Why We Americans Love Driving and Our Cars, and Shouldn't Feel Guilty about It

[eastside]

There is a thought provoking article in the Sunday NY Times magazine on why the car is so integral to the typical American's idea of freedom, and why trying to control it by government fiat is so difficult and even wrong:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/magazine/26HIGHWAY.html
(BTW, registration is free.)

Some quotations:
"I've been converted by a renegade school of thinkers you might call the autonomists, because they extol the autonomy made possible by automobiles. Their school includes engineers and philosophers, political scientists like James Q. Wilson and number-crunching economists like Randal O'Toole, the author of the 540-page manifesto ''The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths.'' These thinkers acknowledge the social and environmental problems caused by the car but argue that these would not be solved -- in fact, would be mostly made worse -- by the proposals coming from the car's critics. They call smart growth a dumb idea, the result not of rational planning but of class snobbery and intellectual arrogance. They prefer to promote smart driving, which means more tolls, more roads and, yes, more cars....

"Mass transit is the cure for highway congestion (A prevailing belief) Commuter trains and subways make sense in New York, Chicago and a few other cities, and there are other forms of transit, like express buses, that can make a difference elsewhere.... But for most Americans, mass transit is impractical and irrelevant. Since 1970, transit systems have received more than $500 billion in subsidies (in today's dollars), but people have kept voting with their wheels. Transit has been losing market share to the car and now carries just 3 percent of urban commuters outside New York City. It's easy to see why from one statistic: the average commute by public transportation takes twice as long as the average commute by car.

"O'Toole and Wendell Cox, a transportation expert and visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, estimate that even if Congress miraculously tripled the annual subsidy for transit, the average driver's commute would be reduced by a grand total of 22 seconds....

"Suppose you have a choice between two similarly priced homes. One is an urban town house within walking distance of stores and mass transit; the other is in the suburbs and requires driving everywhere. Which one would you pick?

"If you chose the town house, you're in a distinct minority. Only 17 percent of Americans chose it in a national survey sponsored by the real-estate agents' and homebuilders' trade associations. The other 83 percent preferred the suburbs, which came as no surprise to the real-estate agents or others who spend time in subdivisions. For all the bad press that suburbs get in books like ''The Geography of Nowhere'' -- whose author, James Kunstler, calls America a ''national automobile slum'' -- polls repeatedly show that the vast majority of suburbanites are happy with their neighborhoods."

[MP57313]

Two comments:
1. I enjoy driving my car, and I also enjoy traveling by rail. It need not be an either/or proposition, though I do admit I'm in the minority in So Cal.
2. The housing comparison question is flawed. I live in the suburbs, and am walking distance from some shopping and transit. I live one block from a bus stop for MTA Route 444, which goes to LA Union Station!

[daveklepper]

The answer to the NY Times is that a dollar spent on transit improvements today does more to releave highway congestion that the dollar spent on hignway improvements, but of course I am talking about congested areas only, not rural areas. One tenth of Massachusetts' land is already devoted to highway transportation. Taking more land for additional highways is far more expensive than transit improvements. It is not only New York and Chicago and other big cities that can benefit from rail transportation, but in nearly every case (very few exceptions, Buffalo poossibly being one), new rail lines have permitted population growth without incease in highway congestion and in most cases have contributed to reduction in highway congestion. Typically, if ten percent of the drivers on a crowded stop and go freeway decide to take the train or bus or light railcar (but very few bus operations entice drivers to leave their cars at home or at the station parking lot and lots of rail operations to just that), then typically the congestion is reduced remarkably and the remaining drivers have a far better time commuting. So the reason cities like Portalnd Oregon and San Diego and Calgary and Salt Lake City are going for rail is not that they expect all the drivers to switch to public transit, but rather that the transit improvements benefit everyone, the transit rider and the car driver.

Anyone interested can add to this and pass on to The New York Times. I have not seen the article myself.

[jeaton]

I don't know who feels guilty about driving a car.

