Welcome to Straphanger, from Taras Grescoe

Bulletins from a Future Beyond the Automobile (And How to Get There)

I’ve been living in the future all my life: a world without automobiles.

I’ve never owned a car, which gives me a unique perspective on the world. I go to the places that cars don’t, and try to get around as much as possible by train, public transit, bicycles and my own two feet.

I’m the author of Straphanger: Saving Ourselves and Our Cities from the Automobile, a book about my adventures in fourteen different cities around the world, looking at the best, and worst, in urban transportation systems.

I’ve been sharing my adventures on Twitter for over a decade, but using a platform owned by the man I consider the biggest troll in the transportation world is sitting heavily on me. I haven’t been posting since Elon Musk bought Twitter, except to direct people how to find me elsewhere. I’m happy that you’ve found me here.

Substack turns out to be a very interesting way to go into the kind of depth I crave, on issues that are important to me.

I hope you’ll consider signing up for these bulletins. There’s a free version of Straphanger, but you can also support this project with a $7 a month contribution, a yearly subscription. Or you can become a founding member, for which you will earn my undying gratitude. If I stop posting for a while, because I’m travelling or otherwise absorbed, I’ll turn off paid subscriptions until I post again.

I’ve got a lot to say about getting to a world beyond cars—things I couldn’t say on social media, except in the occasional long, tedious-to-put-together thread. I’ve been to places where they’ve found the solutions to congestion, pollution, and traffic deaths, places that point the way to a better future. I know a lot about the policy changes that can get us there. I’ve been riding buses, trains, and subways (not to mention bicycles) all my life, and I’ve figured out a thing or two about ways of getting us out of current nasty car-bound predicament.

Join me. I’ll be going to places not many other people around here have been…yet.