“Car Free” as Distraction
I linked yesterday to a New York Times article about a car-free suburb in Germany because I thought it was an interesting illustration of how many different kinds of places can exist in the modern world. This Dana Goldstein post, however, reminded me that in some ways the whole concept of living car-free is a bit of a distraction:
Rybczynski claims that only six American cities have downtowns dense enough for a mass transit-dependent lifestyle: New York (midtown and downtown), Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco. This will come as news to those of us who live in Washington, D.C. and Brooklyn without cars, just to name two communities in which I’ve spent a lot of time. But while the childless lifestyle without a car is rather easy in a number of mid-sized cities, things get substantially more complicated when you’re responsible for ferreting a small, fussy person around to all their activities, while still being on time yourself. Any parents out there have experience with the car-less lifestyle outside of Manhattan? Any childless people who are making car-lessness work in cities other than the ones I’ve discussed here?
This is a useful factual corrective. But one should be clear that nobody lives in Washington, or even Manhattan, without ever using a car. I don’t own a car. But Washington Post superstar blogger Ezra Klein does. And last weekend he and I drove in his car to Costco where we bought supplies for some mass weekend grilling. I take cabs sometimes. And I’ve been known to rock a Zipcar. There salient thing about my life, and about Washington DC, isn’t so much that I don’t own a car as it is that even if I did own a car I wouldn’t drive it very much. It doesn’t really make sense to drive from my house to my office, and even if it did make sense it would be an extremely short trip. The big difference between owning a car and not owning a car under these circumstances is really economic rather than environmental. By not buying a car, I save a lot of money. And people who live in a city where you don’t need a car can save up in advance to buy one, rather than relying on credit—going into debt to acquire a depreciating asset isn’t very financially sound, but it’s a practical necessity for many people.
In environmental terms, however, the crucial distinction is actually how much gas is burned rather than whether or not one reaches a pristine state of carlessness. If someone who’s currently driving 300 miles a week to drive back and forth from Dale City to downtown Washington starts driving to a nearby commuter rail station instead, that will be a substantial reduction in pollution, notwithstanding the fact that he’d still be suburban car owner. Indeed, the reduction involved would be much larger than the reduction involved in someone like Ezra—who owns a car, but doesn’t commute in his car regularly—went “car-free.”
73 Responses to ““Car Free” as Distraction”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
May 13th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Did Dana Goldstein really write “ferreting a small person”?
May 13th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
I lived without a car with a small child for many years, and I lived in Alexandria. When you need a car, you take a cab or rent one. For the day-to-day, it is pretty easy. The big factor is if you arrange your life to minimize the use of a car.
May 13th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Living in a college town, it’s quite easy to go weeks without driving. When you live close to work, shopping, and drinking establishments you don’t really need one.
May 13th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Making cars produces a nontrivial amount of emissions, and the current pattern of car ownership reduces the number of miles a given car might be driven and delays the adoption of more efficient technologies. Accordingly, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if more people adopted a form of carsharing for their car needs.
May 13th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
I live in Harlem (so not mid-town or downtown NYC) and lots of people take their kids on the subway or bus. I know because of their screaming and blocking the aisle with strollers. It’s certainly not hard. And, you can live in _many_ parts of Philadelphia w/o a car, or with limited car use, as I did for many years. (Some parts are not too viable, though- the North East, for example.)
May 13th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
I live in a “college town” (really a small city of 100,000) in the Midwest, and I know several faculty who live without cars. Even more grad students, obviously — but I assume we’re not talking about people below the poverty line.
May 13th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Right. The goal isn’t to have car free households. The goal is to have households with one car in the garage and none on the road in a typical day. That one car is still very useful for a variety of activities I don’t see ever going away.
May 13th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Environmentally speaking, how much gas you burn is only part of the problem. The average vehicle consumes the energy equivalent of more than 70 barrels of oil just in production. “When we get desperate,” as Joe Romm puts it, people will have to realize that purchasing unnecessary products, including (especially) cars, is worse–or at least no better–than throwing them away.
May 13th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
One other thing to consider is that lots of families don’t own a car, they own several cars. Even minimal transit-friendly planning could make a dent in that. I live in Minneapolis, where it’s pretty hard to live without a car (though I did for a long time). But I live close to a transit line I use to get to work, so my family doesn’t need a second car, which is not the case with many of my friends.
