotion, professional and public health guy with 34 years experience turned into a storyteller and YouTuber and podcaster. I actually grew up not far from where you’re at in Northern California. [00:01:12] I grew up on a small little ranch in Northern California, but originally am from Los Angeles. And hopefully we’ll talk a little bit about the Upcoming Olympics that’ll be happening in L. A. And yeah, I went to school down at USC for undergrad, did my undergrad work there, went to Michigan for my graduate work, and then launched into my career in disease prevention and healthcare cost containment strategies did that for a good 15 years or so. [00:01:40] And then the latter half of my career has really been focused on the built environment. Health and the built environment and how our cities and our streets and our public spaces really influence our ability to live healthy, active lifestyles. And in 20, what was it 2012, 2013, I launched the active towns initiative. [00:02:04] And and again, it’s evolved and morphed into a YouTube channel and podcast, the active towns, YouTube channel. That’s awesome. That’s the thumbnail sketch of it. I always [00:02:15] Jeff Wood: love how people get to places because it’s always a, always coming from different directions. And I love that. [00:02:21] I’m wondering though if like that health background, If you’re, obviously the health and built environment connection is very strong as we know, as but I’m wondering if like how that kind of serpentine that way it’s way into your mind over the years that you’re a professional in the health space. [00:02:35] John Simmerman: Yeah, when I was a professional in the health space and actually working actively, not only with individuals and patients and then also expanding into small populations specifically, I was implementing corporate health promotion, professional yeah, corporate fitness programs and health promotion programs on corporate campuses. [00:02:55] So I was working with IBM and Motorola and big companies like that really trying to work on the overall health and well being of a contained population and environment. So we were trying to create an environment. That encouraged healthy living. It didn’t take long for me to realize that this was going to be a combination of the hardcore sciences of the physiology and the response of the body to. [00:03:25] Physical activity and what we eat and all that kind of stuff. But then also even at the graduate level, I was realizing, hey, I really need to bone up on psychology and behavior because so much of what we’re talking about is trying to change behaviors and change habits. And even at the graduate level, I started studying in that arena. [00:03:45] And in fact, 1, a 3rd of my coursework was in the MBA program in business. And then a 3rd of my coursework was in the public health program under the psychology of human behavior and health behavior. And then the final third was in the physiology side, the kinesiology and exercise physiology side of the house. [00:04:04] But yeah, that’s really one of the earliest. Things that I realized was just how important it was to deal with that psychology side of it and the human behavior side of it. And then fast forward to where we’re, the world that we’re in now of like really trying to shape the built environment to try to encourage healthier, active living, more walking and biking for meaningful purposes and getting to meaningful destinations. [00:04:28] There it is again, you’re dealing with human behavior and psychology and trying to do all this. So it influences everything from how we shape our built environment and how that kind of reinforces the behaviors that we’d like to see. But it also, comes in when we’re talking about. Framing and, presenting things in 1 way versus another way. [00:04:50] And then, of course the framing that we have all been subjected to in our grand experiment, especially after World War 2 that has been taking place. And we were all suffering from car brain. Motor normativity is a professor Ian Walker calls it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s all intermixed and mingled. [00:05:07] Jeff Wood: It is. It’s so interesting. And it’s interesting, like the paths you take or the paths you don’t take. Like when I was in college at University of Texas in Austin, I was, I ran track and cross country there. And. To stay eligible to run, you have to pick a major after your sophomore year. [00:05:22] And so I was like maybe I’ll be a kinesiology major. And then my kind of pathway was gonna be, I’ll go be a coach somewhere and, train other runners to to run distances and things like that. But then I took a geography class and I was like, oh, maybe I liked geography better. [00:05:35] I liked history a lot and I wanted to take a history class. But my mom, my, my dad and my sister had taken history and they had did nothing related to it in their professional careers. And so I was like, maybe not history, but maybe geography. And so I took these classes on cities and then it just took off from there. [00:05:49] So I went from like that kinesiology space that running space that, active lifestyle space to this weird map making space that has brought us both to the same end really, because I’m still fascinated by all the psychology, by all the, the physical connections, the active part of it. [00:06:06] And so it’s really funny how our paths go different directions, but end up in the same place. Yeah. [00:06:11] John Simmerman: Oh, the commonality is running. [00:06:13] Jeff Wood: Yeah. Yeah. Running. Running. I know it’s so crazy. And then running is such a, it was such a part, a big part of like my early life, obviously, because I ran track and press country in high school and college, and then a little bit professionally afterwards. [00:06:26] And just being able to, like we talked about on the show that we just, on your show, we were just on, like just being able to understand all the places in a 10 mile radius of. Of your central location is a game changer for understanding places, at least from the, from the Walker’s view or the runner’s view, because it’s totally different from when you see in that car brain windshield perspective that you usually get from driving around in cars. [00:06:50] John Simmerman: Yeah. And I’d like to say too and this goes with with riding a bike as well, especially riding a bike in a relaxed manner like utilitarian cycling whether you’re walking you’re running or you’re biking in that nature, you’re traveling closer to natural human speed. [00:07:06] Obviously, when you’re walking, you definitely are. And you really just, you learn the city in a different way. You have a grander appreciation for it. And that’s 1 of the double entendres that I like to emphasize with active towns, the active towns initiative, the active towns movement is I talk about, yeah, we’re trying to create places that really reinforce and encourage people to live that healthy, active lifestyle. [00:07:30] But 1 of the neat. Side benefits to that is that once you really understand your city at that level, and you’re engaging with people, because when you’re walking and biking, you do you engage with people much more. There’s a sociability that comes with that. And that’s where that double entendre is. [00:07:46] Not only are you active physically, but you’re also tend to be more active and engaged within your community too, because you understand your community at a much more intimate level. [00:07:56] Jeff Wood: And from this level, like your brain’s more active too. You’ve seen all those pictures of, the brain activity that happens when you go on a walk. [00:08:01] So there’s that part of it too, which I think is really fascinating as well. [00:08:05] John Simmerman: Yeah. In fact wonderful book that came out well over a decade ago now with from Dr. John Rady spark that looks at the the parts of the brain that really just turn on with physical activity. [00:08:18] And he specifically was studying that impact with children and how that really helps reinforce their ability to learn and all of that. But he does go out of his way to mention that it doesn’t turn off. That ability to turn your brain on really happens throughout our lifespan and it really kicks in again as we get older, next year, I’ll be 60 and it’s like, You really notice that with people who maintain a physically active lifestyle into the latter Stages of their life. [00:08:50] It really makes a big difference. Cognitively, wellbeing, emotional, all of that stuff. Yeah. [00:08:57] Jeff Wood: I just, I got to get out on more [00:08:58] John Simmerman: walks. [00:08:58] Jeff Wood: It’s funny. I ran so much that, and I don’t know if you’ve come across other folks that are like this, but I ran so much and I trained so hard and I was doing 10 miles on my Thursday easy day where I was supposed to like, maybe take some time off, but everybody else is running. [00:09:11] So I might as well run too. And I just stopped cold Turkey. And in two thousand and three and I started jogging every once in a while, but I just never got really back into it. I just never got myself out of it now living in San Francisco without a car, I’m walking around a bunch and that’s helpful to but that cold turkey thing, I think that’s one thing that just. [00:09:29] I think my body was rebelling or something, because I would start running and my legs would start to burn. And I just had this weird thing and I went to the doctors and they said, nothing’s wrong with you. It’s just maybe a mental block of some sort or something. And so I need to get back into something because it is so important as you get older. [00:09:44] I’m starting to think about that, especially given recent circumstances, the family members and stuff like that. Just, important for folks to understand, like how much this does impact your health. And obviously there’s lots of things that do impact your health, but being active is so important. [00:09:58] John Simmerman: Yeah. About a decade ago in literally in 2014 I competed in my final race and that was Ironman Boulder. So that was my 10th and final Ironman race. And so congratulations, impressive as a [00:10:12] Jeff Wood: miler and somebody who has run probably a marathon and training. I’m just like, anybody that does anything over those long distances. [00:10:17] I’m just like, okay. [00:10:18] John Simmerman: 140. 