Can you imagine what the feelings would be if, rather than hiding the gas tax in the price of the fuel, drivers received a monthly bill for the tax in the mail. Talk about an elevation of emotions-and it wouldn't be guilt.

Jay

[Modelcar]

....I never feel guilty of driving a vehicle. If it's legal, no one should. If we're referring this to not riding trains...We'll ride trains when the service is attractive to do so. I've done just that at times already. In Florida and Pennsylvania. Rode the train because I wanted to....Referring to the vehicle, we use them at times because we want to and or need to....Side bar: In the last decade we've had to pay around the thousand dollar figure here in Indiana for a license plate on our auto....After doing that, it's easy to not feel guilty to drive that car. It's not near as bad now as the Excise Tax has been reduced from what it was.

[CSXrules4eva]

Hey this sounds like an issue that could be raised in my envornmental class. Here is the down low on my opinion about this topic. I love trains and my truck. However, I don't take my truck everywere sometimes I'll get on mass transit if more convent. I do this for the sake of emiting less NOx, HyCx, and COx. I also don't drive my car 1/4 mile down the road to go to a seven 11 or something. It's a waste of fuel, money, and a contributor to the greenhoues effect which enhances global warming.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Eastside for bringing up this topic.

I've never had a car (78 yrs old) but instead of forcing people out of their cars we should control the growth process to prohibit new urban-suburban development that's inaccessible and dysfunctional for people who cannot, should not or just don't want to drive. I think we're violating everybody's right to life with a planning process that can force us to depend on modes of transportation so dangerous that they require seat belts, air bags, crash helmets or whatever. I don't know or care if this will get enough people demanding public transit to justify more rail service but I can still manage to fall asleep on what many might refer to as an "uncomfortable" bus.

Redevelopment agencies and other urban revitalization efforts will never stop the decline of cities and mass transit unless we find a constitutionally sound way to stop development "for motorists only." Many of us love to drive, but it's still a privilege. The courts remind us consistently that it is not the equivalent of our right to travel.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Eastside for bringing up this topic.

I've never had a car (78 yrs old) but instead of forcing people out of their cars we should control the growth process to prohibit new urban-suburban development that's inaccessible and dysfunctional for people who cannot, should not or just don't want to drive. I think we're violating everybody's right to life with a planning process that can force us to depend on modes of transportation so dangerous that they require seat belts, air bags, crash helmets or whatever. I don't know or care if this will get enough people demanding public transit to justify more rail service but I can still manage to fall asleep on what many might refer to as an "uncomfortable" bus.

Redevelopment agencies and other urban revitalization efforts will never stop the decline of cities and mass transit unless we find a constitutionally sound way to stop development "for motorists only." Many of us love to drive, but it's still a privilege. The courts remind us consistently that it is not the equivalent of our right to travel.

[Paul Milenkovic]

As I was taking a walk through the neighborhood subdivision, it hit me that this style of housing (or at least on a mass scale for more than just rich people) is a post WW2 happening - a mere blip in history. I like trains, but I also like my car, a lot, and autos give mobility to allow 2-career families (try stopping off at the grocery on the way home from work for all of you commuter train people), allows frequent trips over intermediate distances (100-200 mile range) to care for aging parents.

I agree that these New Growth people are maniacs. Where I live, New Growths have been appearing in the payments (speed bumps in an effort to slow traffic on local streets -- dad gum Communists!)

But on the other hand, when the oil runs out, we are going to be left high and dry in our automobile-served suburban houses. Don't have any simple answers.

