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A
Threshold Survey of the Problem with Cars
Many
citizens have “problems” with cars (aka,
Large, Private Vehicles or “Autonomobiles”).
Gas
Prices: Some citizens see the price of
gasoline as the main problem with cars. Those
who have a problem with what they pay at the
pump believe, incorrectly, that:
-
There
is an economically sound alternative to
gasoline prices rising in the future, and/or
-
Some
villain is behind the fluctuating price of
gasoline and/or
-
There
is a functional and cost-effective
replacement for cheap gasoline to propel
Autonomobiles.
Traffic
Congestion: Other citizens see the key
problem with cars as traffic congestion. They
are concerned with the fact that they cannot
drive a car where they want, when the want and
arrive in a timely fashion. Most believe,
correctly, that the problem is getting worse
every day, every month and every year. Many also
believe, incorrectly, that this trend can be
reversed by some means short of Fundamental
Change in human settlement patterns.
Ugliness:
Some citizens express the problem with cars in
terms of the aesthetics. They complain about
undesirable auto-related facilities -– ugly
parking lots, sign-dominated strip development
and, of course, scattered facilities to sell,
repair, resell and junk cars. Most agree that
these critics have valid concerns but disagree
on a course of action or even whether
“anything” can be done about it.
Air
and Water Quality: Other citizens are
concerned with Autonomobiles’ impact on air
and water quality and/or the health of natural
systems including their contribution to
greenhouse gases and Global Climate Change.
These concerns are supported by scientific
analyses but contrary voices intentionally
confuse the conversation.
The
Big Picture: Those who take a more
comprehensive view of the problem with cars are
concerned with the macro economic and security
impact of extensive use of cars as reflected in
the imBalance of Trade as well as energy and
resource inSecurity. The later is illustrated by
wars and terrorism over the past three decades.
Many are concerned with the economic impact of
replacing the 50-year-old Interstate Defense
Highway System that is the backbone of the
Large, Private Vehicle System (LPVS).
And
there is more: The problem with cars does not
end with these major concerns:
-
Many
citizens have problems with rude drivers,
drunk drivers, cell phone talking and
texting drivers, young drivers and old
drivers.
The
Grim Reaper in a Roadster: The categories of
citizens with concerns about cars does not end
with those who use cars every day.
Safety
of cars is a major concern for users and
non-users: Walking, riding or driving – cars
kill over 40,000 citizens every year.
Those
who cannot afford to drive cars or are too
young, too old or otherwise incapable of
driving, have a problem not just with Mobility
and Access but also with getting run over by
cars. Unlike most other major causes of death,
cars kill a disproportionate number of young,
healthy citizens.
Many
of those who die because of cars are young,
old or have no choice but to put themselves in
harms way. (See End
Note One.)
When
all the car-related deaths are added up, cars
have already killed far more citizens than all
the enemies in all the wars in the history of
the US of A including the French and Indian War
and the American Revolution. Ten times as many
died in 2007 as have been killed in battle since
the start of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The
Wrap Up: Finally, there are some who believe
all these problems are real but
they are even more concerned with the
detrimental economic, social and physical
impacts of dysfunctional – autocentric /
Autonomobile-dominated -- human settlement
patterns. The focus of their concern is the
disaggregation of the origins and destinations
of travel demand that generate the Helter
Skelter Crisis. (See End
Note Two.)
This
group of citizens suggest that over-reliance on
Autonomobiles for Mobility and Access has placed
contemporary civilization on a slippery slope to
economic, social and physical chaos.
The
problem with cars and people who drive them has
gotten so bad that on 19 June 2007, the Vatican
issued the “Ten Commandments” for roadways.
With so many problems raised by citizens from
diverse perspectives, one might think that the
future of cars would be a topic of serious
debate. So far, that is not the case. For
reasons explored below, well-to-do citizens,
MainStream Media and advocates of Business As
Usual are whistling past the graveyard as they
go shopping for their next Autonomobile and
fantasize about Band Aid solutions to the
Mobility and Access Crisis.
What
Do Citizens Believe About Cars?
Citizens
seem to fall into three general cohorts with
respect to their views on cars:
First:
It is clear that some citizens do not have any
problem whatsoever with cars. In their view,
cars are one of mankind’s most wondrous
inventions and any problems that others have
with them are far outweighed by their enormous
benefits.
It
is hard to tell how many citizens feel this way.
Roughly 10 percent of the population believe the
Earth is flat and about 40 percent do not
believe evolution is a reality.
Based on how often these views are encountered,
one might assume that the “no problem with
cars” cohort might range between 15 and 25
percent of the population. Let us assign 20
percent.
Twenty
percent is not a majority by any stretch. However,
representatives of this cohort are the only ones
seen in Autonomobile advertising. They are also
over represented in every serious discussion
about the problem with cars.
Second:
By far the largest group, perhaps 75 percent of
the population, have specific problems with
cars. Most of these pet problems can be found on
the “Threshold Survey of the Problems With
Cars” above. In almost all cases, the second
cohort has a villain in mind. They are sure this
villain is causing the problem with cars.
These
villains range from greedy oil companies to
pandering, contribution-grubbing politicians,
malevolent transport infrastructure providers,
devious foreign interests, illegal immigrants,
rude citizens and “other people.” This list
is much longer, of course, but you get the idea.
Since someone else is to blame, the majority
cohort sees no reason to change their current
use of Autonomobiles.
The
majority cohort includes almost all those
professionally involved in Agencies, Enterprises
and Institutions (including universities and
Agency-funded transport “research” centers)
that are directly or indirectly involved in the
transportation “industry.” Most of these
“professionals” have a specific villain in
mind – the villains of choice are “those
other people” who will not listen to their pet
“solution,” what ever that may be.