6 miles. There you go. Yeah. It’s like incredibly long day, but one of the interesting things that took place in my brain when I was like, okay, I’m done, with that phase, et cetera, not to say that I wouldn’t. I kinda just felt like I was beating myself up on the pavements. [00:10:37] And so I really shifted from that point forward to. Almost exclusively on soft surfaces. And you and I talked about this a little bit in, in my interview with you the other day introductions to gesture apogostresses together. Is I spend most of my time out in the green belt riding on highly running on highly technical trails that really slow me down and force me to walk occasionally frequently because I run by heart rate too and so I soon as my heart rate pings I walk until I bring it way down and then I’ll run again. [00:11:11] And I find that’s right. Given me a whole new lease on a running career in the sense that. I can feel like I can get back out there. I’m running much slower. I’m not beating my body up as much. You’re not getting that repetitive overuse injury that you would tend to get when you’re putting in big, long miles and all of that. [00:11:31] And it also psychologically. Slows your brain down because you’re not comparing yourself to, Ooh I used to be able to do a mile at this pace during this type of training, right? Because your brain thinks that you’re about 20 years younger than you actually are. [00:11:46] Jeff Wood: It does. It does. And I ran a couple of of jingle bell runs with some friends and I just couldn’t let it go that they were going to be faster than me. [00:11:53] I just like, and so I got to, Something in my brain, I got to turn off that competitive competitiveness a little bit because one of the things that keeps me from going is. Is just that idea that if I’m not going to run this marathon to the utmost ability, I know I can finish one. [00:12:07] That’s not an, that’s not something I’ve ever thought that as a problem, it’s just like, how fast would I go? And what would that compare to everybody else and all this other stuff that really is irrelevant. Now, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how fast I ran the marathon or whatever, but that’s always creeping in the back of my mind is okay, if I really trained for this, could I like, get under three hours and, or could I get to a qualifier for Boston? [00:12:26] Then could I do this? And it’s like this cascading thing that happens on, in your mind. And as, as somebody who’s do so much running and. Do so much, like just be super competitive. And that’s really the only place I’m super competitive. If you play board games with me, I’m like a little bit competitive, but it’s not like the end of the world. [00:12:41] I’m not gonna flip the table or anything like that. But if I, when I was running, it was like this like thing in my brain switched and I was like a totally different person. It was weird. And it just, for some reason, that’s just how it is. I don’t know what it is. [00:12:52] John Simmerman: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting too, because my brain is now wired into the stage that I’m at when I’m like really looking at the built environment and looking at communities at a much more holistic level. [00:13:04] And so now what I get really jazzed about is especially when I’m visiting other cities or visiting Boulder, which I tend to do at least twice a year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is I’m really honing in on how accessible this trail is for me to be able to get to. And so I’m like, evaluating things, because from here where I’m at, I can easily bite to the trailhead, lock my bike up at the Barton Springs pool, go out in the green belt and run. [00:13:30] And so I have that little. Little trick that I’m doing now. It’s okay how easy is it for me to access this trail? By not having to get into a car. Yeah. And that’s the trick that I’m working on because whenever I travel, I typically have my Brompton folding bike with me. And so that’ll be my transportation. [00:13:46] And then I’m like thinking, okay how well has the city done in terms of creating a safe place for me to lock that bike up so that I can access those trails. And in my brain, that’s what I talk about with the channel is these are activity assets, the protected bike lanes, the pathways, the trails, all of these things are activity assets, but so are things like safe places to be able to lock up a bike. [00:14:10] So that you can access the trail and not feel compelled to have to drive a car because you’re worried that your bike won’t be there when you come back. [00:14:17] Jeff Wood: Yeah, then you have to run all the way back home. Yeah, [00:14:21] John Simmerman: it’s not gonna be a [00:14:21] Jeff Wood: long way. It could be a long way. All right let’s get into the meat of the episode. [00:14:27] We have a lot to talk about. We just had an election. Some folks are going to feel sad. Some people are happy, but we’ll talk about some of the interesting and good stuff that happened in the transportation space. I want to thank everybody who’s ordered bus and bike scarves. We have the. [00:14:40] That’s only scarves. And then also you can see behind me, I have one of the bike only scarves in the lightweight version as well as the, actually the heavyweights have sold out. Let me know if you want it, if folks want another printing and I’ll try to see what we can do and figure out how to get those. [00:14:50] Cause they were very popular this time. Also, we’ve revamped our website. So go to the overhead wire. com and check all the stuff out that you can check out there. We’ve got our cars or cholesterol merch. We’ve got our Raymond Unwin’s town planning and practice book, audio book that you can check out. [00:15:04] We’ve also got our bookshop site, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We’ve got all that stuff. We don’t have time to go through all that today. But I really appreciate folks going and supporting the show, especially Patreon supporters as well. So this is episode 160, 161. We’re in session with John. And before we get to the show, I definitely want to let folks know you can get this podcast on iHeartRadio, Spotify Pocket Casts, Overcast wherever you get your podcasts. [00:15:26] Usually folks get them through Apple Podcasts. You’ll also be able to see this on YouTube as well. And then let’s get to the news. So it was a busy week. It was a crazy week. I think lots of folks are still maybe hiding under their beds, but that’s okay. We’ll be here for the duration to try to, help you through that. [00:15:43] There was a lot of ballot measures. And so I guess we’ll, first off, we’ll just go to Denver. So in Denver voters agreed overwhelming me to to Tuesday to let the RTD keep all of its sales tax revenue that would have been part of that would have been kept under lock and key through the table or amendment, which is like the taxpayer’s bill of rights. [00:16:00] And so now they can keep all of it to continue boosting their service, which has, the. And in Colorado, more generally, it feels like there’s been a huge discussion at the state level about transportation policy as someone who visits Boulder fairly often. I’m sure you keep track of this, John, and what’s happening. [00:16:18] And so that was a big win for Colorado and for Denver specifically on Tuesday. [00:16:23] John Simmerman: Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, I think it’s even grander than just Denver because the RTD is actually the, that’s true transit organization that covers all the way up to Boulder and Longmont. [00:16:33] And this really truly is significant. And one of the board members Lynn Geisinger, in, in the article that we, were looking at there, she talked about how. Important this was to be able to access this money, this funding and be able to, continue doing the good work. [00:16:49] And yeah, no, it was very encouraging to see that the voters you were hip with being all allowing them to go ahead and spend the money that they have and, and trying to make that happen and get that stuff out. And of course, The RTD in general, I use RTD, quite a bit. [00:17:06] Whenever I’m there, it’s the way to get to to Boulder, from DIA, the Denver International Airport is to get on the airport bus and come right in. And then once I’m in Boulder, best way to get to downtown Denver is to jump on the Flatirons flyer the bus and boom, you’re right down there. [00:17:23] And when I used to live in Boulder, I would ride the bus every single day. Because that’s at least for the two years of my decade that I lived in Boulder. I worked in downtown Denver and I would ride the Boulder Express is what it was called at the time in the nineties down to downtown Denver. [00:17:39] And so huge when I think for the people in the front range area there in the Denver metro area to be able to really emphasize on improving the ability to. Build that transit out and, put some fine tuning on it because they really got hit hard during the pandemic. So I think this is 1 of the things that is going to hopefully pay off in huge dividends. [00:18:04] And I’m keeping my fingers crossed for that, that BRT that needs to happen along Colfax, I think is 1 of the things that’s on there. And personally, as somebody who voted in 2004 for the tax increase in Boulder County for the RTD for the train line, the fast tracks train line that would go all the way to Longmont I hope that we’re able to see that actually come through. [00:18:29] At the time I was, I owned a home in Boulder County in N Wat, and I was walking distance to what would’ve been a future train stop right there in the village in n Wat. Which by the way, that’s. Why that village exists, it used to be a whistle stop, that little village, an old historic village. [00:18:46] They’re [00:18:47] Jeff Wood: bringing it back. The built environment is still there. We just need to continue to invest in the transportation that’ll get that going. Yeah, one of the biggest challenges [00:18:56] John Simmerman: though, Jeff and you, I’m sure you talk about this a lot is that those tracks that used to be, a combination of freight and passenger rail. [00:19:04] Ultimately ends up becoming the ownership of, or the property of freight rail. And that’s 1 of the biggest challenges that has had is like trying to deal with, how’s this going to work? And so it’s a huge challenge, not only in the Denver metro area, but in many places around the country where these legacy. [00:19:24] Lines the old trail or the old rail lines that exist out there. Sometimes it’s hard to be able to, get them trans transformed back into carrying people again. Yeah. Because they used [00:19:37] Jeff Wood: to, especially if they’re single track lines to gets, it gets harder to get to spread out the right of way and get a couple of tracks in there so you can get, bi-directional travel with good headways. [00:19:46] So yeah, I, I know that, that’s one of the sticking points is the freight. Railroad ownership, but also just being able to build a line that goes from Boulder and Longmont to, to downtown Denver. You have the station now and all the investment in the regional rail that’s happened since 2004, but, that one is the last one I think, and there’s, and even the governor is all about that one. [00:20:08] So we’ll see what actually happens. I know that there’s a big argument about that from the board and the regional This is also what happened last week because I got a cold. Oh no! And I have problems with talking for periods of time. Oh man, I have cough drops too. You’ll probably hear me sucking down cough drops every once in a while as well. Try to get my throat back into normal. What a week. What a week. So let’s go to Nashville. [00:20:34] Shall we? Nashville’s choose how you move 3. 