[PNCROSE]

Hoosiers have a particular affinity for their cars. Pry my cold dead hands ... etc. This attitude doesn't lend itself to serious discussions of alternatives to driving. Just give us more lanes. The choice of real estate certainly was flawed. What was left out was a pedestrian friendly neighborhood featuring lots that aren't 100' wide each. I do walk to the corner grocery but I admit wrestling 6 gallons of milk home is difficult. Commuting to work is difficult because Indianapolis has about the worst transit system in the nation. Run like a hub system, no matter where you want to go, you have to go downtown first. However Indianapolis' growth follows no distinct pattern except to follow road construction and whereever developers can pave over another farm. Mass transit requires massive groups of people traveling to and from distinct geographic areas, but automobiles defy this logic. So Indianapolis has massive numbers of people going all over the place like ants with no organization. Very inefficient. And face it, we're lazy. It is much easier to leave anytime we want and drive than plan a trip using a bus or other scheduled mode. With these disadvantages, it is no wonder that mass transit doesn't catch on unless the government directs it for our own good. Trains were built in Los Angeles only because of the forward thinking of their government at the time. The only reason commuter rail in LA took off was because of the damage to the area's interstates from the Norwood earthquake. After using trains for a year or so while the interstates were inop, Californians found out they weren't that bad after all and kept using them. Sure the tracks took damage, but they were much easier to repair than a 10 lane interstate. Will other parts of the country need a natural disaster to see the light?

[Anonymous]

I feel guilty about driving my car. thats why I use public transportation when I can.

[Junctionfan]

Cars are o.k. They give purpose to the autorack, automax, autoparts and frame cars right?

[Anonymous]

I don't feel the least bit guilty about driving, simply because I HAVE TO. Not to mention how much I love it too. Grocery stores are several miles away and even the closest Wal-Mart is 20 miles away. The only public transportation in our county has to be "booked" or "reserved" a day in advance and is made up of vans. This public transportation only leaves the county once a week too and that's to the Hendersonville Wal-Mart on Tuesdays. This is generally for the older people that can't drive anymore or are afraid to. We are fortunate to have what we do though.

[daveklepper]

Mark (and everyone else), despite what you wrote, and my own comment as well, i wrote the Times. Why? Because the assumption of many of the anti-Rail, anti-Pulbic Transit people is that we are anti-car! All of us know that isn't true. In congested areas the 10 to 20% of the people that move from private cars to public transit where the public transit is truly improved, frees up the road space so that the remaining 80-90% that continue to commute by car can do so more efficiently and enjoy it.

[espeefoamer]

I have to drive. I live 1 1/2 miles from the nearest bus stop[:(!]!

[railman]

I completely agree with what's been said- I do love driving my car.

But with that I think alternatives must be there. The Bus works well, and if we had the streetcars system that Minneapolis-St. Paul had around 1948, you'd have to beat people off it. (Oops, gave away secret information about where I live, uh oh)

Thankfully when we run out of oil ( that's a great while from now), I'm not paranoid, but thankfully I'll be able to ride my horse to work.

Yes, transit doesn't work in every situation. But if you set up rail lines with feeder buses and the like that make sense, most people would try and ride it when possible.

On a sad side note, street crews in Minneapolis uncovered perfectly intact double track old streetcar line, while repaving streets. Instead of uncovering the rest and having an instant (and cheap) addition to our LRT, the goomers decided to tear it out. WHY? Obviously, when the crews decided in 1950-something to just pave it over, they had seen the future and knew that rail would someday return![banghead]

This is the same city, though, that sold off all it's rail ROW along the river, let two rail bridges across the Mississippi go to bike trails, and gave up two depots. (the Milwaukee Road's is an ice rink and the GN is gone.) Not to mention letting some of the viaducts and easments go, too, which makes laying new rail in the city virtually impossible with NIMBYS' around.

Things to make you go huh- OT
The same city also, is having a big fight over letting water spin the turbines under Minneapolis' now abandoned mill district. (It's now a park, used to be water powered grain mills). This would generate electricity for the city, etc. People don't like the idea, but don't they get it- that's what the mills were there to do in the first place!!


That's the other catch in all of this; planners don't use common sense,so when they spend money when they could have used the "old stuff", critics can jump all over them, and rightly so. I just get dissapointed because then the big picture gets forgotten.

Apologies in advance for any spelling errors.

[DSchmitt]

There are good reasons for mass transit (both rail and non rail) in some areas and some circumstances. This site has studies and reports documenting a lot of them
http://www.vtpi.org/

But one thing that bothers me is that transit advocates throw in every cost they conceivably can when taking about the costs of the automobile, but ignore most costs when evaluating transit systems and comparing them to the automobile.