A
large segment of the majority cohort believe
that building more infrastructure including new
toll roads, raising the cost of peak hour travel
via Hot Lanes and other forms of congestion
pricing and/or improving efficiency of vehicles
will “solve” the problem with cars.
That view is Conventional Wisdom about cars. It
turns out that Conventional Wisdom makes solving
the problems with cars nearly impossible.
Third:
And the third cohort? The third cohort in this
distribution of perspectives concerning the
problem with cars is not large – perhaps 5
percent of the population at the present time.
This group believes that there is something
fundamentally flawed and unsustainable in a
society that subsidizes a transport system that
requires the vast majority of citizens to rely
on Large, Private Vehicles for Mobility and
Access and renders many citizens immobile and
without access.
Why
does this third cohort think reliance on
Autonomobiles and the Large, Private Vehicle
System (LPVS) is fundamentally wrong? Because
Autonomobiles and the LPVS do not provide
Mobility and Access now. Further, the
Mobility and Access crisis is getting worse
every year in every New Urban Region (and in
most Urban Support Regions) in the US of A.
This
Backgrounder is addressed to the
third cohort and those who may be interested in
joining this growing group. The intent of this
exploration is to:
-
Identify
the scope and causes of problems with cars
– aka, Autonomobility. This includes the
impact of cars on not just The Mobility and
Access Crisis and The Helter-Skelter Crisis
(aka, dysfunctional human settlement
patterns) but also on The Affordable and
Accessible Housing Crisis.
(1)
Recreation / entertainment venues that depend
on making citizens happy and safe for their
economic viability;
(2)
Big Box retail facilities that generate
Autonomobile trips;
(3)
Space for Parking and Driving Cars
-
And
finally, it speculates about what comes
next: Will citizens take
action to cushion the dramatic shock of a
rapid, forced abandonment of cars or will
citizens and their leaders continue to
whistle past the graveyard and wait for the
inevitable crash?
Mainstream
Media's Contribution
When
the topic is “the problem with cars,” the
MainStream Media almost always dance around the
edges and beat around the bush. There is
discussion of “citizens' love affairs with
cars,” and of “freedom” but no mention of
the fundamental problems with Autonomobiles or
as S/P chooses to call it Autonomobility. (See End
Note Three.)
Why
the sugar coating? Why the discussion of
“love affairs,” muscle cars, the giddy
jabber about freedom, joyrides and what
American Dreamers dream about? The car-story
tellers are leading the whistlers past the
graveyard.
Trained
journalists working for MainStream Media should
know better. One suspects they do know better
but they would not have jobs at major media
outlets – or in Agencies, much less the
Autonomobile industry – if they reported the
whole truth about cars. (For an overview of the
constraints on MainStream Media see the Backgrounder
THE
ESTATES MATRIX.)
Billions
are spent every month on advertising
Autonomobiles and touting auto-dependent land
uses. Millions more are devoted to image
advertising by petroleum, rubber, chemical,
Autonomobile and housing sectors for the
economy. This critical revenue stream keeps
MainStream Media from sounding the alarm for
reasons spelled out in THE ESTATES MATRIX. Self-
interested, misinformed and misguided lobbyists
as well as anti-think tanks spokespersons and
pundits are deployed to provide a steady stream
of misinformation to maintain collective
ignorance about the reality of Autonomobiles.
(See End
Note Four.)
Another
Perspective
Luckily,
not everyone sings the same song. A recent
Ecocity Builders e-newsletter views
Autonomobility from a different perspective:
"Part
of the current pondering is rightly focused on
the primary enabler of our energy hogging way
of life: the car. "How can we make cars
better?" we wonder.
"What
about biofuels, or electric cars?"
"The
problem is that there IS no better car, no
matter what energy source powers it, because
the car itself lays the foundation for the
thinly scattered, resource-demanding
environment that we've built around ourselves.
The only way to solve the car problem is to
get out of the old mindset and move to what
would actually work. The Ecocity approach, we
think, is a powerful solution/ strategy that
addresses the situation at the level of
response the problem demands." (See End
Note Five.)
Ecocity
Builders are not alone in their condemnation of
Autonomobiles based on settlement-pattern
impacts. The problem is that supporters of “a
car-free universe” are almost alone. Beyond
MainStream Media one finds an occasional story
about those who live “car free” or with
fewer cars than one per driver, but it is not
often. (See “Loving
the One-Car Lifestyle,” 19 July 2007 in
the Bacon's Rebellion blog. As suggested by the
citations in End Note Five,
there are many anti-car books and studies and
even more anti-anti-car (aka, pro-car)
publications. The problem with the
anti-car publications is that most of them focus
on one or a few aspects of Autonomobile impacts
and few consider the overarching dysfunctional
human settlement pattern impact of Large,
Private Vehicles.
The
Enormity of the Problem with Cars
Those
who have given serious thought to “the problem
with cars” know that to honestly consider the
anatomy of Autonomobility is to probe the
currently quaking economic foundation of
contemporary society. The present trajectory of
the technology-dependent and advertising / Mass
OverConsumption-driven civilization is
unsustainable.
On
the one hand, reliance on Large, Private
Vehicles for the Mobility and Access by almost
all citizens drives up the balance of payments,
generates direct and indirect pollution and
creates resource insecurity for every citizen of
every First World nation-state. That is
especially true in the US of A, which has the
most severe case of Autonomobile addiction and
twice the per capita energy consumption of the
European Union. (See End
Note Six.)
The
reliance on cars for Mobility and Access is a
primary obstacle to evolving a sustainable
trajectory for civilization. The reason for
this extreme impact? Pure and simple:
Autonomobiles drive dysfunctional human
settlement patterns.
