This is a conversation with a different type of guest. Tim Jackson spent 18 years as the main advocate for the car industry in Colorado. As the president and CEO of the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association, Tim lobbied for many laws that were passed in Colorado, including with such clever framing as "the freedom to drive." So yes, Car Guy on a Bike Podcast. This show is about how we can make bike transportation a reality for people of all ages and abilities. And one thing we can be sure of is that the car industry has figured out how to organize society around cars. As Kevin Mayne, our last guest and the top bike lobbyist in Europe, pointed out, there's a lot we can learn from the car industry. That's why I wanted to have this conversation. I should note that it's also my view that we need to talk to people with whom we disagree.

Tim and I have had a number of conversations over the last few years and I enjoy his knowledge and enthusiasm. You'll certainly hear a lot of that in this conversation. And if you want more, pick up a copy of Tim's book, Dude, Where's My Flying Car?

Avi Stopper (00:00)

Welcome to Bike Networks Now. I'm Avi Stopper, the founder of Bike Streets. Through a series of conversations with leaders in bike transportation and beyond, 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 a practical reality for people of all ages and abilities. Why is that? 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 that answer—a modern approach to innovation—is the topic of a book we're writing on how cities can make bike transportation possible today.

Avi Stopper (00:49)

This is a conversation with a different type of guest. Tim Jackson spent 18 years as the main advocate for the car industry in Colorado. As the president and CEO of the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association, Tim lobbied for many laws that were passed in Colorado, including with such clever framing as "the freedom to drive." So yes, Car Guy on a Bike Podcast. This show is about how we can make bike transportation a reality for people of all ages and abilities. And one thing we can be sure of is that the car industry has figured out how to organize society around cars. As Kevin Mayne, our last guest and the top bike lobbyist in Europe, pointed out, there's a lot we can learn from the car industry. That's why I wanted to have this conversation. I should note that it's also my view that we need to talk to people with whom we disagree.

Tim and I have had a number of conversations over the last few years and I enjoy his knowledge and enthusiasm. You'll certainly hear a lot of that in this conversation. And if you want more, pick up a copy of Tim's book, *Dude, Where's My Flying Car?* All right, Tim, how did I do with that introduction?

Tim Jackson (01:59)

That was awesome. When you say sometimes you have to have conversations with people you disagree with, I'm thinking, wait a minute, do we disagree? I'm not sure we disagree.

Avi Stopper (02:07)

I don't know, I guess we'll find out.

So I want to set up this conversation by acknowledging the success of the car industry in getting society to organize itself around automobiles. The automobile ecosystem has to be the most subsidized industry in the history of the world. Direct subsidies, direct investments from governments into automobility include $264 billion on US highways in 2022, $26 billion in annual subsidies to fossil fuels, $40 billion in direct subsidies to the automakers—Ford has received $8 billion, Tesla more than $3 billion—$80 billion of course in bailout funds during the financial crisis. And then there are all these hidden subsidies as well. $127 billion has been estimated in free parking each year. Extremely favorable terms for drilling on public lands. The list goes on and on, not to mention externalized costs associated with climate change, air quality, and noise pollution.

And so I say that not as a giant indictment, but in kind of awe of how automobility and the car industry has really convinced society that investments in this particular mode of transportation are necessary. So first off, if you reject that framing, have at it. But I'm curious to hear your take on how that happened, and acknowledging that this has been going on for more than 100 years, I'd love your take, Tim, on how you feel the car industry has convinced society that investment in automobility is worthwhile.

Tim Jackson (03:47)

I wouldn't question your numbers at all on the amount of investment by government into automotive transportation, which is I think what your thrust is there. But there is a lot of tax revenue generated from the auto industry too. So a lot of those government dollars that have benefited the industry have actually ultimately started with consumers. Consumers are paying sales taxes when they buy a car. If they're using gasoline or diesel fuel, which most do still today—well over 90%—they're paying a gas tax or a fuel tax for each gallon. And then they're paying an ownership tax on the car, which goes usually to the county and local governments. And then oftentimes they're paying for their own parking.

There is street parking and you mentioned that. There is some free street parking—I would say some, in some places a lot of free street parking—but there's a lot of property taxes paid for properties adjacent to the free parking. I'm not saying that the car makes up for all of the government revenues that go into some form of the industry, but there is a lot paid there. Don't think I didn't hear about it when I was at the dealer association.

