You are missing the elephant in the room: our cars are simply too big. The planet is doomed if every household aspires to a 2 1/2 ton SUV, electric or not. Just look at the best selling vehicles in the US last year: 1. Ford F-Series (should that be FU?) 2. Chevrolet Silverado 3. Ram pick-up. Despite all the blather about range anxiety, most journeys are short and average vehicle occupancy is less than two. So why are people driving in vehicles that look like extras from a Mad Max movie? A combination of CAFE standards and 'shift the metal' marketing. Government could kick start changing social norms by introducing aggressively size related vehicle taxation and by supporting ride sharing and AVs (HT to Xiaohu and Peter S
Some years ago my sister was finishing law school on the east coast and looking to move back to the west coast, and my dad, a regular buyer and seller of cars, got on eBay to find a deal on a used truck for her to move back with and then resell. There were almost literally none at all available, so he kept expanding the search area, and kept expanding it, until it hit Houston, and suddenly there were thousands of trucks to look at.
My point is that trucks are mostly owned by people who need them, to haul animals, animal feed, equipment, construction materials, trailers, etc, and that the complaint about there being too many trucks mostly comes from urbanites who don't need cargo capacity, and who mostly only notice the trucks in their area that are egregious status symbols rather than necessary utility vehicles.
The idea that we should tax construction & utility workers, farmers, and millions of suburbanites & small landholders in an attempt to either punish them for needing utility vehicles or force them into using options of greater cost or hassle vs the status quo, is very elitist. Electric cars and electric trucks, powered by a clean grid, is a far better answer than imposing urbanist, white collar ideals on suburban & rural blue collar needs.
This is no longer the case (https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/pickup-trucks-sold-cars-us/). Trucks have become status symbols, are being aggressively marketed as everyday drivers, and are increasingly popular as passenger vehicles. They are also larger and do more damage to our roads. I also do not doubt that any tax on trucks would have exceptions for work vehicles but if you are picking up a gallon of milk in an F-150, then yes you should pay out the nose to do so.
A quote from your linked article: "Analysts looked at where pickup sales are most concentrated and found middle America has the largest appetite for trucks." Note that middle America is also where there is a greater proportion of suburban & rural blue collar people, and also note that the desire for trucks *is* a desire - lots of people want to have trucks, and it is always dubious for people who don't have a particular interest (here, e.g., urban white collars) to deem that interest unworthy and to impose top-down penalties on it.
I agree that trucks have become status symbols and daily drivers (though these are distinct classes which only partly overlap) in a greater proportion than previously. This has changed at least partly as a consequence of significantly improved gas mileage in trucks, which for many late model trucks is now better than the average passenger car of 20-30 years ago, but is of course not as good as the average passenger of today - which means, of course, that driving a truck already means that the owner is paying a premium in gasoline taxes vs the higher mpg car owner. How much more do you think truck owners should pay than they already are, and why is this not best addressed by simply adjusting the existing consumption tax on gasoline, which neatly fits costs to specific users in an intelligible way that they can plan around and tailor their consumption accordingly? And why do you not think a better plan than imposing additional luxury taxes on people who aren't you, is to encourage and expedite electric truck development and the clean grid to power them?
A gas tax is not the ultimate solution. Users should have to pay a real usage fee. A heavier vehicle should be taxed at a higher rate. Ideally we would also introduce a vehicle miles traveled tax.
The meteoric rise in pedestrian and cyclists death is related to the explosion in size of our vehicles. Things like weight and hood height make a difference. If you choose to operate one of these tanks you should be prepared to pay heavily to do so. We are incredibly selfish and need to consider people outside of the vehicles as well. Since driving a truck is usually done on a public utility, roads, drivers need to be prepared that they won't have the same freedom of choice as if they were driving in their own private road. Trucks kill, in so many ways. I really don't care about people's wants at that point.
Do you have any data on the relative amounts of wear and tear on roads caused by full size trucks vs passenger sedans (F-150 vs Honda Accord, e.g.)? I would be interested to see it, and I admit I'm skeptical that the difference is significant, or even that both categories combined are significant vs semi-tractors and other truly large vehicles (like city buses?).
I don't understand why taxes on gasoline, which are inherently directly tied to volume of gasoline consumed and to miles traveled, and are a simple, intelligible up front cost rather than a complicated thing to calculate at year's end, don't fit the bill in your mind for getting users to pay for the real costs of usage and miles traveled on the roads. What is gained by applying second and third layers of taxes and fees, that isn't gained much more simply and directly by adjusting the existing gas taxes?
You are concerned about the higher rate of deaths from larger vehicles, and that is a valid point, and those costs, it's true, are not directly addressed by gasoline taxes. Do you have any data on the relative rates of death per mile driven between trucks and cars? What is the rate of pedestrian & cyclist deaths from vehicles over the last twenty years? Do you feel that trying to push down the number of trucks on the roads, in the face of - as your article above shows - unprecedented appetite for trucks, is the best way to confront this problem vs., say, better design and wider implementation of bike lanes, better biker safety equipment (mandatory inflatable vests in cities?), or a greater push for faster development of superhuman autonomous vehicles?
Something to also think about for a gas tax is that the benefits start to disappear as EVs are introduced. The goal is to reduce the number of miles driven and also equitably fund road repairs. A gas tax should be applied because it is a substance that is actively contributing to climate change but we also need to charge the more destructive users for their wear and tear.
And to answer your question, yes, protected bike lanes and better road design are key but these things are very difficult when the masses are demanding they be able to bring 19-foot extended cab vehicle downtown. These things take up massive footprints and usually for the benefit of one to two riders however our cities continue to plan for massive swaths of parking which could be used for many better purposes including safe street infrastructure.