[MP57313]

QUOTE: Originally posted by railman
[Obviously, when the crews decided in 1950-something to just pave it over, they had seen the future and knew that rail would someday return![banghead]

Railman,
I think the pave-overs were done just to get the job done quickly, and not to plan for rail returning one day. As far as I know the track under pavement would eventually be pounded out of alignment from all the traffic and the slow deterioration process.
In LA in the early 80s you could still see narrow-gauge LA Railway tracks that had been paved over in the early 60s. (Pico Blvd; Vernon Ave.). A few traces are still barely visisble today. But no way could they have "unpaved" the rails without a major rebuilding program.

[Anonymous]

I love driving a 6 speed stick with performance tires, and I may get a g-force meter to stick to my windshield to show me how much faster I can corner.

That said, the last 4 years I've found jobs where I don't have to drive to work. I can study, read the paper, eat, meet people. A much better way to spend commute time than driving.

It's not about guilt. Getting out of the car and walking or riding a bike is a better way to live.

[domefoamer]

I don't have any quarrel with anyone driving a car. It's those trucks and jumbo SUVs that bother me. I mean the ones with clean carpets and empty load beds. If your vehicle isn't getting 25 mpg on the open road, there ought be a reason beyond hauling you and your coffee mug around town.
My wife and I have two cars. One uses American-made, renewable biodiesel to get 40 mpg. The other, the 5 passenger SUV, gets 27 mpg wherever and whenever. I can carry a sofa or a large rototiller in back. There's no sacrifice required to be smart, thrity and prudent about your personal transport. The end of the Oil Age is on the way, my friends, and I'm looking forward to it.

[TH&B]

I LOVE driving when I want to drive.
I HATE driving when I don't want to drive.

[Modelcar]

....Use to love driving but and as an example, just completed a drive to the east and the interstate was saturated with trucks....Didn't really have any problem but it's not love anymore...maybe like but one really has to be on his toes to stay safe. Wish some of the trailers we see lined up in groups of a half to a dozen trucks out there were on the rails. A reasonable amount of them is of course acceptable but maybe 80% of the traffic.....There must be a better solution.
Side bar: Years ago it was 427...then 402....327...and others and now 3.0L and 4.3L to power my vehicles...So, I'm contributing to saving the oil stuff......

[domefoamer]

Right, modelcar, you point out a disturbing trend. I read in a Nashville newspaper that up to one-third of the vehicles on their interstates actually are full-sized semis. On my last visit there, it felt like I was driving a car through a freight switching yard, at quadruple time. It was truly scary. There's no sense or safety in mixing two-ton vehicles among 40-tonners, at 80 mph. If I still lived there, I'd be wandering the two-lanes, or staying home. Most of this cargo would be better off hauled on the freight railroads. It may seem cheaper to put it on a truck, but only if you ignore safety issues and the increasing cost of building newer and bigger highways to do the work of rails.

Out here in Denver, half the cars are jumbo SUVs and pickups, which is bad enough. But because of our isolated geography, semis are pretty rare. That's probably one of the best things about living here.


But back to the original topic, long long ago-- I reject the arguments of O'Toole and allied Libertarian number-crunchers. Their classic technique is first to hide the benefits of light rail projects, narrowly defined, among the largest numerical pool within logical reach. Thus, "More light rail will only carry 4% of the total passenger trips in the Denver Metro area, up from 2% now." Roads and highways carry 90%+, so we should spend the money there, right? Next, they count the travel time savings on adjacent highways, which don't seem to change much. And they claim that taking the train saves only a few minutes over average times on the highway.


