By David Sirota, In These Times, April 6, 2012
Interstate 70 in Colorado, one of the nation’s best-known arteries, is
the latest thoroughfare to incite an archetypal fight. Running at capacity as
it cuts through Denver, this gateway to the Rocky Mountains is about to be
expanded over the objections of residents whose low-income neighborhoods will
be sliced apart.
No doubt, the road will probably win–as roads almost always do in
these battles. Indeed, the story of I-70 summarizes the 60-year tale of urban
development in modern America: Instead of beefing up public transit, cities
build neighborhood-destroying highways, cars fill up those highways, cities
then build more highways to alleviate traffic, and then yet more cars flood the
roads, creating even more traffic. Known as the “fundamental law of highway
congestion,” this cycle perfectly embodies the “if you build it, cars will
come” axiom confirmed in 2011 by researchers at the University of Toronto.
In the past, of course, road fetishists could claim that such
catch-22’s aside, our nation is inherently reliant on cars, and that adding
roads–any roads–is intrinsically worthwhile. This, in fact, is the assumption
woven into the bipartisan federal stimulus bill and President Obama’s new
budget, both of which target transportation dollars to building roads. Those
new highways may not reduce congestion, energy consumption or pollution, but
they will enrich an array of powerful interests, including automakers, fossil
fuel companies, trucking firms and road contractors. And so they are repackaged
as cure-alls by politicians in our money-dominated democracy.
But what happens when America suddenly tones down its love affair with
the automobile? At that point, could we still justify destroying neighborhoods
to make room for bigger roads? Could we still pretend that more roads are truly
necessary? Could we still overlook the fact that road construction creates
fewer jobs than public transit projects? In short, could we still ignore all
the contradictions and problems that accompany our road fetish?
The United States is a nation whose car romance presents itself in
everything from high-minded literature (On the Road) to middle-brow music (“Paradise By the Dashboard
Light”) to low-brow films (Road Trip) – and all the SUV commercials in between. Pondering a less
car-dependent society may therefore seem like an academic exercise. But it’s a
more relevant endeavor than you might think.
Under the headline “Driving is a Dying Activity in America,” Business
Insider recently highlighted data
showing that Americans are putting fewer miles on their cars than at anytime
since 1999. USA Today notes
that this stunning decrease is a product of “factors ranging from the weak
economy to high gas prices to aging boomers and teens driving less.”
That last trend is the most significant, because it’s not just about
frugal parents momentarily prohibiting kids from driving during an oil-price
spike. It’s also about young people’s preferences. As the New York Times just reported, “Many young consumers today just do
not care that much about cars,” as evidenced by an 18 percent drop in teen
drivers licenses between 1998 and 2008. A generation ago, Ferris Bueller said
that getting a computer instead of a car proved that he was “born under a bad
sign” – but the Times cites a
new poll showing 46 percent of today’s 18 to 24 year olds say they would
actually “choose Internet access over owning a car.”
Taken
together, these attitudinal shifts present a welcome opportunity to change
everything from environmentally destructive infrastructure policies to outdated
corporate investment strategies. Seizing such a rare opportunity requires only
that more of us spend a bit less time in the car when possible. That, or at
least an end to a political theology that always presents new roads as a
panacea.
David Sirota, an In These Times senior editor and syndicated columnist, is a
bestselling author whose book Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the
World We Live In Now—Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything was released in 2011. Sirota, whose previous books
include The Uprising and Hostile
Takeover, hosts the morning show
on AM760 in Denver. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com or follow him on Twitter
@davidsirota.
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