Take a look at Amsterdam or Copenhagen and look at the number of helmets in use by bike riders. Helmets and inflatable vests as you mentioned are not because riding a bike is dangerous it is because in North America we have terrible bike infrastructure and have designed for vehicles first and all others last.
It's also worth noting that Republicans have been supporting ideas like the carbon dividend plan which would use the proceeds of green taxes to compensate lower income groups. I appreciate that the US is a 'big country' but (a) the average size of US vehicles has increased substantially over the last 50 years, and (b) Europeans and Asians (even in rural areas) survive quite happily with much smaller vehicles - check out the best-selling car in Japan: the kei-car Honda N-Box
Where genuinely good policies unavoidably impose costs on lower income groups, I certainly support compensating those groups, ideally directly from the money saved or generated by the policy.
The US *is* a big country, not only geographically (to a degree that I suspect coastal urbanites often do not have accurate intuitions about), but also culturally both in terms of the mindset of the people who have immigrated here over the last several hundred years, and in terms of the evolved expectations around that desire for space and freedom that are tightly ingrained in their descendants and the people who came afterward, drawn by those ideals. To impose sweeping cultural change from without on those people is wildly different than to have been born European or Japanese and grown up in those cultures - it's almost inconceivable that people who want F-150s could be persuaded to be happy about trading them in for Honda N Boxes, regardless of how contemptuous people who want N Boxes might be of F-150s.
And generally it is, I think, desirable that there should be meaningful differences among developed countries, so that people who want communitarian urban life can find it (in Europe or elsewhere), and so that people who want space and individualism can also find it (in America or elsewhere).
The whole point of these taxes to allow people to exercise choice while paying for the externalities that they inflict on others, at home and abroad. Or would you rather the US follow the European lead and ban certain products (such as phasing out ICE vehicles)? BTW the US is more urbanized than many developed nations (e.g. Germany and Italy).
If I understand you correctly, your fundamental concern here is about energy use and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and I agree with you that we should be pursuing aggressive policies to improve these measures. I think there will be a point, perhaps not too far away, when it is viable to start phasing out ICE vehicles in the US, and I think it is reasonable to be continually pushing the limits of regulations on energy efficiency, mpg ratings, etc. I am not convinced that using the metric of 'vehicle size' is a good proxy for energy use, when it seems we can (and are) taxing energy consumption directly via gasoline taxes, which is inherently progressive toward the greater energy consumption of larger vehicles and applies a direct incentive to address exactly that consumption.
I find it interesting that the UK has the highest public transit usage but still travels quite a lot by car. I assume London brings the public transport figure up, but I think our trains and busses are generally pretty good. Public transport is great for travelling within and between urban areas, but not so much for rural areas where demand is much lower - that's probably where a lot of our journeys by car occur.
England has one of the oldest rail networks in existence. It's partly electrified, and also mostly privatized. The government owns the tracks (NetworkRail) and sometimes operates its own trains (in London).. but alot of privatization happened during the 80s. I think Network Rail should offer a public option, like the London Overground, for other parts of England, and also electrify remaining segments of track. It's very easy to get from Southampton to downtown London, 1.5 hours, but its 50 quid! So I'd like a public service to run on those same tracks, alongside the private regional monopolies.
The age of the rail network probably works in our favour since most towns are built around it, although it does mean making changes is more difficult - trains can't be too tall or wide because they have to fit under bridges built for steam trains, this presumably makes electrification more difficult as well.
I do think it would be good to get the cost of rail down if we want to make the UK more green, I live in Scotland and it would actually be cheaper to fly than to take the train to London, which is why privatising a natural monopoly like rail was a pretty bad idea.
From my home in Queens, I used to spend approximately 2.5 hrs/day commuting to a Manhattan job via rail & subway. When I told my daughter that I estimated I had passed the 250,000 miles mark on public transportation, she had a "Distinguished Commuter" trophy made for me. I know all about public transportation from the seat of my pants, so to speak.
But once getting home, after dinner I used to enjoy going to get a coffee and browse the bookshelves at a B&N about two miles from my home. By car, it took about 5 minutes to get there. After a long day of commuting, there was no way I was going to walk to the bus stop, wait for a bus, and then stop every two blocks, turning a 5-minute outing to the book store into another 45-minute commuting endeavor. No way.
So what I'm saying is that planners have to see public transportation & automobiles as compliments, not substitutes. You want most urban residents to rack up their miles on public transit, but shouldn't want to impede them using private transportation when it's appropriate. In an ideal urban world, everyone should be able to afford an EV but rarely have to use it.
I think this type of transportation lifestyle is basically the future we can realistically hope for - something like Japan where most miles travelled (basically to and from work because rush hour + parking would be annoying anyway) are on public transit but everyone still owns cars for their errand trips.
The goal should be to make public transit a viable option for the former, and getting everyone in EVs for the latter.
In our ideal urban world, you could also make that trip to B&N by bike in 10 minutes or by foot in ~30 minutes and have it be a safe, pleasant experience. Not trying to shame you for preferring to drive there after a long day - I'd often feel the same and am not saying that shouldn't be an option, particularly since not everyone is physically able to walk or bike. But with actual competent bike infrastructure (it's cliche to talk about Amsterdam, but for a reason!), riding can be just as relaxing, very quick, not stressfully dangerous, and more fun than driving. Train, bus, and car can't be the only options for errands and other quick, local trips.
