In this conversation, we’re gonna flip the script. A few weeks ago, I got an email from two 8th graders, Cooper and Hugo, who were working on a school project about how they can help get better bike lanes in the area.

I love it when young people care about civic issues – during the 2020 pandemic election, I co-led a project with some local high schoolers and Princeton students to recruit young people to be poll workers and we ended up with more than 30,000 people joining across the country. I suggested to Cooper and Hugo that we record our conversation as a podcast episode. They’ll ask me some questions. And I’ll ask them some as well. I think this is especially important because, at its essence, this is a conversation about young people who are the present and future – and who don’t have the right to vote and shape policy – looking at our city – the city they live in and will inherit – and saying this isn’t good enough.

And I take responsibility that I and the other adults around me haven’t made it good enough for them. If you can’t bike because it’s not safe enough and you can’t drive because you’re not old enough, there are significant limitations on your freedom.

It’s also fundamentally a question we should all be asking: what does it take to have the city, the country, and the world we want?

Avi Stopper (00:01)

Hey everyone, welcome to Bike Networks Now. I'm Avi Stopper, the founder of Bike Streets. Through a series of conversations with leaders in bike transportation, we're trying to answer a question: Why is bike transportation still not possible for most people in American cities? And how can we make it a reality? Despite voter support and billions of dollars of investment, there's no city in America where biking is truly a practical reality for people of all ages and abilities. Why is that? It's 2026. And how can we fix it so anyone can ride to the places they want to go today? These aren't just freewheeling conversations. We're in search of an answer. And our best understanding of that answer is the topic of a book we're writing on how cities can make bike transportation possible today.

Avi Stopper (00:57)

In this conversation, we're going to flip the script. A few weeks ago, I got an email from two eighth graders, Cooper and Hugo, who were working on a school project about how they can help get better bike lanes in their area. I love it when young people care about civic issues. During the 2020 pandemic election, I co-led a project with some local high schoolers and Princeton University students to recruit young people to be poll workers, and we ended up with more than 30,000 people joining across the country. So it was a delight to get this email. And I suggested to Cooper and Hugo that we record our conversation as a podcast episode. They'll ask me some questions. I'll ask them some as well.

I think this is especially important because at its essence, this is a conversation about young people—who are the present and future, who don't have the right to vote and shape policy—looking at their city, the city they live in and will inherit, and saying, "This isn't good enough." And I take responsibility that I and the other adults haven't made it good enough for them.

If you can't bike because it's not safe enough and you can't drive because you're not old enough, there are significant limitations on your freedom. It's also fundamentally a question we should all be asking: What does it take to have the city, the country, and the world we want? So with that said, Cooper and Hugo, thanks for having this conversation with me and thanks for being interested in big questions.

Hugo, I want to start with you. Can you describe the assignment you got from your school?

Hugo (02:35)

For school we are doing a WAC project—it's World Affairs Challenge. We decided that we wanted to see if we could make a sustainable infrastructure for bikes. What basically that is, is we're going to see if we could make more bike lanes around town, specifically around the university area. And we just want to make it a safer way and faster.

Avi Stopper (03:06)

That is awesome, I love it. And let's figure out on this podcast how to make it happen. Kicking it over to you, Cooper—why did you pick this topic? "World affairs" sounds like it's a pretty expansive set of possibilities. Why biking?

Cooper (03:22)

Well, we're interested in bikes because we know that many people struggle to get around and afford cars. And bikes offer an alternative to cars that is less expensive. And bikes may also be a dangerous way to get around. So we want to create something that will make biking more efficient and safer.

Avi Stopper (03:39)

Awesome. All right, so the setup for this was you guys had some questions that you wanted to run by me. Why don't you pepper me with some questions that you have.

Cooper (03:47)

So to go back to how we can create a sustainable infrastructure for cyclists, do you have any big ideas on how we can make that happen?

