Cars Have No Place in Our Future

Let me start this post by acknowledging my own hypocrisy on this subject. My wife and I have a car and would have a much more difficult life without it.

I’m now of a certain age where it’s possible to envision a time where driving a one ton vehicle at speeds high enough to seriously injure people might not be in anybody’s best interests. Yet the little voice inside me that says “you’ll get my keys when you pry them out of my cold, dead hand” is still there.

I lived in Washington DC for a few years short of two decades without owning a car and never missed it. I can’t imagine living in San Diego without one.

Between my medical needs –visiting health providers is 90% of my social life– and my wife’s grueling work schedule, we need a vehicle. We’re not happy about it and hope for a future where using transit to get from a place where we can afford to live to the places we need to go doesn’t require the same amount of time as a commute to Temecula from North Park.

Having said all that, let me say that a future not automobile dependent is needed if we are to have any chance to keep our climate habitable for our species a few generations from now. NOW is the time to be making the decisions enabling that future, since magic wands seem to be in short supply these days. And, no, electric cars are not a good solution; they may have a smaller impact per vehicle, but driving a Prius to a McMansion isn’t living green..

Reading all the critiques of SANDAG’s vision for the future makes me want to scream. And it proves beyond a doubt that a lowbrow satiric film like Don’t Look Up has a place in the modern day discourse.

https://youtu.be/RbIxYm3mKzI

I want to grab those luddites by the collar and forcefully ask them what their solution would be, but I already know the answer: they don’t have one. 

And any attempt to change the status quo when it comes to transportation will be regarded as impinging on their “freedom.” Plus, building new infrastructure costs money and we’ve all been taught that taxes are a tool of the devil.

The dirty secret about cars and roads is that they exist because of government planning and subsidies. Traditionally roads are built to accommodate projected traffic, which then grows to fill the new capacity. (hot tip–adding more lanes does not decrease congestion) 

Streets are modelled to maximize the flow of cars and the speed at which they travel. Until recently it was the standard that pedestrians and cyclists were squeezed by planners into narrow and often dangerous spaces. Attempts to change that paradigm are met with misinformation and the attitude that “somewhere else” is a better idea. 

Just because those parking places we all crave don’t usually require us to open our wallets doesn’t mean they are free. Somebody, somewhere, whether it’s the government or the real estate developer is tapping your bank account on a regular basis for a spot.

Renters pay an average of an additional $225 per month for their personal space in an apartment building.

From Voice of San Diego in 2013 (so it’s higher now):

• On a surface lot zoned for mixed-use development, a single space costs $10,000. In an above-ground parking garage, one space costs between $20,000 and $40,000. The cost of a space in an underground parking garage is estimated at between $60,000 and $90,000.

Any proposal to overhaul our transportation status quo needs to start with an even greater threat to Americans’ freedom, namely the “right” to build housing anywhere you damn please as long as it’s not in my backyard.

The building of a massive network of higher speed roads is, environmental and social concerns aside, one of the great accomplishments of the last century. Anthropologists in the future will look upon our ribbons of concrete as an engineering marvel, much like we look at the Roman aqueduct systems today.

Highways enabled the consumer culture needed to fuel the American economy. They also killed most Mom and Pop as a viable business model for necessities in most of the country as malls and supercenters with tons of parking made for more choices and a different experience. Now, the smaller “shopping centers,” as they were once called, are being abandoned as Mega is the standard. 

Even Mission Valley, once considered the queen bee of San Diego shoppingtopia, now continues to exist in large part because of the traffic generated by a two story Target. 

Any strategy for overhauling transportation has to incorporate the understanding that further sprawl is a non–starter. If you’re politically savvy, you should be muttering “lots of luck with that one.” And you should also know that densification is our best option.

Single-family homes, the dominant mode of suburban housing, put a massive strain on the environment, have more square footage per unit than multifamily housing does, meaning average emissions per unit are higher.  When taken in conjunction with the use of cars as mass transportation, suburban single-family homes create nearly three times the carbon emissions as dense, urban multifamily housing.

Suburbia, with its stand-alone rows of housing, is a big contributor to the fact that over half of Americans say they feel lonely. Reorganizing the way we live should mean people’s daily lives are framed by repeated spontaneous interactions as they negotiate a more urbanized environment. 

If the lockdowns from COVID19 have shown us anything, it’s that checkout lines are not a good substitute for having a social life. 

The future of transportation –at least until we get Star Trek transporters– means that planning for mobility needs to put social and environmental benefits at the top of the list. 

This means a wholesale switch towards electric mass transit, safe and separate bike lanes accompanied by a steady closure of the conditions that allow cars to rampage through our lives. Do we really need to travel at 35 miles per hour on University Avenue through North Park’s business district? Of course, in some places, and for some purposes, using cars is unavoidable. 

One beef I would have with mass transit planning is that economies of scale often take second place behind construction design. I know, I know, that San Diego’s terrain offers many challenges, but we can learn from cities like Madrid for tips on shortening construction time and costs.

As Guardian columnist George Monbiot says: 

• In this age of multiple emergencies – climate chaos, pollution, social alienation – we should remember that technologies exist to serve us, not to dominate us. It is time to drive the car out of our lives.

We’re smart people. We can figure this out. All we have to do is try. …don’t like my ideas?... figure out another way, but ignoring what’s coming our way is not an option. 

Hey folks! There’s a change coming to Words & Deeds in 2022. I’ll be moving from WordPress to Substack, which hopefully will mean just a few changes in formatting. Stay tuned for exciting details.

Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com