1 billion transit plan is moving forward for voters on Tuesday gave the overwhelming green light from a, for a major overhaul of the city’s bus system, sidewalks and traffic signals with 66 percent of the city voting to approve the plan. The approval means Davidson County sales tax will increase by a half cent, which will go directly into funding the transit plan. [00:20:54] And yeah. This was a big win for the mayor. This was a big change from what they voted on in 2018, which was a bunch of subway tunnel, a bus driver, transit, and light rail. What did you take away from this one? [00:21:06] John Simmerman: The thing that, that, surprises me about a lot of these things is that they’re tied to sales tax. [00:21:15] And I guess that makes sense, but it does concern me because we know that sales. Go up and down. And so you’re not really looking at a set amount of money, like what would come place if there’s a bond. But I don’t know. I’m pretty stoked to see the number of wins that we have seen across, the entire country and looking at these various initiatives that have come through, but I am a little concerned that they’re all, they all. [00:21:42] Not all of them, but many of them seem to be tied just to sales tax. I’m not an expert in this. Maybe you have more experience in terms of this as being a legitimate funding mechanism, but I do. It’s a [00:21:54] Jeff Wood: popular one because it’s a little bit easier, I think, to get voters to pass. A sales tax of a quarter cent or a half cent or a cent, and there’s other ones on our list today that we’re gonna talk about that go any number of different ways with the sense the number of, the percentage of the scent that they take. [00:22:10] But I think it’s, to a certain extent, it’s a little easier to have that vote. And it’s also, the legislation may be in certain states that allow it. Is, is easier as well, because you might have a conservative state that you have to go to like in North Carolina, or even in, I think, in Nashville, you have to ask the state, be like, can we have this election? [00:22:27] It’s not like roads where you can just build them in there or they give money out through formula funds or whatever. Usually you have to have an election of some sort because the state required it because of, just, I guess this is the way that. Some of these States operate another, option that a lot of places they have, like in Seattle and other places like car tabs where or hotel taxes or different, you know, mechanisms like that. [00:22:48] You also have property taxes. I know in the East Bay, they have property tax. That’s like a levy on certain, number, an amount of money on a number of property. Yeah. And I think that’s actually more fair to be honest the property tax versions, because the, you mentioned a bond measure, but I think like just raising revenue overall. [00:23:03] Property taxes are generally the most stable overall of the tax revenue because property is in the same place all the time. It doesn’t go up and down based on the whims of the, of who’s shopping or who’s not shopping. But also the value of the transit system is inherent in creating value for the property that’s around it. [00:23:19] And so that’s another thing, we talk about value capture a lot, but that’s actual regional wide value capture versus at the station area or things like that. Sales tax is just one of those things that I think people are frustrated with to a certain extent, like you are, because. [00:23:31] It’s not very equitable people who are lower income are going to pay more from that perspective on the sales tax, but it’s also the thing that’s enabled the easiest through state legislatures. It’s one of those trade offs that you have to make in order to get some of these things to pass. [00:23:46] I wish it wasn’t the case. And I wish also that, like roads, we could just be like, okay, we have this plan, this regional plan that everybody’s agreed on, or the, the MPO has agreed on let’s flex funding or get things going to where we can spend money. On the transportation system rather than just roads. [00:24:00] And then, hey, let’s have an extra bonus sales tax selection just so we can build our transit system. [00:24:05] John Simmerman: What’s interesting too, is, based on the entire money that they’re projecting to be able to raise here. They’re only looking at about 86 miles of upgraded sidewalks. A whole bunch in smart signals and it just, a lot of it seems to be that there’s some upgraded bus stops, some transit center stuff. [00:24:25] A lot of it just seems like it’s still car brain oriented. 1 of the things I’ve never been to Nashville. Have you been in Nashville? I haven’t either. No. I just wonder that, is that yes, I get it. That’s cool. If you can upgrade 86 miles of sidewalks, what’s the timeline going to be on this? [00:24:45] How long is it going to take? And then. But at the same time, it’s like the distances that you’re talking about, because when you think of a transit stop, a meaningful transit stop, your walk shed is typically just about a half mile. If we’re really looking at distances where that’s not a viable transit stop, to be able to bring in enough of a walk shed of people, using that transit stop, then you go back to one of the things that I try to re Really emphasize in highlight is just how magical it is to have a viable bike network and transit option especially if you’re talking about transit, reaching further destinations, you’re going to get on that bus or that train to be able to get to your work center, which is. [00:25:31] Further than you would be comfortable riding your bike. So let’s just say you’re going to the next village over, in that transit district. And you’re not going to ride your bike the 10 miles there, but you can easily catch, a BRT or a light rail system or some sort of transit system to be able to get to that location. [00:25:49] That’s where the magic of being able to have a, network that, that 1st and last mile or 2 miles is feasible through bikes, including bike share systems and things like that. So that’s just where my brain always goes to is knowing that humans are lazy, and we, and again, this gets back to the human behavior side of my work is understanding that we are hardwired to take the easy way. [00:26:16] And so if we. If our choice is, walking a mile and a half to get to a meaningful transit stop, but our other option is reach for the car keys, we’re going to reach for the car keys, if that’s available to us. So yeah, [00:26:31] Jeff Wood: one of the things about this that’s interesting, especially this election in Nashville specifically, is that they lost really, like I mentioned earlier, they lost really bad on election previously, and that one had a lot of transit lines at a subway, had bus rapid transit, a lot of investment, and this time they decided and also had some mayoral scandal rights the mayor previously I’d gotten into trouble over something specific that I can’t remember, but it would, there was a scandal that maybe tank the whole thing as, as well. [00:27:00] But Freddie O’Connell, who’s the mayor now is actually a transit advocate forehand and one of the things he was trying to do, which was trying to move something forward that would actually get passed. And I think this is the struggle that we have in a lot of cities because we have to pass a ballot measure is who are we going to get to vote for this? [00:27:16] And why are they going to vote for this? And this was, I think a lot of folks is including myself like this. This is a very conservative plan. It’s a very conservative investment. It’s only 3. 1 billion. He even mentioned that, we’re not going to do this right away. It’s going to be over the next 10, 15 years or so that we’re gonna make this investment. [00:27:33] And the primary investment that they’re going to make is actually in bus service. Yeah. And so when you see this happening in a place like Nashville, which is growing like gangbusters and, getting a lot of investment from, just the outside world because so many people are moving there. [00:27:47] You wish that they would actually make a large, bold choice to try to move forward and actually try to move people around rather than just roads. But I think they made a somewhat calculated calculated bet on what they were what they could pass and what was actually going to get past the voters in national. [00:28:02] I think, I guess by passing it by so much, they made the right choice, but it remains to be seen what the impacts are going to be. I am looking forward to seeing what the transit service is going to do. For bus ridership because in 2006, Charlotte passed a light rail ballot measure, but also it had a hundred percent increase in service for its for the bus service. [00:28:22] It wasn’t talked about as much because it wasn’t a shiny, sparkly light rail line that they built on the south corridor, but the ridership did increase by like a hundred percent. And so you saw this investment actually make a difference in how much people are riding the bus. And so I hope we see that in Nashville as well. [00:28:36] John Simmerman: Yeah. Yeah. [00:28:37] Jeff Wood: Yeah. I hear you. Next up local sales tax is set to increase next year by a half percent. After central Ohio transit authority sales tax levy passed on Tuesday, the levy permanently renews an existing 0. 25 percent sales. This one was the really weird one. I was like, what’s going on here? The 0. [00:28:52] 25 percent sales tax and adds another 0. 5 percent sales tax combined with another 0. 25 percent sales tax levy. That is not on the ballot. Approval of this levy brings COTA’s total share to 1, 000. Of sales tax to 1 percent and Franklin County’s total sales tax to 8%. I think that’s one of the problems too, that we’re going to see is we’re getting up in the upper bounds of what people are going to actually care about in terms of sales tax, 8, 9%. [00:29:14] That’s pretty big compared to some places where it may be set with seven or 6%. [00:29:18] John Simmerman: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And it’s it’s estimated to bring in what, 6.2 billion by 2050, so that, that’s [00:29:26] Jeff Wood: it’s by 2050. It sounds big, but it’s like a rounding error on an interchange. A couple of interchanges, right? [00:29:32] So they’re gonna build bus rapid transit, they’re gonna do some sidewalks. This one’s 500 miles of sidewalks. Yeah, they’re actually going to do more bypass trails and stuff like that. But still 2050 is a long way away. [00:29:44] John Simmerman: And I think that’s one of the things that I try to encourage cities to consider is that if you’re this far behind on your sidewalk network and your pedestrian infrastructure, and you literally probably have nothing. [00:30:03] In terms of bicycle infrastructure, but you seem to have the will to from the populace, the electorate to pass some of these bills you might want to consider, that not being just a sidewalk, you might want to consider building a significant multi use path approach to it where you can, becomes a much more effective. [00:30:23] Palatable option for an all ages and abilities facility versus necessarily going in and, telling people, hey, this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to take X number of lanes away from, the motor vehicles and create protected and separated bike lanes within the roadway. [00:30:42] A boy, many of these places that we’re talking about. Wouldn’t. Be really all that excited about doing that Columbus might, but some of the outer areas around Columbus, probably not so much. In a suburban context, and I am thinking about Carmel, Indiana, as an example where Mayor Brainard when he was there really didn’t support the idea of. [00:31:07] Bike lanes protected bike lanes within the motor vehicle right of way. He really looked at it of how do we create wide sidewalks that are actually side paths where you have a mixture of people walking and biking at the same time. Now, that means that you have to make sure you build them wide enough. [00:31:27] Yeah, and the wider the better and then you’re then you have to work with okay. How’s that going to work at the intersections and at the cross streets and that’s where, continuous elevation side paths and sidewalks through the minor intersections and the driveways are essential. [00:31:44] And then making sure that you have protected, interactions at the intersections and in the