Getting ‘Stuck In Traffic’: The Absurd Inefficiency Of Car Culture
Why do we continue to do this to ourselves?
This article is adapted from a recent post I made to my newsletter.
My wife and I have one-way tickets booked to Spain for the day after the year turns new. For myriad reasons, we can’t wait to make the move. As much as we’re starting to feel the emotion associated with living relatively far away from our adult daughters, leaving the country makes a ton of sense now and going forward.
Financially and, more so, to our overall quality of life. A quality of life dictated, in part, by how we get around.
Ever since I lived and studied urban planning in San Francisco, car culture never made sense to me. So, I decided to move to Los Angeles.
Go figure!
But it’s true. Los Angeles absolutely does not have to be the way that it is. It’s our lack of imagination and counterproductive, if not perverted marriage to the status quo that keeps our car culture alive. If we wanted to, we could retrofit Central Los Angeles and many of the cities in larger LA County to not be so car dependent.
Not going to happen. Never. And even if there was a chance in hell, I’m so over LA as to not care enough to stick around.