May 13th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
My brother had a car for years in San Francisco, and he never drove it anywhere because he knew that when he returned someone would have parked their car in the street parking spot he had been using.
May 13th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
The kid thing is an utter canard. When I was a kid, we went to our public tennis lessons and our little league games and the library and the convenience store on our bicycles. Helmetless, it it true. But on our bicycles. There is no reason why kids cannot do that today.
May 13th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Another issue for consideration aside from emissions is the cost of road maintenance. Asphalt is a petroleum product. As more and more cars use the roads, more and more asphalt has to be maintained. And its getting pricey. During last year’s gas run up I tracked the price of asphalt. I can’t remember the specifics and I’m on an iphone now so looking it up would be a bother, but the price increases roughly tracked those of gasoline. Many municipalities simply stopped paving because they couldn’t afford to. Reduce the number of cars on the road and that frees up resources for more meaningful spending.
May 13th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
I live in Minneapolis, where it’s pretty hard to live without a car (though I did for a long time).
I spent a year in grad school at the U living in Dinkytown without a car. The next year I moved a block from the St Paul Campus. Got a car then. But Dinkytown was perfectly walkable/bike-able/bus-able.
I expect there are plenty of similar places, st least in college towns.
May 13th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
jayackroyd, you make a good point but there are WAY more cars on the road today then there were when you were a kid. And many more neighborhoods that are a freeway trip from everything, including ballparks, libraries, etc… Bicycling, helmet or no, is much less safe than it used to be. Especially in places where car dependency is a way of life.
May 13th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
There’s lots of people who have kids and don’t have cars. They’re poor, though, so few pundits actually know them.
The zipcar + transit is a great solution for lots of people, even people with kids. It gives people options. If they want to have a car, fine, but if they don’t, they’re not basically stranded someplace.
May 13th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
I live in Harlem
I live just south of Spanish Harlem. I also found that midtown downtown reference weird. The 456 provides great service from Brooklyn to the Bronx. Crowded at rush hour, but it’s way faster than a car or a cab. Was just up at the Bronx Botanical Gardens. An easy trip on the 4 with a short, free transfer bus ride tacked on.
And the ONLY way to go to a baseball game is by subway. Boston, Chicago, NYC.
May 13th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
The article was not really about being car free, but was about what is possible when we reimagine what our communities can look like. We’ve taken it as gospel that any new development needs parking for three cars per household, that any new commercial development needs several acres of parking, and that residential neighborhoods must be completely seperated from commercial and retail uses. The article illustrates that there are alternatives and that these alternatives are better for our health, well-being, and environment.
May 13th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Ghost
I get your point, but the old not superhighway roads are still there. I lived in Bergen County, NJ for a year or with no car. Bike and foot worked okay. It is true that the NJ Turnpike/I95/I80 went right by. But there were legacy routes still in place.
Of course, as with my moving to St Paul, your decision of where to live necessarily involves that need for a car.
All that said, riding a bicycle here in NYC turned out to be too terrifying an experience for me.
May 13th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Rybczynski’s claim that you need a density of 50 persons per acre to support public transit is just stupid.
Plenty of suburbs in the UK and continental Europe have decent sized houses (single-family or duplex/semi-detached) with nice gardens, and lots of people who don’t or can’t drive. They’re planned in smart ways (not just sidewalks, but separate footpaths and cycleways) and have decent public transit.
The goal is to have households with one car in the garage and none on the road in a typical day.
Or even “one car on the road, no other cars needed”: as Atrios puts it, the pressure towards it being “one car per driving-age household member”.
The piece in that section on the Levittown model of planning — premised on the 1940s one-car family in which Pop commutes and Mom walks the kids to school or goes to the store — is much smarter. Levittown used to be considered suburbia, and now the McMansioneers treat it as if it were the inner-city.
May 13th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Just take any US city–of any size–that was designed before 1900 and retains the same city plan it had then. Such cities (”small towns”, I think they’re called) have small but dense centers with small shops, and dense but still “suburban” housing surrounding the center, well within walking distance. These cities are especially prevalent in the Northeast where development started the earliest, even though most of the new development around and in between these places is car-dependant.
The principle is really simple. Build town centers within walking distance of residences. This can be done anywhere in America you want. And it already exists in the oldest places.