case of Carmel, you’re talking about lots and lots of roundabouts because it’s the roundabout capital of the United States. Yeah. Yeah. So there’s ways to do this. And I think that it’s something that could work in a Nashville. [00:32:01] It could work in, a more conservative state as a whole, like in Ohio to be able to have Hey, a, This is good. Everybody seems to be thumbs up to sidewalks. Okay let’s make the sidewalks and side paths wide enough to be able to be multimodal. These are very suburban contacts typically. [00:32:21] So the numbers aren’t huge. So it’s not like we’re talking about San Francisco or New York or even downtown Austin for that matter, where, the numbers are such where you’re going to have a lot of conflicts between people on bikes and people walking. I’m not thinking of sports cyclists here. [00:32:38] I’m thinking about kids being able to get to school. I’m thinking about the elderly being able to run errands, on their electric assist cargo bike, things of that nature. So [00:32:49] Jeff Wood: I was in China recently. And one of the things that I noticed was tons of multi use pass on the side of large roads, especially, and you could drive anything in it that didn’t have four wheels. [00:32:59] So they all had to be electric. You couldn’t drive them. One of the things they do, they make sure to do is keep out gas powered vehicles, but like specifically like this, right? Yes. Where you have these pathways where, basically you can walk, you can ride a bike, you can ride an e bike. [00:33:14] You can have these two wheelers, you can have a three wheeler, as long as electric and they’re all just going back and forth. A lot of it was actually used for delivery drivers and they, this huge delivery industry in, in, in China where people are getting stuff all the time. And so a lot of these trails, like it was, Pretty impressive how much space they had for a place that was separated from vehicle traffic. [00:33:33] And it was very I felt safe walking, even if there were electric vehicles that were going fairly fast, I still felt better than if there was like a car or something else. Or if I felt like we were, in the right of way as it were. [00:33:44] John Simmerman: Hey, did you see the news today about the huge number of people riding bikes to go get dumplings? [00:33:51] Jeff Wood: I saw that. I saw, I haven’t read it yet, but I saw I think Doug from the war on cars posted that. And I love that idea. It’s from what I’ve understood. I haven’t read the whole thing, but it sounds cool. And it sounds like they’re trying to crack down on it. I don’t know. What’s going on [00:34:03] John Simmerman: because there were like, tens of thousands of students doing it. [00:34:06] So they’re just like, Hey, let’s go [00:34:07] Jeff Wood: get dumplings and [00:34:08] John Simmerman: just ride. And they were over overwhelming the the streets and the highways. And so it was really funny. And yeah, they had to clamp down on it a little bit. Cause it overwhelmed the system, but it was funny. [00:34:18] Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. [00:34:19] John Simmerman: And it was funny because they mentioned two things on the the NPR post on it that I listened to is that one, it was, they wanted something fun to do that was cheap. [00:34:29] And they decided let’s go ride bikes and then they use bike share bikes to be able to get to that, those locations. And I thought that’s super, super cool. [00:34:37] Jeff Wood: That’s awesome. Instead of, designing our system for for commutes, maybe we should design it for a dumpling access. That’s, that’s the next design. [00:34:44] Dumpling oriented transportation would be the next best thing. So good. So good. Just two years after it was passed, the climate commitment act, one of the most progressive climate policies ever passed the state of Washington. Faced repeal effort from conservatives. It requires major polluters to pay for the right to do so by buying allowances it’s called cap and invest one of the allowance, one allowance equals one metric ton of greenhouse gas pollution each year, the number of allowances available for purchase drops with the idea of forcing companies to find ways to cut emissions by 2030, supposed to slash carbon emissions almost half of 1990 levels by the year 2030. [00:35:17] So this actually did not pass. And if it would have passed, it would have gotten repealed. And big win for the climate in Washington state, very exciting that they keep the, they get to keep their cap and invest program. One of the big things that actually they’ve been spending money on from this is salmon runs. [00:35:32] And so the state D O T is actually having to basically, cut Get rid of culverts and stuff that keep salmon from going through the, through the rivers to their spawning grounds. And it’s going to cost a ton of money. And some of the money is coming from this specific thing. And it was required as from federal court to, for the state DOT to do this because of because of lawsuits from the Native Americans that were living up there. [00:35:54] And so this stuff, it’s all interconnected. Obviously this is a a cap and invest law. It has to do with carbon emissions, but it also impacts our transportation systems as well. And what the dot is required to spend money on [00:36:05] John Simmerman: it is actually. And in a recent episode that I had where I was chatting with a few folks from the cascade bicycle club, they were talking about how important it was for them to fight off this recall of this and, this repeal. [00:36:20] And so very encouraging to see that the electorate came out and said no. We’ve the reason why this is in place is a very good reason. And we hate to things we see things go to the culture war kind of things and the political war types of things of electoral politics and all that. [00:36:38] But the fact of the matter is that, or what I’m trying to say is partisan politics. And this was a very encouraging thing because they talked about how some of this funding is critical to the active mobility and transit and all of those things, because it is, it does point back to a lot of those investments that, as you just mentioned. [00:36:57] Yeah. Transportation side. Yeah. [00:36:59] Jeff Wood: I think it’s really important to think about, also what, some of this money is going to be spent on. I know that there’s activists and stuff that are up there that is trying to think about we have this money from cabin invest in, even in the California, we have money from cabin trade that goes to investments, but we want to make sure we would invest them in things that actually reduce emissions. [00:37:15] Not just like some pet projects we think will reduce emissions too. So I do also want some sort of system that, that actually makes those determinations from a data standpoint, because I think if we get too far into making these investments that don’t really work, we could undermine the benefit of the system as well. [00:37:29] So I’m glad they’ve, I’m glad we voted not to repeal it, but I also want them to figure out what are the things that are going to be needed to be invested in so that we can keep this kind of momentum going and reducing emissions overall. [00:37:40] John Simmerman: The other thing that I like to reinforce, and I do this frequently is, understand from a human behavior perspective that sort of one issue politics, one issue approaches to interventions oftentimes don’t really be. [00:37:57] Work that well, in other words, coming from public health, I can tell you definitively if that’s what I’ve leagued with is public health that do this, and it’ll impact positively public health. It doesn’t resonate with folks. Same thing with just saying that, do this and it’ll do wonders for our climate situation. [00:38:15] It doesn’t really resonate that well. What really resonates that well with the electorate, I think is. Understanding that, these things that we’re trying to implement will have a broad based improvement across a myriad of factors, which, oh, by the way, include public health and the climate situation and the economic vitality and vibrancy of the area. [00:38:40] And, you see where I’m going with this. It’s it’s all of these things. And yes, we still need to, Do some data capture and measure some of these things to the best of our ability, but at the same time, understanding that we’re talking about a very complex system. That is multivariate and they’re never going to be able to, from a research perspective, control all the variables anyways. [00:39:01] And so you have to have a, an appreciation for understanding that, doing the right thing and doing these things, take a step back and say, does this make sense? Yeah, it does make sense. And by the way, we can do this. So it’s wonderful to see that this, stood the test of the electorate and they’re, they saw through it and didn’t buy into the doom and gloom and the scare tactics that were being put that called for this repeal. [00:39:27] But at the same time, I look at it and say Hey, this is a good thing. And by the way, it’s going to be good for the economy. It’s going to be good for public health. It’s going to be good for all of these other things. In addition to the climate, which was the main. Purpose of this. [00:39:39] Jeff Wood: Yeah. And as we mentioned on the show all the time, everything is connected. [00:39:42] And so all the things that you’re talking about specifically, it’s hard to say this thing is going to lead to this thing, but this thing will lead to this thing this thing all happening together in, in harmony. And I want to make sure I want to share, I guess I’m clear that I’m not, I don’t, I’m not. [00:39:57] In favor of being too technocratic about it, but I also want to make sure that we can, win the fights that we’re going to have because of it and not, lose them because something isn’t working the way maybe it should. I totally agree with you on those points. Next up voters in Cobb and Gwinnett counties have rejected ballot measures to expand public transportation. [00:40:14] Both referendums proposed a 1 percent sales tax that would have used to, but would have been used to fund public transportation improvements in the county. So this was one of the negative ones that we saw that evening on Tuesday. I don’t. Really have much background information on why particularly people who are not voting for it. [00:40:31] I just know that they lost and I’ll have to look into it later at some point. Yeah, [00:40:36] John Simmerman: well, and we did see, overall, when you think of when we look at, what transpired on Tuesday. I think that. Overall, we saw some very encouraging things. We just, went through 3 or 4 of them. [00:40:48] Kia did a good job of highlighting quite a few others, including right there in the Denver area. We had Westminster, pass. Up in mountain village, Colorado, which is where tell your ride is they passed a 246 million in sales tax and property and lot lodging tax increases to work on some really fun stuff. [00:41:09] And from a transit perspective, including a gondola but sadly, also some of the other things that didn’t, Pass were in San Diego they rejected a sales tax increase that would have raised 350Million dollars a year for transit. And, that 1 sticks out for me because I used to spend a lot of time in San Diego. [00:41:28] I would surf down there and share an apartment with my sister for a short period of time there in San Diego and North County and it’s San Diego just. Sometimes just blows my mind. Some of the