Are you skeptical of autonomous cars? To me, this discussion almost feels moot since I expect them to be ready for mass deployment within a decade. Then you get the advantages of both cars and transit with few of the drawbacks.
Transit isn't that efficient by the way, especially not compared to an electric single seat vehicle that I expect would become the norm if autonomous taxis catch on.
We may be able to get some of the same benefits with delivery drones, using either wheels or rotors/wings. If it would take me 20 minutes to drive to the store, 5 to receive my purchases (picked out and paid for online), and 20 to drive back, then a drone that can bring them to my door in 50 minutes is a clear win. In other words, the drones don't have to travel even half as fast as a car. This allows for very different driving tactics.
I think self driving cars will hopefully lead larger American cities to less car ownership. Why own, house, pay insurance, etc. when a self-driving taxi will almost always be available in minutes?
It definitely depends a lot on lifestyle - I cycle or walk pretty much everywhere, and use trains to travel long distances, but that's because I'm young, single and live in a small city in the UK - I wouldn't use a car much even if I had one. I actually could afford one, but I save a lot of money this way, and with the right carry rack and panniers it's impressive how much stuff you can move with a bike.
However, I can't see living without a car being practical if you want to live in the countryside, or even the suburbs, unless you're really patient or really into physical fitness. It becomes especially difficult once you have children and need to shift more people and objects around.
I can imagine a future in which owning a car becomes uncommon, especially once driving becomes automated and drops the cost of renting a car, but as a cyclist I totally understand that some people will hold on to antiquated technology, there's always going to be a committed group of car enthusiasts for both practical and aesthetic reasons.
Some food for thought about ripping up neighborhoods and rebuilding with increased density:
1. Post-COVID, higher density will be resisted and not without good reason.
2. Anyone who thinks ripping up suburbia, exurbia and parts of urban America to make them car-free-zones isn't going to cause a massive amount of pollution and an increase of our carbon footprint is smoking something they shouldn't.
Does anyone REALLY think tear downs and new construction are an "energy freebie".?Also, given the shoddy workmanship that developers are allowed to get away with, these new "green neighborhoods" are going to have to be rebuilt every 20-30 years. Much of the downtown in my small was rebuilt about 15 years ago. Guess what? Already there are structural problems in LUXURY buildings and the area looks like crap. New construction only continues to hold up if it is well built...and YES and building quality also has a carbon cost.
Well reasoned and I know we won't be seeing the end of cars soon but there is one thing that you overlooked and almost all do and that is the epidemic we have of cyclist and pedestrian deaths. Deaths due to traffic violence have absolutely sky rocketed since 2008. EVs will do absolutely nothing to solve this. In fact they are heavier than their ICE equivalents and will be filled with bigger and bigger dashboard distractions.
Market Street may be wide and appear empty but there is far less blood on the pavement than would have been had cars not been removed. You're right this needs to be done intelligently and I believe Oslo is a good example. But all the density in the world doesn't help people if they don't feel safe simply walking to a grocery store. I have been to too many vigils and memorials to believe that F-150s have any place on dense city streets.
Streets used to be gathering places where multiple modes shared the space. Jaywalking wasn't a thing until the automotive industry invented it to get pedestrians out of their way. Denver, my home town, had an amazing streetcar grid. We ripped it out to make room for cars. It's time we took some of that space back.
Cars absolutely need to be removed from dense urban cores. We can start to reclaim street space in many ways, Market Street included, once we are no longer scraping bodies off the pavement. In order to do that we can not allow cars, with some exceptions (deliveries, emergency services, those that absolutely must drive due to disability), in our most dense places.
#bancars is a sticker you put on your water bottle because "get these fucking speeding death boxes out of our city centers which can accommodate mass transit, and walking and biking with ease" is too long.
I prefer trains to cars but I agree with the post. I think future cars will be automated and electric. Also I think less people will own cars and only use them when they need them.
Funny, most places in the world were car free prior to 1945. Is Noah Smith saying a roughly 75 year old social phenomenon is indispensable? I doubt it.
Prior to World War Two cars were found mainly in North America and western Europe. How did ancestors in other places cope? They had to otherwise a lot of us wouldn't be here.
Current car dependency lifestyle is largely an America product along with television: the two together were a happy accident where the one amplified the other. Prior to the war many Americans lived in small towns or rural areas, travel between towns was by train. Within towns access to business and entertainments was by foot. Humans have used their feet for millions of years, we're good at it.
Mass car dependency was affordable during the 1950s and 60s because the US at the time was the world's #1 provider of liquid fuel. This fuel enabled manufacture along with car use. With the venicles came an entire ecosystem: heavy construction; fuel supply and distribution, real estate and insurance; also bank finance to pay for it all. Giant governments emerged to guarantee the loans along with giant militaries to steal resources... As the 60s wore on the US reserves began to decline and the country found it necessary to import fuel which increased dependence on external sources such as OPEC. The 1973 embargo followed by the 1980 Iran-Iraq war were devastating to the world economy which had become car manufacturing-dependent.
There were frantic efforts to cope: everything but conservation and jettisoning the car lifestyle: offshoring jobs, opening borders the borders to millions of undocumented workers, deregulating finance- and industry, neoliberalism generally; also, union busting, bubble economies, China opening, replacing Bretton-Woods w/ Plaza Accord, the euro and the EU, dollar depreciation, Carter Doctrine, rise of central banks, decades of futile US wars. All of these were intended as hedges against real fuel price increases and declining energy returns on our (massively expanding) energy investments. Comes now electric cars full of happy sound and fury = another pathetic hedge.
Why have every one of these hedges failed. Because resource depletion and decline are matters of physics that cannot be 'outwitted' or negotiated with.
