[sustran] The Auto and its Enemies

[Eric Britton]

"The broad public, having been exposed for years to strident anti-automobile
rhetoric, deserves a better understanding of the mentality behind the
anti-car ideology..."

Read all about it:

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The Auto and its Enemies
(Reprinted from Innovation Briefs, Vol.  10 No. 3, May/June 1999)

By all accounts the automobile is the nearest thing to an ideal
transportation system.  No transport technology offers people more
convenience, comfort, security and privacy.  The auto serves its users on
demand, from door to door, with no transfers, no waiting, and at an
acceptable price.  Widespread car ownership has given millions of people
more options of where to live and work and opened up access to greater
social and economic opportunity.

So, how come a number of vocal critics see the auto not as a solution but as
a problem, and view existing auto and highway policies not as a success but
as a failure? In an insightful and widely noticed book, James A. Dunn
examines the gulf in perceptions that separates the auto's critics from the
millions of ordinary citizens who treasure the auto as a symbol of personal
freedom.

James A. Dunn Jr., Driving Forces: The Automobile, Its Enemies and the
Politics of Mobility,
Brooking Institution Press, 1998

Behind the current anti-highway rhetoric, James Dunn, professor of political
science at Rutgers University-Camden,  sees a loosely organized  band of
crusaders who harbor visceral hostility toward the  auto and its culture.
This "anti-auto vanguard," as Dunn calls them, view the automobile "not as a
proud achievement of American industry but as a relentless oppressor and a
menace to civilization."

The fact that cars are less polluting, safer and more energy efficient today
than they were twenty-five years ago is no consolation.   The car critics
are not interested in solving the problems caused by the car, writes Dunn.
"It is the whole gestalt of the auto as the central sociocultural icon of
our society that they want to eliminate."

The vanguard's immediate goal is not a total abolition of the car, just a
dramatic decline in its importance in the transportation system, writes
Dunn.   But the anti-auto activists go beyond seeking more balance in
transportation by improving public transit and providing incentives for its
use.  They want to make auto travel more expensive and less convenient, if
necessary, by resorting to legislative mandates and regulatory measures. The
ultimate goal of the vanguard is to bring about a massive change in our
travel habits.  Dunn finds this highly ironic. In the past, he observes,
progress meant replacing an older transportation technology with a newer one
that offered greater mobility. The vanguard's goal of replacing the auto
with "alternative transportation," transit, walking and bicycles would be
the first modal shift in transportation history that would reverse this
historic process by restricting rather than expanding mobility. The
vanguard's objective, far from being progressive, is profoundly reactionary.
The Vanguard's Impact
How successful has the anti-auto movement been so far, and how is it likely
to fare in the future?
Dunn traces the rise of the anti-car sensibility to the "green tradition" in
American thought and literature of the 19th century, exemplified by Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Henry  David Thoreau and Walt Whitman.

In the 20th century, social critics and urbanists like Lewis Mumford and
Jane Jacobs drew on these values to focus on the negative effects of the
automobile on America's cities.  The 1970s saw an outpouring of books,
articles and reports that were highly critical in their assessment of the
car's impact.  "Within a few years the private car and the whole industrial
and social apparatus that supported it were redefined by its critics in very
negative terms," writes Dunn.  The car was demonized as a voracious consumer
of irreplaceable energy resources, a major source of greenhouse gases, a
killer of tens of thousands of accident victims, a destroyer of cohesive
communities and a despoiler of the landscape.

But the early critics' predictions of  the "death knells of the automobile
culture," did not materialize.  Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the
automobile kept gaining ground, and not just in America but in the rest of
the world as well. The critics vastly overestimated the public's willingness
to give up personal mobility and underestimated the extent to which autos
and highways fit the values of the American political and social culture.

What does the current generation of critics make of the auto's continued
dominance?  Do they still expect the end of automobility?  Or have they
changed their views?  "The visceral hostility to the auto and its culture is
clearly still present" writes Dunn. The most committed members of the
anti-car movement resist arguments that their basic goals may be
unattainable. Contemporary critics, such as James Howard Kunstler (The
Geography of Nowhere, 1993) and Jane Holtz Kay (Asphalt Nation: How the
Automobile Took Over America, 1997) still believe, in Kunstler's words, that
"the Auto Age as we have known it, will shortly come to an end." The
mainstream environmental movement, although less apocalyptic in its
predictions and  more restrained in its rhetoric, is no less convinced of
the need for fundamental change. Groups such as the Worldwatch Institute,
Union  of Concerned Scientists, Environmental Defense Fund and Surface
Transportation Policy Project (STPP) build their policy recommendations on
the basic proposition that the current dominance of the automobile is
unsustainable in the long run.

There are three key elements in the vanguard's long term strategy, observes
Dunn. First, there must be continuous consciousness-raising among
policymakers and the general public.  The auto must be made to pay its "true
social costs." Once people are confronted with paying the full costs of auto
travel, they will be much more willing to consider other transportation
alternatives. Second, the auto critics must engage in effective lobbying of
the legislature.  The most notable success in this regard, notes Dunn, have
been the efforts of the STPP to introduce more funding flexibility into the
federal-aid highway program and to earmark funds for
environmentally-friendly transportation initiatives.  The third element of
the vanguard's strategy is to build bureaucratic momentum, writes Dunn.  To
this end, the vanguard has become an active part of the policymaking process
and seeks a voice in numerous forums to influence the course of debate on
auto-related environmental issues, such as global warming, "sustainability,"
"smart growth" and "livable communities."

Will the vanguard succeed in its campaign to drastically reduce society's
dependence on the automobile and bring about a massive modal shift? Dunn
doubts it. The main strength of the anti-car lobby lies in their sense of
outrage and their missionary zeal.  Their weakness which Dunn thinks, will
doom their efforts in the end is that they are disconnected from mainstream
America.  Their goals are not shared by the vast majority of people and run
counter to deeply entrenched preferences of most Americans. The vanguard's
vision of a largely carless world in which residents mostly rely on bicycles
and public transportation lacks political realism and seems beyond the
bounds of public acceptability.
"They [the anti-auto vanguard] threaten to take away the individuals'
tangible embodiment of their personal freedom, their car, without offering a
superior substitute," Dunn notes.
The Politics of Mobility for the 21st Century
Dunn offers an alternative policy future. The most effective policy response
to the pressing auto-related problems, he writes,  is not to discourage
people from using cars but to encourage improvement in the technology of the
auto itself.   "It is easier and more politically astute to use Washington's
arsenal of powers against Detroit than against tens of millions of citizen
motorists," writes Dunn.

Such a policy would welcome the advent of less polluting, more efficient
cars. It would allow individuals and communities to choose freely from an
expanded range of choices rather than seek to impose bureaucratic "command
and control" patterns of travel behavior.  It would try to preserve rather
than denigrate the immense and undeniable benefits of car ownership.

Above all, Dunn believes that "a successful politics of mobility must have
commonsense appeal to citizens."  People must see it as a means to help them
meet their specific personal needs, not as a crusade to save the planet or
to reshape the living environment in the elitist image of the anti-car
vanguard.

The anti-auto forces will not like Dunn's book much.  But the broad public,
having been exposed for years to strident anti-automobile rhetoric, deserves
a better understanding of the mentality behind the anti-car ideology. James
Dunn has performed a valuable public service in better illuminating the
anti-auto movement's agenda, motivation and philosophy.