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Cars’ dominance is about to end

Editorial by Anders Gullberg, researcher on sustainable accessibility and mobility at KTH.

Published Jan 26, 2017

Is the public finally waking up from its long car-centric nightmare?

For a hundred years the car has squeezed people off the streets, killed tens of millions and caused a huge increase in the greenhouse effect. Despite waves of well-earned criticism, the motor–industrial complex has always emerged the winner. Now, a third wave of criticism, using more intelligent means than those seen previously, appears to be about to break the dominance of the car in the USA and Western Europe. The Washington Post recently published an article entitled ‘The car century was a mistake’. This is not the first time our era’s best-loved combination of leisure and labour machine has been criticized. There were two earlier such phases: the first when the car was in its infancy; the second when the drawbacks of mass motoring became apparent in around 1970. We now see a third wave, this time with more potential to exert influence on a global scale.

The categorical claim of the title raises questions. Is it reasonable to sweepingly dismiss the car, given all the good it has done? What methods can we use to test the statement’s validity, and are there specific reasons why this harsh assessment is being made today?

Motor transport was, without doubt, the most successful building block in 20th-century economic development. The motor, oil and construction triumvirate was the engine that drove record economic growth in the immediate post-war decades, providing work and prosperity for millions and creating dreams of a better life, which were often realized. Frequently the car became quite simply a member of the family. Can we imagine a world without the car which completely transformed everything – from human desire and the rhythm of everyday life, to urban sprawl and the oil-dependent balance of geopolitical power?

Here we face a challenge, the counterfactual exercise to avoid the alleged mistake, in other words to reconstruct the 20th century without the car. The economic prize-winner Robert Fogel made a similar experiment with the railways and their role in the growth of the US economy (Railroads and American Economic Growth (1964)). Fogel quite simply imagined the railways away, substituting an evolved canal system in their place. But what might take the place of the car? Hardly a faster horse. To ‘disinvent’ the car would be much harder, if not impossible. A reasoned approach would be to imagine a more limited development, in line with the assertion by the Swedish transport economist Jan Owen Jansson that the car would never have been granted access to towns had modern-day socio-economic values applied in the immediate post-war era.

Although this does not solve the problem, it does allow a rough balance sheet to be drawn up. The advantages have already been mentioned: economic growth and increased material standards, wider markets, increased mobility, the promise of independence, and the joy experienced by hundreds of millions of car lovers. On the dark side of motoring we find sixty million, perhaps as many as one hundred million, fatalities, a figure that exceeds the number of victims of the Second World War. In the USA more than 3.6 million people have been killed, whereas in Sweden, despite a successful zero-vision policy, three thousand lives have been lost over the last decade, along with thirty-two thousand serious injuries. Globally, road accidents are the most common cause of death for young people.

In addition, local particle emissions kill too. Road traffic is a major cause of global warming and not even fossil-free fuels can solve the problem because car making and road building also produce huge emissions. Local environments are harmed too and people without cars suffer from deteriorating public transport. In terms of cost, energy and space, the least effective form of transport has been allowed to expand at the expense of the alternatives.

In its infancy the car was enthusiastically seen as the symbol of a new age. Mass availability came about thanks to the introduction of the Ford Model T in the USA in 1908. Yet the first wave of criticism lay only just around the corner. This sometimes proved violent, especially in the USA when protests were led by mothers of the many children killed in road accidents. The street was regarded as a place for all; the car a violent intruder. To deflect criticism the New York road-building magnate Robert Moses was forced to include separate playgrounds in his gigantic projects.

In the 1930s many activities were crowded off the streets. The motor–industrial complex had emerged the winner. Pedestrians, especially children, learned via the law, campaigns, schooling and painful experience that the street was for cars. The American ‘love affair with the car’ made it easier to overlook the increasing harm to life, limb and property. In Europe as well as in the States, blame was usually attributed to careless pedestrians, who had only themselves to blame.

In Sweden, the  love of the car intensified in the early 1950s when leading Social Democrats yielded to powerful right-wing and internal pressure, and unreservedly embraced car drivers and the motoring lobby. To question this love affair could have serious consequences, as the Nobel Literature laureate Harry Martinson discovered with the hostile reaction to his 1960 poetry anthology, Vagnen (the Vehicle). His personal accusations met with fierce protest and he was branded a reactionary.