It
is a vicious three-step circle:
Step
One: Citizens and their Agencies,
Enterprises and Institutions have evolved
settlement patterns in which the vast majority
must have a car to get anywhere and all must
have a car to get most places.
Step
Two: At the same time, the space required to
drive and park the car disaggregates and thus
renders humane settlement patterns ever more
dysfunctional.
Step
Three: That means that Autonomobiles are
even more necessary and we are back to Step One.
On
the other hand, the economic, social and
physical prospect of an end to Autonomobiles is
stark and horrifying to those who give
considered thought to a world without cars
within the settlement pattern that has emerged
over the past 90 years. If the
“no-more-cars” bomb dropped tomorrow, most
citizens would be immobile and isolated. Only
one sequence of realistic images we can recall
is stark enough to capture the prospect:
In
one of the early Star Wars movies, Luke
Skywalker is trapped at the end of an
access ladder on an inter-stellar vehicle.
As the vehicle races through nothingness, the
hero is suspended over the abyss. One
can see, thanks to the wonders of
cinematography, a vast expanse of
inter-stellar space into which the hapless
hero will fall if his grasp on the last rung
fails. That last rung is a steering wheel.
That
is Business As Usual’s economic prospect with
respect to the end of Autonomobiles. The
difference is, today’s reality is not a movie
and the fact is, there is nothing but the abyss.
(See “Still
No Exit,” 2 July 2007.)
Masking
Reality
“I
would rather be stuck in traffic on the way to
work than driving 70 miles an hour on the way
to collect an unemployment check.”
We
first recall hearing this rendition of
Conventional Wisdom from J. Hamilton Lambert in
the 70s. Lambert was a clever bureaucrat who
worked his way up from a position of planning
aide/draftsperson to be County Executive of one
of the largest and most wealthy municipalities
in the US of A. Jay loved simplistic
pronouncements like this to frame complex policy
questions in ways that made the “answer”
seem obvious. (See End
Note Seven.)
When
Lambert made this statement, traffic congestion
was becoming a big issue in Fairfax County. The
only bigger issue was the revenue needed to pay
for schools, police, fire and other public
services generated by ever more dysfunctional
settlement patterns.
Lambert,
and others who used this homily, did not mention
that a citizen could not live on
unemployment/welfare for long before they could
not afford a car or gasoline to power a car.
That reality has grown more true as the years
pass.
The
way to find a job? Move to a place where
congestion is already bad, get a job and make
congestion worse by driving to work.
The
failure of the Autonomobile to provide Mobility
and Access in large New Urban Regions is a
classic example of the operation of The Fallacy
of Composition – what is good for one is not
good for all.
What
Is the Proof that Autonomobiles Do Not Provide
Mobility and Access?
The
proof of the utter futility of continuing to
rely on Large, Private Vehicles as the primary
way to provide Mobility and Access is quite
simple:
There
is not a single New Urban Region in the US of
A where Autonomobile congestion is not growing
worse year by year.
There
is not a single New Urban Region in the First
World where the Autonomobile is relied on to
provide the majority of intraCommunity,
interCommunity, intraRegional and
interRegional travel where traffic congestion
is not growing worse year by year.
It
does not matter what streets, roadways,
freeways, expressways or tollways are built,
congestion grows worse and the Mobility and
Access Crisis becomes more critical every year.
In addition, fossil fuel consumption continues
to grow and air and water resources continues to
be degraded by Autonomobile emissions.
There
is no effective “congestion relief” strategy
that relies on the use of Autonomobiles. All the
Business-As- Usual “fixes” that rely on
Autonomobiles are variations on the theme of
building more of what is causing congestion in
the first place, thus intensifying the Mobility
and Access Crisis.
The
fact is that large, contemporary
agglomerations of urban use – New Urban
Regions or whatever one calls them – cannot
be provided with functional Mobility and
Access using Autonomobiles as the exclusive,
or even primary, means of transport.
In
small urban agglomerations a large percentage of
the citizens can rely on Autonomobiles for
Mobility and Access with acceptable results –
as long as fuel is cheap and the roadways upon
which to operate Autonomobiles are substantially
subsidized. (See End
Note Eight.)
This
is not the place to debate the subsidy issue.
Suffice it say that since at least 1650 in North
America, various modes of transport have been
subsidized by Agency- chartered corporations or
directly by Agencies to foster
“development,” “economic growth” and
citizen well-being. First it was post roads,
toll roads and navigation aids then canals and
railways, then motorways and finally airports
and airways and expressways. Who pays what for
which mode is not easy to tie down. (See End
Note Nine.)
In
the Bacon’s Rebellion column, “How
About Sustainable Logic,” 16 July 2007,
S/P castigated those who use faulty reasoning to
suggest shared-vehicle Mobility and Access
systems should pay for themselves. We observed:
No
one suggests that private-vehicle systems or
airlines pay for themselves. Canals and
railroads could not have been constructed
without vast government “contributions.”
Mobility and Access is a function of
government (Agencies). One part of the system
cannot be separated out and required to pay
for itself any more than the police, fire,
public safety or education can “pay for
itself”.
It
is also a fact that no citizen should expect
to pay a flat rate for services when these
individuals can make location decisions that
drastically raise the cost of many services
– public and private – but especially the
cost of Mobility and Access.
So,
If New Urban Regions Are the Problem...
“Well,”
you say, if the problem is that New Urban
Regions (NURs) cannot be provided with Mobility
and Access using Autonomobiles, then why not
just avoid NURs? After all, who needs NURs when
citizens could spread across the landscape where
there is plenty of room for cheap new roads? If
NURs are becoming impossible to provide with
Mobility and Access, let us just go somewhere
else and build something else.
