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.
Jack Lucero Fleck spent decades inside San Francisco’s transportation department, starting as a draftsman and retiring as the city’s fifth city traffic engineer. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the double-decker Embarcadero Freeway that walled off the waterfront, his team 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 is a story about the 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. Recorded live at San Francisco Climate Week, in collaboration with the Climate Action Resource Library, with audience questions at the end.
- Youtube: https://youtu.be/4BXBNermSZU
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0kTdjBsXh9hVfQgBKZzayZ?si=QSw96oBMSyGnRf5G5C52nQ
- Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/any-job-can-be-a-climate-job/id1780900570?i=1000775838264
- Substack (show notes): https://open.substack.com/pub/anyjobcanbeaclimatejob/p/the-traffic-engineer-who-helped-tear
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7480339504659124224