Cars Are Killing America: Can We Break Free Before It's Too Late?
America's salvation lies in its past
This isn’t the American Way. But you’ve been tricked into believing that it is.
Your car is making you fat (Link). It's also making you poor (Link). And depressed (Link). And it's giving your kids asthma (Link). Hell, if you can think of something bad, your car is making it worse. If you're an American and you own a car, then you are part of the most covert abusive relationship in world history.
Like anyone trapped in an abusive relationship, you probably think this is just the way life is. Of course you can't walk to a grocery store - that's just the way it is. Of course you have to spend $15,000 each year on your car - that's just the way it is. Of course cars kill hundreds of thousands of people every year - that's just the way it us. I'm sure you just think that's the American Way. But what if I told you it isn't?
What if I told you that car companies spent 80 years brainwashing America (Link), and that we spent decades protesting against the destruction of our communities (Link)? Then we were gaslit into accepting the new normal. But that's a story for another day.
Today, our story has one goal: to show you that another way is possible. America can return to its roots. We can restore our communities and our health. Along the way, we can even build a stronger economy.
But wait! I hear you cry. I like my car! I don't want to give it up!
And to you, I say: you don't have to. The beauty of change is that we can build an America with room for every single one of us. Right now, however, America has room for only one lifestyle - dependence on cars. But the American way isn't one of dependence - it's self reliance and the freedom to choose. Over the last hundred years, however, America has lost that freedom. For most of us, there is only one option: driving. And a choice with one answer is no choice at all.
With a little bit of change every year, we can cut down on traffic. We can eliminate the stress of driving and make it safer for everyone involved. We can stop our children from dying in needless car accidents. We can even help working-class Americans spend their hard-earned money putting food on the table instead of fixing their old, used cars for the 5th time this year.
That's a tall order! How do we do it? Three simple words: bikes, trains, and busses.
Bikes
Bottom-Line Up Front: When America first became a world power, bicycles were the transportation of choice. Modern research tells us what America used to know: making room for bikes can strengthen local business, save lives, reduce traffic, and improve public health.
Amidst a grueling campaign against corruption, Police Commissioner Teddy Roosevelt rode his bike to work every day. In between wrangling the corrupt cops of Gilded Age New York, the future president fought to get the Big Apple's police force on wheels. At a time when trains and walking were the transportation methods of choice, Teddy saw the value in a smaller personal vehicle that doubled as a source of exercise.
Fast forward to today, however, and less than 1% of Americans ride their bikes to work (Link).
So what changed? What did Teddy Roosevelt know that we've forgotten? A quick look at the facts tells us a fairly simple story. Let's start in Teddy's hometown: New York.
Back in Roosevelt's day, the F-350 hadn't been invented yet. As a result, cyclists could travel in relative safety across New York's famous street grid. Today, however, cyclists have to dodge pickup trucks, SUV's, and 18-wheelers just to get to work. It should come as no surprise that it's incredibly dangerous for modern cyclists to share the road with cars and trucks (Link). As a rule, modern American cities are built to make it as dangerous as possible to get around on a bike. But what happens when a city starts doing the opposite?
Until recently, this was every street in New York
In 2012, New York's government published the results of a series of experiments: it built the first protected bike lanes in the United States (Link). Most American bike lanes are just some paint on the asphalt, but NYC decided to build physical barriers instead.
The first experiment was on 9th Avenue. What happened? First of all, there were 58% fewer injuries across the board - that includes both drivers and cyclists. The narrower road pushed cars to drive a little safer. Meanwhile, cyclists tend to avoid sidewalks when they have a dedicated space on the road. This means fewer pedestrians get hit by bikes, and fewer bikes get hit by cars. In spite of the narrower road, however, traffic congestion didn’t get any worse.
That's not all, though: this same experiment also resulted in a 49% boost to retail sales along the bike lanes. Experts believe that cyclists tend to make more frequent stops at local businesses, even though they also make smaller purchases.
In the years after the 9th Avenue experiment, New York built miles and miles of bike lanes across the city. Each new project just reinforces these results: from increasing safety to reducing traffic, bike lanes just make sense. One team of researchers believe that bicycle infrastructure is the most cost-effective investment that America can make in public health (Link).
But that's just New York, right? New York is one of the biggest cities in the world - surely this doesn't apply to the rest of the country.
A team of researchers with the Nelson Institute investigated just that (Link). The average American makes a whole lot of short trips in their car - trips around a mile or less. These kinds of trips involve errands close to home, like picking up eggs or visiting a local coffee shop. So these guys looked at towns across the Midwest and asked: what if people just replaced those trips with walks or bike rides?