Avi Stopper (03:56)

Big ideas—I have lots of big ideas. The question is whether we can actually get them done. So more infrastructure, I think you're right, is what's so important to make bike transportation possible. And I like to use an analogy that's actually related to driving, because a lot more people are accustomed to driving and understand what is required to make driving possible. What is required to make driving possible is that the roads and the streets have to connect to each other, right?

So if you were driving—say you're driving with your parents on a road and you get to a river, and there's no bridge over it. To get across that river, you have to drive down the muddy bank, drive through the river to the other side, and then get up the other side, and only then do you connect to the road on the other side. That's clearly not a great situation, right? That is a transportation network that has a really significant gap or flaw in it. And that is the fundamental state of the bike network.

There are trails that lots of people use and really like. There are other bikeways called protected bike lanes—that's when a bicyclist is separated from drivers or parked cars or a combination of those. And those tend to be more chill places and ways to ride a bike. But the problem is there aren't enough of them and they don't connect. So that example of driving through a muddy river in your car because there's no bridge is analogous in that in the bike network, there are these gigantic gaps. Maybe they're not rivers that we have to get across, but they're really scary, intimidating boundaries that we have to be able to cross.

I'm curious—you guys ride bikes, right? Do you ever encounter those kinds of boundaries where you just can't get across? Maybe your parents say something along the lines of, "You can ride up until this street, but you can't go past there"?

Cooper (06:07)

Yeah, sometimes I bike to my friend's house and there's a river we have to cross, and it's not the most efficient because we have to go around the river and that takes like an extra 10 minutes.

Avi Stopper (06:20)

Hugo, how about you? When you're on your bike, do you sometimes find that either your parents don't want you to go outside a certain area, or there's just some particular place where it's too scary and you're not willing to or allowed to go?

Hugo (06:35)

Sometimes my mom, if she doesn't feel well or she's out doing something, I will bike to Whole Foods and get some groceries or something like that. And it's right by Louisiana Avenue, which isn't the busiest, but I don't always feel comfortable with that. And I'm not allowed to bike on the parkway since it's all one way, so I'd be going against the flow of everybody else. So I have to add five or ten minutes to my usual route, which would be a lot better if I could just have a bike lane right by it. And even if there was a bike lane, it still doesn't mean it's going to be the safest. It also has to be set up so you don't have to worry about a car going over the side and hitting you.

Avi Stopper (07:24)

So what you've observed there is that there are different types of infrastructure where in some cases you feel safe and in other cases you don't feel safe. And my main contention is that when people don't feel safe, they're probably going to use a car or some other way to get there, or maybe they won't go at all.

I just want to ask you though—when you can go someplace on your bike, when you do have the ability to ride somewhere, how does that make you feel? When you're able to do this by yourself without depending on your parents, does it feel like freedom, or do you just not really pay attention to it? What does it feel like when you're able to actually go someplace on your own?

Cooper (07:55)

I feel like I can gain more independence away from my parents and I don't have to wait until they are available. I can roam freely and bike around the neighborhood and around the city when I want.

Avi Stopper (08:22)

That's a brilliant answer, Cooper. And that is very much the promise that I see in having a complete bike network that anyone can use—that if kids can go to the places that they want to go when they want to go, you're so much freer to live your lives the way that you want. You can have more social interaction. You're less isolated at home with screens. You're able to go out with friends. You're able to go out and experience the world.

And so getting back to your original question, the big idea that I have about infrastructure—the thing that I spend most of my time thinking about when it comes to how cities should build bike networks—is how a city gets to a complete bike network. I'm not really interested in building individual bike lanes one at a time. We have done that for decades now, probably since the 1980s or so. And what you find is that there are some bike lanes here, some bike lanes there; some of them are chill, others are not pleasant at all to ride in, and others are just downright scary and unpleasant.