May 13th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Hah! Try getting five kids and a couple of hundred dollars worth of groceries home on a bus! Throw in a 54″ plasma TV, and it just illustrates the absurdity of the car-haters’ Utopia…
May 13th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
I have a 5-year-old and live in central SF. We drive our car about 2x/week and use transit or just walking for all daily commutes and most in-town outings. (The 2 trips are the weekly grocery stockup and my daughter’s swimming lesson–no pools near us, and the one she goes to is technically bus-accessible but when the bus takes 3 times as long as the drive I’m as liable as anybody else to choose the drive.) I think taking a single kid on transit is pretty easy–2 or more can be tough depending on ages. (And depending on decent transit systems with frequency of service–you don’t want to miss the bus home with a newly potty trained 2 year old and the next bus being in an hour.) And I probably would be tempted to cut down to a share except that taking a sick kid on transit (infrequent necessity but still) is a whole different ballgame.
But my husband and I seriously discussed whether to move to the suburbs with a child, and the car-dependent lifestyle is one of the reasons we didn’t. We’d like our daughter to be able to walk to the park or a friend’s house by herself in another few years, and bus to her own school a little after that. Without that infrastructure, the part of our life where we spend a huge part of each day transporting her would extend until she was 16 and got her own car.
May 13th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Try getting five kids and a couple of hundred dollars worth of groceries home on a bus!
Oh, you think that’s easy with your fancy-shmancy car or minivan– I have *12* kids, and let me tell you my friend, telling families that they can get along without a full sized van and 3 other cars just isn’t realistic in this day and age!
May 13th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
C’mon, there’s a great magazine article waiting for you where you take some lady’s two small kids off her hands for a week, carlessly.
May 13th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Do you ever get tired of being wrong all the time? I live in manhattan and never use a car.
Everything can be delivered, including groceries.
May 13th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
[...] Free” Misses the Point I tend to agree with Yglesias on this: But one should be clear that nobody lives in Washington, or even Manhattan, without ever using a [...]
May 13th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
I have *12* kids, and let me tell you my friend, telling families that they can get along without a full sized van and 3 other cars just isn’t realistic in this day and age!
The original example was just a hypothetical. My personal family transport involves a dump-truck full of children, which heads a caravan of eighteen wheelers filled with furniture, personal water craft, and NASCAR memorabilia–your eco-terroristic lifestyle is just not practical for Real Americans like myself and my four wives.
May 13th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Do you ever get tired of being wrong all the time? I live in manhattan and never use a car.
Everything can be delivered, including groceries.
5′ll get ya 10 the delivery service takes you your groceries in a car.
Also, the original post stipulates that mahattan is one of the few places in America where carlessness is easy, so you win no points for saying how easy it is to be without a car there.
May 13th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
These discussions always tend toward distractions. It’s always some novel-but-more-or-less-ridiculous experiment under discussion rather than, you know, a proposal for a modest reduction in miles driven/modest increase in fuel efficiency/modest improvements to mass transit/etc. And unfortunately, discussion of the former serves as a referendum on the latter in many circles.
May 13th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
C’mon, there’s a great magazine article waiting for you where you take some lady’s two small kids off her hands for a week, carlessly.
Hell, take the kids off her hands WITH a car, and you find yourself strapping two kids into car seats, driving them to day care, driving to the office, driving back to day care, and driving back home. No one in their right mind would consider this to be more convenient than pushing the kids in their stroller to a nearby day care center and hopping on a bus or train to the office.
As far as I can tell, the only reason the latter lifestyle is considered undesirable is that any location in a reasonably safe neighborhood within walking distance of both mass transit and a respectable day care facility is going to be astronomically expensive.
May 13th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Rybczynski’s claim would also come as a surprise to Portland and Seattle, among other mid-size cities that rely on large mass transit sectors.
May 13th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
it’s also nice to be able to use a small pick up truck every now and then. I had a small truck for a while and although I didn’t use the bed often, when I needed it it was shore handy. Then a kid came along, and there’s nowhere to strap a car seat in the bed of a pick up truck (and strapping it on the side of the truck is frowned upon).
May 13th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I really, just really can’t wait for the day when Matt gets married, has two kids, buys two cars, and moves out to the suburbs.
May 13th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
As far as I can tell, the only reason the latter lifestyle is considered undesirable is that any location in a reasonably safe neighborhood within walking distance of both mass transit and a respectable day care facility is going to be astronomically expensive.
I think the figure you’re looking at is $900-$1500 per month. If you can find a spot.
