Responding to the demands of congressional lawmakers, the “big three” Detroit automakers have each pledged to develop and offer “eco-friendly” cars. This concession of the world’s most infamous SUV manufacturers to the rising forces of environmentalists isn’t necessarily a change of heart as much as a will to survive. To get the federal bailout money they need, the three automakers must now explore more extensively the “greener” hybrid and alternative fuel technologies that the Japanese carmakers earlier pioneered.
The fact that environmentalists have forced some of the dirtiest industries to at least give lip service to the treehuggers who now appear to control their purse strings is a remarkable achievement, no doubt. But we must, as environmentalists, think about the future of transportation. It’s my suggestion that even if we were able to develop cars that are “carbon-neutral” in some kind of technological utopia – cars thus harmless in terms of global warming – we still should probably not rely on them as our primary means of transportation, as we do in the United States.
In truth, though, using cars as the primary system of transportation creates far more problems than simply melting the ice caps or the depletion of the stolen hydrocarbons of ancient sunlight that power them. A commitment to sustainability requires us to consider those problems.
Less than a month ago, the city of Portland succumbed to near paralysis as the result of inclement weather. A KGW television news report on the conditions made it glaringly obvious that our transportation troubles were indeed avoidable with better planning, warning viewers: “If you must travel, please allow an extra hour going by car, and an extra 25-30 minutes taking the bus. If you’re going by TriMet light rail, trains are currently running on time at all locations.” This isn’t to say that trains completely dodged the bullet this winter, as they too eventually experienced delays. That they were significantly more resilient to weather than counterpart highways, however, is not debatable.
This wasn’t the first time we’ve been confronted with the inadequacies of our transportation impotence. Barely a month after Hurricane Katrina had all but wiped out New Orleans, a second hurricane threatened America’s fourth largest city – Houston, Texas. Attempting to evacuate the oil industry’s capitol, thousands were stranded along the highway out of Houston, in a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam that was literally 100 miles long. This was after officials opened all lanes to outbound traffic.
Both these events make it clear that cars are not just an environmental problem: They’re a security problem. We cannot, using our system, easily evacuate an American city without subsequently turning the population into a sitting duck target on the interstate river of asphalt.
The event alluded, further, to one of the biggest costs of highway-based transportation: congestion. I’m sure all of my readers have experienced a traffic jam at some point in their lives. The frequent criticism of public transit is that it’s more inconvenient and takes more time. Ignoring momentarily the countless examples of bullet train systems that travel in excess of a hundred miles per hour, we must consider one truth about public transit: It’s predictable.
When you get on the TriMet in Portland, you usually know exactly how long it will take you get to where you’re going. This is obviously not the case when you’re stuck in traffic. While it generally takes TriMet 41 minutes to get from Gresham to downtown Portland, a traffic jam could last 20 or 30 minutes, or, as is often the case, it could go on for hours. It could be the result of highway overloading or a 16-car pile-up wreck. Your only hope is the help from news radio helicopters that can tell you nothing about how your commute will go tomorrow. Further, if you face a bad storm or, god forbid, a mass exodus from some threat to the city, you might as well forget traveling at all.
It may be counter-intuitive, but the car system often sells itself as the instrument of greater freedom of choice and movement, though it is in fact quite the opposite. This is because the transportation system as it exists does not only facilitate use of the car, in many places, it makes it the only reasonable option for getting around. This seriously limits choice for millions who simply cannot drive, such as children, the elderly confined to suburban nursing homes, or the poor who cannot afford to buy, insure, or fuel up cars. For all of them, there is no supposed increase in free will as a result of cars and the city design that mandates their use. There is only the confinement to more limited walking-distance options. Never mind what would happen if they needed to evacuate.
The list of costs goes on: Less walking means more obesity, low speed limits mean longer travel times, less dense populations mean fewer opportunities for social interaction, more parking lots mean more wasted space.
This is by no means to say we should do away with cars entirely. But we can choose to quit, as a means of public policy, making whole series of decisions about road building, land use and government bailouts that support this horribly inefficient system. The dollars that pay for the extended distances for public services made necessary by sprawl and miles of asphalt are our dollars, and we can simply choose not to use them to endorse cars, but rather something else more efficient and less vulnerable. Those who still wish to drive, can. They just might have to pay more of the real costs of their choice, instead of freeloading off the rest of us.
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The limiting freedom of cars
Daily Emerald
January 14, 2009
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