So what I'm interested in—getting back to the river analogy—is figuring out how cities can create complete, connected bike networks right now. Let's not go one bike lane at a time. Let's instead figure out how we can create a complete network all at once. And it's a really tricky challenge. It's tricky because bike facilities and bikeways have historically cost a lot to build, they have been very time-consuming in their design, and they have created a lot of conflict. What I mean by that is some people want them, other people really don't want them, they fight, and ultimately the bikeway that gets created is often not as good as it could or should be.

So we have to figure out how to solve those three problems: How do we do it on a budget that is much less than it normally costs? How do we do it quickly? And how do we do it in a way that not only doesn't create conflict but instead makes people really happy about what's happening in their neighborhood and in their community? That is, in a nutshell, at a high level, my big idea. We can get more into the details of how I think you actually accomplish that.

What do you think about that idea of a complete network? Does that seem like something that would help you get to the places you want to go? Think about the parks that you ride through. When you ride through a park, it's super chill. You feel safe and comfortable. Maybe it's not as direct as you might like, but it's still pleasant. What if the whole city were like that? What do you think that would do for you and for your own ability to live your life the way you want?

Cooper (11:16)

Well, to start, we want a safe way for bikers to get around. So we would like bike trails where we don't have to interact with cars. We like to ride places where we can meet our friends and play sports and video games and just hang out. And it would be nice to ride to school because our parents, on one hand, wouldn't have to drive us. And it would also be great exercise for us. And we would like to have our communities where things are close and connected with bike paths.

Avi Stopper (11:47)

What I want to ask you is to think about your parents for a sec. I'm glad, Cooper, you mentioned your parents. Empathize with them a little bit. About how much time each day would you say your parents spend driving you to and from school? And what do you think they might be able to do with that time if you were able to get yourself to and from school?

Cooper (12:03)

Well, I think they take about 30 minutes there and back, so that's like an hour out of their day.

Avi Stopper (12:09)

Hugo, what do you think your parents would do if they had an extra hour every day?

Hugo (12:14)

So my dad—I also play hockey, so my parents are taking me out to Monument seven times during the week. My mom just does yoga, but my dad works full time. So it'd be a lot more helpful for my dad because I know he likes to get out to the gym, or he likes to shoot hoops with me, or just play with my family, or do cards, or watch a movie with us. So if I could bike to school myself, then my dad could work out in the morning, and then at night we could all hang out together.

Or for my mom—she likes to do yoga, so if she doesn't have to take me to school, she could go do yoga, she could teach yoga, or she could go get a cup of coffee with friends. Since I have a sister too, and she plays a lot of field hockey, my parents are always running around doing whatever they can for my sister and me. And if I could bike, then I could do as much as I could for my parents.

Avi Stopper (13:21)

That is a brilliant answer. And what you're starting to see is the opportunity that a bike network people can actually use can create. Your dad, just as an example, could have an hour to go do his workout in the morning rather than driving you. Then he has plenty of time to do all of his work during the day. And when you get home, you can shoot hoops, right? But if he's got to pick you up and drop you off, then maybe he doesn't have that kind of time—he's got to work still and can't shoot hoops with you.

This is a really significant opportunity for people to live the best versions of their lives. The kinds of family experiences that you're describing are totally what we're getting at. So the question really becomes, back to your original question, how can a city actually make this happen?

A lot of the work that we do at Bike Streets in our advocacy is around thinking through the specific, very minute details for how a city can actually make this a reality. And what we realize is that when we look at the standard operating procedure—the way cities have tried to build bike networks over the years—we really have to revisit those practices. Because obviously, you guys are here in eighth grade, 50 years after the modern bike movement really started in this country, and you still can't go places. That's a huge mess.

So I think the first thing is we need to reevaluate a lot of the ways we have historically done this. Getting back to: How do we do it less expensively? How do we do it faster? And how do we do it in a way that doesn't create conflict? That conflict thing is not just because I'm conflict-averse—it's because conflict, when we have neighbors and bike people and all these different constituencies fighting each other, slows things down dramatically. It takes longer to build the bike network, and it also makes it so that what they eventually build isn't as good as what it could be.