When considering cars its necessary to take in the material demands of the entire car ecosystem and to consider the scale of the enterprise. The bigger the enterprise, the greater the material needs, including greater waste carry capacity. Right now the scale is working against itself; reducing the 'utility' humans are supposed to be deriving from car ownership. Leaving out the car-related war deaths (80 million in WWII) and deaths due to car pollution, the car business kills over a million every year (WHO) in crashes, mostly in 3d world countries. When is enough enough?
The idea that electric cars will affect our depletion trajectory is stupid. Where are the electric roads? Where are electric tires or the electric plastics that makes up most of a car? Where is the electric glass or electric parking garages or electric mining equipment and processing plants or aluminum mills or electric railroads. Where are the electric ocean-going car transport vessels or electric oil tankers shipping trillions of gallons of fuel for the millions of gas powered giant pickup trucks and luxury sports sedans manufacturers must sell in order to internally subsidize the handful of electric sedans?
Another insolvable problem is the absence of return by way of car use. Driving cars is an open-ended expense, driving doesn't pay for the car ... or the rest of the enormous car ecosystem, instead, what pays is debt, in currently astronomical amounts. More cars = more debt, The costs of the debt plus that of the cars is compounding: our entire economic regime groans under the burden of exponentially increasing costs: what is the outcome if they double? Would the costs ever reach that point?
The total amount of car-related debt was unpayable decades ago. Now? What does this mean for your children? Slavery? Homelessness? Debts will be repaid one way or the other. Starvation? Endless warfare? For what? A goddamned car? Good grief!
As for suburbs, they will be abandoned as areas have been- and are being abandoned continually right now in this best of all possible worlds. Some ruined suburbs will be returned to agriculture use or be reclaimed by nature. Car use will decline when there is nowhere to go (as during Covid) or fuel is unavailable or too costly or the rationing regime does not allow recreational use -- 95% of auto use is recreational. Rationing is currently imposed by limiting access to credit: relatively high fuel prices result in credit shortages which keep motorists off the road but also cause banks to fail. When this particular hedge breaks down there will be hard rationing as during the war or the 1970s.
And break down it will because more cars = more bankruptcy. Basically, if we don't jettison the cars by way of policy or strategy, they will disappear as being unaffordable, destructive luxuries.
As a fairly anti-car urbanist, I appreciate this post and agree with most of it. When pro-car ideologues are being intransigent and unreasonable, I do respond with "ban cars" but I fully admit that it's an argumentative and idealistic Twitter slogan, not a universal policy.
That being said, I think you are wrong to suggest that urbanists oppose cars primarily due to climate change. That is part of it, but mostly I oppose cars because of the death. Dead kids who get run over by their own parents in their driveways. Dead cyclists who get crushed by truck drivers making unsignaled turns. Dead grandmas killed in crosswalks because people in souped-up SUVs have no visibility. Dead folks who have to risk running across 8-lane arterials because DOTs do not build pedestrian infrastructure.
Vision Zero (as in zero road deaths) needs to be the goal. That will involve a lot of things. SUVs and trucks need to be heavily taxed and regulated to reduce their bulk and increase windshield visibility. The gas tax should go up to encourage consumers to buy lighter-weight cars. Streets need to be redesigned so that they are narrower and have bump-outs or speed tables at crosswalks. Protected bicycle infrastructure needs to become ubiquitous, as it is in Amsterdam or Copenhagen. Especially dangerous intersections need to be completely redesigned. And yes, in some places, we should ban cars.
I think you are letting one negative experience on Market Street color your whole perspective on car-free streets. You link to the story of London, but the facts of that article indicate the problem is a failure to regulate Uber and truck traffic - not the congestion charge itself. Go to Charlottesville, Virginia or Burlington, Vermont and you will see how much energy and commerce can be created by pedestrianizing main streets. But that doesn't have to be the only goal! Speeding up transit can be a motivation for this too. King Street in Toronto or 14th Street in New York still have the same sidewalk space as they did in the past, but restrictions on car traffic have revolutionized those streets as transit corridors. Where buses and streetcars were once not much faster than walking, they now speed along and have seen big ridership increases. Creating a plaza atmosphere where people lounge around in what were once parking space is great, but it is not the only reason (and maybe not even the main reason) for restricting car traffic on some urban streets.
You are missing the elephant in the room: our cars are simply too big. The planet is doomed if every household aspires to a 2 1/2 ton SUV, electric or not. Just look at the best selling vehicles in the US last year: 1. Ford F-Series (should that be FU?) 2. Chevrolet Silverado 3. Ram pick-up. Despite all the blather about range anxiety, most journeys are short and average vehicle occupancy is less than two. So why are people driving in vehicles that look like extras from a Mad Max movie? A combination of CAFE standards and 'shift the metal' marketing. Government could kick start changing social norms by introducing aggressively size related vehicle taxation and by supporting ride sharing and AVs (HT to Xiaohu and Peter S
Some years ago my sister was finishing law school on the east coast and looking to move back to the west coast, and my dad, a regular buyer and seller of cars, got on eBay to find a deal on a used truck for her to move back with and then resell. There were almost literally none at all available, so he kept expanding the search area, and kept expanding it, until it hit Houston, and suddenly there were thousands of trucks to look at.
My point is that trucks are mostly owned by people who need them, to haul animals, animal feed, equipment, construction materials, trailers, etc, and that the complaint about there being too many trucks mostly comes from urbanites who don't need cargo capacity, and who mostly only notice the trucks in their area that are egregious status symbols rather than necessary utility vehicles.