This is the corollary to the “No one wants to live in a walkable community; it’s soo expensive!” argument.
May 13th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
I really, just really can’t wait for the day when Matt gets married, has two kids, buys two cars, and moves out to the suburbs.
I do believe this is the “every generation is going to act exactly like my generation has” argument.
How long does Matt have to go without doing so before he wins? 10 years? 20? 50?
May 13th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
it’s also nice to be able to use a small pick up truck every now and then.
That’s another thing convenient carsharing, ala Zipcar, is really good for (you can potentially use different vehicles as your needs shift trip by trip).
May 13th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Throw in a 54″ plasma TV, and it just illustrates the absurdity of the car-haters’ Utopia…
Do you drive around with that TV all that often? I rather doubt it.
May 13th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
As far as I can tell, the only reason the latter lifestyle is considered undesirable is that any location in a reasonably safe neighborhood within walking distance of both mass transit and a respectable day care facility is going to be astronomically expensive.
Maybe. But when you subtract the car expense…
Seriously NYC is just full of people making mid 5 figures and making the rent. They aren’t necessarily in Manhattan, but transit services in the outer boroughs is pretty damn good.
And as Bloomberg’s girlfriend noted, regarding her riding the subway, with no Judi Nathan security, NYC is the safest city in the world.
Hell, Nathan lived a block away from my apt. Nothing looked sillier than her out with her little dog and her security beef, buying a paper at the Yemeni bodega.
May 13th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Anecdata!
I almost never drive my car; I live in Alexandria within a mile or so of several Metros. I can walk, bus, or bike to any of them; to the bank; to the grocery store; to the Crate & Barrel Outlet (mmmmm); to work (7 Miles away, a 45-minute fair-weather bike commute on the Mt Vernon Trail/National Mall). Whole weeks go by (occasionally months) when I don’t drive at all.
Though I’ve toyed with getting rid of my car and going the Zipcar route, I’ve done the cost analysis and decided to keep it instead. It’s paid off, has dirt-cheap insurance, and will last probably 10 more years. I can use it to go to my dad’s house (30 miles away) and my mom’s house (350 miles away) at a moment’s notice (which has happened before). I can use it to carpool and help out friends who don’t have cars (a la EK and MY’s trip to Costco). I can use it to get to places that are *just* too far or too much of a PITA to walk or are not on a bus route (e.g., the bike shop; my kingdom for a bike shop I can walk to…).
I see folks with kids in my neighborhood using some combination of walk/parknride/bus/school/metro/work. There’s even a dad and kid who go by on bikes together past my house; I figure he’s riding with the kid as far as school, then either riding all the way to work or at least as far as the Metro station.
Granted, it is quite expensive to buy a house in my neighborhood, but I am perfectly happy renting a nice place with a great view, for a reasonable amount of money.
All of which reminds me; I need to strap my bike on the back of my car to take it to the shop for a tuneup!
May 13th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
I really, just really can’t wait for the day when Matt gets married, has two kids, buys two cars, and moves out to the suburbs.
I think the whole point of the current discussion is that there are lots of different “suburbs” Matt could live in when this comes to pass, and in some suburbs his family might just need one car, or possibly even none they personally own (e.g., if there is something like Zipcar available).
May 13th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
By the way, though some non-car-dependent neighborhoods may seem pricey, you’d be surprised how much more you can afford when you don’t have the expense of a daily car commute. Even if you still have a car and are making payments on it, the savings on gas, maintenance, and insurance can add up to quite a lot if you aren’t using it every day for a long daily commute.
May 13th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
I find this to be quite amazing. I live in Los Angeles, probably the most difficult city to use public transportation. Every day, i take the bus to work and i see men and women taking their children to school and presumably going off to work themselves. Of course, none of these people actually count, as far as Ms. Goldstein is concerned. Because, my guess is, none of these people could afford a car. So they don’t count. But they do it. Every day, in Los Angeles. With kids. No really. it is possible. Lots and lots of people with no other means but to take public transit, do it.
May 13th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Really, Brad, we understand that you’re crying on the inside.
On the “kiddies’ activities” thing: well, that’s really just a function of sprawl, isn’t it? Not to mention the over-regimentation of children’s lives in a living environment where unstructured play has withered away through fear of the Child Abductor and through building patterns that are premised on pod-style housing developments connected by busy highways. Why should the only alternative to having Little Johnny watching TV inside be to stick him in the SUV for soccer practice on a private field five miles away?