So I think at its essence, what cities really need to do is think about how they make very small changes—in terms of what they're actually building. Not ripping up the streets, not building giant edifices, but instead making small, subtle changes that change the way that drivers use certain streets. If you think about a residential street—let's get into very specific details here. A residential street doesn't have a lot of traffic on it to begin with, right? A big arterial street has tons and tons of drivers on it all the time—tens of thousands of cars in many cases every day—whereas a residential street might have 500 cars that go down it over the course of an entire day.

And what is the one thing that the people who live on that residential street dislike most? They dislike people using their residential street to avoid the big arterial street. There's an actual term for it: it's called rat running. When you avoid the big arterial street while you're driving and instead rip through the neighborhood to cut through and avoid a traffic jam or something like that—that's called rat running.

A lot of those 500 cars are people who are rat running on that street. And neighbors dislike it because they often come through at higher speeds, it increases the volume of cars on that street over the course of a day, and it decreases the safety of that street. So at its essence, the opportunity that we think has the potential to make the biggest difference is to think about how we can make those neighbors happy. We can make those neighbors happy by redesigning the streets in little, subtle ways that make rat running impossible on those streets—so they become less attractive for drivers to use as a cut-through.

If we can make rat running less possible on a small subset of streets, those streets will go from maybe having 500 cars a day to 100 or 200. And who are those 200 drivers? Those are the people who live on that street, coming to their houses. And the other effect this has is that it makes that street incredibly awesome for people who are riding bikes.

So that's what I like to think of as the atomic unit of a complete network. You can do that inexpensively, you can do it quickly, and you can do it in a way that reduces conflict. And with that as your building block, you can think about how to do this across an entire city. What do you think about that? Is that the kind of answer you were expecting when you undertook this project?

Cooper (18:21)

Well, you answered our question perfectly. We were brainstorming answers for this question and we kind of came back to a pool of answers, and that was the biggest answer we could think of.

Avi Stopper (18:42)

Cool. Elaborate on that a little bit. What was the answer that you were thinking of? How were you articulating it, or what was your vision of the future?

Hugo (18:53)

Well, we were envisioning changing the way streets can move. If we have a straight street, what would happen if we were to divide that street into three-fourths and one-fourth? And the one-fourth of the street could go through the neighborhood if it needs to, away from the busy street, and that one-fourth of the street could be for cyclists.

Avi Stopper (19:27)

I like that a lot. The thing that I'll add to that is that in places where bike transportation has really taken off, a lot of it has been done in this way, where they think about what are the streets that already exist that are chill, and how do we make them even more chill—and how do we do that in a way that's inexpensive and that we can do quickly?

Can you remember the last time that you saw construction while you were driving with your folks?

Cooper (19:55)

Tuesday morning, I had to go and pick up my carpool, and there was a street blocked for construction.

Avi Stopper (20:04)

A street blocked for construction—that is exactly what I was looking for. So what's interesting when you see those things is to think about how those are temporary conditions on the roadway, right? Small adjustments being made that change the way people behave.

It's useful to think about how that barricade is changing behavior, how it's changing the street. If it's on a quiet residential street and you have construction and a little barricade that just says "no through traffic," think about the volume of drivers now using that street. It's pretty amazing how the streets are constantly changing. We think about a street as concrete and asphalt that's there for a long, long time, but in reality, streets are constantly changing and they're being changed in ways that people have come to expect. You expect to see construction anytime you drive.

And so what we think could be a really important component of this is giving people the opportunity—by using construction-like conditions, temporary conditions—to show people how much more awesome their streets could be. You don't even have to build it at first, necessarily. You could just go on your street, put a few cones down, and say basically "no through traffic," and your street will be really significantly transformed.