The idea that we should tax construction & utility workers, farmers, and millions of suburbanites & small landholders in an attempt to either punish them for needing utility vehicles or force them into using options of greater cost or hassle vs the status quo, is very elitist. Electric cars and electric trucks, powered by a clean grid, is a far better answer than imposing urbanist, white collar ideals on suburban & rural blue collar needs.
This is no longer the case (https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/pickup-trucks-sold-cars-us/). Trucks have become status symbols, are being aggressively marketed as everyday drivers, and are increasingly popular as passenger vehicles. They are also larger and do more damage to our roads. I also do not doubt that any tax on trucks would have exceptions for work vehicles but if you are picking up a gallon of milk in an F-150, then yes you should pay out the nose to do so.
A quote from your linked article: "Analysts looked at where pickup sales are most concentrated and found middle America has the largest appetite for trucks." Note that middle America is also where there is a greater proportion of suburban & rural blue collar people, and also note that the desire for trucks *is* a desire - lots of people want to have trucks, and it is always dubious for people who don't have a particular interest (here, e.g., urban white collars) to deem that interest unworthy and to impose top-down penalties on it.
I agree that trucks have become status symbols and daily drivers (though these are distinct classes which only partly overlap) in a greater proportion than previously. This has changed at least partly as a consequence of significantly improved gas mileage in trucks, which for many late model trucks is now better than the average passenger car of 20-30 years ago, but is of course not as good as the average passenger of today - which means, of course, that driving a truck already means that the owner is paying a premium in gasoline taxes vs the higher mpg car owner. How much more do you think truck owners should pay than they already are, and why is this not best addressed by simply adjusting the existing consumption tax on gasoline, which neatly fits costs to specific users in an intelligible way that they can plan around and tailor their consumption accordingly? And why do you not think a better plan than imposing additional luxury taxes on people who aren't you, is to encourage and expedite electric truck development and the clean grid to power them?
A gas tax is not the ultimate solution. Users should have to pay a real usage fee. A heavier vehicle should be taxed at a higher rate. Ideally we would also introduce a vehicle miles traveled tax.
The meteoric rise in pedestrian and cyclists death is related to the explosion in size of our vehicles. Things like weight and hood height make a difference. If you choose to operate one of these tanks you should be prepared to pay heavily to do so. We are incredibly selfish and need to consider people outside of the vehicles as well. Since driving a truck is usually done on a public utility, roads, drivers need to be prepared that they won't have the same freedom of choice as if they were driving in their own private road. Trucks kill, in so many ways. I really don't care about people's wants at that point.
Do you have any data on the relative amounts of wear and tear on roads caused by full size trucks vs passenger sedans (F-150 vs Honda Accord, e.g.)? I would be interested to see it, and I admit I'm skeptical that the difference is significant, or even that both categories combined are significant vs semi-tractors and other truly large vehicles (like city buses?).
I don't understand why taxes on gasoline, which are inherently directly tied to volume of gasoline consumed and to miles traveled, and are a simple, intelligible up front cost rather than a complicated thing to calculate at year's end, don't fit the bill in your mind for getting users to pay for the real costs of usage and miles traveled on the roads. What is gained by applying second and third layers of taxes and fees, that isn't gained much more simply and directly by adjusting the existing gas taxes?
You are concerned about the higher rate of deaths from larger vehicles, and that is a valid point, and those costs, it's true, are not directly addressed by gasoline taxes. Do you have any data on the relative rates of death per mile driven between trucks and cars? What is the rate of pedestrian & cyclist deaths from vehicles over the last twenty years? Do you feel that trying to push down the number of trucks on the roads, in the face of - as your article above shows - unprecedented appetite for trucks, is the best way to confront this problem vs., say, better design and wider implementation of bike lanes, better biker safety equipment (mandatory inflatable vests in cities?), or a greater push for faster development of superhuman autonomous vehicles?
Yes.
Here is a brief article to start on vehicle weight: https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weight-vs-road-damage-levels/
A more scientific look includes the fourth power formula: https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-trucks-do-our-roads
This is about large semis but can be applied to our larger consumer trucks.
SUVs which are built on light truck bodies and are classified as "light trucks" are much more lethal than other cars: https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/new-study-suggests-todays-suvs-are-more-lethal-to-pedestrians-than-cars
Something to also think about for a gas tax is that the benefits start to disappear as EVs are introduced. The goal is to reduce the number of miles driven and also equitably fund road repairs. A gas tax should be applied because it is a substance that is actively contributing to climate change but we also need to charge the more destructive users for their wear and tear.
Joe Lindsay has written about vulnerable road user deaths and vehicle size: https://www.outsideonline.com/2411345/suvs-trucks-deadly-cyclist-crashes
And to answer your question, yes, protected bike lanes and better road design are key but these things are very difficult when the masses are demanding they be able to bring 19-foot extended cab vehicle downtown. These things take up massive footprints and usually for the benefit of one to two riders however our cities continue to plan for massive swaths of parking which could be used for many better purposes including safe street infrastructure.
Take a look at Amsterdam or Copenhagen and look at the number of helmets in use by bike riders. Helmets and inflatable vests as you mentioned are not because riding a bike is dangerous it is because in North America we have terrible bike infrastructure and have designed for vehicles first and all others last.