May 13th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
C’mon Matt, you know danberkman is 100% car free!
May 13th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Haven’t owned or driven a car for 31 years. In the process, we raised three kids, who all learned to walk and ride bikes, buses or trains. My wife and I shop twice a day, either on foot or by bicycle. Of course, this is Tokyo, but we don’t live in the city center. Safety is a big factor, along with transportation that is ubiquitous and convenient when we need it.
May 13th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
I really, just really can’t wait for the day when Matt gets married, has two kids, buys two cars, and moves out to the suburbs.
When I have kids, I really would like it if they can go out their front door and visit a friend without being run over by a geezer in a land yacht. Vauban fits that bill.
May 13th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Re: things get substantially more complicated when you’re responsible for ferreting a small, fussy person around to all their activities
Also, a small fuzzy furry creature. Unless you’re really, really close to a vet’s office, taking a pet for a vet visit without a car is impossible. Animals generally aren’t allowed on public transportation except guide dogs for the blind, and trying to cart a possibly sick and often quite loud and unhappy animal in a carrier on a lengthy hike is not feasible.
Re: average vehicle consumes the energy equivalent of more than 70 barrels of oil just in production.
that’s not really a lot of oil (since most of us only buy a new car maybe once a decade or so) and if people weren’t spending the money on cars they’d be spending it in something else that’s going to produce CO2. Even food and drink do that for crying out loud. But meanwhile Matt is dead on right here: cars are necessary, but driving routine vast distances in them not.
May 13th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Also, a small fuzzy furry creature. Unless you’re really, really close to a vet’s office, taking a pet for a vet visit without a car is impossible. Animals generally aren’t allowed on public transportation except guide dogs for the blind, and trying to cart a possibly sick and often quite loud and unhappy animal in a carrier on a lengthy hike is not feasible.
So you call a cab. Doesn’t happen THAT often..
May 13th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Much more environmentally friendly to have a car instead of a child. If you need a child, you can go with the short term and sporadic use model provided by BigBrother, a longer term loaner from FosterCare, or the ten year lease from AdoptionAgencies. Trendsters with a bit of cash can even get a fancy import. With so many different models available it is incredibly selfish and harmful to the environment to want a new, biological model.
May 13th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
If you are the sort of person who thinks going carless is important, then WTF are you doing having children?
What this society needs is fewer articles about how bad cars are, and more articles about the true ecological costs of having a child.
Right now what we have is precisely the sort of ecological theater so rightly mocked by Republicans, where people and actions are judged based on whether they accord with some sort of checklist of behavior (a checklist that looks remarkably like the bylaws of a religion), with no attention paid to whether these actions actually make sense in the grand scheme of things.
May 13th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
@Ted: I did 10 years of schooling in Midwestern college towns, and it’s most certainly possible to live without a car there. (I did it.)
As I left, though, big box stores were being built on the edge of town, and the future of smaller stores closer to campus is in doubt, I think.
May 13th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
anonymous says: Just take any US city–of any size–that was designed before 1900 and retains the same city plan it had then. Such cities (”small towns”, I think they’re called) have small but dense centers with small shops, and dense but still “suburban” housing surrounding the center, well within walking distance.
Unfortunately, many of these small shops are vacant, nail salons, or takeout restaurants. The grocery, hardware, clothing stores have packed up and gone to the mall.
May 13th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
I agree with poly – I live in one of the older ’suburban’ areas in L.A. county (which is now considered urban). Smallish single family homes with real yards. Got kids? The school is 2 blocks away, and a beautiful and very safe park is across the street (supervised by volunteer parents/grandparents). Shopping? Three grocery stores within a 4 block radius, along with 2 clothing stores, dry cleaners, drug store and a couple of good restaurants. I can catch a bus literally across the street from my house that delivers me a few blocks from work (though I usually carpool instead). I often go days at a time without needing to drive. The funny thing is, I didn’t realize any of this when I moved here – I was bummed about giving up the ‘urban’ lifestyle. But I’ve come to appreciate it, and realize that there are places that don’t necessarily look like Manhattan but can still minimize the need for driving. They just don’t come with McMansions (thank goodness).
May 13th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
It worth keeping in mind that such places are astronomically expensive because the supply of such housing has been severely limited below what the market would produce by 60+ years of government regulation mandating sprawl.
