Every American understands the phrase “war on cars”, including the ones hearing it for the first time. Cities fight over every reallocation of street space: a protected bike lane, a bus lane, parking converted into parklets. At stake in these fights is an inherited premise: that a car is how an American arrives at adulthood, independence, and economic mobility. Yet fewer people are claiming it: in…
I often visit family in Miami–and I explore the area including upscale Key Biscayne, just across a causeway from Miami. We of course took the bus over the water, to maximize leisure and 360 views! Miami’s 26 bus route ranges in frequency from every 10 minutes at peak to hourly late at night. In Key Biscayne we walked through affluent neighborhoods–here is a snapshot of the Zillow Zestimate map:…
Embarking on a Sunday-Monday camping trip (getting home before the Monday workday!). Beginning at the train station, trying out the Burley Travoy trailer as camping gear portage: It was not such a long bike ride from the train station to meet up my friends at the southern span of the Golden Gate Bridge. Our destination was Kirby Cove , a park located just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San…
This past week I spent in Aspen, Colorado–an ultra-expensive alpine town. I have done so a number of times to visit with family. The city’s population is ~7,000 according to the 2020 census. Notably, the population balloons by 77% to ~12,000 during the daytime, due to an absence of housing inventory and a migratory workforce. These facts and figures matter to me as I am fascinated at the…
I am late to share the news here on my blog, but I became a father recently. This has opened my eyes in many ways, but I want to jot down some thoughts about family mobility while they are fresh. Moving around as a parent with a child is a form of physical disability. I did encounter this fantastic YouTube video a month or so before our baby was born, and it was inspiring: You can of course forego…
“Voting with your feet” usually means leaving. You don’t like the schools, or the taxes, or the politics, so you move somewhere that suits you better. Lately I have tended towards staying & investing. A few years ago I reclaimed citizenship in Austria, the country my Jewish grandparents fled. A second citizenship made me stop and ask what I was signing up for. A citizen doesn’t only draw…
Sorry, this blogpost is a book review. But it was a really great read–and I read it cover-to-cover, which is very rare for me in my adulthood. The book is called “ This is Where You Belong ” by Melody Warnick, and its contents fiercely resonated with me as I read it when my then-girlfriend and I were entering COVID-19 lockdown together. COVID triggered a lot of lifestyle changes globally, and for…
A neighbor on my street handed a flyer to the house next door. It was a one-page printout, calling for neighbors to write down details of speeding vehicles on our street (make, model, time, direction), which she planned to compile and bring to the city. I appreciated the intent. I called the number on the flyer and invited her over. I expected to talk strategy with her about how to persuade the…
5 years ago I stopped driving. I get around by walking, biking, taking the train & bus. It’s been long enough that the change has stopped being a “transition”, and it’s now an opportunity to inventory what actually changed. Health Driving to work was literally killing me, in 2 ways. The first was the absence of exercise. 2 hours a day in a seated, motionless box, eating into the same hours I might…
In my previous post I argued that the barrier to carrying items by bicycle is mental: once you’ve made the first trip then your mental model updates permanently. While that’s true, there’s a category it doesn’t fully solve which is transporting the awkward and large object. For most people, those trips that require transporting an odd-shaped object remain “car-shaped” trips. I call it “the trailer…
In 1862, the San Francisco & San Jose Rail Road needed to decide where to cross San Mateo Creek as it laid train tracks down the Peninsula. The decision was not made by an engineer; it was made by a real estate speculator who had already bought the land he wanted the railroad to run through. That speculator was Charles Polhemus. Polhemus joined the San Francisco–San Jose railroad board in 1860. He…
Parenting an infant gives you 20 minutes here, an hour there. There’s never enough to context-switch into “real work”. It’s enough time for me to build small civic data projects with Claude Code. All 3 of the projects below answer local political arguments I’ve heard at public meetings in San Mateo. Each project lives at a public URL, each took a handful of hours across my naps, and each is meant…