There's a whole field and term for that, which is tactical urbanism—temporary demonstration projects that make it dramatically easier for folks to understand what a proposed set of changes might be like. Wouldn't it be cool if you could go out, with the approval of your local city, and say, "This is an unpleasant intersection," and with the guidance of maybe a civil engineer or some designs that the city gives you, you could go out as a group of students and make some slight changes to an intersection? Maybe you make it a four-way stop for a day, or maybe you narrow the streets so it's easier to cross. That's the kind of freedom we think people need to make it possible to show folks how much better the streets can be.

I'm curious if you've ever thought about it that way—that the streets don't have to be the way that they are. Cooper, is that something you've ever thought about? That they're just that way because the last person who designed them came through and said, "This is what we think it should be"?

Cooper (22:51)

A lot of bike lanes are being ripped out, and I don't think they should be, because a lot of cyclists ride on the road. And once they rip out the bike lane, they're going to have to drive more, and they're just going to keep ripping out bike lanes until everyone's driving. I think that people should have the freedom to bike around the city and not always have to drive.

Avi Stopper (23:14)

Totally. It sounds like you've done your research, so I applaud you on that. What are some of the reasons that you have encountered? Do you have a sense of why bike lanes have been ripped out in some places?

Cooper (23:25)

Well, a lot of places, traffic. Bike lanes get ripped out because not enough cars can get through. The cars sometimes pile up, and not many people bike because they need to get to work fast. And sometimes biking isn't the most efficient way to get there.

Avi Stopper (23:43)

I think you put your finger on an important thing, which is that because we don't have networks, because it's not easy enough for enough people to ride their bikes to places, the bikeways we do build don't get enough use. They get some use for sure, but not enough. And when a bike lane—a protected bike lane, usually—gets ripped out, there is some opposition. But if you had thousands and thousands of people every single day using that protected bike lane, it just wouldn't be politically possible for the city to rip it out.

Think about it from a driver's perspective. You have a gigantic interstate and tons and tons of people use it every single day. If all of a sudden the state came along and said, "Hey, we're just going to get rid of this," people would lose their minds, right? And it is the case that when a bike lane gets ripped out, people lose their minds—but not enough people lose their minds. Not enough people are using them and getting really angry about it such that it becomes politically impossible for a city to do that. So when we build protected bike lanes, we need more and more people using them so that they can't ever be removed.

The other thing I would note is that the bike lanes that do tend to get removed are often in places where there is a significant amount of conflict. And there are certainly some tricky locations where you have to have a big protected bike lane on an arterial street, but without a complete network, you aren't going to get lots of people riding. Because there might be one super-awesome bike lane, but if it doesn't connect to other super-awesome bike lanes that let you go anywhere, people aren't going to be able to use it.

What I was describing before with those quiet residential streets—if you make those quieter, then you have the potential to reduce conflict with neighbors. And in Denver, for example, we have seen this done before. There was a program during the pandemic called Shared Streets, where the city came in with these temporary construction barricades and just said, "No through traffic on these streets. Instead, these streets are for walking, they're for biking. And if you live on one of these streets, you can drive to your house and park in front of it." And the neighbors along those streets loved it. More than 90% of people in surveys afterwards said that they wanted those streets to be made permanent in that particular configuration.

Think about that from a conflict standpoint—that just dramatically reduces the number of people who are opposed to it. So I think we need to do a lot of work to align the interests that we have as people who want to ride bikes with the people who already live on those streets and make it so the bikeways we create are much more aligned with what those folks want to see. They want to get rid of rat running. And if we can make that happen, and we can make the street more chill so that their kids can go out and ride to the places that they want to go, that is going to generate support in ways that we have often failed to do in the past.

All right, so I want to turn this back on you. There's this great quote from Steve Jobs where he says something along the lines of: the most important thing that he ever learned is that the world as we know it doesn't have to be this way, and that anyone can change it. He has this analogy where he says, if you push something over here, something else might pop up over there. And you have the ability to shape the world around you. It doesn't have to be this way. The people who designed the world as it currently exists, they weren't any smarter than you. They just happened to design it in the way that they thought made the most sense.

