When They Come For Our Cars

"...Big Government Will Be Behind It." The January 2019 issue of Car and Driver revives a topic that is sure to only get larger and more intense over coming years - "The War on Cars." But, make no mistake, this topic seems like it has been one of the few constants in my life since I first became a wee-lad-enthusiast probably forty years ago. We've loved to hate cars for a long time now. But my first reflection while reading the article actually was some introspection of my own personal politics, namely one centered on independence, intelligence, and irreverence (the tagline of Car and Driver, incidentally) and whether my automotive passion (folly?) may have had an incipient role in shaping my worldview. Could it be that cars shape your politics? Are they that evil?

First, let's tackle the topic itself - the "war on cars." As I approach my quinary decade, it seems that the rise of electricity-powered vehicles has finally come into a focus. A focus not seen since the early 1900's. Yes, that's correct. Electric cars are not something new and innovative. In fact, they were very popular before internal combustion proved to be far more convenient and largely pulled their plug. 

Starting in 1832, advances in battery and motor technology strongly favored electric cars over other propulsion methods and by 1900, "around a third of all vehicles on the road" were powered by electrons. That level of market saturation is not currently projected to occur again before at least 2025, by the way, according to EVAdoption.com. The media and Elon Musk certainly love to project their ubiquitous, utopian, electrified vision of the future...but, currently, only about 2% of the population are actually buying into it. Even my favorite car brand, Porsche, is jumping on the electric-only bandwagon with the new Taycan, a fact that has made me pay more attention recently. But are we missing the actual problem here? I think so.

The real problem seems to be congestion and the overall number of cars on the road. Some folks postulate that the policies and procedures we live among have created and sustained this focus on personal transportation options. Which comes first? The parking lot or the car? The Brookings Institute took a good look at congestion and it's potential solutions and the prognosis is not good. They state that congestion is a natural byproduct of a few factors - limited real estate to drive on, efficiency benefits by having groups of people in the same place at the same time, and the fact that, like water, traffic will find it's fastest route...and then clog it up. Making more roads isn't feasible due to cost and space. Staggering school and business work hours reduces concentration of congestion but at the expense of social quality and business efficiency. Public transportation is the solution, you say? The Brookings article posits that increasing public ridership from its an estimated 4.7% of morning trips up to its full theoretical capacity (after capacity is tripled, by the way) of 11% (in year 2000 data) was only estimated to reduce private vehicle use by 8%. And at great cost. Uber and Lyft, you say? Recent data cited by the Car and Driver article estimated that these services "contributed an extra 94 million miles of driving" in Seattle in 2017. They say that Uber and Lyft compete primarily with public transportation options, not with private cars. Seems we're going backwards with that solution if reduction of cars on the road is the goal. What does the Brookings Institute tell us to do? Live with the congestion. They say it's still way better here in the US than in other places. The most progressive option they suggest is the "congestion tolling" solutions that are being rolled out in a few places like London. You pay more at certain times. You may not be able to use your vehicle of choice in those places at all if it pollutes too much (but watch out for who decides which vehicles fall into which category). Or you may not have any place to park it affordably. Yes, having too much urban parking, especially those relatively cheap public-metered spots, apparently has overly-encouraged us all to just drive on into the city. The Brookings folks suggest it get progressively more expensive to get into town in a car - a market-based way to keep congestion in check. Let's pretend that ease of lifestyle and convenience should only be reserved for the wealthy, though. Plebeians must suffer, because poor.

It looks to me like we've got some confused and competing goals here. Making and selling cars and trucks is a big part of our economy. When that slows down or does not grow, it hurts the economy (and each taxpayer when our taxes go to bailouts to help the industry). We don't want pollution and we think (well, the media tells us) that cars are very bad for the environment. And that electric cars are better. But there are strong arguments to the contrary. Are we just moving the pollution elsewhere, and maybe actually increasing it? What actually creates the most air pollution? Are you ready for it? It might actually be farms! Yes, as shocking as it may be, our factory farm system, heavily-reliant upon fertilizers that release polluting gases into the air may actually be our biggest contributor to global air pollution. Came as a shock to me, too. Maybe what we should be worried about is what happens when they come for our food!

As an aside, you'd think all this info would be easy to find and sift through - but you'd be wrong. So take a look for yourself, please. 

Our competing goals: we want short trips from our low-density neighborhoods to get to high-paying jobs, working with cool people in cities, all while having food to eat. Yes, it seems we each want it all and are willing to demonize other people's choices to maximize our own personal situation. Gotta love capitalism and democracy.

And that brings us back to politics (small "p") and cars. Clearly, I'm not one to get easily pulled to either side of an argument. I'm pretty evenly untrusting. I was taught that history was written by the victorious at an early age. I read about America and Freedom and Adventure and Independent Thinking and Self-Reliance in the pages of many a car magazine. Was my early penchant for small, wheeled transportation devices and the publications celebrating them formative of a libertarian capitalist worldview? Are publications like Car and Driver, Automobile, and the other gasoline-soaked print rags really just vehicles (yes, intended) of right-leaning propaganda that try to reinforce "the American Dream", in the 1950's classic sense? You'd probably have to be crazy to deny the possibility. But you might also be crazy to think that it's as nefarious as it all sounds. With only 5% of morning commutes relying on public transportation and only a 2% market penetration by electric cars, declaring the death of the car appears to still be an exaggeration, as Mark Twain might have said. 

Should we be worried about the death of cars? Unlikely. Should we be worried about the environment, I think so. Did car magazines make me into an irreverent, independent person? Hard to call but it likely had a contributory effect. Did you get anything out of this article? That's probably the only important thing on this page. Hopefully, you did.

(hat tip to Dr. Josh for his recommendation to listen to the Hardcore History podcast by Dan Carlin whose etymological survey of the seemingly fanatical loyalty of Japanese soldiers in WWII - some refused to surrender until the 1970's and beyond! - reminded me of my own fanatical love of cars and how that came to be)