The War on Cars

Posted on November 13, 2025
Categories: Vancouver — Tags: #politics

The hosts of the podcast The War on Cars were in Vancouver last weekend to talk about their new book: Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile. I’m not a regular listener these days—my podcast listening has suffered ever since I stopped commuting—but I decided to check it out.

Two people in front of a large screen. On the left is a what looks like a yellow traffic sign with the text "The War on Cars". On the right is a hardcover book.

The event was organized by Vision Zero Vancouver and hosted by Uytae Lee of About Here. MovementYVR had a table out front. Brent Toderian of UrbanWORKS was in the audience. Basically, everyone in Vancouver urbanism was present.

A further out view of the same two people in front of a screen. It displays the text "Allow two New Yorkers who have only been here for 36 hours explain Vancouver to you." You can see some of the crowd watching.

It started off with a talk about their impressions of Vancouver. That stuff makes me a little uncomfortable: yes, things are pretty nice here, but there are serious problems that need to be addressed … like the funding cliff heading our way next year. Fortunately, that part was brief. Then they started talking to City Councillor Lucy Maloney and Tom Flood of Rovélo Creative.

The same two people from the previous pictures are sitting in front of the screen, but now joined by another two people. The screen is showing black and white and red images of anti-car/pro-cycling advertisements.

Lucy Maloney (second from the right) was elected to city council in last spring’s by-election. The candidates for ABC Vancouver—the majority party on council—were soundly rejected in favour of Maloney of OneCity Vancouver and Sean Orr of COPE, in a massive turnout for a by-election. I gotta say, it felt really good, especially after nearly everyone I voted for last time lost.

I’m happy with Maloney. We don’t agree on everything, but she seems like she’s trying to fix our problems. I didn’t know that she got into politics by volunteering with Vision Zero Vancouver. She talked about working on council, what she’s trying to do, and what the city is up to.

Tom Flood (on the right), on the other hand, was a complete unknown to me. I think he’s a marketer who got interested in bike lanes and stuff after having kids. He said he was fine cycling in traffic in Toronto, then realized he’d never want his kids to do that. Now he makes a lot of pro-cycling marketing, like the poster on the left in the above picture.

The same four people are still in front of the screen. On the left, the screen is showing the book again. On the right, it's showing the logos for Vision Zero Vancouver and Velo Lifestyle.

It was an interesting show. I’ve flipped through the book a bit. It talks about the history of cars, their negative impacts, and basically makes an argument against car dependency, but with more sources and references than your standard urbanist podcast or YouTube video. I’m looking forward to giving it a proper read.

Tags: #politics