[sustran] Re: The Auto and its Enemies

Carlos Cordero V. ccordero at amauta.rcp.net.pe
Wed May 19 13:12:44 JST 1999


>"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..."
>
First. Interesting article, such a good piece for debate. however not
accurate in a lot items. Very provocative which is good. Just from your
quote:  ' the broad public ' , in Latinamerica at least, there is no broad
public exposed to this
arguments. Africa? , Asia ?

>By all accounts the automobile is the nearest thing to an ideal
>transportation system.

Second. this argument forget how costly (not only in economic terms) is the
builded environment where the auto is operated.  So again, the world is not
USA and Europe. And it is not only the automovile, it is the build
environment
need to run them

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.
>
Third. Totally true. For less than ten percent of the population in LA
(Latinamerica, not Los Angeles). But even them start to feel that something
is wrong. About 80,000 thousand people are working as a taxi drivers in
Lima. Without license to drive a cab, without social security. They have to
work about 12 hours per day, seven days per week, to pay the car rent (about
us$ 10 per day) and to get about US$ 300 - 400 per month. Ask them about the
pleasure to drive a car

>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.
>

Why should  define myself as an anticar people, we should not be anticar.
How can be anticar somebody (with an average earning of US$ 200) in LA who
can not afford a car in the next 100 years.?
Being pro something is different than only beign against something else.
Sometimes both match, sometimes not.

>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 conditions which make US the car country are not possible in other parts
of the world, unless you want to become Brasil (two countries in one, huge
foreign debt, etc)


>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 car is less poluting for several reasons, industrial competition, oil
crisis, and technology development which allow the industry itself to put
more cars on the roads, and also the bunch of critics, who see the results
of current  policies, etc. It is true however that part of the solution has
to
come from  the car industry (and others too). But seeing the solutions for
the problems the car create, only inside the car is a short view.
>
>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.
Theultimate 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.


There is some schematism in this view. When we started to work for more
sustainable trasnsport systems, we did not see it as a part of a global,
worldwide group. One has to respond for local problems. To face them. Later
comes to
realize that there is other people in the same route.
The sucessive changes in technology does not mean kill the older or even the
contemporary. Bicycles are not older than cars, planes are not newer than
cars, etc. The idea of modal shift as replacing older technology is very,
very conservative. Successful tech as internet use the phone, electricity,
etc. Even the car does it.
' Making the auto more expensive and less convenient' is not a true
statement. Driving a car in Singapur, must be the most convenient place to
do it at a fair price. It is possible internalizing cost but also due
to a well cared public transportation.
Countries with cheaper automovile transportation are countries with
expensive problems for the future.

"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.


So, the critics invented the problems. They did not exist before. Come
on...

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.
>
Why a book like Dunn's is written now and not 30 years ago? Because there is
a disccussion which starts to arise. Values? What does it mean? That car is
a culture besides of beign a simple mean of transport?. So it is posssible
to realize that as a any other culture creation it was a response to
concrete problems and that maybe is not any more the answer? That is also
possible to build an alternative culture which got back the car to a single
mean of transport and again to get answers for NEW problems (including those
created for the car irself?) . I think the point here is that the car is not
the only issue, there is a context which make possible such perception of
personal mobility.

.... and bring about a massive modal shift? Dunn
>doubts it. ...

againg the idea of ' massive shift '. The situation is that the massive
shift ocurred years ago, when public transport was broken up in several
countries and even now thousand of bikers and walkers choices are not
allowed due to
biased policies.
Proposing an Integrated transport systems and  internalizing cost are
separated issues or sides of the same coin?

>The anti-auto forces will not like Dunn's book much.

Are you sure? it is important to debate. Society gets a benefit. Unless you
think there is no real problems to talk about. That every problem is just
imagination coming out from a bunch of idealistic people .

Send me one book, please,  and think about HOW (means of transport?) to send
it.
" All the rhinos and hippos and elephants in the world, if gathered in one
city, could not begin to create the menace and explosive intensity of the
hourly and daily experience of the internal -combustion engine . Are people
really expected to internalize - live with- all this power and expplosive
violence, without processing  and siphoning it off into some form of fantasy
for compensation and balance? Marshal McLuhan
>
>
>






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