[sustran] Re: The Auto and its Enemies

[Eric Bruun]

Professor John Pucher, also of Rutgers University, has written a 
scathing review of Professor James Dunn's book. It is forthcoming
in Transportation Quarterly, so I will not post it without 
permission.

My own personal comment: I find it hard to believe that a Professor
of Political Science actually believes that "car-haters"
have political power anywhere close to what the highway lobby has
in the US. What we have today is hardly a response to the public
desires -- in fact, there are numerous examples of politicians
ignoring what the public wants.... Eric Bruun


On Tue, 18 May 1999, Eric Britton wrote:

> "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:
> 
> ==========
> 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.
> 
> 
>