things that comes out of that part of your state, my state, my original state, I was going to say, it’s closer to [00:41:46] Jeff Wood: where you are. [00:41:47] You’re yeah. It’s crazy. San Diego is such an interesting World down there. I will just call it a world. It’s, there’s a lot of stuff that’s happening and there’s a lot of interesting interventions and one of the most, popular light rail lines is the one that goes between the border and downtown San Diego. [00:42:02] The blue line, the original 1, 19 81 was one of the first light rail lines in the country to be built after the subway, kind of expansion of the sixties, fifties, sixties and seventies. Yeah. And they did it at low cost. They got it done and it’s been very successful in, in, bringing people back and forth. [00:42:16] And so they have stuff like that where, the light rail system is one of the most efficient in the country in terms of how much they pay and how much they spend for operations and stuff like that. And they just built an extension, but then you have stuff where they, sandbag was trying to do a road pricing tax. [00:42:29] And then, an election happened and a lot of the people got kicked off. And They reverse course. And so it’s there’s a lot of it’s a very it’s not so it doesn’t lean one direction in terms of like your general electoral politics. And so it has a lot of interesting kind of weaves and bobs that happen a lot in its lifetime of what happens. [00:42:46] It’s still in the state of California, but it’s also a little bit different than Los Angeles or a Bay area. [00:42:50] John Simmerman: Yeah, Bruce apple yard who is obviously a professor down in that area. He and I were chatting a little bit about, the politics that are down there and the realities that are down there. [00:43:00] And recently they’ve been doing some pretty good things on, from a A home perspective, trying to get some affordable housing moving and some reimagining of some large properties. I think there’s a huge mall that’s being completely re envision and going to be a multi use development and all of that. [00:43:18] But, yeah, some of the things that happen out of there and I know from an active mobility perspective, we’re always running into a whole bunch of vehicular cyclists that seem to have retired in that area. That’s. It’s good weather John Forrester types that are there, but speaking of active mobility, one of the things that that Kia did highlight on her list. [00:43:39] It was very last bullet point on one of the things that didn’t pass. This is sad is the voters of Western Idaho the county of Kootenai, which is where Coeur d’Alene is located. They decided not to expand a trail system. It’s going to be a major expansion to their local trail systems. [00:43:59] And I’m like, oh, man, that would have been, it’s you rarely see, trail systems and pathways, actually suffer a massive defeat because I like to say that, one of the things that crosses party lines are separated, pathways and trails. Very rare that you see them just. [00:44:17] Literally get voted down [00:44:20] Jeff Wood: quarter lanes, an interesting spot to won’t go into much detail, but yeah, [00:44:24] John Simmerman: well, there’s some beautiful, there are some beautiful rail trails up in that district in that area. So that’s why I’m surprised that I’m sure that’s. Perceived as being an overwhelmingly positive activity asset, as I like to call them in that area. [00:44:38] Jeff Wood: So that whole part of the country is really amazing. Montana, the Idaho and those areas, it’s really nice to need to spend more time going up there. Do we have any other election stuff on Kia’s list? Because I think I’m out of I’m out of mind. I will measure a past in Los Angeles, which gives another 1 billion for homelessness. [00:44:58] It’s interesting to see what that will mean for a city that already spends a ton of money on homelessness. Yeah. That passed too. And so there’s a lot of housing stuff that passed as well in addition to the transportation stuff. [00:45:09] John Simmerman: Since you brought up Los Angeles, let’s actually go to our original list of and talk a little bit about the Olympics since we teased that a little bit earlier because I know that you enjoy, I love the Olympics. [00:45:20] It’s one of my favorite [00:45:21] Jeff Wood: things ever. It was in London in 2012 and I, people probably listen to the podcast are probably tired of me hearing about my experience there. But 2012 was so great in part because I had friends that were running and two silver medals among the lot of them and got to hold one. [00:45:35] They are really heavy. But also people think that you won that if you’re holding it and it’s weird to have to defend people, don’t touch it. Don’t touch my friend’s solar metal. But yeah with the Olympics in just four short years, Los Angeles has promised to make the games car free, but how would something like that be accomplished in the big auto centric region? [00:45:51] Mayor Karen Bass has signed an executive order to create a capital infrastructure plan, but perhaps Ciclovia holds the answer. This was an item in slate by Henry Grabar, one of our favorites. And just talking about some of the ideas that folks have had about how do how do you. Make a very car oriented place. [00:46:07] Los Angeles is good. Has a lot of transit ridership. They just passed up a million writers on their system again, which is a lot. But also, it’s known for being very auto oriented in terms of the way that a lot of folks get around there. And I will say there’s just a lot of interesting ideas in here. [00:46:22] What did you take out of this one? It’s not going to happen. [00:46:25] John Simmerman: And I’ll say that definitively. It’s not going to happen. It didn’t happen in, in, in 1984. What did happen in 1984? And that was my freshman year at USC in Los Angeles. And so I was part my, my campus was part of the Olympic village. [00:46:39] But what did happen was they had effective shuttles and buses and things of that nature. I think that part will happen. What intrigues me about. What’s happening now for 2028 is the, this idea that Aaron Paley has and thinking about this concept of this festival trail and trying to connect a lot of these destinations with a combination of the build out of the transit network, which Los Angeles is leading the way from a North American perspective in terms of investment in their transit, the rail transit, the system that’s been built out. [00:47:15] Alyssa Walker and I have talked a little bit more extensively about, the realities of this and she has a wonderful new newsletter torched that is really focusing in on the realities of the fact that the city is not going to be able to deliver on that promise. But let’s hope that they can deliver on some legacy projects that will live on afterwards. [00:47:36] And One of the things that I also as a reality check for my bluntness of saying it’s not going to happen was I went ahead and visited Paris this year. I was there 1 month before the Olympics there in Paris to evaluate just how car free it really was there. And it wasn’t, it was still, the main boulevards were still chopped, choked full of blaring taxis and delivery vehicles. [00:48:00] And it was, it was still on those main boulevards. It was still a mess. What the mayor did, though, Mary Hill Doggo did, though, is that she has had a long standing, investment and dedication to trying to transform a lot of the side streets. And so what was absolutely delightful to document where the school streets and the pedestrian oriented streets, off of the main drags that were there. [00:48:26] It’ll be interesting now that she has just she, meaning that Maryville Dalgo has just announced that they’re going to be. Creating a no go zone for people driving through the middle of the heart of the city. And it’s interesting that took place after the Olympics were all done and wrapped up that now they’re announcing though, by the way, I hope you got used to the fact that you weren’t able to drive wherever you wanted to, because it’s going to stick. [00:48:49] It’s going to stay because. Honestly, it’s and I tried to produce a few videos to do a compare and contrast between the side streets, which were absolutely delightful to walk and bike on. And, the main drags where we had protected bike lanes now, but it was still an auto sewer and you’re being. [00:49:09] Subjected to a lot of pollution, a lot of horns and a lot of aggressive drivers. Even Paris didn’t quite make it, but I’m sure that Los Angeles, which really has tremendous weather, all year round in Los Angeles. I’m 4th generation Angeleno. So my family’s been there since the 1800s and I would love nothing more than to see. [00:49:32] That’d be a walkable bikeable area. But I don’t think it’s going to happen that it’s going to be car free, but there is that possibility if they can really link a lot of those venue sites and lean into the combination of transit. And what I was mentioning earlier before is the magic to those transits because, those transit hubs. [00:49:54] Is make sure that you’ve got the biking network in place. That is good because again, the distance that we’re going to be willing to walk is really only going to be about a half mile, maybe 3 quarters of a mile. If it’s a meaningful transit destination or stop. [00:50:09] Jeff Wood: That’s what I took away from my London experience as well in 2012 when I was there for two and a half weeks was everything, all the venues and everything that you wanted to go to for the games, they were all connected by the tube or you could get there in other ways. [00:50:21] The Boris bikes were just a big thing at the time still. And you could go and get to the places where you wanted to go and you didn’t really have to actually interact with any of the heavy car streets because you could actually access through the tube and then the places that they closed down where the place is just immediately outside the venues like around the beach volleyball court that was next, right next to 10 Downing street and things like that. [00:50:42] But what I did take away from that was that, especially if you’re thinking about Paris or London and comparing that to a place like Los Angeles was like this idea for the festival trail might actually make sense because you are connecting all the venues together with maybe one or two major streets, not all the streets, but maybe one or two major streets that you can turn into these hubs Ciclovia permanently for two weeks. [00:51:04] It’s not going to stay, unfortunately. I just don’t see the momentum for that. Type of thing staying, but I can see it happening for two weeks. We saw what happened when the four or five highway got shut down for a little while, people stop, just stop going out and stop driving. They know that they’re not supposed to go anywhere because something crazy is going to happen. [00:51:19] They don’t want to get stuck in traffic. Sure. The Olympics are going to be the same thing. I feel like where people are going to know that the Olympics are going on. And so if they want to go places, they’re going to know what places to avoid. And if this festival trail exists, which is basically this long connected single road or multiple roads that connect all the major venues together, whether that’s through bus lanes making them open for bikes and things like that, just keeping cars off them completely. [00:51:42] I can see that being the thing because that’s what happened in Paris. And I feel like in London as well, which is like, You have the tube, you have the access to get to the places. We’re just going to have to do it on the surface in Los Angeles versus underground. Like they did in Paris and in London. [00:51:55] John Simmerman: Yeah. And I’m glad you mentioned, the four or five being, a no go for a period of time Los Angeles has seen this multiple times over the past few decades where an earthquake would happen and a portion of the I 10 freeway will collapse. Or something else will happen and, you’re not able to go on your normal route that you would ride, that you would drive. [00:52:18] And just like with the Embarcadero freeway going down, in the Loma Prieta earthquake Loma Prieta. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of 1989. When that came down, humans. We’ll adapt, we will change, and I think that’s where there is that opportunity to take a bold step and change that built environment. [00:52:41] And if you’re going to do this festival trail, and you’re going to make it, something that’s going to be in place for 2 weeks for the main Olympics. And maybe we’ll be a part of the pair Olympics as well. Hey, be bold, transform with some of these major streets and make them not a major. [00:52:58] Yeah. There you go. That’s the visual. He’s for those listening only audience, he’s a holding up the map of the festival trail. And yeah. The key thing here is take this opportunity and I think that’s a lot of the folks in Los Angeles that are calling for bold steps is transform that right away transform those some of those major streets and boulevards that are connecting each of these sites, each of these venue sites into a much more people oriented place because there is plenty. [00:53:31] Of other capacity, there’s a redundancy of other streets and other highways that people can take. And therefore people who are used to using that route as their, it’s essentially a strode is what these routes are. People who are used to using those routes as many highways or freeways they’ll find a different route. [00:53:53] And that’s what we’ve seen over and over again as experienced by human nature is when that route is no longer there because of an earthquake, taking it down or in the case of the most recent case with the I 10, it burned up and overpass burned up and it collapsed and it was out of operation for a while. [00:54:12] We find a different way. It’s, traffic evaporation. [00:54:15] Jeff Wood: Yeah, we had that in the Bay area too, where there was a tanker truck that caught on fire at the spaghetti junction that gets to the Bay bridge. And it was, it was a miraculous comeback because it was rebuilt in a week or something. [00:54:26] Crazy like that, would never happen in the real world if it wasn’t like a priority for Caltrans. I wish would we could, should be able to build subways in 10 days or whatever, but that’s just not the reality of it. But yeah and people adapted, they took part, they did other things. [00:54:38] And yeah. Traffic’s like water, not or like a gas, not like water. So it’s exactly. Yeah. And that’s, I [00:54:43] John Simmerman: think didn’t Wes Marshall mentioned that to you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that reminds me of seeing in the background there the on bike or, the bike green scarf and all that he had his on the other day when we were I was recording an on bike interview with him in Boulder, Colorado. [00:54:59] So that was good fun. But yeah. And to your point too, that. It seems like the money’s always available when we need to scramble to do something for automobile infrastructure, whether it’s the I 95 interstate collapsing because of, some catastrophe, et cetera. Yeah, we find the money available, but, we’re scraping for fractions of a percent of a sales tax to be able to build more, walking and biking infrastructure and enhancing transit. [00:55:28] It’s really just, comical how bad it is in terms of, doing that. So in the case of Los Angeles, invest the money, let’s build something permanent. Again, you got incredible weather there. There’s no reason why it can’t be a walking and biking paradise. And we’re building out the infrastructure, the backbone of the infrastructure of transit, throughout the Los Angeles basin area there. [00:55:49] Yeah. Yeah. [00:55:51] Jeff Wood: You got time for a couple more. [00:55:52] John Simmerman: Yeah, absolutely. [00:55:53] Jeff Wood: Okay. Let’s go to high speed rail in Canada. Canada set to announce plans for a high speed rail line linking Toronto and Quebec city in the coming weeks with trains reaching speeds of 300 kilometers per hour, the new line would connect Montreal and Toronto in just three hours. [00:56:05] A trip that currently takes five and a half hours by car, though the project costs remains unknown. Officials estimate it will take four to five years to design the system before construction can even begin. This has been the CBC news. A discussion a couple with Wes about the Mexican transit network happening the inner city rail that might happen. [00:56:23] And also the discussions that’s happening between Austin, San Antonio and Monterey that was an interesting kind of thing that popped up recently too. And so now we have Canada to the north and south, they’re considering building high speed rail networks with electrified transit and I’m jealous. [00:56:39] Just do it in California. Like we’re building stuff and I’m still jealous of like just the discussion and the willingness of the federal government to be like, we’re going to build these things. [00:56:49] John Simmerman: What’s your odds on bets on that? Is it going to happen? [00:56:52] Jeff Wood: Yeah, I think so. Because you know what? [00:56:53] I actually did the math on this and the region from Detroit to Quebec city. From Windsor basically is 18 million people. And that is Oh, let’s see, where did I put my number? It’s 40 percent of of the country’s population or something, some big amount is along that corridor. [00:57:12] And so you’re actually connecting a lot of Canada together through that. Obviously you’re not going to be able to do that, the same thing. Calgary and BC are way too far away, but this slice of land between Toronto and Montreal and Quebec city. It’s a lot of people for the, for Canada. And the population is the same size as in New York Metro. [00:57:30] Yeah. And so you think about it from that perspective, that should be a priority for them to connect. It should have been a priority a long time ago. If this is a corridor, it’s not even that these cities are all over the place and you have to have a hub and spoke. It’s actually one line that goes between these places. [00:57:43] And so I think that, This is not necessarily, I know different governments have different ideas and, politics and stuff, especially in Canada to I still think that it’s a good investment for them. And I think that, they’ll probably look at it more favorably than say, the current administrator, the incoming administration would look at that. [00:58:00] Here in the United States. And so I think it will happen. I still think, the problem with many of these projects are the long timelines and the changing politics between. And so things can get cut off and broken and stopped. Look at what’s happening in Toronto, specifically with all the bike lanes that are, that premier Ford wants to rip out. [00:58:17] But we, I think in Canada, I think there is a case to be made for connecting all these destinations. [00:58:24] John Simmerman: I’m smiling because you just mentioned, Premier Ford wanting to rip out the bike lanes. Yeah. So the quote here is that they really consider this. This is the project that we’re building this for the next 150 years. [00:58:36] In other words, this is an incredibly important project. I just hope it doesn’t take 150 years to build it. It’s, estimated to cost 120 billion Canadian dollars. That’s the one that’s come out now. Yeah, that’s yeah, that’s this idea for this this high speed. Again, I wonder, just how much infrastructure is in place to really make these be successful. [00:59:03] Again, when I look at some of the most successful and you have the experience of being in China and seeing some of those systems that are being successful. But when I look at the. Systems that are successful in Europe that I’ve been participating in, and I traveled for 60 days in Europe with a year rail pass. [00:59:20] What made that feasible impossible for myself as for other people is that you could get to these stations, by easily walking and biking to them, I didn’t have to worry about getting a car, hiring a car, getting an Uber ride, et cetera. I could literally get on my bike and ride to the train and then be able to, from there, be able to get to Paris, get to London, get to wherever I need to go. [00:59:44] That’s the thing that worries me about North America is you end up building out these networks and then they fail because they’re just not that, it’s. You can’t feasibly do park and rides really make these things happen. The joke is in Dallas, where you go to a transit stop and it’s basically just a parking structure. [01:00:07] And if you happen to live in the apartment complex across the street, there’s not even a pedestrian crossing that gets you to that transit stop. [01:00:15] Jeff Wood: I know Dallas is the quintessential commute time system and it’s infinitely frustrating to see that. But. I do, for specifically, and I can’t speak to Mexico because I’m not as familiar with what’s goes on in Monterey and other cities specifically because I haven’t looked at those aerial photos but in Toronto and in Montreal and other cities in Canada, they have much better transit coverage than we do here in the United States. [01:00:35] And they have a lot better service levels. They actually get way more, per capita ridership than we do in Toronto. Obviously they have the, they have their subway and their tram network that actually happens there. And they actually have, Despite what the premier Ford wants to do with the bike lanes, they actually have good infrastructure for that. [01:00:49] And then Montreal I’ve been there a few times. It’s when you get to the center city, it’s pretty great. There’s a lot of, ability to walk around. You can get on the subway and go any number of directions. They’ve just built some new infrastructure that way to the biking there is fantastic as well. [01:01:01] And from the experiences that I’ve had in my Canadian experiences, BC and Montreal only. But in Montreal, it seemed they’re ready for this. It’s not Austin or a Dallas or a Houston where, you might get off the train and be, in your immediate area, you probably have some access and things like that. [01:01:15] But it’s I think it’s a better opportunity and maybe a better way to show off the benefits of this. I know here in California, even, Fresno is trying to do some really big things and it’s downtown and actually reorienting itself. And they might actually, Prove the way forward for providing those bicycle and pedestrian and transportation links that maybe it didn’t have before. [01:01:34] So I’m looking forward to seeing what happens there, but the same way my parents lived in Rotterdam for for a year and I went to go visit them and I felt the same way we got on the train, went to Delft and then we went to Amsterdam and we went to a number of different cities on, along the line between the two Utrecht and other places. [01:01:49] And it was just like, go off the train, it was really easy. You could get to your hotel or wherever you’re going really