Sorry,
that does not work. New Urban Regions are where
over 80 percent of the population of the US of A
now live, work and where they seek Services,
Recreation and Amenity.
New
Urban Regions (NURs) are the fundamental
building blocks of contemporary civilization.
NURs are state-of-the-art in First World
urbanization.
Creating
ever more intensive and complex urban systems is
not a new phenomenon. For 10,000 years, when
humans have had a choice, the vast majority
chose urban over nonurban environments to live
and work. That is especially true in the context
of global Winner-Take-All competition and
Business-As-Usual growth and consumption.
Industrial
Agglomerations and now New Urban Regions have
evolved in the 250 years since the dawn of the
Industrial Revolution as noted in Chapter 3 of The
Shape of the Future. In contemporary
urban society, every individual and every
Household has a need to make money to live,
especially if they want to participate in the
euphoria of Mass OverConsumption. (See Jim
Bacon’s column “The
Excesses of Affluence,” 28 May 2007. Also
see THE
ESTATES MATRIX.)
New
Urban Regions are where most of the best jobs
are and where the opportunity is greatest to
achieve the goals that humans of all races and
creeds have set for themselves. New Urban
Regions (by whatever name one wants to use) are
what democracy and a free market demand and
where these foundations of contemporary
civilization thrive.
As noted above,
for low-density areas at the Beta Community
scale and for relatively short travel distances,
the self-propelled, rubber-tired Large,
Private vehicle on paved roadways is relatively
efficient as long as the fuel costs are low.
However, as the urbanized area expands and
achieves New Urban Region scale, it becomes more
attractive with better jobs and more interesting
activities – a magnet for what Professor
Richard Florida calls the “Creative Class.”
Under these conditions, the volume of travel
grows and Autonomobility becomes more and more
inefficient. If the settlement pattern
does not evolve into functional and Balanced
components with supportive shared-vehicle
mobility systems (aka, transit), the
Autonomobile becomes less and less functional as
a major contributor to Mobility and Access.
The
Specter of the Wealth Gap -- the End of
Democracy with a Market Economy
Even
if it were physically possible for Autonomobiles
to provide Mobility and Access, Large,
Private Vehicles (Autonomobiles as we know
them) when constructed as high-tech, low-carbon-
footprint machines will be beyond the economic
reach of most citizens. Already, new Large,
Private Vehicles are a major economic drain
on the majority of the population on the wrong
side of the wealth gap. As noted below, smaller
and cheaper cars not safe on the Large,
Private Vehicle System. Cheaper, used cars
are gas hogs and CO2 / NOX / particulate
volcanos. This issue is further examined in PART
IV.
Reliance on Autonomobiles will progressively
widen the Wealth Gap in First World
nation-states. This threatens both
democracy and a market economy.
This fact does not seem to bother apologists for
Autonomobility. It should.
Functioning markets depend upon a functioning
democracy and vice versa. Democracy
cannot survive in the face of a widening Wealth
Gap when citizens have reached a level of
education, literacy and ubiquitous
communications that exist today and drive
citizen exceptions. (See End Note Ten.)
Compounding the Wealth Gap problem is another
fact of contemporary life: As the population
ages in maturing First World nation-states,
Autonomobile provides Mobility and Access for a
smaller and smaller percentage of the
population. As critical as the
Wealth Gap and the “percentage of population
served” issues are, there is an even more
critical overarching reality. As pointed
out in the following section:
Even
if Autonomobile fuel were free and non-polluting
and cars came in Cracker Jack boxes,
Autonomobiles would not provide Mobility and
Access for functional contemporary human
settlement patterns in large New Urban
Regions.
The
Primary Problem with Cars
In a word, the
problem with cars is that they are AutoNOmobiles.
Large, Private Vehicles do not now and can never
provide humans with Mobility and Access in
prosperous New Urban Regions. This is a
matter of physics, not policy or politics.
The reason the Mobility and Access Crisis is
getting worse in every New Urban Region is that
Autonomobiles and more Large, Private Vehicle
System (LPVS) infrastructure cannot solve the
crisis. More of the same infrastructure makes
the Mobility and Access crisis worse.
In fact no transport system can solve the
Mobility and Access Crisis. A solution
requires Fundamental Change in human settlement
patterns and transport systems to support
functional patterns and densities of land use.
We have outlined this reality from dozens of
perspectives in The Shape of the Future and in
over 30 Bacon’s Rebellion columns devoted to
Mobility and Access over the past five years. (See
End Note Eleven.)
Here are a
few specifics about the futility of reliance on
vehicles for Mobility and Access that are Large
and Private:
Large.
The
Large part of the Large and Private equation is
easy to understand; it is a matter of simple
physics. When vehicles are
Large they require excessive amounts of space to
drive and to park. The cumulative impact
of all this space disaggregates human
activities, the very reasons that humans create
urbane, urban spaces in the first place.
Take a look at an
aerial photo of any Core of any
New Urban Region in the US of A. Look at
the Centroid of any component of human
settlement above the scale of Neighborhood.
What you see is vast areas devoted to surface
parking. This issue will be documented and
explored in PART IV.
Large also
means that the vehicles are expensive and that
these vehicles require large amounts of energy
to move them – especially to move them fast
– in an environment with gravity and wind
resistance. It also requires extensive
energy to move Large Vehicles long distances to
connect the dispersed origins and destination of
travel demand.
One
of the main reasons people want large private
vehicles, over and above the status factor, is
that they deem them to be, and in most
instances are, “safer.” Safer is
better when the Large, Private Vehicle Systems (LPVS)
– including the interRegional system (aka,
“Interstate”) – create dangerous
conditions by mixing vehicles of different types
driven by operators with different skills.