It's a really empowering message in that it's presenting people with the possibility that the choices they make, the things that they get involved in, can really make a difference and make the city a better place. So I want to ask you guys—if you were able to design the city of the future, when you think about the city that you'd like to inherit when you're adults in a few years, what do you think that city might look like?

Hugo (28:07)

I think when people think of the city of the future, everybody thinks there's going to be flying cars and all this super high-tech stuff. I imagine it as a lot safer than just cars flying every which way. I think the safest way would be for people to bike. Not completely getting rid of cars, but I think if there weren't as many cars—yes, it takes longer for people to get around, but there'd be fewer people dying from transportation.

Avi Stopper (28:44)

And Cooper, how about you? What's your vision of the future?

Cooper (28:48)

I also imagine a whole bunch of high tech, and maybe the high tech will influence us to make more high tech. But I think that bikes will also be a safe way to travel and reduce car usage, because there are a lot of car crashes. And in the future, I think that we could have close communities where we don't have to travel really far to get to our friend's house or really far to get anywhere—really close communities where we can bike or even walk there.

Avi Stopper (29:21)

Those are beautiful visions of the future, guys. Let's make it that way. And one thing I want to leave you with is that a lot of tech—we're using technology to have this conversation, we're using technology in our lives all the time, and the pace of technological development is accelerating in ways that are both interesting and in some cases quite concerning. And yet the bicycle is a piece of technology from the 1880s. It's old, relatively speaking. It's very analog. It is essentially a combination of simple machines. And what's incredibly powerful about it is that this technology that is pretty old still shapes our ideals of what cities could be. People think about buying a house, and they want to be able to walk and bike to places that are cool.

The reality is that we have the opportunity to make that happen. If I were you guys, I'd say continue to dream about it and get involved in the local bike movement. Any final questions before we wrap it up?

Hugo (30:24)

I just have a quick question on what VAMOS is. I saw that the mayor promised in his campaign to build a VAMOS network. We just wanted to know what it is.

Avi Stopper (30:44)

Good question. So VAMOS—my organization, Bike Streets, developed a policy concept in the last mayoral election that a lot of city council folks signed on to and the mayor as well. VAMOS is basically answering the network question that we were discussing. It looks at these challenges of cost, time, and conflict and says, "These are constraints. How, within these constraints, can we figure out a way to complete a high-comfort bike network across the entire city in a short period of time?"

At its essence, VAMOS is an attempt to figure out: How can we create a complete bike network that covers the entire city of Denver, that is built—at least the first version of it—within a year and costs about $5 million? For context, $5 million is a lot of money. But when we're talking about building infrastructure, $5 million is a drop in the bucket. It's not nothing, certainly, but compared to other roadway projects and compared to a lot of bike facility projects candidly, $5 million is very little. And $5 million for an entire network that covers an entire city is, frankly, a little bit dizzying and disorienting for a lot of people to hear.

But we aren't creating or designing or suggesting anything new. We're looking at stuff that exists already in the right-of-way, on the streets, and saying, "How can we take these low-cost components—things like signs, things like one-way alternating one-way streets on residential streets—how can we take these things that already exist? We're not inventing anything new. We're not designing anything wild and crazy. We just use them in a complete and coherent way." This is what our advocacy is about—trying to get Denver and cities at large to think more broadly about how they can create these complete networks in a very short period of time.

All right, fellas, go off, ride your bikes. You did an awesome job. This has been a delightful conversation. I have really enjoyed it.

Cooper and Hugo (33:04)

Thank you for your time. Thanks for having us. Nice having a cup of hot chocolate with you.

Avi Stopper (33:06)

My pleasure.

Avi Stopper (33:12)

Thanks for listening. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for guests you'd like to hear from, drop us a line at [email protected]. Bike Networks Now is a production of Bike Streets. Anyone should be able to ride a bike to any destination in their city today. You can learn more about our work at bikestreets.com.