simply, we, we actually went to to Heidelberg for Christmas from there on, on the train and we get off the train and walk to our hotel room and then hung out in the Christmas market. [01:02:03] So it was just really an easy experience and prove that it’s possible in a place that actually thinks about these things. But I think we can catch up. It might take a little bit more effort and you might have to it’ll be a little bit harder. But I think Canada is going to be ahead of the United States in that regard. [01:02:18] John Simmerman: Yeah. And specifically when you look at, you mentioned Montreal, Montreal is the best example in North America of a city that has built out a cycling network that can actually feed a high speed rail system such as this. And the fact that you can jump on a bike share bike for, higher bike. [01:02:37] Catch the train and take off. Yeah, it’s brilliant. [01:02:41] Jeff Wood: We’re we’re at an hour and a half so far. So I might just jettison some of the other items that we were going to talk about because there was so much stuff from the election that was really great to, to chat with to chat about. [01:02:51] But I do want to go to some listener questions and comments because we did have a couple of those from the last few weeks. And I think some of these are really interesting. Let’s go through this. And also if you want to leave a question or comment, feel free to email us at the overhead wire at gmail. [01:03:03] com. We always love reading your comments. And if you want to have them on the show, I’ll ask you if you want to have it on the show. Otherwise I’ll just send you a nice email back and thank you for your comment. Feel free to send them in, even if you don’t want them read out. So this one is Hey there, From Andrew big transit, urbanism, et cetera, nerd. [01:03:18] So obviously I love the show. Started listening during COVID out of boredom and binge the whole thing. Very impressive. That’s a lot of episodes. It was great because I had a lot of time to kill and you had a lot of great content. I’m writing since you asked of transportation theme songs. We had an episode, a number of episodes ago about from the friends, which is a transit theme band and in Cleveland, Ohio. [01:03:36] And so I asked folks what their transit. Music might be definitely my favorite song. You haven’t mentioned yet is biking by Frank Ocean. There’s also a great remix that features Jay Z and Tyler, the creator. Both versions are full of bike metaphors and references to actual bikes, the act of biking. [01:03:50] But at the end of the day, it’s just a really good song, especially while cruising on your bike at night. Speaking of Jay Z, his name is a reference to the subways near lines, near where he grew up in Brooklyn. He might be the most pro urbanist artists out there. His name is transit themed. He has at least one song about biking. [01:04:04] He talks about New York all the time. Have you considered getting him on the show? I’m sure he’d have some great insight. Anyways, congrats on 500. Keep doing what you’re doing. Thanks, Andrew. So this is interesting. Like I’ve been thinking about music and the transportation and, you’re in your space, I’m curious, like what you think is a tent pole music for thinking about active towns. [01:04:24] John Simmerman: The, we were just talking about Montreal and arcade fire comes to mind and a lot of the stuff that they have of, talking about the suburbs and urban sprawl and things of that nature. They immediately come to mind. And then from an active mobility perspective you. [01:04:39] You can’t not mention David Byrne from the talking heads, cause he, wrote the book bicycle diaries and always had his bicycle with him as he traveled around the world and playing and. Yeah, it’s huge. But yeah, I think that it’s what’s really cool. The soundtrack of, talking about the times and about the challenges. [01:04:59] I think it’s, it’s brilliant. Where Arcade Fire kind of talks about that impact. So that’s those are the 2 that really come to mind is Arcade Fire and David Byrne. Yeah, [01:05:10] Jeff Wood: I feel like I feel like for me, like when I was running in high school, like my thing was my yellow Walkman, my yellow Walkman sports and making tapes and running around. [01:05:19] And I had music that I just loved running to. And I couldn’t go places on a run by myself. For the most part, I could do it. I could be somber and solitude to a certain extent, but for the most part yeah. I really liked having my headphones in and running and I probably broke a few getting them over sweaty, but but I still have that. [01:05:35] I still have that Walkman somewhere, that yellow sports Walkman that was just like in my hand. And actually, I actually, this is really funny. I ran with it so much that. When I took turns on the track, like one arm went faster and further than the other arm because I was so used to holding a Walkman. So when I didn’t have a Walkman, my arm was like, what do I do with myself? [01:05:53] Because I had something heavy in one hand and not in the other hand. So it actually impacted my gait and my, my, how I ran as well, which is funny. [01:06:01] John Simmerman: Bringing us back to, to how we opened and nerding out about running. Yeah. And all that kinda stuff. I think I mentioned this to you before is that I usually, when I’m on my walks, I’m listening to a podcast or maybe listening to music. [01:06:15] I will oftentimes listen to a podcast or listening to music as I’m riding my bike over to the trailhead, but then I take my earbuds out and put them in my pocket. And just focus on the trail one, because I really want to be present in the moment. I want to be focused on not turning my ankle. Yeah. [01:06:33] You know exactly what I mean. [01:06:35] Jeff Wood: If I was in the green belt, I would definitely not. I wasn’t listening to music on the green belt either. Yeah. Yeah. [01:06:39] John Simmerman: Yeah. Cause you, you really have to be that. But the other thing that I love about that is I’m also immersed in nature and because taking the earbuds out, I can hear the birds. [01:06:47] I can get into a spot, several spots in the green belt. Yeah. Where you can’t hear any cars either. And you might hear a jet airplane going over the top, it’s, you can actually get into a place where you can be immersed in nature. And I think that’s really important for humans. [01:07:04] Jeff Wood: We’ve really been selling the green, but if you go to Austin and you want to check something out, that’s really cool. [01:07:09] And you have a day just go to the. If it’s a nice warm day, like just take the 10 mile hike and go out to the waterfalls and, or, there’s some trailheads actually by the waterfalls to the, the end of the route where you can walk down the hill and get there too. [01:07:21] If you can get to those trailheads, if it makes it easier but just, it’s awesome. And I highly recommend it for folks. And it’s something that’s not really talked about much in like literature when you’re going to Austin, it’s go see this and go see the vats and go see this. [01:07:33] The that trail specifically is just is one of the jewels of the city. [01:07:37] John Simmerman: And there’s there you can do a, two for wine because Barton Springs pool is one of the most recommended things. And that’s my preferred trailhead is right there at the Barton Springs pool. And there’s a brand new bathroom and water fountain right there at the trailhead near Barton Springs pool. [01:07:52] So do both do Barton Springs school and the green belt. It is closed this week, by the way. Oh, yeah. We’ll wait. It is closed this week because they are the Austin water is in there working on the the sewer lines that go through the green belt. Okay. That’s a whole, that’s a whole nother topic that they chose to have sewer lines in the green belt. [01:08:13] Yeah. [01:08:14] Jeff Wood: Oh [01:08:14] John Simmerman: my gosh. Oh my [01:08:15] Jeff Wood: gosh. Hi Jeff. It occurred to me that I had a song recommendation for you as well. If you grew up listening to Sublime like I did, then you would like this artist’s stick figure railroad shelter by stick figure. This was from Jonathan McMillan , which is interesting. [01:08:29] And then finally, this is a little bit longer one, but this was from a note that was sent to from our discussion with Wes Marshall. And again, sorry for my throat. There’s of course, lots of literature out there that goes into the effects of cities on health. This recent one from St. Jude’s children’s research hospital, extensive tracking of patient outcomes and how the built environment affects important indicators for surviving treatment is a great example. [01:08:51] This is called the Association of Neighborhood Characteristics and Frailty and Childhood Cancer Survivors. I report from the St. Jude lifetime cohort study. I have an undergrad degree in biochemistry and molecular biology and ended up going back to school to shift my career to transportation policy and advocacy. [01:09:05] So Wes noting 2 of his students are in biology undergrads definitely rings true with me and then also with you in public health as well. One of the reasons why I got into cities and transportation advocacy policy stems is because it is a complex system, just like the field of medicine, even with all of it, all of the studies in the world and every piece of infrastructure measured out perfectly and put into place just as it’s supposed to be, the result is almost never what you planned it for. [01:09:26] The reason I used to want to be a doctor was because you could treat patients with the same exact story, history, et cetera, with the same medication, surgery, and you could get completely different outcomes. And that wasn’t because you’re a bad physician. It was because the nature of the work is complex. [01:09:39] It was about being responsive, not prescriptive. I want my work in transportation and planning to be the same. I want to give my patient, my city neighborhood and block the tools it needs to respond to interventions and disease so that when the unexpected things that are certain to happen, they come out of adversity, stronger or worse. [01:09:55] The very least alive Jane Jacobs discussion of cities as problems of organized complexity really hit home when she brought up the fact that the life sciences were making such large advances in part because they treated the human body and human health like problems. They were not the problems. They wanted them to be to me. [01:10:10] That is one of the big insights provided by treating cities like complex organisms or complex human habitat. They’re not two variable problems Or the neural network problems we want them to be it’s humbling and frankly, a lot more fun that cities instead require the systems that govern them to be responsive, decisive, and kind. [01:10:25] This turned into a longer email than I anticipated, but this is part of the death and life brought up again by you. And Wes was one of the points in my learning about cities and urbanity that I hope will shape the way I think all the time. The experience I had the most in the medical field taught me a lot of things, but it certainly ingrained this idea in me the most. [01:10:41] Thank you for another great Monday show and a great podcast overall, it is played and continues to play a large part of my career shift into the wonderful world of cities and transportation best regards Morgan Shaw. So I just wanted to highlight that because I thought that was a wonderful email that Morgan sent