The current transport system puts 3,000- to 5,000-pound cars in the same lane with 40,000-pound
trucks all traveling 75 miles an hour.
But that gross mismatch of mass is just the
context of the problem. The passenger
vehicle drivers have widely varied skills and
abilities. Many people drive while talking or
texting on a cell, reading, applying makeup,
eating, refereeing children or looking for cute
guys.
The trucks are, for the
most part, driven by professionals but that does
not guarantee safety, as accident data documents.
For professional drivers, time is money and
someone forcing them to drive 55 miles per hour when they
could be going 75 miles per hour costs them time and money.
Further, the truckers, regardless of skill, are
herding trucks, the majority of which have
safety defects involving brakes and steering.
To add drama, some of the trucks are carrying
hazardous cargo. This is a deadly mix, as
documented by the data on traffic deaths cited
at the outset of this Backgrounder.
It is not just the danger of killing and maiming
drivers, passengers and pedestrians that make
LPVS dysfunctional. About one quarter of
the delay encountered by those “stuck in
traffic” is due to “incidents” (aka,
accidents) on the LPVS.
Private Vehicles are also
Large because each vehicle is designed to meet
diverse needs:
The vast majority of the
current Autonomobile trips could be successfully
completed in far smaller two-, three- or four-passenger
vehicles and many of them could be made in two-
or three-wheel vehicles including Segways.
Small vehicles do not convey status, cannot be
made safe on a mixed vehicle roadway systems,
are not comfortable on long trips, will not
carry a baseball team, and get stuck in a few
inches of snow.
Smaller is
cheaper, except for sports cars, and they have
a different set of negative parameters.
The Autonomobile industry makes the most profit
from selling Large, expensive vehicles. If
auto manufacturers can convince citizens to buy Large vehicles
they make more money for their stockholders.
The prospect of smaller vehicles is addressed in
PART IV.
All these Large issues have
an impact, but the bottom line is that Large
vehicles disaggregate the spaces and activities
that humans value, the spaces and activities
that enrich urban life and are scaled for human
use.
Private.
There is a second set of problems generated by
the Private part of the Large, Private Vehicle
equation. First, the fact that vehicles
are Private exacerbates most of the problems
with Large vehicles:
As with the
Large part of the equation, Private is a status
symbol. Apart from the fact that Large,
Private vehicles are the 20th and 21st century
unisex codpiece, Private means that there are
vastly more vehicles required than if shared
vehicles were the vehicle of choice. This
is obvious from the fact that the great majority
of the Private vehicles are used, at most, a few
hours each day. The economic incentive of
any shared-vehicle provider would be to have the
capital investment rolling as much of the time
as possible.
The fact that Private
Autonomobiles are often used for
“peak-period” travel exacerbates this
problem. The periods of peak demand are
the sweet-spot for optimizing the use of
shared-vehicle mobility systems. Use of
Large, Private vehicles saps the demand for peak
use of shared vehicles and shared-vehicle
systems.
Small
and Shared Is Beautiful
From this
discussion it is clear that if vehicles were
smaller and shared, the problems would be less
severe. Further, if vehicles are privately
used but shared sequentially – like rental
cars or Zip Cars – it would be a big
improvement over exclusive Private ownership. Sequentially shared vehicles are a step in the
right direction and would help erode the
illusion that two or three Large, Private cars
are a necessity for every Household.
In summary, “the problem with cars” is that
the vehicles that came into common use during
the 20th Century are Large and Private.
The problem is Large, Private Vehicles (LPVs). The problem is also that the system that has
evolved on which these vehicles operate, the
Large, Private Vehicle System (LPVSs)
disaggregates the urban fabric. That
disaggregation undermines economic prosperity
and social stability. It is also
environmentally unsustainable.
When
the idea of a nation state-wide system of
“interRegional” roadways was first outlined
as a national priority just after World War I,
the system was conceived of as roadways
connecting urban
regions, with most of the traffic being
military and “commercial” vehicles, not
passenger cars. Rail, after all, carried
passengers and most of the heavy freight in
interRegional commerce. The concept of an
interRegional system for Large, Private Vehicles
was not the intent. Just the opposite was the
goal, as expressed by Benton MacKaye:
“roadless towns and townless countryside.”
By the time the interRegional roadway idea
worked through many committees to the document
that laid the foundation for the
“Interstate” system in 1944, the proposed
interRegional roadway system penetrated the
urban fabric at the Core of every future New
Urban Region. (See End Note Thirteen.)
The illustrations in “Interregional
Highways” depict wide, disaggregating and
isolating swaths of roadway through urban
fabric. Due to decisions aimed at
holding down cost by refusing to pay for the
impact of the new roadways,a s discussed in the
Bacon’s Rebellion column “Interstate
Crime,” 28 February 2005, the net
result was gross disruption of urban social as
well as economic and physical systems.
Mobility and Access for citizens in sustainable
21st century New Urban Regions requires that the
LPVS evolve into a completely new system as an
important element of the evolution of functional
human settlement patterns.
The
overarching requirement is that there is a
Balance between the travel demand generated by
functional settlement patterns and a mobility
system. It is a matter of physics that this
is not a LPVS. (See End Note
Fourteen.)
One last point about
Large,
Private Vehicles. When economists view the
expenses of individual Households to determine
how they can economize, they find that the very
largest single waste of money in the majority of
Households is the loss of value due to
depreciation of new Autonomobiles incurred
during the first year after buying a new
Autonomobile. (See End Note Fifteen.)
Looking back, those who pine for the good old
days should recognize that with small, shared
vehicles serving functional settlement patterns
there would be no need for drastic curtailment
of human activity due to the end of cheap oil.
With lower levels of demand, the supplies would
be sufficient for centuries to come.
