Jack, a self-described "low-level, powerless bureaucrat," didn't let that stop him from pushing for what he saw was right after the 1989 earthquake. What he knew: freeways don't reduce traffic - they invite more. This episode is part of Any Job Can Be a Climate Job, a podcast exploring how people bring climate impact into everyday work, even in roles that aren't labeled 'climate.' Jack Lucero Fleck spent decades inside San Francisco's transportation department, starting as a draftsman and retiring as the city's fifth traffic engineer. He used to call himself and his colleagues "low-level, powerless bureaucrats." Then they helped tear down the Embarcadero Freeway. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the double-decker freeway that walled off the waterfront, Jack's team did the work that answered the question everyone was stuck on: where would the traffic go? Their finding, that the surface streets offered "comparable capacity," helped win a 6 to 5 vote to take it down for good. This conversation was recorded live during San Francisco Climate Week, in collaboration with the Climate Action Resource Library, with audience questions at the end. It is a story about climate work hiding inside the nuts and bolts of a city, and about how change actually moves through a slow institution: anchor to a policy that already exists, and listen for what your opponent really wants. Who this episode is for Public-sector and government workers who think their role is too small to matter City planners, engineers, and transit advocates Anyone trying to make change from inside a large, slow institution People who want to persuade across deep disagreement━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Chapters 0:00 "Low-level, powerless bureaucrats" (cold open) 2:04 The Embarcadero Freeway that walled off the waterfront 3:51 What a traffic engineer does, and how Jack got here 10:09 Starting as a draftsman: his first taste of power 11:07 The earthquake: "where will the traffic go?" 12:39 The myth of vanishing traffic and "comparable capacity" 14:55 Transit-first policy as leverage, and the climate angle 17:57 The Chinatown fight and the 6-to-5 vote to tear it down 20:46 The second fight: the terminal separator structure 24:42 Levers for employers, and solutions for suburban sprawl 28:57 Befriending Rose Pak and winning the Central Subway 31:08 After retiring: 350 Bay Area and solving warming 34:32 What "350" means: McKibben, Hansen, and 350 ppm 37:12 Audience Q&A: a friendship across the divide 42:38 Regional sprawl and induced demand 46:14 Autonomous vehicles and the "three revolutions" 48:30 EV chargers as infrastructure 51:57 Closing: listen for what your opponent actually wants ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Resources mentioned 350 Bay Area and 350 Bay Area Action 350.org, founded by Bill McKibben (the name comes from 350 ppm CO2, via climate scientist James Hansen) San Francisco's transit-first policy (1973) Three Revolutions by Dan Sperling (electric, autonomous, shared) The End of Nature by Bill McKibben Climate Action Resource Library (co-host)For Jack's full climate allies list, plus his 2010 ITE paper ("What Will It Take to Stop Global Warming: The Case for Electric Cars") and his SPUR retirement talk on the automobile in the city, see the full episode notes on Substack. Disclaimer: This episode is for informational purposes only. Views are the guest's own. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎧 Listen to the podcast YouTube Apple Podcasts Substack━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✨ Work with Louisa - advising, coaching, speaking: kidoki.com ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎙 Credits Produced and hosted by Louisa Henry Edited by Alex Leff Music by Run Riot Run Logo by Cassidy Frost ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🤝 Sponsor or partner with the show: partnerships@anyjobcanbeaclimatejob.com Know someone who thinks their job has nothing to do with climate? Send them this episode.