As far as space, take NY as an example it is one of our most dense cities where half of the city does not own a car yet there is enough curbside space dedicated to parking vehicles to cover 12 Central Parks (https://gothamist.com/news/how-else-could-nyc-use-its-12-central-parks-worth-street-parking-space)
It's also worth noting that Republicans have been supporting ideas like the carbon dividend plan which would use the proceeds of green taxes to compensate lower income groups. I appreciate that the US is a 'big country' but (a) the average size of US vehicles has increased substantially over the last 50 years, and (b) Europeans and Asians (even in rural areas) survive quite happily with much smaller vehicles - check out the best-selling car in Japan: the kei-car Honda N-Box
Where genuinely good policies unavoidably impose costs on lower income groups, I certainly support compensating those groups, ideally directly from the money saved or generated by the policy.
The US *is* a big country, not only geographically (to a degree that I suspect coastal urbanites often do not have accurate intuitions about), but also culturally both in terms of the mindset of the people who have immigrated here over the last several hundred years, and in terms of the evolved expectations around that desire for space and freedom that are tightly ingrained in their descendants and the people who came afterward, drawn by those ideals. To impose sweeping cultural change from without on those people is wildly different than to have been born European or Japanese and grown up in those cultures - it's almost inconceivable that people who want F-150s could be persuaded to be happy about trading them in for Honda N Boxes, regardless of how contemptuous people who want N Boxes might be of F-150s.
And generally it is, I think, desirable that there should be meaningful differences among developed countries, so that people who want communitarian urban life can find it (in Europe or elsewhere), and so that people who want space and individualism can also find it (in America or elsewhere).
What's individualism got to do with anything?
The whole point of these taxes to allow people to exercise choice while paying for the externalities that they inflict on others, at home and abroad. Or would you rather the US follow the European lead and ban certain products (such as phasing out ICE vehicles)? BTW the US is more urbanized than many developed nations (e.g. Germany and Italy).
If I understand you correctly, your fundamental concern here is about energy use and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and I agree with you that we should be pursuing aggressive policies to improve these measures. I think there will be a point, perhaps not too far away, when it is viable to start phasing out ICE vehicles in the US, and I think it is reasonable to be continually pushing the limits of regulations on energy efficiency, mpg ratings, etc. I am not convinced that using the metric of 'vehicle size' is a good proxy for energy use, when it seems we can (and are) taxing energy consumption directly via gasoline taxes, which is inherently progressive toward the greater energy consumption of larger vehicles and applies a direct incentive to address exactly that consumption.
also, a great maps I jest read : https://twitter.com/ScootFoundation/status/1368820855141134336?s=20
Sigh...I really do need to move back.
Wow, and I thought the London Underground map was big!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/travel/downloads/tube_map.html
Interesting point of view Noah ! Where does the chart with the cars owned, VKT, biking frequency come from ?
It comes from here! https://internationalcomparisons.org/environmental/transportation/
I find it interesting that the UK has the highest public transit usage but still travels quite a lot by car. I assume London brings the public transport figure up, but I think our trains and busses are generally pretty good. Public transport is great for travelling within and between urban areas, but not so much for rural areas where demand is much lower - that's probably where a lot of our journeys by car occur.
England has one of the oldest rail networks in existence. It's partly electrified, and also mostly privatized. The government owns the tracks (NetworkRail) and sometimes operates its own trains (in London).. but alot of privatization happened during the 80s. I think Network Rail should offer a public option, like the London Overground, for other parts of England, and also electrify remaining segments of track. It's very easy to get from Southampton to downtown London, 1.5 hours, but its 50 quid! So I'd like a public service to run on those same tracks, alongside the private regional monopolies.
The age of the rail network probably works in our favour since most towns are built around it, although it does mean making changes is more difficult - trains can't be too tall or wide because they have to fit under bridges built for steam trains, this presumably makes electrification more difficult as well.
I do think it would be good to get the cost of rail down if we want to make the UK more green, I live in Scotland and it would actually be cheaper to fly than to take the train to London, which is why privatising a natural monopoly like rail was a pretty bad idea.
I'm surprised that France has the lowest road fuel consumption par capita. Small cars ?
From my home in Queens, I used to spend approximately 2.5 hrs/day commuting to a Manhattan job via rail & subway. When I told my daughter that I estimated I had passed the 250,000 miles mark on public transportation, she had a "Distinguished Commuter" trophy made for me. I know all about public transportation from the seat of my pants, so to speak.
But once getting home, after dinner I used to enjoy going to get a coffee and browse the bookshelves at a B&N about two miles from my home. By car, it took about 5 minutes to get there. After a long day of commuting, there was no way I was going to walk to the bus stop, wait for a bus, and then stop every two blocks, turning a 5-minute outing to the book store into another 45-minute commuting endeavor. No way.
So what I'm saying is that planners have to see public transportation & automobiles as compliments, not substitutes. You want most urban residents to rack up their miles on public transit, but shouldn't want to impede them using private transportation when it's appropriate. In an ideal urban world, everyone should be able to afford an EV but rarely have to use it.
I think this type of transportation lifestyle is basically the future we can realistically hope for - something like Japan where most miles travelled (basically to and from work because rush hour + parking would be annoying anyway) are on public transit but everyone still owns cars for their errand trips.
The goal should be to make public transit a viable option for the former, and getting everyone in EVs for the latter.
In our ideal urban world, you could also make that trip to B&N by bike in 10 minutes or by foot in ~30 minutes and have it be a safe, pleasant experience. Not trying to shame you for preferring to drive there after a long day - I'd often feel the same and am not saying that shouldn't be an option, particularly since not everyone is physically able to walk or bike. But with actual competent bike infrastructure (it's cliche to talk about Amsterdam, but for a reason!), riding can be just as relaxing, very quick, not stressfully dangerous, and more fun than driving. Train, bus, and car can't be the only options for errands and other quick, local trips.