Avi Stopper (05:09)

I think what I hear there is that there is a market driver for adoption, and then on the flip side there's this argument that cars are paying for themselves—or that drivers' payments for vehicles and fuel are paying for a lot of the infrastructure. At some point in ancient history, a set of decisions were made by governments to invest heavily in the road infrastructure that would make automobility possible. Bike transportation tends to require a lot less in terms of infrastructure. You can go over a variety of different surfaces more easily, you can steer around gigantic potholes and muddy dirt roads that existed back in the early 1900s. So do you have a sense of how a groundswell developed in supporting automobility? There's this gigantic chicken-and-egg situation with the adoption of vehicle transportation. Do you have a sense of how it became the dominant paradigm or wisdom that cities needed to invest heavily in road infrastructure—that the automobile was the future and that cities needed to make investments accordingly?

Tim Jackson (06:29)

There's been a lot of investment at the federal level, the state level, the county level, and then the municipal level. In other words, those decisions are being made in different places by different people, but I guess all for the same fundamental reason—that they know the importance of the automobile industry to getting people where they need to be and for the overall economy.

Avi Stopper (06:52)

Is it fair to assume that your work in lobbying was basically to get cities and states to perpetuate that type of investment, to continue to invest in the sorts of systems and infrastructure that would uphold, advance, and increase—this is a loaded term—but the entrenchedness of car transportation? When you talk about investments in new roads, those are fundamentally investments in automobile transportation. Is that an accurate way of thinking about ongoing investment in car infrastructure?

Tim Jackson (07:31)

I think that's fair. But one thing we need to note is that I don't see it as a trade-off. I don't see it as, we ought to do this for the cars but don't do it for bikes or don't do it for pedestrians or don't do it for buses. In fact, in the book you reference, I point out that I believe infrastructure needs to be built, increased, improved, and built for all forms of mobility. And that would be for mass transit, for bicycles, for motorcycles, for cars—you could say for trains and even for aviation. In a growing society, all forms of mobility are important to the economy and to the public writ large. There needs to be focus to find a way to grow all of them. And I didn't find myself—since you referenced my time in the dealer association and lobbying—I wasn't there to say cars versus bikes or cars versus mass transit. But sometimes I was on the defense that way.

So I think that should be pointed out. I don't think it has to be either/or. And this hasn't been brought up yet, but I'm a pretty avid bicyclist too. So I believe in bikes. I believe in the cycling industry. I did almost a 30-mile ride last Sunday and about a 38-mile ride the Sunday before that. I want to make sure that your listeners who don't know me know that I don't think it has to be an either/or.

Avi Stopper (08:57)

Why is it that you, the car guy, quote unquote, feel like these various modes of transportation need time in the light, that they deserve investment as well?

Tim Jackson (09:09)

Well, I just think it's important for society. I think most—and I won't say all, but I think most—in the automotive industry would agree with that. There's a lot of car guys and gals out there who are avid cyclists, and they understand the importance of bicycles and they spend a lot of time on bicycles. They also, when they fly in somewhere to a conference, they'll use some other form of mass transit—maybe not always a city bus, but something.

Avi Stopper (09:40)

There's an important distinction that I want to make here real quick, which is something that a lot of bike folks would talk about. And that is the distinction between exercise and performance cycling on expensive bikes and cycling for transportation, where an average trip isn't a 40-mile ride. An average trip is a two-mile trip to the grocery store or to pick up your kid from school in a cargo bike.

And I appreciate the way that you're describing that you see an important place for other forms of transportation in the broader local transportation milieu. I think a lot of people who spend their time thinking about active transportation would argue, as I would, that yes, there is a place, of course, in the transportation mix for this. Yes, there has been investment, but the investment has been so disproportionately favorable towards automobility as opposed to any other form of transportation. Do you agree with that?

Tim Jackson (10:35)

Yes, I mean, I think there's a lot more revenues from the auto industry too. So there's a lot more revenues—again, to recap some of those—on the ownership tax, on the fuel tax, on the sales tax. There's a lot more revenue just because of the price of the car. And the price of that car is going up, unfortunately, way high right now, and so that means the sales tax is higher. If they're a bigger vehicle and they're still on gas or diesel, it makes the fuel bill higher. And if the transaction price on a new car is higher, that means the ownership tax will be higher. So that all goes up disproportionately higher for cars than it does bikes.