The
Private Vehicle Mobility Myth
During the past 20 years SYNERGY/Planning has
developed and refined a tool to help citizens
understand Autonomobiles and the Mobility and
Access Crisis. This tool is the
articulation of the Private Vehicle Mobility
Myth. Those who are beholden to the
Private Vehicle Mobility Myth believe
that:
It is possible to build a
transport system serving New Urban Regions using
Large, Private vehicles (Autonomobiles) in such
a way that any driver can go any place they
want, at anytime they want and arrive in a
timely manner.
This myth grips the
largest (75 Percent) cohort who have a
“problem with cars” as well as the 20
Percent cohort that have no problem with cars
discussed above. The Bacon’s Rebellion
column “From Myth to Law,” 29 November 2004,
and the material cited in that column
as well as later columns including “The
Commuting Problem,” 17 January 2005, “Regional Rigor
Mortis,” 6 June 2005, and “Solving the Commuting
Problem,” 5 February 2007, explore
the ramifications of the Private Vehicle
Mobility Myth. (Also again see End Note
Eight.)
Reliance on
Large, Private
vehicles makes the Private Vehicle Mobility Myth
consumptive and deadly.
When frustration with not being able to live the
Private Vehicle Mobility Myth boils over, those
who can afford it turn to the Skycar Myth
articulated by Richard Buckminster Fuller and
Frank Lloyd Wright. New technology and
smaller jet aircraft are not going to make this
fantasy any less of a myth. (See “The
Skycar Myth,” 15 November 2004.)
Perhaps the most important
ramification of the Private Vehicle Mobility
Myth is the impact on citizens who can afford to
buy what ever they want. For most of these
drivers, Large, Private Vehicles provide the illusion
of “Freedom.” Freedom is good.
Even the illusion of freedom is not necessarily
bad.
An important question is:
How many would pay for the illusion of freedom
if they understood that Private Vehicle Mobility
is a myth and they had to pay the full cost of
Large, Private vehicles?
S/P’s view is that when the subsidies for
driving and parking are removed by allocating
the fair cost of location-variable decisions, a
great deal of the allure of the Autonomobile
will disappear. The problem is that the
dysfunctional settlement patterns will
remain.
An overarching concern is
that when the old system starts to fall apart,
and the majority of citizens understand the
system cannot be made functional with Large,
Private Vehicles (LPVs), can a transformation
be accomplished?
When it is
imperative to implement a new Mobility and
Access strategy to serve contemporary urban
civilization will there be the resources
available to accomplish this
transformation?
It is critical to
understand that “solving” any of the
“minor” problems with cars such as:
-
Better trained drivers
-
Getting
drivers with sub-par skills off the road
-
Rapid incident (accident) response
-
State of the art traffic signal systems
-
Automated systems to shunt drivers to the less
crowded roadways (if one exists)
-
Helping drivers find the remaining open parking
places faster
-
Variable congestion fees on
LPVSs
-
Separating trucks from passenger vehicles
will not solve the Mobility and Access Crisis.
The entire
LPVS must be changed. To
repeat:
There must be a Balance
between settlement pattern travel demand and
Mobility and Access system capacity.
Achieving this Balance requires Fundamental
Change; Fundamental Change in human settlement
patterns and to accomplish that, Fundamental
Change in governance structure.
The
Autonomobile and the Disaggregated Society
There are also wider implications of the
mistaken reliance on the Autonomobile for
Mobility and Access. A full exploration of
these ramifications is beyond the scope of this
Backgrounder but a quick overview is
appropriate. When citizens and
governance practitioners, including elected
officials, fail to understand the role of
Autonomobiles in creating the Mobility and
Access Crisis, it leads to a range of
misconceptions by individuals that can be
illustrated with by the following
vignettes:
-
Excuses by citizen scofflaws who ignore speed
limits and common courtesy: “If DOT would just
build more roads, I would not be late and so
would not have to drive so fast, cut off that
car in the other lane, etc. ...”
-
Failure of police to enforce HOV lane
restrictions and speed limits: “I cannot blame
citizens for being frustrated and breaking the
law because if the damn politicians would just
build more lanes they would not have to speed /
drive on the restricted lanes, etc., ...
In fact I do the same when not in
uniform.”
In other words: If (name
your villain) would just (name your
“solution”) I would not have to (name the
action that endangers the driver, passengers and
pedestrians) ....
All these
misinformed actions make the Mobility and Access
Crisis worse. This same outlook shows up
in a larger context. Almost everyone complains
about how “other” drivers drive. "They" speed,
"they" tailgate, "they"
hog the road, "they" drive while
talking on the cell phone, "they" do not pay
attention to pedestrians or children playing
near the roadway, "they"... the list is
endless...
This is a symptom of the
individual isolation that the Large, Private
Vehicle provides. High-performance Autonomobiles
especially provide a context for
aggressive competition and in extreme, but
not uncommon, cases Road Rage. If the
drivers met on neutral ground and had a chance
to get to know one another, they more than
likely would not have the same level of
aggression.
The bottom line is that
Autonomobiles exacerbate two general
proclivities of humans:
These proclivities
undermine the evolution of a society where
citizens are happy and safe.
Why
Have You Not Heard about the Fundamental
Problems with Cars Before This?
Why
is the refutation of the Private Vehicle
Mobility Myth not taught as part of every high
school driver's training course? Why is it
not the main subject of all state driver’s
exams? Why is it not explicitly spelled
out on a waiver that must be signed before
buying an Autonomobile? In fact, why is
the need for Balance in human settlement
patterns not introduced in elementary school
with other basic concepts of ecology and then
reinforced in all formal and continuing
education programs?