Contemporary intellectuals soon saw motoring as a revolutionary mass phenomenon to be interpreted and analysed. In 1955 the French philosopher Roland Barthes described the car as a quite magical object, the era’s equivalent of the Gothic cathedral. Henri Lefebvre, the French Marxist, noted just over a decade later how the car had become the prime object of the consumer society, whereas the American politician Ralph Nader was more forthright in his 1965 book Unsafe At Any Speed, in which he attacked the motor industry’s demonstrable lack of interest in safety. This paved the way for the coming storm of opinion.

The second wave of criticism, which welled up in the late 1960s, was one current in a decade of anti-authoritarianism. In city after city, popular protest prevented motorway builders from razing parts of the urban fabric. In Stockholm, plans from the 1920s to widen practically every road in the city centre were shelved. And major roads planned to complete the roundly criticized, yet barely half-finished, Central Business District redevelopments were cancelled.

A second effect was improved road safety brought about by seat belts and speed restrictions, which kept the numbers of traffic injuries down. A third result of this wave of criticism, still felt today, was an increasing awareness of the car’s destructive characteristics.

Concessions from the motor–industrial complex were limited. The campaign Utan bilen stannar Sverige (‘Sweden stops without the car’), launched in 1982, ensured that consolidation was complete – the dominance of car-centric traffic power structures. Car ownership and miles travelled, despite brief lulls, have increased steadily, especially in global terms. The number of cars in the world passed the billion mark in 2010, a figure that many estimates suggest will double before 2050.

The currently emerging third wave of car criticism has two clear advantages over its predecessors. Widespread presentism: the inability to perceive the world differently, without the central importance of the car, has been a serious obstacle for change. The successful projects that already operate today, especially in densely populated areas, show that an alternative traffic world is feasible, and they pull the factual rug from under this attitude.

Two important contributions are Start-Up City: Inspiring Private and Public Entrepreneurship, Getting Projects Done, and Having Fun by Gabe Klein (Island Press) and Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution by Janette Sadik-Kahn (Viking). Both authors have carried out major, successful urban- and traffic transformation projects in Washington DC, Chicago and New York. Klein encourages the public sector to use the same enthusiasm and energy found in many start-up companies. Sadik-Kahn used the same principle when working for the New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, whom she convinced in ten minutes of the controversial idea to close Times Square for cars. This proved an enormous success, resulting in more vibrant street life and improved traffic flow. Both books are filled with examples well worth following. Space, both physical and mental, has increased for pedestrians, cyclists and public transport, and has promoted a dynamic city life. Surprisingly, change has occurred without eliminating the advantages of the car.

The approach of these projects is experimental – changes are first trialled and then adopted permanently where results are successful. The whole-hearted support of politicians is vital. There will always be sceptics, with media allies, who try to prevent change. Therefore hard facts about already implemented projects are important, as is a close, open dialogue with the public and the media. Because changes are taking place in the USA, the likelihood of global dissemination increases.

These new ideas are starting to take hold in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe. One important figure is Alexander Ståhle, who in the recently published book Closer Together: this is the Future of Cities (Dokument Press) engagingly writes of his own and other promising international experiences, particularly from the USA. He points out the paradox that we continue to buy greater numbers of ever bigger cars, at the same time as most people do not want the car city that we keep building.

Another advantage of the third wave of car criticism is that it engages with a society very different to its predecessors. Ninety-nine years after the Ford Model T, in 2007 came the launch of the iPhone, which has superseded the car as the prime consumer object among the young, trendsetting elite. Today’s transport-sector data is much improved and simulation allows us to trial radical ideas. Self-driving cars will lead to major changes in just a few decades, although the specifics are currently unclear.

The smartphone, as an integral part of new systems for information and payment in the transport sector, will yield revolutionary change just as the Ford Model T once did. Using platform technology similar to that of the Internet companies, transport needs can be met using a fraction of today’s vehicles and roads, and with better quality too. Car dependency can be reduced. In the future, those still wanting to own their own vehicle will be able to travel without congestion, but they will pay somewhat more, which should placate anti-reformers.

The century of the car is now beginning to look like a mistake, and it seems possible to break the dominance of the motor vehicle. For climate policy and city life this would be a major bonus.

Anders Gullberg is a Swedish social scientist, urban historian, technology historian, and associate professor. He is partner in the Sustainable Accessibility and Mobility Services program at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. 

Original article published in SvD (Swedish)

Further reading: J.H. Crawford: "The car century was a mistake. It's time to move on." Washington Post 2017-02-29

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