The results were pretty incredible. First of all, about 1300 fewer people would die every year. Between cleaner air and more exercise, we would see improved health across the board and fewer deaths each year.
The biggest winners weren't cities, though. Rural areas tend to find themselves downwind of major cities. Air pollution gets blown into these towns, where it poisons the lungs and causes cancer. With fewer people on the road, that means less air pollution would get blown into small towns. Overall, Midwest towns would wind up saving about $4.9 billion in annual medical bills, and small towns would see the lion’s share of the savings.
But that's just air quality. If folks ride their bike every day, what about physical fitness? The same study found that improved fitness would lead to another $3.8 billion in savings, thanks to lowered healthcare costs. With just the slightest change in our habits, we could breathe cleaner air and live longer lives.
Before moving on, I'd like to look at one last paper. A team of researchers at Rutgers University analyzed data from all 50 States and 14 different countries (Link). What they found boiled down to this: the more people walk and ride bikes, the healthier a State tends to be. States with more bike-riders see less diabetes, less obesity, and improved overall health.
Bearing all of this in mind, we need to start making room for bikes on our streets and our roads. That means protected bike lanes and separating drivers from cyclists. America is meant to be the land of liberty - so why are we making it impossible for people to lead different lifestyles? Why does so much of America make it dangerous to ride a bike to work? If we truly value freedom, we need to make room for bikes.
Trains (and busses)
Bottom-Line Up Front: America's greatest cities were built by public transportation. Our leaders abandoned this model and doomed our cities to gridlock and isolation. Public transportation can give us a better economy with more convenience for the average American.
The great cities of the 20th Century weren't built by cars - they were built by trains. Between streetcars, elevated rail, and subways, the great American city was defined by mass transit.
Even today, rail travel is a defining feature of economic juggernauts like Chicago and New York. Car companies waged an 80-year campaign to destroy this fixture of American life. We need to bring it back.
But why bother? America is completely dependent on cars. That's just the way it is. Why should we go back to the way it was a hundred years ago? Was there something that America knew in 1910 that we’ve forgotten?
It shouldn't hard to guess that the answer is "yes." Cars have a simple problem that trains do not: geometry.
The more cars are on the road, the slower they move. I can't count how many times I've shouted at my windshield when another driver cut me off and forced me to slam on the brakes. The thing is, when you're driving on a congested freeway through Atlanta, Georgia, you kinda have to cut people off. Are you supposed to just miss your exit and add another 20 minutes to your commute?
But that's not the worst of it. If you've ever driven near a major city, you've experienced the incredible frustration of stop-and-go traffic on a freeway with a 65 MPH speed limit. This is the problem of geometry.
If we knew this in 1945, then why can’t we figure it out in 2025?
This problem only exists because cars take up so much space. A single trolley from 1940 could carry the same number of people as 24 cars. Meanwhile, a single train-car on the New York Subway, let alone a full train, can comfortably fit more than 200 people (Link). How much space would 200 cars take? How long would it take 200 cars to pull off of a freeway? Or find parking? Meanwhile, a train on the subway is in and out of the station in seconds.
Imagine a regular-sized bus. It can comfortably fit about 40 people on it. Now imagine how much space 40 cars would take. That’s the difference between an empty freeway ramp and grid-locked traffic.
Busses get rid of the geometry problem, but trains can do one better. They benefit from it. The more people take the subway, the more trains it can afford to run. More riders means more paying customers. Moreover, more riders means that elected officials have a strong incentive to invest in more frequent service. It turns into a self-reinforcing cycle, with increased traffic paradoxically cutting down on the amount of congestion.
Now this sounds real nice, in theory. But does it actually work? Thankfully, we have more than a hundred years of research to look at. But let's just focus on the last twenty.
I've talked a lot about New York, so far. So let's start there. In NYC's 2012 report (Link), the city discusses some very modest changes to its roads.
The first change was adding a bus lane in the Bronx. The improved bus route triggered a 71% boost to sales for businesses along the route. Completely ignoring trains for a moment - they literally just put made a bus lane, and it almost doubled sales for nearby stores!
The second change was the addition of both bus and bike lanes to a Manhattan street. Along this bus route, landowners reported that roughly 49% fewer retail spaces were left empty. More businesses could afford to open up thanks to the upgrade. Plus, the street also saw a 37% drop in car crash injuries.
