Its Time To Cancel Car Culture
A few years ago, as I was leaving work one day, I was casually making conversation with a coworker. On the way out the door she asked, “So where did you park?” I replied, “Oh I take the bus.” She gave me this shocked look as if something was wrong. What is it about not owning a car that makes people think it is strange?
This type of attitude is common in America, but less so in the rest of the developed world. I had studied abroad multiple times in college; in Toronto, in Milan, and in Hong Kong; I used buses, streetcars, and subways to get around. The rides were smooth, cheap, I didn’t have to pay attention to any roads, worry about traffic or parking, and I got to my destinations in a timely manner. In the U.S. it seems like that if you don’t own a car, there is something wrong with you as if you aren’t a functional productive member of society. This attitude is toxic, here’s why.
Mass car ownership is unsustainable.
From a spatial and land use perspective, cars are extremely inefficient. 95% of the time they are being unused. Public transit would be very efficient in this aspect. A single bus can replace about 30–50 cars and a train car could replace over 150. So much of our cities are dedicated just to parking which the spaces could be used for desperately needed housing in expensive cities. In a typical American city, about half of the surface area is dedicated to cars in some form or fashion. All of this is covered with asphalt and contributes to rising temperatures. Traffic congestion is a problem that we can not build our way out of. Adding more lanes to highways doesn’t decrease congestion or decrease travel times
Building a car-centered infrastructure is much more expensive on a per-mile basis than for other types of transport. Adding another lane along I-5 in Portland is estimated to cost $500 million, meanwhile, Salt Lake City built its light rail system for a fifth of the cost. A bike lane can cost between $5000 and $50,000 per mile depending on the circumstances. For every $1 that an individual car costs, the cost to society is $9.20. Also, transportation is the biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
The human cost of cars is high
There are almost 100,000 deaths each year due to car crashes and decreased air quality. This is triple the number of deaths from firearms and double that of opioid overdoses each year. The built environment of American cities often makes long commute times inevitable. There is a link between a commute as little as 10 miles to increased stress, high blood pressure, obesity, and mental health problems. The quality of life in American cities has been impacted by cars. They are expensive to maintain, costing the average person about $8469 a year.
Entire neighborhoods, much of them inhabited by the poor and minorities have been destroyed to make room for highways, displacing communities. Highways have been used as a tool of segregation and enabling the white flight that decimated the urban core of U.S. cities. It may sound strange to some, but racism has contributed to much of the traffic problems in many cities.
So what is the solution to this? The case should be made for increased investment in public transportation. In 2002, voters in Hamilton County, OH shot down a half-cent sales tax levy called Metro Moves. If passed, the measure would have dramatically overhauled Cincinnati’s public transit system by creating several light rail and commuter rail lines, a streetcar system, and expanded bus routes. It was estimated to create nearly 40,000 jobs and connect over $300,000 existing jobs that were not accessible to transit. It would have saved the metro area about $85 million in fuel costs. The ballot measure was defeated by a nearly 2–1 margin. In Nashville, a similar levy was defeated in 2018. The opposition is largely rooted in car culture. Suburbanites whose driving is subsidized by much more expensive infrastructure saw no benefit in being taxed to pay for public transport, even though traffic congestion would be reduced due to more transportation options.
The built environment of American needs to be changed to increase population density and diversity of housing options. Building less detached-single-family homes; and more apartments, condos, duplexes, and townhomes. Businesses and homes should be closer together rather than being zoned far away from each other, reducing the need for driving and increasing the cost-effectiveness of transit. To make the Metro Moves and other transit expansions possible in the future we first need to cancel car culture and make the benefits of dense, walkable, transit-oriented urbanism known.