May 13th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Re: So you call a cab. Doesn’t happen THAT often..
And how many cabs allow animals? Besides which, last I checked a cab is definitely a car (not many rickshaws in the USA) and as such suffers the same ecological drawbacks as any other car.
May 13th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
You completely missed the entire argument, didn’t you?
This is a thread about CAR SHARING, and how systems that allow many people to share the use of a car both reduced environmental impact and makes less carbon-intensive city living possible.
The title of the post is “CAR FREE AS A DISTRACTION,” fer chrissakes.
May 13th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
I live in Harlem (so not mid-town or downtown NYC) and lots of people take their kids on the subway or bus. I know because of their screaming and blocking the aisle with strollers. It’s certainly not hard.
You might have seen me with my kids on the subway. The younger boy loves to scream over and over again while I sit there slowly losing my mind. Living in New York, traveling by subway is a necessity, even if with you have two toddlers. But it’s certainly not easy.
May 13th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
I am a huge fan of public transport and riding bycicles.I have never drove a car in my 40 years.That is my choice.Others make different choices.
I am not a better human being just because i ride a bus.And my neighbors who work way out in Howard County are not worse people for driving a car.
Supporters of public transport lose the support of people like me when they talk of forcing people to go without cars.I also do not like the smug moral superiority of some of the commenters who would like to ban cars.
If I feel that way , imagine how someone who actually drives feels.People who support public transport should avoid turning themselves into a liberal parody.
I agree with MR YEGLAIS it is a distaction from creating a realistic transport system.
May 13th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
People who support public transport should avoid turning themselves into a liberal parody.
You’re going after strawmen here, pete. The standard middle-class American lifestyle has become increasingly dependent upon one car per driving-age household member, and that a lifestyle that doesn’t or can’t rely upon cars for basic tasks is somehow considered deviant or a failure.
My wife isn’t out on a limb when she assumes that the people “riding the bus” means “poor” or “license suspended” — it’s what she was brought up to think, and her experience in southern cities backs it up.
If you want to live in a 2500 sq. ft. house with a three-car garage in a subdivision without sidewalks that joins a four-lane road, then your cup runneth over. If you want to live within walking or safe cycling distance of a grocery store or a library, or on a useful bus route, you’re left scrabbling.
Joe from Lowell has hinted at the reason, and creating genuine choices actually require a degree of collective effort — and yes, sometimes a bit of compulsion in terms of zoning and building ordinances. The current zoning model is no less of a compulsion when it sets a minimum home or lot size, or okays wide roads for new development to “account for future growth” and considers sidewalks an unnecessary expense. (Or, even worse, an unwanted way to “bring in criminals”.)
You won’t find many people forcing others to give up their cars; you will find many people forced to drive for trips that could be done otherwise. It’s just that its not considered compulsion when an activity is deemed “normal”. That can be changed with minimal investment: it could mean having sidewalks instead of grassy verges; it could mean adding a pedestrian crossing to a major road (”oh no, it’ll slow down the commuters!”). Little things.
May 14th, 2009 at 12:14 am
Burning gas is not the only crucial environmental distinction related to car use. In addition to how much pollution is released and how inefficiently resources are consumed, there’s also how much pollution (aside from carbon monoxide) is released, how much sprawl is generated, how likely it is that people and other animals will be killed or wounded, and how much political support is siphoned away from transportation that serves the poor, the disabled and teenagers.
Car-sharing is a clear improvement on the pollution and efficiency fronts. It’s a bit less clear when it comes to sprawl, carnage and transportation for all.
Matt, I would appreciate if you would take one more minute and let yourself be distracted by J.H. Crawford’s response: “Once the last car disappears from the street, it becomes a playground for people of all ages. This can be seen any day in Venice or Fes. Peace, safety and tranquility settle over the street, and a rich and vibrant social life takes the place of the stink, noise, and danger of cars.”
Isn’t that a bit more than a distraction? Isn’t it worth something?
May 14th, 2009 at 12:27 am
REGARDING MR PSEUDONYMOUS IN NC COMMENT# 59
I would agree with your sentiment. And I agree that many suburbs are hard to travel without a car.My point is that several commenters did make it clear that they felt cars in general were bad . This is not simply a “strawman”.I do feel that a small minority of public transport supporters do give most of us a bad name.