in and it goes to all the stuff that you were talking about, John. [01:10:56] And I think that connects to what we talked about on the show, which is everything’s connected, but it won’t always come out the way you think it will. [01:11:04] John Simmerman: Yeah, and, one of the biggest challenges that I’ve always had with my career too is accounting for that which has been prevented. When you’re taking proactive steps, you’re trying to, in health promotion, disease prevention it’s a little bit different in the medical model than, curing something that has happened. [01:11:22] And how do you measure that? And so you end up having to measure that through epidemiology and looking at large databases and looking, comparing between populations that had the intervention and didn’t have the intervention at the end of the day. We know what makes our cities and our populous. [01:11:39] Healthier and happier, and that’s creating more people oriented places and really not subjecting he channeled and mentioned children. Let’s not subject our children to noisy, polluting environments. Let’s implement things like school streets and let’s. Bring the volumes and the speeds of motor vehicles, around these areas down and for that matter, let’s take a look at our urban environments in our residential environments and say, why do we keep subjecting ourselves to fast moving, polluting cars and traffic? [01:12:13] Yeah, from a prevention perspective and what we can do to control the things that we can control let’s take those bold steps and make those moves and traffic on those streets and those environments for sure. For sure. [01:12:27] Jeff Wood: Last part, our favorite part, puppies and butterflies. It’s probably show we talk about something fun, interesting, or maybe it isn’t in the other sections. [01:12:32] Johnny, how many puppies and butterflies for this interesting week? Yeah, that’s a [01:12:38] John Simmerman: that’s a great question. I would have to just lean into the fact that the weather is. Finally, starting to feel like fall here in central Texas, you lived here, how incredibly hot and miserable it can get. [01:12:52] And we’re definitely feeling the effects of global warming and it’s getting the summers are just getting really bad here. So when we do start to feel a little bit of that fall environment come in, you just, you love it. You just lean into it. And so I. Was delighted to have 59 degrees when I went out for my walk this morning around the neighborhood and I’m like, yes, so that’s my puppies and butterflies right there. [01:13:16] And I did see a handful of butterflies [01:13:18] Jeff Wood: while I was walking around too. That’s the best. Every time. Now I see puppies and butterflies outside. I’m like, oh, that’s a puppy butterfly. It’s a wonderful thing. But yeah, I try to tell people and I don’t think you understand if you’re maybe the Northeast is different or maybe like the West is different, but I don’t think you quite understand like what a cold front actually does in Texas because they come through, you might’ve gone to school and it might be 75, 76, 77 degrees outside and you come outside and it’s 40 and you’re wondering what the heck happened. [01:13:43] And it was just like this front came through and cleared out all of it, all of the air and just drop this cold mass on top of you. And it’s a, really a shock, especially if you’re not really used to that kind of weather. [01:13:54] John Simmerman: Well, to be completely honest though, it’s, it’s warming up, it’s in the afternoon now. [01:13:59] So we’re. Pushing to the mid to upper eighties. So even though it started off nice and cool and we did have that little, cool cold front come through that made the mornings nice, it’s still going to heat up, it’s still [01:14:11] Jeff Wood: going to get warm. I know I used to run at midnight. That was my thing. [01:14:13] It was like, I would go out for a run at midnight because it’s too hot to run during the day. It can’t run in the sun for sure. Yeah. Yeah. My puppies and butterflies there’s a new star wars show coming out soon called skeleton crew. The trailer just dropped this last week, and it starts out with kids in the suburbs which I’m interested to see what Star Wars suburbs look like. [01:14:29] Yeah. And what that means and what they’re trying to get away from. Because this is an adventure from the 1980s Amlin ideas. I don’t know if you’re a fan of the movies from the eighties where kids were ruling the Goonies and such, but yeah. That’s the feeling that I’m getting from this. [01:14:42] It’s not gonna be a typical Star Wars story in, in that respect. And so four or five kids find a ship on their planet and they’re troublemakers in their suburbs and maybe they’ll see adventures in the stars. And so I’m looking forward to that. I always look forward to new Star Wars, but I have a special interest in this one specifically because of the suburban aspect that I’ve seen in the trailer just a little bit. [01:14:59] John Simmerman: Yeah. And what’s interesting how Hollywood had treated, the, those kids, in those movies is inevitably they were a band of kids on bikes. [01:15:09] Jeff Wood: Yeah. Like ET, right? Yeah. Yeah. It’s like the most classic one. They’re all riding around trying to get away from the folks that be, and then they end up flying right on their bikes. [01:15:18] And that’s the, that’s a great metaphor, I think, for, and it’s, [01:15:21] John Simmerman: and it really hones in on the fact that, there is, when we think about, The nostalgia of, previous generations, et cetera, and what it was like to grow up as a kid. It brings up that memory of we had children that, we, as children had much more of a free range, approach to things. [01:15:39] And we did, come together as a band and it was prior to cell phones. And, how did you know where everything was happening? It was the place, the house that had all the bikes parked out front. Yep, exactly. That’s what it was. [01:15:51] Jeff Wood: So that’s what it was. And you just drop by your friend’s house on a summer day and see if they were home and if they were home, you probably were hanging out, a little bit. [01:15:58] We used to do that too. We’d bike by our friend’s house and see who was home and hang out for the day. Go get a Slurpee or a baseball cards or something like that. In Kingwood specifically, you could get most of the way around the neighborhood without crossing a major street cause there were underpasses. [01:16:11] So we would, hop on our bikes, you meet your friend, you’d call it one friend, and then you’d hop on your bikes and go cruising around the neighborhood and then you’d see all the other friends and that was what it was and it was super great. [01:16:21] John Simmerman: Yeah. And if I can give a quick plug for my podcast the very first episode for season eight this year was in fact Lenore Skenazy who wrote the book free range kids and is come together with Peter Gray and also Jonathan height to form the new nonprofit, let grow. [01:16:39] And they’re really honing into this and really saying, what do we need to do to really reinforce the. The fact that we need more free range kids, we need to be able to have that ability to create an environment where it is safe inviting for kids to be able to jump on those bikes and. Go out as a band of Kids On Bikes. [01:17:00] Jeff Wood: Yeah. Band of Kids. [01:17:01] John Simmerman: Band of Kids. [01:17:02] Jeff Wood: I love it. Love it. [01:17:03] John Simmerman: Good stuff. [01:17:04] Jeff Wood: Where can, you just mentioned the podcast, but where can folks find you when you wish to be found? [01:17:08] John Simmerman: The website is active towns.org org and yeah, out on YouTube, head on over to the Active Towns channel. It’s the best place to find me. [01:17:15] Jeff Wood: Awesome. We’ll have it in the show notes. You can find me on Twitter at the overhead wire at the overhead wire.com. You can find me on mass on the overhead wire at SBA Social. Instagram threads LinkedIn I just got on blue sky yesterday. Yep. I saw you. I had been putting it off, but you know what? [01:17:32] That’s where everybody is. I just, I probably should have gone there first. Maybe. I don’t know. All this stuff is really messy. And I was getting tired of being negatively bombarded on Twitter with cause I was telling somebody this morning, I was like, When you’re on there and I’ve followed a lot of people and I don’t follow anybody that I don’t, want to find out what they’re up for, but I had a lot of politics things that I followed and I probably overdid it a little bit. [01:17:54] But what happens is that somebody will respond to one of the negative posts I didn’t want to see, or they’ll, underneath or they’ll quote, tweet it or whatever else. And so all the crap that I didn’t want to get into my feed. And I just like, Because all of the folks that I really like following weren’t posting as much that’s what ended up being in there. [01:18:12] And so it was just like this negative vibe. And just less transportation, less planning, less cities, more politics, more national stuff that I just like, I get it. I know what’s happening and I’m working against it, but I don’t want to see it like 24 7. And so I feel like this blue sky, when I went over there, I was like, it felt like a full moon. [01:18:29] Breath of fresh air which was amazing. And I wasn’t sure what I was going to expect. Cause people have been talking about, Oh, this one’s better for this. And this one’s better for that. And Bassadon is this and threads is I, whatever. But so I’m not going to be able to build up the same following I had on Twitter. [01:18:43] It’s just not going to happen. It’s a 10 year project that disappeared, but. But yes, we can talk with folks that are like minded and have a gay old time again, I think. [01:18:53] John Simmerman: Yeah. And and yes I’m also out on threads and also on blue sky and to reinforce what you just said, it looks like there’s a surge of folks from this world who are making that migration away from Twitter’s last X. [01:19:06] And and yeah, I shut down. My, my accounts over there months ago. So yeah, I [01:19:12] Jeff Wood: haven’t, I haven’t done it because in part because it’s my job to follow news and information. So that’s one thing that’s keeping me doing it because there is still a lot of stuff that I find there that isn’t anywhere else. [01:19:22] And and that’s what I would stuff, right? [01:19:25] John Simmerman: Yeah. And that’s what I would say is I would encourage people that are, in the news area and are posting, please. [01:19:34] John Simmerman: Get off that site and start to make a migration over if you don’t want to be monogamous and just say, you’re going to blue sky, do what I do and do them both, I’m on Facebook, I’m on Instagram, I’m on threads, I’m on blue sky. [01:19:46] I just. So very little traction on Mastodon. So I haven’t been diligent about getting stuff out there, but yeah, you can find me over there on the threads and and blue sky quite active. [01:19:58] Jeff Wood: Awesome. Follow. Share. Yes. Yes. Thanks for joining us. The money’s at the red wire. [01:20:03] Thanks to our generous patrons for sponsoring this week’s podcast and every week’s podcast. And John, thanks so much for coming on the show. We really appreciate you coming on here and sharing all your ideas and thoughts and also just like the awesomeness that you put out into the world. So we really appreciate that. [01:20:16] John Simmerman: Yeah. Thank you very much, Jeff. It’s been an honor to be here.