Are you skeptical of autonomous cars? To me, this discussion almost feels moot since I expect them to be ready for mass deployment within a decade. Then you get the advantages of both cars and transit with few of the drawbacks.
Transit isn't that efficient by the way, especially not compared to an electric single seat vehicle that I expect would become the norm if autonomous taxis catch on.
https://www.templetons.com/brad/transit-myth.html
I am fairly skeptical that we will get autonomous cars soon.
We may be able to get some of the same benefits with delivery drones, using either wheels or rotors/wings. If it would take me 20 minutes to drive to the store, 5 to receive my purchases (picked out and paid for online), and 20 to drive back, then a drone that can bring them to my door in 50 minutes is a clear win. In other words, the drones don't have to travel even half as fast as a car. This allows for very different driving tactics.
I'm hoping to get hit by an autonomous Tesla so I can sue Elon Musk.
Hi Noah thanks for the post
just one question:
- Do you think it should be feasible to have more cars in common? not personal cars instead.
I mean the example of japan talks about replacing trains by cars.
But what about the impact of things like developing Uber?
The difference is that uber you could have personalized usage, not predetermined
I think thats a main reason why public transit has limited impact. The degree of freedom on use is limited
A final remark: lots of people argue that reducing cars ownership is mandatory if we want to stay under 2°C
I am curious what would you answer them?
Many thanks :)
I think self driving cars will hopefully lead larger American cities to less car ownership. Why own, house, pay insurance, etc. when a self-driving taxi will almost always be available in minutes?
sorry " mean the example of japan talks about replacing cars by trains" obviously
It definitely depends a lot on lifestyle - I cycle or walk pretty much everywhere, and use trains to travel long distances, but that's because I'm young, single and live in a small city in the UK - I wouldn't use a car much even if I had one. I actually could afford one, but I save a lot of money this way, and with the right carry rack and panniers it's impressive how much stuff you can move with a bike.
However, I can't see living without a car being practical if you want to live in the countryside, or even the suburbs, unless you're really patient or really into physical fitness. It becomes especially difficult once you have children and need to shift more people and objects around.
I can imagine a future in which owning a car becomes uncommon, especially once driving becomes automated and drops the cost of renting a car, but as a cyclist I totally understand that some people will hold on to antiquated technology, there's always going to be a committed group of car enthusiasts for both practical and aesthetic reasons.
Some food for thought about ripping up neighborhoods and rebuilding with increased density:
1. Post-COVID, higher density will be resisted and not without good reason.
2. Anyone who thinks ripping up suburbia, exurbia and parts of urban America to make them car-free-zones isn't going to cause a massive amount of pollution and an increase of our carbon footprint is smoking something they shouldn't.
Does anyone REALLY think tear downs and new construction are an "energy freebie".?Also, given the shoddy workmanship that developers are allowed to get away with, these new "green neighborhoods" are going to have to be rebuilt every 20-30 years. Much of the downtown in my small was rebuilt about 15 years ago. Guess what? Already there are structural problems in LUXURY buildings and the area looks like crap. New construction only continues to hold up if it is well built...and YES and building quality also has a carbon cost.
Well reasoned and I know we won't be seeing the end of cars soon but there is one thing that you overlooked and almost all do and that is the epidemic we have of cyclist and pedestrian deaths. Deaths due to traffic violence have absolutely sky rocketed since 2008. EVs will do absolutely nothing to solve this. In fact they are heavier than their ICE equivalents and will be filled with bigger and bigger dashboard distractions.
Market Street may be wide and appear empty but there is far less blood on the pavement than would have been had cars not been removed. You're right this needs to be done intelligently and I believe Oslo is a good example. But all the density in the world doesn't help people if they don't feel safe simply walking to a grocery store. I have been to too many vigils and memorials to believe that F-150s have any place on dense city streets.
Streets used to be gathering places where multiple modes shared the space. Jaywalking wasn't a thing until the automotive industry invented it to get pedestrians out of their way. Denver, my home town, had an amazing streetcar grid. We ripped it out to make room for cars. It's time we took some of that space back.
Cars absolutely need to be removed from dense urban cores. We can start to reclaim street space in many ways, Market Street included, once we are no longer scraping bodies off the pavement. In order to do that we can not allow cars, with some exceptions (deliveries, emergency services, those that absolutely must drive due to disability), in our most dense places.
#bancars is a sticker you put on your water bottle because "get these fucking speeding death boxes out of our city centers which can accommodate mass transit, and walking and biking with ease" is too long.
great read :) using this for my ap lang assignment :P
re: Market street i see what you mean about it being a dead zone but i do appreciate that it makes the buses a lot faster
Sorry, cars don't kill people.
I've had many cars in my lifetime and not a single one of them took off on its own volition and killed someone.
It's "the nut holding the steering wheel" who kills people.
I prefer trains to cars but I agree with the post. I think future cars will be automated and electric. Also I think less people will own cars and only use them when they need them.
Funny, most places in the world were car free prior to 1945. Is Noah Smith saying a roughly 75 year old social phenomenon is indispensable? I doubt it.
Prior to World War Two cars were found mainly in North America and western Europe. How did ancestors in other places cope? They had to otherwise a lot of us wouldn't be here.
Current car dependency lifestyle is largely an America product along with television: the two together were a happy accident where the one amplified the other. Prior to the war many Americans lived in small towns or rural areas, travel between towns was by train. Within towns access to business and entertainments was by foot. Humans have used their feet for millions of years, we're good at it.