All those figures can seem precise and compelling. Their math may be correct, but the logic is suspect. As for the first argument, the laws of math insure that massive systems such as the Denver roadways, netting over 700 square miles and 2 million people, never show large percentage gains. Only marginal gains are possible. But it also means that a 2% ridership increase here benefits a large number of people, tens of thousands a day. <p>Light rail isn't equal tol high-speed rail. But for regular commuters, it's more important that times be consistent and predictable, like the highway isn't. If you don't need that 20-minute cushion before leaving home, that's days of added sleep over a year. Something never counted by these "economists." Don't forget the 100-year blizzard two years ago, when DIA was operational, but had to be shut down because personnel couldn't make their way to or from it over the windswept prairie. There is no train to the airport, but there will be if Referendum 4A passes.


Finally, why would we measure the benefits of public improvements among those who don't use them? The biggest benefits of light rail obviously belong to its riders, and any one of us can buy a ticket for a buck or two. That's a lot cheaper than a seat in our three new publicly funded sports arenas, which I also helped pay for. But they help my city, and make ideal destinations for -- you guessed it -- light rail.

The Light De-Railers are winning some battles, but rail, like any good idea, keeps coming back. The momentum is with us, but it's taking far too long thanks to ideological obstructionists like O'Toole.

[Modelcar]

...If interstate trucks would run the speed limit as rail traffic is mandatory to do perhaps they would not be quite as competitive. I believe we all can agree the 75 mph semi passing us on the interstates [with 65 mph limits for autos}, is petty common. I am fully aware they pay taxes and have a legal vehicle so qualify to operate on the interstates....I"m simply saying many are breaking the law to be competitive and getting the speeders off would make it safer for all of us...And I'm not talking about the ones running maybe 5 mph over the limit as many autos do.

[Anonymous]

Lately most of the trucks I've seen on the interstate have been obeying the speed limit (within 5 mph or so) and things have flowed pretty well. So many will speed going down hills though, trying to get up enough speed before going up the next hill and can make things very dangerous. This past week I was on I-240 in Asheville and a logging truck merged from I-40. This truck was leaving maybe 10 feet of room between the front of the cab and the car in front, all while I'm trying to go ahead and get past this maniac driving 70 mph (55 mph speed limit for all traffic.) on the sharp curves of this outdated highway. There needs to be more speed enforecement for the trucks especially and heavier fines and penalties when they're broken to slow them down.

[Anonymous]

Howabout the fact that Highways eat up Thousand of Acaers of grenn space and former land that was on the tax rolls

[oltmannd]

Enforcing speed limits and/or reducing maximum speeds will NOT close the transit time gap between rail and trucking. If you're comparing truckload with carload freight, a difference of an hour or two running time for the truck is meaningless against the multiple days for a carload. If you're comparing truckload with intermodal, the railroad is still already so much slower that an hour or two on a trip means little. The problem with railroading is the terminals, not the main lines. So much time is lost switching, getting trains in and out of terminals, grounding boxes and getting in and out the terminal gates that RRs just can't beat truck trip times, regardless of the highway speed limit.

BTW - on a recent Xcountry vacation, I noticed the large truck load carriers were not exceeding 65 mph anywhere, ever. I suspect this is/was a fuel conservation effort.

[Modelcar]

....Just 2 weeks ago my experience I listed above was across Ohio, Wv. and a part of Pennsylvania....Especially on the Penna. Turnpike we estimated truck traffic was near 80% of traffic running...! In Somerset our Hampton Inn room faced the turnpike and the amount of truck traffic was alarming....And I observed it several days from that hotel window. Traveling in the traffic it was common for trucks to be passing me, { even up the grades}, when I was doing 60 mph....and they flew right on by me....tailgated me if I got in their center lane at that speed....Turnpike speed limit in the New Stanton to Somerset area is 55 mph....! Across Ohio same result....I drive almost 70 in 65 mph limit across most of that state and same result....Trucks whiz right on by...and their speed limit is 60...! I'm not saying slowing these speeding trucks is going to make the rails competitive with them, but even for a matter of safety for us all, slowing them is what should happen....and that would have to work in the rails favor....Not cure all problems but just make an improvement on that one problem...

[tree68]

60, 65, 70? Heck, I was running 80 in traffic through metro Toronto this summer. Four lanes wide. I wasn't passing anybody, either.

[Modelcar]

...Meaning....?