Avi Stopper (11:22)

That's a great segue actually into talking about lobbying and the way that you frame some of these arguments. I'd like to start with some accomplishments that you are particularly proud of over the course of your career—specific wins, the collective feathers in your cap. What are some of the legislative or policy initiatives that you were part of that you really feel are the crowning achievements of your career?

Tim Jackson (11:48)

Well, a lot of these are industry-specific, but in the automotive industry, there's the relationship between the dealers and the manufacturers, and that's governed in all 50 states by what are called franchise laws. So I was the advocate on this, in this case for the dealers. Achievements in those 18 years were 26 provisions of franchise law that were enacted during my days there—my reign of terror, if you want to put an evil umbrella on it. Twenty-six provisions of franchise law, and they all passed. Every one that we took to the Capitol passed, and they all passed by 90% of the vote or more.

Avi Stopper (12:27)

Could you give me an example for those of us who know nothing about franchise law? What's an example of a dealer-association-friendly franchise law?

Tim Jackson (12:34)

Part of the promise of the franchise—which were developed by the manufacturers in the late 1800s; Ransom Eli Olds had franchises in 1898, Henry Ford had franchises in 1903, and he had franchises here in Colorado still in place as early as 1913—those franchise agreements put responsibility on dealers for investment in facilities, tools, training, visual image, customer satisfaction, and so on. So in return, the dealer asks, "OK, if I'm going to make this investment"—and these are multimillion-dollar investments, by the way, in each facility; on average today it would be probably $35 to $40 million per dealership—"what do I get in return?"

So what Colorado has done, and what a lot of states have done, is said, number one, the manufacturer is not going to be able to compete with you by having their own store right across the street or in the same market or in the same state. If you're going to be a franchise, you have to be a franchise, and most manufacturers have chosen to do that. Secondly, there's what is called a market area, or market trade area, that is protected. It doesn't mean that somebody can't compete with you, but they can't compete across the street from you, so it gives you a market area. Those are two.

I'll give you a third one. Since a manufacturer builds the cars and the dealer sells and services the cars, a dealer doesn't have any traction against a multinational corporation when it comes to how they're reimbursed. So there are reimbursement arrangements that are spelled out by law in franchise law in all 50 states. I was an advocate for making that fair for the dealers and consumers so that the consumer would have a reasonable chance of getting their car fixed under warranty. So it's called warranty reimbursement provisions.

Avi Stopper (14:27)

Going back to the argument from a moment ago around the financial benefits that governments reap as a result of people buying cars and buying gas—when you're thinking about your lobbying pitch, how do you frame that? Am I correct in assuming that that economic argument is one of the foundational pieces? Let's just say you're headed down to the state Capitol to have a meeting with state senator X. How are you thinking about presenting your pitch?

Tim Jackson (14:57)

Yeah, it depends on—I don't want to complicate it, but it does depend on what the issue is at hand. But if it is something between the dealer and the manufacturer, for example—and that's what the franchise provisions were—then the approach would be this: This is important for your constituents because they rely on the dealers there in your district. They hire the employees, they pay the bills, they pay the light bill, they pay the insurance. They contribute, they donate. They're one of the first businesses that is likely to donate to children's programs, hospitals, health systems, local parks and recreation, and so on. So they are important—they're an important component of the local economy and community—and that's why you should consider why this is important to them.

Avi Stopper (15:43)

Would you say, again, back to my argument that the funding levels are disproportionately in favor of cars—to what extent do you think the reason for that is that, at least when it comes to active mobility and bike transportation, there is not a lot of direct cash flow? In other words, there's not a huge pool of money coming in. One of the points of attractiveness of active transportation is its lack of expense—the fact that people can do it inexpensively. You can get a decent bike for a few hundred bucks and ride it for 20 years without spending really any additional money. In your observation around bike transportation and the lack of investment, do you think that is indeed the case—that this is one of the shortcomings, that the economic argument just has not been made?

Tim Jackson (16:37)

I think the short answer would be yes. So I gave you my argument—let's say, what's the other argument? Now, that wasn't on something against bikes. That was in the relationship with the manufacturer.