I have been doing safe-streets, transit, and housing advocacy in San Mateo for about 6 years. Along the way I’ve written a fair amount about it, here and elsewhere . Most of what I’ve actually learned came from showing up: to public meetings, to bike rides, to city survey groups. These lessons are written for the version of me who began this advocacy journey in 2020, and for anyone in that…
J.D. Vance and the rising pro-natalist right have an explanation for collapsing American birth rates: a values crisis . People are too selfish, too secular, too career-focused, too disconnected from the meaning of family. The solution, they argue, is cultural — restore the right values and the babies follow. The data tells a different story. And it’s an uncomfortable one for them, because the…
In my last post I argued that Proposition 13 is the policy that ties California’s dysfunction together: it entrenches homeowner advantage, suppresses supply, and shifts the tax burden onto everyone who arrived after the good seats were taken. A natural follow-up: if Prop 13 explains California’s housing crisis, does it also explain why California has fewer babies than almost any other state? The…
Last week I argued that gear-shifting competency is an underexamined barrier to bicycling. Then a friend called me 10 minutes before a group ride I’d invited him to, panicking — both his tires were flat and he didn’t own a pump. He ran his bike over to the meeting point on foot. We inflated his tires with another rider’s hand pump, I walked him through it, and he made the ride. He’s a competent…
In my previous post I argued that California is not the progressive champion it presents itself as. Proposition 13 is a big part of why. Prop 13 didn’t just shift the tax burden from property onto sales and income. It gutted political “localism” — the idea that decisions and power should be handled by your own community rather than by distant governments. The Promise The promise of Prop 13 was…
In 1983, nearly half of all 16-year-old Americans had a driver’s license. By 2022, that share had fallen in half to ~25%. Even at 18 years old the rate dropped from roughly 80% to 60% over the same period. This trend is real, decades-long, and expected to continue. I want to tell you this is good news, and I think it mostly is. But fewer licenses doesn’t mean more kids on bikes — it may just mean…
One of these needs a drivers license and license plate. The other does not: E-bikes have gone mainstream (1.7 million sold in the US in 2024), and US state e-bike legislation is struggling to keep up. What comes next will determine whether e-bikes remain a viable car replacement or get regulated into irrelevance. What’s at stake Three things are true at once: The current framework is…
Most adults consider bicycling a serious transportation option–maybe not every day or for all trips, but actors ride them in popular movies and TV . But suggest that someone ride a scooter to work? You’ll probably get an odd look! Before I go further, I want to clearly define “scooter”. By scooter, I mean an un-motorized two-wheel kickscooter, the type you might have had as a child and forgotten…
If you’re a cycling advocate, you probably learned to shift gears so long ago it feels like breathing. But the share of cyclists who can do the same is almost certainly much smaller than our community tends to assume. So roughly what percentage of people who know how to ride a bicycle also know how to shift gears? Nobody has directly surveyed this. We track the rate of bicycle ownership, how often…
You already know how to ride a bike. The only thing standing between you and a carless grocery run is how the stuff gets home with you. Start with what you already own You do not need to buy a new bicycle to carry things. A standard bike can carry a surprising amount with zero accessories. Hanging a bag from each handlebar works. Two full canvas shopping bags hang cleanly from most handlebars.…
I feel a strange sympathy when people complain about gas prices, parking, insurance. Sympathetic, but distanced–like the way you’d feel watching someone struggle with a burden you set down so long ago you forgot how heavy it was. I don’t own a car. I haven’t for 5 years. I live in a suburb of San Francisco with my partner and our infant. There is obvious skepticism about how car-free suburban life…
For my own transportation, I do not drive a car. I get around my city by walking, biking, and taking public transit. Here’s why. The opportunity cost My household can financially afford a car and all its attached costs. Most of my neighbors can too. My story isn’t a story about financial necessity. It’s a story about what car ownership actually costs you–in money but more importantly in distress,…
