We need them to go to work, go to school, go to a store, visit a friend and hang out at the coffee shop. The cars allow us to get where we need to go. They give us freedom to move about. Or do they? Have you ever been stuck in traffic?
Traffic jam on a highway. Miserable. Cars bumper to bumper crawling at 5 MPH. We need to widen the highway! More room for the cars! Five years and millions of dollars later two more lanes have been added. And… traffic jam, bumper to bumper. Can a highway ever get wide enough? How many lanes would it take to eliminate traffic congestion?
Not enough parking in the downtown. We need to create more parking! Let’s tear down some buildings to make room for the cars! How many buildings do we need to tear down to accommodate all the parking that we need?
A concerned citizen is asking questions in the North Denver Tribune. “How is density going to contribute to increased quality of life? Don’t we already have too many cars on the narrow streets in our neighborhoods?” Let’s limit the density in urban areas! People can live somewhere else and… drive to work. How is sprawl going to contribute to our problem with cars?
Widening the streets, creating more parking and limiting density only treats the symptoms of the problem and, in the long run, contributes to its exacerbation.
The problem with cars is that we need them.
What if we eliminated the need? Providing people with alternate options? Convenient, accessible public transportation can drastically reduce the need for driving. We should treat the cause, not the symptoms of the problem.
Density contributes to increased ridership of public transportation. In dense comminutes more people chose to hop on a bus rather than deal with the traffic and fight for parking. In turn, seeing increased ridership, city dedicates more buses and creates more routes to support the trend. Gradually cars get demoted to the weekend use only.
No more need for cars. No more problems with cars.
We all read these articles...articles which say that everything is wrong with designing our cities based on cars and mobility...but still even in poor countries like India where car density is low we rip apart whole cities to accommodate them............sigh...........The authorities whoa re responsible for building the city ignores this rationale and listens to a certain other lobby whose interests are not long term at all....
ReplyDeleteChitra,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comment. You are right, it is scary to see India and China follow into American footsteps. Considering population of those countries the consequences will be catastrophic!
Don't blame the city planners, they are just responding to the situation. The only thing strong enough to stop the car is a fare-free bus. There is an international campaign to make public transport fare-free. When fares are removed a gradual change will begin.
ReplyDeleteI second that. Even with reduced fares a partial migration from car to transit means paying for both. Some intrepid souls make a cold-turkey transition to a car-free lifestyle, and serve as quite an admirable example, but for most people trapped in a motoropolis like greater Detroit, following that example at this time is an exercise in altruism; the voluntary acceptance of a substantial level of inconvenience and often loss of opportunities, even when the overall cost of the mass transit lifestyle is less than the automotive one. Cars come with so many fixed costs, most notably insurance, which still have to be paid on the days one takes the bus. Partially phasing out the car in favor of transit will be cash-flow-neutral or cash-flow-negative, and it will only be cash-flow-neutral if transit is fare-free.
ReplyDelete