Nothing left to lose

Vroom Vroom

Wasn't the car was supposed to be the machine that represented freedom? The magic carpet that whisked us away to exotic destinations, that let us spread out and claim that little piece of the American dream? The essential expression of our personality, our very identity? Weren't we all supposed to get in the giant gas guzzler, put the top down, hit the road and discover America à la Kerouac? Was not the back seat the storied locus of our very conception? Where the hell did it all go so horribly wrong? How did the thing that was supposed to free us become our captor, our slaver; the shiny wings transformed into shackles?

As I've started to commute by bicycle regularly, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the role of cars in our community landscape. I have time for a lot of such idle thought as I'm gliding past car after car sitting stock still through light after light (note that we call them Stop lights, not Go lights), futilely attempting to get home, swimming upstream against the overburdened intersections, our mangled on-ramps, the press of our fellow humans all jammed into the constraints of our impossibly congested, detested, molested roads. If your body's arteries are anywhere near as clogged and sluggish as our poor, ailing road network is every evening at 5:30 PM, I seriously advise you to consult a physician immediately. You are on the verge of death.

I couldn't wait to get my first car. As soon as I was of legal age I got a drivers license and as soon as I could afford it, I bought a car. Then of course I had to have the money to pay for gas, insurance and maintenance, which meant I had to get a job, which frankly I only needed to keep the car running which I needed to get back and forth from work. By the time I was eighteen I had pretty much recognized the pattern of desire leading to enslavement. And I stayed voluntarily enslaved to the car for about the next thirty years. Good thing I wasn't allowed to get a learner's permit to use heroin.

SubDivision

The suburbs were the great promise of the American century. GI's coming back from the war could hope for a little place in a nice new development away from the troubles of the cities with their factories and immigrants and crime. The American dream included home ownership and mobility. Both literal and figurative mobility. We built the interstate highway system and drove our Conestoga Vista Cruisers out past the beltway to the promised land of the middle class. And the burbs had a pretty good run. We loved our little boxes and still do. But the suburbs have became so congested they're starting to look like cities. Cities with no cultural amenities (i.e., museums, theaters and public spaces where a diverse array of citizens mix), no public transportation, and no soul. The old shopping malls are dying or desperately trying to transform themselves into cutsie "town centers" where there is no town. Presumably the designers of such faux spaces think people will simply accept that our civil interaction is best played out at Old Navy or the 20 screen multiplex. No wonder the current generation of creative information workers are clamoring to get into cities.

Faced with the inexorable deterioration of our civic landscape, it is inevitable that some of us would seek alternatives. But what? A return to some non-existent pastoral utopia? Return to our Agrarian roots? Shall we hike up our breeches and go back into the fields? Not a very likely alternative for a nation of overweight consumers. But maybe by very small personal decisions, maybe through modest shifts in public opinion we can nudge our culture to first recognize the folly of dependence on automobiles for our every movement in life and find ways of building our communities and our lives around human beings instead of machines.

It's tough to imagine what such a future America might look like. And I'm certainly not an optimist that my countrypersons will suddenly come to their senses and recognize we have spent the last hundred years transforming our country into a spiritless hellscape and abandon the car over night. But there are already signs of transformation. In addition to the aforementioned migration of youth to formerly blighted cities (Cleveland and Detroit notwithstanding), the increase in bicycle commuting, increased investment in public transportation and even the aforementioned lame attempts at reconstructing our suburbs on the notion of Smart Growth / mixed use development are heartening signs of life after Exxon.

Thankfully, we can always trust in good old entropy to help us do the right thing. As we are confronted by the incredible societal cost of maintaining our crumbling roads and of securing fuel for the ever bigger Humscalades we need to isolate ourselves from the increasingly horrid road surfaces, and of the individual cost of owing and operating a personal internal combustion vehicle (auto loans, gas, maintenance and insurance), the sensible alternatives that have always existed (think bicycles, public transportation and more walkable communities) may just occur to more of us as obvious ways to improve our quality of life. But such transitions cannot be imposed on us.

We have to make choices based, hopefully, on enlightened self-interest. We will only choose to make our communities better places when we can no longer ignore the obvious; that the type of absolute reliance on cars that has characterized much of the past century makes our communities and our lives worse, economically, socially and and spiritually; and that walkable, bikeable, human-scaled towns and cities lead to happier, healthier lives for those living in them. It won't happen suddenly and the change won't come from above. It will come through the myriad personal choices made by people like me who seek out walkable communities in which to live and who limit their job searches to positions available within the range of biking, walking and/or public transportation. It seems a luxury to be able to do so, and for most people it is. But if you think about how much money you wouldn't be spending if you weren't dumping it into your car, you might find that you could afford a slightly more expensive house or apartment on the same salary. And if you add to that the fact that if you walked or biked to work each day, you might be able to stop spending money on a gym membership and a holistic life coach. You'd be healthier and happier because you're getting some freakin' exercise for a change.

One day the personal automobile may seem quaint vestiges of a bygone era, like the steamship or the land line telephone. But at this rate I probably won't be alive to see it. In the meantime I'll just keep the cranks rotating while I roll by the line of humanity in their little metal cages.