[LINK] "Being Carless in America is Like Second-Class Citizenship"

[rfmcdonald]

Thanks to Facebook's John for linking to Sami Grover's Treehugger essay on the problems of being carless. I've not noticed it, having lived in compact communities and now in a Toronto with decent mass transit, with frequent biking; I'm thankful I'm not in the Phoenix that Andrew described some time back.

The first time I came to America I was 23 years old, and it always confused me why people were so shocked that I had never driven a car. Until I started to travel. Because as soon as you leave the major metropolitan areas, it can be amazing how un-pedestrian friendly most infrastructure is. The fact is that being carless in most of America is, without doubt, a major impediment to social inclusion and economic well-being. Without a car, you're basically a second class citizen.

[. . A] curious yet provocative piece over at The Guardian has gotten me thinking about what it really means to be carless in the Land of Opportunity. Linh Dinn—who himself grew up in suburban Virginia—writes a fascinating essay/rant about America's automobile mania and those who cannot, for whatever reason, participate. He begins with an account of a horrific incident in South Carolina where a woman deliberately drove into a group of teenagers who would not get out of the road because she "wanted to knock some sense into them". This is, says Dinn, a symptom of a wider malaise:

"At that intersection, there are no sidewalks. All over America, there are many roads without sidewalks. Many communities are built just for the car. Lawns, often vast, encroach right to the curbs. America's 307 million people own about 150m cars. Entire blocks are reserved for parking garages. Walking on a road shoulders, one can feel like a vagrant or a prowling criminal."

Dinn's essay goes off on some interesting tangents, exploring everything from the mono-cultural blandness of the suburban megamall, to the inevitable emotional attachment to the automobile that comes when it is ones ticket to freedom and, often, sexual awakening.

Living now in rural North Carolina, the hegemony of the motor car is ever more apparent to me. It's rare that I see people walking down the grass verge on the road into town as cars come rushing by. Given the unpleasant experience it must be, I can only assume that most that do are doing so because they have to, not because they want to.

Thoughts? And yes, I think cars have a perfectly legitimate place in the transportation mix.