Pretty great, right? And that's just a couple of bus routes. What about actual trains?
Let's use Chicago as an example. As a city defined by its metro, what is that metro actually doing for Chicago? A team of researchers from MIT and the Argonne National Laboratory ran the numbers, and they got some pretty crazy results (Link).
First of all, public transit adds around $35 billion to Chicago's GDP each year. Now the Windy City only spends about $2.7 billion on transit. This means that it's getting more than a 1,000% return on its investment - 13 dollars back for every dollar spent.
According to the study, if every single train rider in Chicago decided to buy a car, the city would see a 30% spike in traffic and congestion. Considering the fact that Chicago already has the second worst traffic in the world, this would be catastrophic.
But Chicago's El is a hundred years old. The Windy City's metro is as established as it gets. What about something new? How long would it take to get a return on our investment?
Lucky for us, we have the perfect case study: Seattle. Seattle's Link Light Rail broke ground in 2000. The first trains started running in 2009. So what happened?
Going on publicly available data, the Link has been a smashing success. First of all, it keeps breaking records - more and more people are taking the Light Rail to work (Link). Considering the fact that Seattle traffic is among the worst in the nation, this shouldn't be a surprise.
On top of this, more and more people are excited to live and work near the Light Rail (Link). In less than 10 years, Light Rail stations fueled a 9% boost in nearby jobs and a 62% boost to the value of nearby housing. This comes in spite of the fact that the city built 20% more housing around these stations. Housing shortage aside, one thing is clear: people like living near the Link.
And the thing is - Seattle's light rail is tiny. Mass transit relies on an economy of scale, and it needs to run through most of the city. Otherwise, riders tend to get trapped along the narrow corridor that has trains. The Link only runs two routes, and it's a fraction of the size of Chicago's El. Compared to the New York Subway, Seattle's Light Rail is straw in the wind. Imagine what it would be like if the Link became a proper Subway system - something like this:
Maybe someday, Seattle can enjoy the benefits of a robust rail network, but for now it will have to settle for one or two extra lines over the next decade. Regardless, however, the fact of the matter is that we keep dumping more and more cash into the endless money pit of highways and cars. We’re burning our tax dollars on machines that give our children asthma and poison the air.
Public transportation represents a better way forward. America used to know that. America used to do incredible building projects. We moved heaven and Earth to build the New York Subway. A hundred years later, and the subway continues to rank among the best transportation systems on the planet.
How incredible is that? American infrastructure from over a hundred years ago is still world-class in the modern day. When was the last time we built something truly great? It wasn’t in my lifetime, that’s for sure. We need to change that.
The Need for Change
“I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad.” - Benjamin Disraeli
The average American will spend 54 hours sitting in traffic this year. Your car will cost you more than a full work-week. The nation as a whole loses $224 billion each year thanks to this gridlock. But that isn’t the worst of it. 42,000 people die in preventable car crashes every year (Link). Every vehicle on the road is a threat to everybody around it. Those are just the obvious deaths. Another 200,000 die thanks to the poisonous fumes that come from each car’s tailpipe (Link). Combine these two stats, and cars become the third leading cause of death for our nation.
America has an abusive relationship with cars. But we don't have to. We have a way out. All we have to do is restore the old American way of life. Trolley lines once crisscrossed every American city, from St. Louis to Los Angeles. Bicycle mania once swept the nation, filling our streets with the young and the old - all happy to partake in American life.
Our nation amazed the world with its cutting edge metro systems, from Philadelphia’s subway to Chicago's El. Now we sit on the sidelines while countries like Columbia are building the transportation of the future (Link).
America isn't even second best anymore - we're dead last. Is this the America you want to be?
Is this something you care about? You can do something about it!
The smallest step: Pick someone who represents you in your State or local government. This can be your mayor, your governor, or a member of city council. Shoot them an e-mail, and emphasize that you want them to move your community away from cars and toward something healthier. Tell them this is something their voters care about, and their voters want them to take action. These people were elected to serve you, and they have a responsibility to uphold the will of the people.
Taking the leap: If you're extra passionate about this, take it a step further. Shoot a phone call to your representative, instead.
Not sure what to say? Here's a guide to walk you through it - Link.
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This was very informative, but…..I like my car!! I also enjoyed the light rail in Seattle, the trains in Germany, and the speed train in Beijing. I’m so thankful for choices. Thanks for the article, it really gets me 🤔 thinking.
Hey, you misspelled Colombia by typing "Columbia." Might want to fix that.