Avi Stopper (16:50)

What I'm fishing for here really is—I'm trying to self-analyze. This is a set of conversations that's really a bit of self-reflection on things that bike transportation advocates have done well and areas where we need to improve. Because the car industry has been so successful in getting investment, and the bike industry has by comparison not—most significantly, bike networks don't exist in most cities. Complete bike networks. It's as if you're driving on I-25 and you get to a giant river or some sort of train crossing and you can't actually get across. That is the state of bike networks in American cities. Bike lanes just end abruptly, and they are not connected in a way that people feel safe.

And so what I'm really trying to diagnose here through these conversations is: Where can we get stronger in our advocacy so that we can better understand the pressure points that are going to make this set of arguments to people who are making decisions about where investments are made—to make those in a way that is going to make active mobility a practical possibility? A child in an American city should be able to get on their bike because they want to go places and they should be able to go there. That is really the thrust of what these conversations are about. And I would love your take as someone who has been very intimately involved in how transportation investment decisions are being made—to reflect candidly on where you see shortcomings in those other pillars of the transportation ecosystem.

Tim Jackson (18:26)

I think the bike advocate's greatest strength is not the economic argument for government, but the economic argument for the individual. And I think that is important, like what you said, that somebody can buy a bicycle for so much less than they can buy a car. That argument should be made and would be made over and over and over if I was the chief lobbyist for the bicycle industry.

Avi Stopper (18:50)

Real quick—one of the points of framing that I think could be so incredibly powerful right now is oriented around what is the central issue in America right now, which is the cost of living. I should caveat that by saying there's a lot going on in this country at the moment. But clearly, one of the issues that is, if not the issue, most front and center in a plurality of voters' minds is cost of living. Do you think that that angle is potentially powerful?

Tim Jackson (19:24)

I do. First off, let me be very clear. I totally agree with you—that is a big societal issue. It played out in the most recent presidential campaign. No one is getting any arguments on who made the issue better or who was more responsible for it—lack of affordability or whatever. Affordability, cost of living—it's a huge issue. So if that can be brought into the area of personal mobility, I think not only should it find its way in, it should be prominent in that discussion. And I would say bicycles and the cycling industry have an argument to be made on that over the automotive industry because of the cost differential.

That said—and by the way, I mentioned earlier—the price of cars, the cost of car ownership, is going up, and it's going way up. The transaction price to buy a new car, the average transaction price, which just five years ago was about $35,000 or $36,000, has now hit $50,000. Part of that is—it's incredible. And I authored a column for *Automotive News*, an opinion column about eight or ten months ago, making the point that the auto industry—

Avi Stopper (20:29)

That's an astonishing number.

Tim Jackson (20:44)

—manufacturers, who I was directing this to because they have more control, ultimate control, over what they're building and selling—need to find a focus on, a return of focus toward affordability, because we're pricing people out of cars. We're making it harder. We're turning three-car families into two-car families, and two-car families into one-car families, and probably one-car families into just a bicycle.

Avi Stopper (21:12)

Bike people would say that's great. I'll just note also—I think you're talking about the cost of the acquisition, not the ongoing costs, which are renewing your registration, insurance costs, fuel costs, et cetera. Is that correct?

Tim Jackson (21:32)

That is totally correct, and I'm glad you brought that up. No, that's just the transaction price out the door.

Avi Stopper (21:37)

Right. So let me turn this to building a strategy and building alignment. I think one of the things—and I probably idealize this a little bit in my mind, I would imagine the reality is a lot messier—but one of the things that it seems that you did, and have done really well, and the car industry broadly has done very well: the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association, I believe, represented 300-plus dealerships across the state in different locations, different local economies, different circumstances—some agricultural communities, other urban centers, et cetera. And yet you seem to have created a level of advocacy alignment that I would say is impressive. Herding cats like that is not an easy thing to do, and I don't know that I have seen that level of alignment within the active transportation advocacy realm. Is that a fair characterization of what you did? Do you feel like you did that well? And is that indeed one of the strengths? What are some of the lessons that you have learned about getting this diverse set of interests on the same page?