Mass car dependency was affordable during the 1950s and 60s because the US at the time was the world's #1 provider of liquid fuel. This fuel enabled manufacture along with car use. With the venicles came an entire ecosystem: heavy construction; fuel supply and distribution, real estate and insurance; also bank finance to pay for it all. Giant governments emerged to guarantee the loans along with giant militaries to steal resources... As the 60s wore on the US reserves began to decline and the country found it necessary to import fuel which increased dependence on external sources such as OPEC. The 1973 embargo followed by the 1980 Iran-Iraq war were devastating to the world economy which had become car manufacturing-dependent.
There were frantic efforts to cope: everything but conservation and jettisoning the car lifestyle: offshoring jobs, opening borders the borders to millions of undocumented workers, deregulating finance- and industry, neoliberalism generally; also, union busting, bubble economies, China opening, replacing Bretton-Woods w/ Plaza Accord, the euro and the EU, dollar depreciation, Carter Doctrine, rise of central banks, decades of futile US wars. All of these were intended as hedges against real fuel price increases and declining energy returns on our (massively expanding) energy investments. Comes now electric cars full of happy sound and fury = another pathetic hedge.
Why have every one of these hedges failed. Because resource depletion and decline are matters of physics that cannot be 'outwitted' or negotiated with.
When considering cars its necessary to take in the material demands of the entire car ecosystem and to consider the scale of the enterprise. The bigger the enterprise, the greater the material needs, including greater waste carry capacity. Right now the scale is working against itself; reducing the 'utility' humans are supposed to be deriving from car ownership. Leaving out the car-related war deaths (80 million in WWII) and deaths due to car pollution, the car business kills over a million every year (WHO) in crashes, mostly in 3d world countries. When is enough enough?
The idea that electric cars will affect our depletion trajectory is stupid. Where are the electric roads? Where are electric tires or the electric plastics that makes up most of a car? Where is the electric glass or electric parking garages or electric mining equipment and processing plants or aluminum mills or electric railroads. Where are the electric ocean-going car transport vessels or electric oil tankers shipping trillions of gallons of fuel for the millions of gas powered giant pickup trucks and luxury sports sedans manufacturers must sell in order to internally subsidize the handful of electric sedans?
Another insolvable problem is the absence of return by way of car use. Driving cars is an open-ended expense, driving doesn't pay for the car ... or the rest of the enormous car ecosystem, instead, what pays is debt, in currently astronomical amounts. More cars = more debt, The costs of the debt plus that of the cars is compounding: our entire economic regime groans under the burden of exponentially increasing costs: what is the outcome if they double? Would the costs ever reach that point?
The total amount of car-related debt was unpayable decades ago. Now? What does this mean for your children? Slavery? Homelessness? Debts will be repaid one way or the other. Starvation? Endless warfare? For what? A goddamned car? Good grief!
As for suburbs, they will be abandoned as areas have been- and are being abandoned continually right now in this best of all possible worlds. Some ruined suburbs will be returned to agriculture use or be reclaimed by nature. Car use will decline when there is nowhere to go (as during Covid) or fuel is unavailable or too costly or the rationing regime does not allow recreational use -- 95% of auto use is recreational. Rationing is currently imposed by limiting access to credit: relatively high fuel prices result in credit shortages which keep motorists off the road but also cause banks to fail. When this particular hedge breaks down there will be hard rationing as during the war or the 1970s.
And break down it will because more cars = more bankruptcy. Basically, if we don't jettison the cars by way of policy or strategy, they will disappear as being unaffordable, destructive luxuries.
Will the next giant Biden Bill be Greenfrastructure?
What changes will States need to choke down to get the $$$?
As a fairly anti-car urbanist, I appreciate this post and agree with most of it. When pro-car ideologues are being intransigent and unreasonable, I do respond with "ban cars" but I fully admit that it's an argumentative and idealistic Twitter slogan, not a universal policy.
That being said, I think you are wrong to suggest that urbanists oppose cars primarily due to climate change. That is part of it, but mostly I oppose cars because of the death. Dead kids who get run over by their own parents in their driveways. Dead cyclists who get crushed by truck drivers making unsignaled turns. Dead grandmas killed in crosswalks because people in souped-up SUVs have no visibility. Dead folks who have to risk running across 8-lane arterials because DOTs do not build pedestrian infrastructure.
Vision Zero (as in zero road deaths) needs to be the goal. That will involve a lot of things. SUVs and trucks need to be heavily taxed and regulated to reduce their bulk and increase windshield visibility. The gas tax should go up to encourage consumers to buy lighter-weight cars. Streets need to be redesigned so that they are narrower and have bump-outs or speed tables at crosswalks. Protected bicycle infrastructure needs to become ubiquitous, as it is in Amsterdam or Copenhagen. Especially dangerous intersections need to be completely redesigned. And yes, in some places, we should ban cars.
I think you are letting one negative experience on Market Street color your whole perspective on car-free streets. You link to the story of London, but the facts of that article indicate the problem is a failure to regulate Uber and truck traffic - not the congestion charge itself. Go to Charlottesville, Virginia or Burlington, Vermont and you will see how much energy and commerce can be created by pedestrianizing main streets. But that doesn't have to be the only goal! Speeding up transit can be a motivation for this too. King Street in Toronto or 14th Street in New York still have the same sidewalk space as they did in the past, but restrictions on car traffic have revolutionized those streets as transit corridors. Where buses and streetcars were once not much faster than walking, they now speed along and have seen big ridership increases. Creating a plaza atmosphere where people lounge around in what were once parking space is great, but it is not the only reason (and maybe not even the main reason) for restricting car traffic on some urban streets.