The
primary reason is that Business-As-Usual is
dependent upon selling Autonomobiles and on
Autonomobile-dominated (aka, “Autocentric”)
settlement patterns. Autonomobiles are the
vehicles of Mass OverConsumption.
Autonomobiles and housing built in Autocentric
projects (along with military spending) have
pulled the US of A out of every recession since
World War II. Citizens now face a Mobility
and Access Crisis, an Affordable and Accessible
Housing Crisis (building the wrong size house in
the wrong location) and both are due to the
Helter Skelter Crisis – dysfunctional human
settlement patterns. The wars in the
Middle East are caused, in large part, by the
need for cheap Autonomobile fuel; the pollution
in waterways is largely due to emissions from of
byproducts from the use of Large, Private
Vehicles, emissions are a major source of
greenhouse gases... you get the idea.
Have you heard how hard it is to get off the
back of a tiger? The vast majority of
citizens in the US of A are on a tiger’s back
running headlong toward an economic, social and
physical cliff. The bigger problem, if a
more frightening prospect is possible, is that
the entire economy is on the back of that same
tiger.
Autonomobiles were really
convenient when only a few could afford them.
Henry Ford was committed to changing that and he
succeeded for a time. Autonomobiles
remained relatively convenient so long as there
was:
-
Cheap fuel
-
Vast subsidies for the roadways to foster
“growth” and increased consumption
-
Settlement patterns did not yet require
extensive use of Autonomobiles for every need
-
Many citizens had not yet come to believe that
they deserved Autonomobile-based Mobility and
Access
Autonomobility proves the
reality that in a democracy with a market
economy, what is good for some is not good for
all.
This is the Fallacy of
Composition. In a prosperous democracy,
the expectation is that Mobility and Access will
be available to all, or at least the vast
majority of those who go to the polls.
That is less and less possible as the cost and
negative impact of Autonomobiles continues to
increase.
There were warnings of
impending doom if citizens put all their
Mobility and Access eggs in the Autonomobile
basket. Benton MacKaye, Lewis Mumford,
Wilfred Owen and others sounded the alarm in the
'20s, '30s, '40s and '50s. By the time it
becomes obvious to a majority of citizens it may
be too late to avoid The Crash.
Sources
of Information about Autonomobility
The current information about Mobility and
Access is generated by the Autonomobile industry
and Agencies controlled by those who are afraid
to admit that near exclusive reliance on
Autonomobiles for Mobility and Access is a dead
end. They promote the Private Vehicle
Mobility Myth and tout the glories of Large,
Private Vehicles because they see no
alternative.
This cohort
includes the U.S. Department of Transportation, all the state
departments of transportation, and the
National Academy of Science’s Transportation
Research Board. As suggested earlier,
MainStream Media is also on the back of the
tiger. Check out the revenue from product
and image advertising in daily and weekly
newspapers as well as electronic media including
the Internet. The revenue that is due to
Autonomobiles and Autonomobile-driven human
settlement patterns drives MainStream Media
silence on the issue as documented in THE
ESTATES MATRIX.
Try
to find out what the Autonomobile crowd believes
is a sustainable, long-term solution to Mobility
and Access in New Urban Regions and you are
treated like someone with the plague. (Refer
again to End Notes Three and
Four.)
Autonomobile
advocates, agents and apologists look the other
way when their own data shows that regardless of
the level of new facility construction:
-
Traffic congestion is growing worse in every
major New Urban Region, and
-
The hours and cost of delay are growing worse
every year in every New Urban Region
These trends are not in dispute and are
confirmed by the transport Agencies' own data.
In addition:
Energy efficiency is not popular with the
Private Vehicle Mobility Myth crowd. There
are few “energy efficient” vehicles on the
road and the sales go south every time the price
of gasoline goes down. The first thing
that needs to happen is for citizens to
understand the reality of the Private Vehicle
Mobility Myth. Most of the “new
technologies” such as those listed in “Cool
New Technologies that Could Revolutionize
Transportation” at Bacon’s Rebellion Blog
for 25 July 2007, could make a small,
short-term contribution but no combination of
small contributions will substitute for
Fundamental Change.
And, oh
yes, there are also those “problems with
cars” noted in the “Threshold List” that
opened this Backgrounder. These problems
confront citizens on a daily basis and, as noted
above, solving any of them does not convert the
Autonomobiles into an option for sustainable
Mobility and Access.
There are
places that one can learn about alternatives to
the current trajectory such as Todd Litman’s
Victoria Transportation Policy Institute, some
university research programs and the Surface
Transportation Policy Project. (Links can
be found in End Note Eight). However these
“mainstream” advocates of better Mobility
and Access strategies cannot be too forthright
because they risk loss of funding and will be
pilloried by Autonomobile advocates such as
those cited in End Note Four.
PARTS
II, III and IV provide contexts for citizens to
understand the problem with cars.
--
February 11, 2008
END
NOTES
(1).
See “Dying
Young in Traffic,” 1 November 2004, and
“Death
and Cars” at Bacon’s Rebellion Blog 30
April 2006. Also see “Without a Car,
Suburbanites Tread in Peril: Loudoun Residents
Blaze Their Own Risky Trails Where Sidewalks and
Bike Paths Are Lacking,” Chandler, Michael
Alison WaPo 16 July 2007.
(2).
The Helter Skelter Crisis is the subject of
Chapter Two of BRIDGES (Forthcoming). Also
see “The
Whale on the Beach,” 28 August 2006 and
most of the other 113 columns at www.baconsrebellion.com
on the topic of dysfunctional human settlement
patterns.
(3).