I grew up in California, born and raised. I absorbed the state’s self-image from a young age and recognized the state by fundamental truths: confident, a financial powerhouse, and a leader in progressive causes. I left for a bit, and I came back for its weather and economic opportunity. Newly returned as an adult I paid rent, I bought a car (I had to in order to visit rental listings). And I…
My last post made the case that closing streets to cars is good for business. The examples I used were New York City and Montreal—-both well-documented pedestrian successes, but also enormous corridors that make it hard to make a persuasive case that their learnings could be applied in any city smaller than a New York or Montreal. This post is for the smaller places. B Street in downtown San…
I want to be upfront about something: I go to city council meetings to protect bike lanes. I volunteer on a feedback committee for a bus agency. I use the phrase “induced demand” in casual conversation. I am exactly the kind of person whose eyes are supposed to bleed at Buc-ee’s. For the uninitiated: Buc-ee’s is a Texas-born chain of highway travel centers that have become, improbably, a genuine…
Your downtown has a retail problem: empty storefronts, declining tax revenue, negligible foot traffic. The city proposes a solution: close the street to cars, creating a public space for walking and dwelling in the street. Business owners lose their minds: “This will kill us!” “No parking means no customers” “You’re destroying our livelihoods” This reaction is understandable. Business owners have…
You’re standing at the bus stop. The app said the bus would arrive in 3 minutes. Then 5 minutes. Then it just disappears from the tracker entirely. No bus. No explanation. Just another 45-minute wait for the next one, assuming that one actually shows up. This isn’t a story about infrastructure or funding. It’s about United States federal drug policy. The Real Problem: Nobody Can Drive the Buses…
My wife and I had one day in Graz, so we walked, talked and photographed. Enjoy some photos and commentary from our brief visit.
This is a collection of photos from a group bike ride along the [San Francisco Bay Trail](https://mtc.ca.gov/operations/regional-trails-parks/san-francisco-bay-trail), as it runs along the cities of: - San Mateo, - Foster City, and - Belmont.
My wife and I had one day in Milan, so we walked, talked and photographed. Enjoy some photos and commentary from our brief visit.
My in-laws live in Miami so I visit fairly often. Enjoy this collection of photos and commentary from memorable places I've visited in this beautiful city.
This was a difficult film to watch. Between the dreadful soundtrack and relentless themes revolving around death, Come and See (1985) is the kind of theatrical film I imagine walking out of. But watching it in the comfort of my own couch and having checked the DVD out from the library I could not avoid watching the film in full. I forget who or what promoted this film to me. I recall Come and See…
I have been thinking a lot about vulnerability as I decline to drive for my transportation. Giving up driving a car is a kind of exposure therapy to reality that cannot be simulated or avoided. The person walking in public space is vulnerable. They breathe the air directly, hear the noise without a metal shell to muffle it, feel the weather, the sunrise/sundown/darkness, make eye contact with…
There’s a selection bias baked into American democracy, bias that most of us never stop to consider. It’s not just about who wants to vote, but who can get to the ballot box. Our car-dependent landscape means that the people least able to drive (the poor, the young, the elderly, the disabled) are systematically less likely to have their voices counted. A fascinating paper, “ Driving turnout: the…
I visited Europe for a few short weeks (Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy). I took a lot of photos of transportation concerns as I tend to do. Here are some photo highlights I found interesting from the travels. We’ll start off small with a familiar sight–the minimalist 2-wheel manual kickscooter: Interesting just how minimal the lock is that’s used . Can be locked virtually anywhere. Or not…
I’ve previously written & shared photos from my commuting choices , but I thought I’d share a brief update. Travel took me to New York City, and I had an opportunity to explore a new trip between residence and the workplace. Trying the train, I noticed how slowly it traveled and that the distance from residence to workplace was 4-5 miles. So I figured, why not try running it? I had bought a nice…