I also know that in Baltimore [i live in the city itself]there are many people who could use buses but don’t.Yes ,bus service overall in Baltimore is bad.But if you live in the Canton or Federal Hill neighborhoods and you work downtown , the bus is cheaper than a parking garage and sometimes just as quick.
While i think some of my friends should use the bus more or even walk . There is no way that they ever will .I personally do not feel comfortable forcing my lifestyle on them.I sometimes try to convince them to use the bus.But that is as far as i think I, or anyone else, should go.
I would sincerly be interested to hear how you or others think that these people could be convinced to use public transport .But the debate on this post seems to be about whether cars are good or bad.
Maybe this is the sort of distraction ,that MR YGLESIAS was talking about.
MR PSUEDONYMOUS I do not doubt that you are in favor of better public transport.And I am in agreement with much of what you said .Particually on the zoning issue. But I do feel that argueing about whether cars are good or not does not help any of us.
Speaking of which ,I have a long bike ride to work tommorow and i need to get to sleep.Good night to you MR PSEUDONYMOUS and i wish you well.
May 14th, 2009 at 12:33 am
BTW, I am surprised that no one has brought up the fact that apparently NYC is planning to shut down part, or all of Times Square to auto traffic.I read about it in the sunday washington Post on May 3rd.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:25 am
Thanks for the response, pete: you bring civility here and encourage civility in others.
I would sincerly be interested to hear how you or others think that these people could be convinced to use public transport
I’ve commented about it before here on a number of occasions. Part of it requires challenging the ingrained prejudice against public transport. Part of it requires creating public transit networks that don’t feel like they’re being run as a welfare operation. Someone who thinks buses are, by definition, “smelly” or used by poor people — but hasn’t used a bus in decades — needs a different kind of persuasion from someone who’d take the bus if it ran every half-hour instead of every hour, or if getting from A to B didn’t require a half-hour wait at transit station C.
In the first case, it sometimes requires changing the paradigm: light rail doesn’t have the same stigma as buses, which can make inroads in sprawlier places like Charlotte or the Twin Cities. It means challenging the NIMBYism that had people on the outskirts of Atlanta opposing MARTA extensions because of the absurd phantom of Some Black Dude being able to come steal their flat screen TV and carry it away on the train.
In the second case, it just means getting the people who run transit systems to learn how it’s done well from where it’s done well.
That’s really a side-issue, though: the fundamental problem is with the policies of land use, particularly in the last three decades: building patterns and zoning that dispense with sidewalks in residential areas, or demand large up-front parking lots and deep setbacks in commercial spaces.
In so many parts of the US, it has been made hard or near-impossible to walk even a small distance because of asphalt-moated stores, roads without sidewalks or crossings, or strip-malled highways with no alternate routes. I once got stopped by a police cruiser in the burbs of Augusta, GA, because it was deemed suspicious for me — a pale mofo — to be walking around in that part of town.
If there’s a resentment towards cars, it’s primarily a symptom of what car-centric planning has encouraged and mandated, which is a pattern of living not scaled to people. The character of the American suburban landscape is quietly dictated by inanimate objects, and that creates just as much dissonance as if we’d built out our towns and cities to suit the demands of cats: eventually, people would start objecting to cat-condo shaped homes and having to enter stores through three-foot-square flaps cut into walls and doors.
I don’t want to ban cars, but I don’t want them ruling over me. Simple as that.
May 14th, 2009 at 6:28 am
Re: The title of the post is “CAR FREE AS A DISTRACTION,” fer chrissakes.
The point of the title is that we do not need to be car-free to reduce CO2 emissions. If everyone just cut their driving, say, by half, we would be doing a great deal of good in that direction. I’m someone who deliberately lives close to work so I can bike there. So I’m part of the solution not the problem. The “car free” fanaticism is as kooky as suggesting we should all give up sex and live as monks. That’s OK for a few dedicated ascetics, but it’s neither necessaery nor desirable for everyone.
May 14th, 2009 at 8:15 am
5′ll get ya 10 the delivery service takes you your groceries in a car.
A swing and a miss!
10′ll get you 20 that your groceries aren’t the only ones being delivered by that vehicle.
May 14th, 2009 at 9:21 am
REGARDING MR PSUEDONYMOUS COMMENT #64
Thank you for your response. I would agree with many of your ideas.But I think that the first part of what you said is even more important than the zoning issue.