Tim Jackson (22:47)

Well, that's key to the legislative success. The key to the legislative success is the grassroots operation. So I preached this to new car dealers and to their staffs, and that is: get to know your legislators. Get to know them on a first-name basis. Help them get to know your dealership and what your dealership does for them, for their community, for government through tax collection and services. And make sure it's not the best-kept secret in town. Make it a very known fact.

Avi Stopper (23:20)

Hence the sponsorships of the Little League and that sort of thing, right?

Tim Jackson (23:24)

I'm not sure that sponsoring the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts at the local level, or the softball league, was so that I could get another bill passed at the Capitol. I'm not sure that it was quite as self-centered as that. I think they're doing that out of the goodness of their heart and their personal belief system. But because they do that, it did make it easier for me at the Capitol to help advocate. There's no doubt about that.

But most importantly, whether there is a direct economic tie or not, the grassroots is important. So the grassroots would be important to the cycling industry, just the same as it is for the automotive industry. It's all about—I know you've heard this many times before, but it needs to be stated here—it's all about relationships. It's about your relationship with the people making the decision.

I was asked when I interviewed for the job as president and CEO of the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association, "Well, Tim, we don't know if you're going to stay with us for a long time if we hire you. Like, what if you run for governor? What if you run for state senator or state representative?" I had to look at them and say, "That's the last of my goals. In fact, I think I can get more done on the outside of the glass than I can on the inside of the glass." In other words, outside the chamber than inside the chamber. And the way I explain that is: if I'm inside the chamber, if I'm a state senator or state representative out of a 100-member Colorado General Assembly, I'm one vote. I can only control that one vote. On the outside of the glass, I can control or find a way to influence all or most of all 100 votes. But to do that, I have to do it in a very strategic and intentional way, and the grassroots is how I do that.

Avi Stopper (25:20)

How did you get into this, Tim? How did you find this as your passion? You're an author of a book about personal mobility. I think one of my big takeaways from your book is that you're passionate about the freedom that transportation, broadly speaking, confers upon individuals. I'm curious to hear how you got into this whole thing and how you became committed to advancing transportation in the way that you did.

Tim Jackson (25:46)

I guess it all came naturally. I was bicycling at five years old—I learned to ride right about at five. I learned to drive a car at age 16, maybe a little before that, but I was only legally licensed starting at age 16. And I really was a car guy way back then, even before I was a car advocate. So it came naturally. And then I got into association management, and I got into advocacy, and then the need for advocacy was—it was all formative and successive, I guess. So it was a natural succession of my formative years. It's a fair question, but I didn't have to stretch to do this. It all came very naturally.

Avi Stopper (26:30)

I want to talk a little bit more about opportunities for alignment, in an attempt to set aside the zero-sum games that I think are often what we orbit around in these types of debates about transportation and the right-of-way and how the right-of-way gets used. I would guess that the vast majority of people who own a bike also own a car, and that the inverse is true—that the majority of people who own cars also own bikes. I think I saw a statistic once that there are something along the lines of 500,000 bikes in Denver. So it's not like these are totally polarized groups of people. In many cases, they are the same people. They are people in the same households. And they're also, in many cases, as you've no doubt observed, people who—when ballot initiatives are presented to them—tend to vote in favor of bike infrastructure and active mobility, to make those practical possibilities.

Considering that space is limited—ultimately I think a lot of this is about land use and about space in the public right-of-way—if you feel like there's an important place for active transportation in the transportation mix, where do you see that fitting in? What are the opportunities for alignment that you see? I know that you're not supportive of protected bike lanes on big arterials like Broadway in Denver. Where do you see the opportunities for alignment? Which is to say, we're not going to agree on 100% of the facilities that are under consideration, but where are the opportunities? If you indeed believe that there is a place for active transportation and bike transportation in the right-of-way, and you feel like most car people, quote unquote, feel that way as well—where is that alignment? Where is that space?

Tim Jackson (28:21)

Those are all good questions. First off, as I said in the book and I've said on here, I believe in bike infrastructure, but I want to see it used or spent and invested in places that are beneficial. One of the big societal issues we haven't mentioned—let's get it on the table—are bicycle fatalities and pedestrian fatalities on our streets. And most of those fatalities are between bikes and cars or pedestrians and cars. And the car is often cited as the culprit and the pedestrian or the bicyclist the victim. Sometimes they are. Not always, but sometimes they are. Can we agree on some basics and say there's too many and we need to find a way to reduce that? I want to find a way to reduce that. And Avi, I know you do too. And I think probably most of your listeners and fans, of which you have many, want to do so as well.