I traveled up to visit my friend for dinner in San Francisco, and brought my scooter to jet around quickly for errands before dinner: Killing 45 minutes before the dinner meetup time, I stepped into the main branch of the San Francisco public library: There were some awesome skateboarding stunts being captured on a fish-eye lens camcorder, classic: Stepping inside, the library is large (5-6…
My wife & I attending the San Francisco Opera’s performance of La Boheme. We took the BART train up to Civic Center, and took the short walk to the venue, next to San Francisco City Hall. Ascending the staircase of the venue yielded some pretty sights of the building architecture: The theater was pretty inside too: The seating was very compact/crammed–I am a short person and my feet were touching…
We stayed at an AirBnB in Kings Beach, on the north side of Lake Tahoe. My wife & I drove our car from where we reside, in San Mateo, south of San Francisco. It took 4 hours of driving (maybe more?), hitting heavy traffic at points along the way. Highway maintenance (and expansions!) seems to all be rushed to execute during the non-winter months while weather is “good”. Some photos from the…
I participated in a June month challenge of daily photos, here is a collection of them. The Masonic temple in San Mateo: Bicycling point-of-view: Father-daughter electric scooter ride: Car storage decisions: Bike parking: Scooter parking: Downtown San Mateo: Military shuttle stop, at the Ontario airport: Claremont public library: Macro mode: X-bikes: Farmers market: Masonry: Dramatic conversation,…
I flew by airplane (not bird) from southern California into San Francisco airport, and I had the good fortune to have a left-sided window seat. Here are some photos from the descent, captured in black & white on my Ricoh GR iii: You can see the cloud front hitting Santa Cruz, coming from the northwest. It is somewhat comical how flat-as-a-pancake this city is–a common reaction I had as we…
I serve as a volunteer appointee on the SamTrans Citizen Advisory Committee (CAC). That’s my county’s transit agency, which operates fixed route buses and a paratransit service. One route runs north/south on the long El Camino Real (ECR) corridor , and the route services ~1/3 of all of the system’s riders. I do my best to walk the walk (“bus the bus”) by choosing the bus as a transportation…
A couple friends of mine were holding their wedding party, north of San Francisco, in a small town of Boonville, California. My wife & I caught a ride up from a friend, from San Francisco–stopping in Cloverdale for a gas break: We arrived on time for the Friday night rehearsal dinner: It was interesting to see the range of motor vehicles that guests had driven to attend: The rehearsal venue had…
I had the pleasure of attending a family member’s Bar Mitzvah services at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco a few years ago. Here are some photos illustrating the congegration’s building and its decorations. Facade: There are more than one spaces for services to be held: Prayer book (the Torah): Snoozing congregant: Cool lighting and stained glass artwork in another space in the temple: The…
I organized a small group to walk from San Mateo to San Francisco . Our party size peaked at 12 people, and arrived at our final destination ( 4th & King Caltrain Station ) with 4 remaining. It was quite an adventure (taking over 7 hours, including a lunch break) and here are the photos to prove it! Beginning from San Mateo Caltrain station , we zig-zagged on quiet streets, through Burlingame to…
I visited family a couple months ago and we took my niece to the world-renowned and very popular San Diego Zoo. The diversity of mobility aids for parents to transport their children around was incredible. “Child portage” is probably too formal and uncommon a name, so “stroller” is the conventional name. Here are a set of photos I observed and decided to document using my camera. Notably, almost…
May is bike month, and a coworker organized a commute ride to our office. Here is a photo diary from the journey. I began by riding up to a meeting point, where the San Franciscan riders would pick me up on their route southwards: You can visibly see the dangers of motor vehicles every direction you turn: I got early with plenty of time to spare, and took in the view at the Sawyer Camp Trail: The…
My full kit for capturing videos while riding bicycles, like this one: Here is the gear list: 1x GoPro camera (e.g. Hero Pro 13 ) with a compatible SD card ~$330 1x clamp mount ( Amazon , direct from vendor ) ~$20 1x GoPro 3.5mm adapter ( video ) ~$50 1x lavalier mic (e.g. Sony ECM-LV1 ) ~$30-$80 The grand total per camera bundle (buying everything new as opposed to used) would be ~$500 USD.…