Some of the stigma of buses is deserved and bus drivers should enforce some standards.I have seen at least 2 fist fights on Baltimore’s # 23 line where the driver did nothing while blood was literaly shed.
On the other hand most buses are safe in Baltimore .And I am sad to say that as you said above racism and a touch of snobbery is unfortuntaly part of the reason rich whites do not ride the buses.
At a certain point i think that we should accept that many well off people will not ride the bus , and make the buses better for those that do.Too often cities like Baltimore build systems like the Baltimore subway.It was built for well off suburban whites, and is always at least 50 – 75 % empty.It would have been better if they had spent the money on more buses. When people see buses that are so packed that no one can move ,they do not want to get on.Half the time you can not get on because there are so many people on that the bus driver can not let more people on.
Thank you for sharing your ideas MR PSEUDONYMOUS they are defintly appreciated and are food for thought.And now I have to ride go my bike uphill to a job. Is it just me or do the hills get steeper every year ?
May 14th, 2009 at 9:25 am
BTW I think it would be a great idea for MR YGLESAIS to do a post comparing light rail ,subways ,buses and streetcars and examine which ones are most practicle.I think we need a mixture of all ,but I think that streetcars are the best and most efficient.
May 14th, 2009 at 9:42 am
I spent two years without a car in a town of <8000 people. I rode my bike to work and to the store (I got to the point that I practically forgot the walmart a few miles outside of town even existed) and I borrowed my parents car when I had to go away, or else I hitchhiked to the bus station, about 100 miles. Why does hitchhiking not get any airtime in these conversations? I’m kidding, but I will say that the experience of being carless was blissful.
May 14th, 2009 at 10:26 am
[...] car-free in the United States continue to provide fodder for debate around the network, with both Matt Yglesias and Cap’n Transit weighing [...]
May 14th, 2009 at 11:36 am
[...] car-free in the United States continue to provide fodder for debate around the network, with both Matt Yglesias and Cap’n Transit weighing [...]
May 14th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I didn’t drive at all from the time I was 18 to the time I was 30. Didn’t have a car, but didn’t borrow anyone else’s car, didn’t rent a car. I sometimes rode in cabs or in other people’s cars. And during that time I lived in 3 of the above–Chicago, New York (well, Brooklyn actually) and Philadelphia. No pretensions of virtue–I don’t really like to drive and I didn’t have very much money–and really only got a car when I had kids.
But–as in, for example, discussions of being a vegan, vegetarian, or just cutting down on meat, I never found much virtue in being a zealot. When I didn’t have a car, it was a great hassle to have to carry heavy things around, or go to places that public transportation didn’t easily reach. I arranged my life to avoid these things as much as possible, but it wasn’t possible to avoid them completely without making life extremely inconvenient and I felt like I was missing out on things. This is triply true with small children. I commuted on the train with each child between the ages of about 4 to 18 months. I don’t think my fellow passengers were happy–and on some levels, I was extremely unhappy–with this arrangement, but we did it.
Nonetheless, I am quite happy that there is train service between my home and job AND I’m happy that I have a car to shuttle the kids to school, to go to the supermarket for the weekly run of 8-10 bags of groceries, to haul a piece of furniture when necessary, and to get around when it’s 30 degrees or raining hard. If you build good public transportation, it will take care of a lot of needs for a lot of people–but it’s not going to take the place of cars for those situations where cars are most useful.
May 14th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Re: It was built for well off suburban whites, and is always at least 50 – 75 % empty.
Not to mention it doesn’t seem to go anywhere particularly useful. I will assume it was built before the Harbor was revitalized, since anyone riding the subway to get down that way (or up to the Mt Vernon partying district) will have a long walk still.
May 14th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Regarding comment #72 by JonF.
MR JonF I have always assumed that it was built to bring in workers from the suburbs to Johns Hopkins medical center.Since Hopkins is the largest private employer in Maryland ,let alone Baltimore, they had enough clout to get the project done.The line goes from Owings Mill and ends at John Hopkins.
The problem is that to get to any of the suburban stations you need a car since there are only 1 or 2 buses out that way.
If a person has to drive to the station they will probably just drive into town.
This gets back to my point earlier about how we should try to make public transport work for those that do NOT have cars, instead of spending massive amounts of mony trying to get people with cars to take a subway that they still have to drive to.
Let us hope that they build the new light rail line soon.