A typical example of MainStream Media
coverage is Joel Achenbach’s entertaining
opinion piece, “Car Crazy: Why We Keep On
Truckin’, We’re Not Ready to Trade In Our
Gas Guzzlers,” on the first page of WaPo's
Outlook Section for 20 May 2007. Achenbach
presents facts and observations with a thick
sugar coating. A subtle hint to the real
“problem with cars” can be found in the
other story which shares the bottom of page one
with Achenbach’s essay. It is titled
“The China Challenge: A Shining Model of
Wealth Without Liberty.” More on that later.
(4).
A wonderful example of the extent to which
MainStream Media shares the blame for
citizen’s confusion about Autonomobiles can be
found in the September 2004 New York Times
Magazine story, “The Autonomist Manifesto
(Or, How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the
Road)” by professional contrarian turned
conventional wisdom flack, John Tierney.
(5).
The author of this statement is Ms. Kirstin
Miller. The book "Ecocities,
Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature," articulates the mission of Ecocity
Builders, the organization for which Ms. Miller
works. WHAT?
will be found in Chapter 17, Fireside
Reading of BRIDGES, (Forthcoming).
Let
us be clear, there is a library of anti-car
books and reports. There is more than a
library of anti-anti-car (aka, pro-car) books
and reports. A good representative of the
anti-car books is Jane Holtz Kay’s "Asphalt
Nation: How the Automobile Took Over American,
and How We Can Take It Back." New York,
Crown, 1997. The anti-anti-car books are
headlined by "The Vanishing Automobile and
Other Urban Myths: How Smart Growth Will Harm
American Cities," by Randal O’Tool,
Brandon, Ore Thoreau Institute 2001. There
are also many “evenhanded and scholarly”
volumes that in fact tell the Business-As-Usual
story (e.g. "Driving Forces: The Automobile
its Enemies and the Politics of Mobility,"
by James A. Dunn, Jr., Washington, D.C.,
Brookings 1998, and "Still Stuck in
Traffic: Coping with Peak-Hour Traffic
Congestion," by Anthony Downs, Washington,
D.C., Brookings 2004.)
(6).
Autonomobiles are not just a US of A or a First
World problem. Auto-centric settlement
patterns are eating away at the prospect of
future sustainability across the Earth.
Crafty Yankees, Euros, Japanese and Koreans are
taking advantage of a failure to understand the
downside of Autonomobiles in “developing
markets.” Like tobacco and some chemical
companies, automakers sales and profits,
especially in developing countries with low
standards, are keeping them in the black.
What is especially maddening is that US of A
companies sell smaller and more efficient cars
in Europe than in the US of A. And, by the way,
for the first time in history in July of 2007,
more foreign cars were sold in the home of the
Autonomobile than were sold by US of A
corporations. At the end of 2007 GM is the
largest Autonomobile maker by the slimmest of
margins.
(7).
There are other, and we are sure earlier,
versions of this perspective. Lambert
probably borrowed and modified the statement to
suit his purpose – to expand the tax base to
pay for more roads, schools and other
facilities. We have since heard variations
on this theme concerning Southwestern Virginia,
Houston, TX, and elsewhere.
(8).
This topic will be further explored in the
context of the issue of Critical Mass and the
Myth of Other Places in the Backgrounder, “The
Use and Management of Land” (forthcoming).
(9).
The Surface Transportation Project (www.transact.org)
and Victoria Transportation Policy Institute (www.vtpi.org)
provide a number of cost comparisons.
(10).
For an entertaining and frightening view of the
emerging underclass, see “Deer Hunting with
Jesus: Dispatches From America’s Class War”
by Joe Bageant (Crown NY 2007). Also see
PART IV of THE ESTATES MATRIX
concerning the prerequisites for preservation of
democracy, a market economy and open
Institutions. These are also prerequisites
for economic prosperity, social stability and
environmental sustainability – and for happy
and safe citizens. For an excellent
survey of how the existing economic and social
context evolved see “Supercapitalism” by
Robert Reich (Knopf,
NY 2007).
(11).
See BRIDGES, Chapter 2 (Forthcoming) for a
listing and summary of the columns. Also
see columns with transportation titles in the
listings under EMR Profile on Bacon's
Rebellion.
(12).
This topic is explored in PART V in the context
of “How to Build a Village” by Claude Lewenz
(Village Forum Auckland 2007)
(13).
“Interregional Highways: Message from the
President of the United States transmitting a
Report of the National Interregional Highway
Committee, Outlining and Recommending a National
System of Interregional Highways” House
document No. 379, 12 January, 1944.
(14).
In the interest of full disclosure, the
author and his wife drive LPVs.
Immediately following the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo,
the author sold a van, sports car and sedan and
bought the most fuel efficient vehicles on the
market. Because few others changed and the
LPVS has not yet evolved to be safe for more
efficient vehicles, intelligent citizens are
obliged to drive LPVs. The critical issue
is how far and how often these LPVs are driven.
The author’s two-driver Household travels
about 20 percent of the yearly average for Households
in the Commonwealth due to location decisions
that reflect a consistent pattern followed since
1973.
(15).
“Ways You’re Wasting Money: Number 1 New
Cars” SmartMoney.com, 12 Oct 2007
(16).
Warren Brown does a wonderful job of letting
the air out of the hype over energy-efficient
vehicles in “Two Wrongs and a Right About
Energy” in his “Car Culture” column for 29
July 2007 in WaPo. His point is that the
Toyota Prius is not “the answer” and neither
are the other alternatives he lists. As
noted above, even if LPVs (and Prius is
“Large” in this context) burned no fuel they
are not the answer.
(17).
See the ad “helping you get where you want to
go,” page 13 A 2, August 2007 in WaPo by “The
People of America’s Oil and Natural Gas
Industry.” Also see the 6 August 2007 ad
in the A section of the same paper by Chrysler
touting its continued corporate commitment to
both energy conservation and muscle cars.
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