So I just think that putting bicycle lanes down the busiest streets in our central cities is not the best place to do that. That investment in infrastructure—I would much rather see widening and expansion and more investment in the dedicated bike lanes or bike trails like the Cherry Creek Trail, the Platte River Trail, the Highline Canal Trail, the Sand Creek Trail, the Clear Creek Canyon Trail, and on and on. Make them more accessible, more safe, wider, more upgraded. Instead of putting in—and shift that investment, like that $14.3 million investment on Broadway, which doesn't seem like it's getting used as much as it could or should—because I think people, me as a cyclist and a lot of my other friends as cyclists, don't want to ride South Broadway. We'd rather move over a street or two and ride on Sherman Street or Acoma or Grant Street. Even if it doesn't have a protected bike lane, we feel safer over there.

Avi Stopper (30:22)

Back to that distinction between elite cycling, however you want to characterize it, and transportation cycling. Everyone loves a good trail. There's nothing like being out in a riparian zone on a nice spring day in Colorado riding on a trail. The challenge when it comes to transportation is this absence of networks, right? The Cherry Creek Trail might get you within a mile or two of your final destination, but how do you actually navigate to that comfortably? And so the challenge invariably is that we are limited by space constraints. And the space constraints tend to be that there are trails along waterways, there are trails alongside some interstates and highways, and then in the actual urban core and in suburbs, et cetera, there is a giant dearth of network connectivity.

Inevitably you arrive at this challenge that is oriented around spaces that need to be shared, spaces that need to be designated for one use or another. And so I wonder if you've thought about how you solve that connectivity problem from a bike network standpoint—which is to say, how do you actually make it possible for people to go places in cities, practically speaking, if you're not a super-confident cyclist?

Tim Jackson (31:45)

That's a very fair question. And by the way, I thought we would get to that—I wasn't avoiding it. In other words, we leave the Cherry Creek Trail, Platte River Trail, the dedicated trails, which as you say everybody likes. And let's say in the automotive space, that would be like the interstate highway. Before we leave the Platte River Trail and Cherry Creek Trail and those investments, I'd rather see that $14.3 million invested in expanding the Cherry Creek Trail, which is, I believe, the number-one utilized bicycle route in Denver. And my point here is to eventually get to your ultimate question: How do we get everybody everywhere?

We do need to be able to get them everywhere. Not every road for cars is going to be I-25 or I-225 or I-70, and not every route for bikes is going to be the Platte River Trail or the Cherry Creek Trail. But just for a point of reference, let's say the Cherry Creek Trail is our I-25 for bicycles and our Platte River Trail is our I-70 for cycles. We still have to get them other places in town. I totally agree with that. And I'm not saying we shouldn't or we don't. I'm just saying don't put them down Broadway to do it.

So take them in like—I would challenge the times that you and I have gotten together for breakfast or lunch over at Snooze on Broadway—you probably came in on First Avenue or another side street, and that's the way I would come there for the most part. I'm not saying I never ride on Broadway, but I don't ride it much. So let's make those cross streets—not maybe every one, but let's make some of them—very convenient and dedicated as a bicycle corridor, a bike network. Let's make some of those. I totally agree. You and I have a lot of agreement on this. Let's build that bike network, but let's build it on some of the cross streets.

Avi Stopper (33:50)

I do agree with that.

All right, so let's turn to your book. I'm curious to hear the inspiration behind it. The title of course is *Dude, Where's My Flying Car?* I'm curious to hear a little bit more about the inspiration. Transport me, if you will, into this Pollyanna future where people are taking off and landing in front of their houses and there is no deafening sound each time someone takes off at 6 a.m. as your next-door neighbor leaves for her flying car and all of a sudden you have 120 decibels—the sound of an F-18—right outside your window. I'm curious to hear about your vision for the future and why you wrote this book and what the title is really getting at.

Tim Jackson (34:39)

Sure, excellent question. I didn't come on to plug my book, but I am proud of it. A lot of the motivation in the book is the subject matter that we're talking about here, because as you have rightfully stated earlier in this interview, it's a space issue and there's only so much space.

So CDOT has decided that they're not going to add the lane that I'd like to see them add on I-25 between Speer Boulevard and Santa Fe. They're not going to do it. Call it induced demand or whatever you want to call it—we're not going to make it easier to get through there. We're going to instead do congestion by design by not doing it. So it's either induced demand or congestion by design. I'd say they're taking the congestion-by-design route.

Avi Stopper (35:09)

I'll call it that.

Tim Jackson (35:26)

As much as I'd like to see a 10-lane road going to Northern Colorado and Colorado Springs on I-25, I know we're not going to get to that. And at some point in time, we're going to have to think of other ways to get there. We're probably not going to take bikes very often from Denver to Fort Collins or to Colorado Springs. We're probably going to, for the most part, look for other forms of transportation.

The governor's idea is a railroad, a train, and that may come to reality, we'll see. And I'm not against that, but it takes—it requires space too. And will it be used? Will it be used enough to pay for itself? Or how much subsidy will it take to make it work? But when you get to the space question—where is there space? The sky.

And the sky is basically like—some called Alaska the new frontier in the land acquisition. And there's so much space up there. Our skies are largely underutilized. And I'm often asked at the end of my presentations, "Well, wait a minute, Tim, if we filled up the highways with cars, and we put the cars in the air, aren't we going to fill the skies?" Well, maybe eventually, but not in any way close to our lifetimes. So the sky is the new frontier when it comes to personal mobility. The technical term is advanced air mobility.

Some of those would be personal aviation vehicles, like what you talked about—your neighbor taking off at six in the morning at 120 decibels. Those are personal aviation vehicles, and those fall under advanced air mobility. They will have some noise, but they're not going to be as noisy as a helicopter. I gave a presentation at the Biltmore in Phoenix one time, and a guy in the back of the room—first question was, "Tim, I see what you're talking about, these VTOLs, vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, but we already have helicopters. Why do we need them?" And I said, "Wait a minute, that's an excellent question. And if that didn't come through my presentation, I need to clarify that."

Can you imagine coming into the Biltmore for this lunch meeting in a helicopter? If you came in—if you landed at three o'clock in the morning, you woke everybody up in the entire resort. If you landed at three o'clock in the afternoon, you've dusted everybody off in a two- or three-block radius and shut up their conversations too because of the noise. These VTOLs are going to be different. They are more like a helicopter than they are a car, by the way.

Avi Stopper (37:59)

Ha!

Tim Jackson (38:13)

Or let's say a large drone, a passenger drone. And drones make some noise, but they're not going to be anywhere near the noise level of a helicopter. A helicopter has one big rotor that spins around and a jet engine powering it. These have six or eight or ten small props and electric motors and batteries that propel those props. And so they're a lot quieter. CEO-speak in these flying car companies, VTOL companies, will say they're 5% the noise level. I don't even believe that, but I think they're probably closer to 10 or 15%. But let's just agree, they'll be a lot quieter than a helicopter. Will they be totally silent? No, but they'll be a lot quieter.

And they'll be a lot faster. So to go to DIA—Denver International Airport—in rush-hour traffic from where you live or where I live in central Denver can be an hour to an hour and 15 minutes. These will be eight or nine minutes and basically a straight shot. We learned in school—I'm sure you learned, I learned probably in third grade—the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. These will fly the straight line.

But back to your question, what motivated me to write the book? Actually, when I set out, the book was to dispel a bunch of myths about mobility, and I did that in the middle section. But I became fascinated by what I saw in both autonomous cars and flying cars—that's what the focus of the book really became, and the title became *Dude, Where's My Flying Car?* So I see a lot of promise in this for our future, both from air taxis—which is called urban air mobility—and personal aviation vehicles, PAVs. And that's what drove me to write the book.

Avi Stopper (40:09)

Well, Tim, thank you very much for joining. I would point people towards a very interesting book written by Charles Mann. It's called *The Wizard and the Prophet*. It's basically two archetypes of different visions of the future and how to advance human civilization and human thriving. It's a great book, and this conversation—bikes, flying cars—is very much relevant to that. Where will we be? We'll find out. Tim, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Tim Jackson (40:39)

Hey, thanks for the opportunity. Congratulations on your podcast. I'm going to have to put it on my podcast list to make sure I listen.

Avi Stopper (40:47)

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.