I woke up in a bad mood yesterday because I remembered the state of public transportation in the United States, so now I have to make it your problem.
The lack of solid public transportation in the United States, is, in my opinion, the malaise that causes approximately 50% of the issues in the country. My source for that statistic is just a gut feeling, so take it with a grain of salt, but I’m about to give you some justification for those feelings.
So firstly, let me take you back to the good ol’ days when public transportation ruled the streets of the United States. A glorious 17,000 miles of streetcar track stretched across the nation. It was a time when “automobile” meant car, and “car” meant streetcar. People opened markets across the streets, meandering across the roads of the town, unafraid of being run over by trucks that were physically too tall to see pedestrians. There were no giant parking lots, instead there were – get this – houses. Radical, right?
Then, jaywalking was invented.
So around the late 1920s, as cars became more popular, so did pedestrian deaths from accidents. People were obviously and justifiably upset about this, so a bunch of counties and states started trying to pass laws obligating manufacturers to include speed limiting systems within automobiles. This would have resulted in fewer sales, meaning less profits for automobile companies, and while the number of deaths caused by cars is not really a concern for shareholders, it is for pedestrians, so the companies had to placate the masses somehow. This is where jaywalking comes in.
Automobile companies made the genius move of placing the responsibility to not get run over in the hands of not the people with the high-velocity metal object careening down packed streets, but rather, the pedestrians. The auto industry rallied together to block the regulatory laws being passed, and then snuck their way into a series of meetings with the Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, to create their ideal traffic laws.1
A campaign began across the country to ridicule people who had the audacity to walk across the street like they had for centuries before. Car manufacturers lobbied police forces to publicly humiliate jaywalkers by whistling and shouting at them, or carrying them off the street.
This was the first step in the destruction of public transit. Cars became more and more common because walking became more and more dangerous and inconvenient. Cars are bigger than people.2 So, more infrastructure in city design was dedicated to cars: sprawling parking lots, wide streets, thin sidewalks, and distant suburbs. The US government was happy to subsidize all this expansion because it meant bigger cities, which means more tax revenue for the local city government on property, and more taxes from the economic development on a federal level.3
But what the government doesn’t do is subsidize the maintenance of any of that infrastructure, and because of the size and prevalence of cars, the wear and tear of roads is quite rapid. Roads and parking spaces are large and constantly exposed to the elements. This means constant upkeep, and more and more money sunk into repairs every year. So it’s really expensive to keep all these fancy new parking lots from turning into sinkholes. What’s the solution? To do more subsidized expansion and collect more property taxes, of course!
Do you see the issue here?
The United States is basically filled with suburbs that will constantly expand their car-friendly infrastructure until the maintenance costs inevitably catch up to them and everything goes wrong. Suburbs fall into disrepair, housing becomes ridiculously expensive, and everything is so spread out that you have to spend 45 minutes driving to the nearest grocery store.
All of this because of jaywalking.
Well, more accurately, because of decades of lobbying by car manufacturers. While all of this mess was happening in the suburbs, the streetcars (trams) of the United States were being choked to death by the oppressive presence of cars.
Normal cars were permitted to drive on the same rails that streetcars operated on, meaning even when just 10% of the population was driving cars, streetcars were effectively locked out of the streets.4 They were consistently off-schedule and became increasingly unreliable because there were just too many cars in the way. On top of all that, streetcar contractors were required to maintain the quality of road around the rails, so they were basically subsidizing car infrastructure simultaneously.
Once again, cars, intentionally or unintentionally, sabotaged and demolished public transit in the United States. Once streetcars went under, metro lines and buses followed suit, only being profitable in a few very densely populated cities.
As the rational and intelligent reader that I am sure you are, you are most likely incredibly dismayed upon reading all of this. But you might still be considering the hyperbolic claim I started this article with, and wondering when I am going to prove that so many of our modern issues in the United States are caused by a lack of public transportation.
Wonder no longer!
Firstly, cars kinda suck for several reasons. And the number of cars in existence is inversely proportional to the amount of public transportation.
I’ve already detailed to you why cars create unsustainable economic and infrastructural development, but on top of that, they also crowd out space for housing and low-rent property. In cities with a million or more people, an average 22% of the total area of the city is dedicated just to parking.5 That’s nearly a quarter of land in cities that could be filled with more affordable housing. It’s also space that could be used to build parks, community centers, markets – a multitude of valuable forms of infrastructure that the US lacks. And you could even have – stay with me on this journey – walking paths and streetcars from the affordable housing to the parks. Sorry, I might be getting too out there with the ideas here.
Anyway, cars are also terrible for the environment. It’s not even just the direct emissions that are the worst part. The manufacturing process releases a variety of greenhouse gasses, alongside all the waste products like plastics, toxic battery acids, and tires that just sit in landfills. Cars also account for about a third of all US air pollution.6 And on top of all that, the infrastructure required to accommodate cars like giant highways produces a crap ton of greenhouse gasses as well.
Finally, cars just kill a lot of people. I’m not talking about air contamination or anything – there’s just a lot of people run over by cars every year. Pedestrian fatalities in the US have been consistently increasing for a while, and are now at their highest in over 40 years. According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, 7,500 pedestrians were killed by drivers in 2022.7 That’s 1500 times more deaths than there are from sharks each year. So if you’re afraid of sharks in the ocean, you should be 1500 times more afraid every time you cross the street in the United States.
I think that’s enough car-bashing for now. Let’s get into the benefits of public transportation.
First of all, it’s significantly cheaper to get around on public transportation than it is to buy a car. For someone without a lot of disposable income, it’s much easier and safer to use public transit than to invest in purchasing a car and the insurance for it. Cars take a lot of maintenance on top of the initial purchase as well, which racks up a significant added price beyond the upfront cost. Extensive systems of public transportation give people in lower socioeconomic status greater access to areas of a city they otherwise would not have access to without a car. This means more freedom in job opportunities and housing.8
Walkable cities that are easily navigated with public transportation tend to have stronger and happier communities. Everything feels closer together and there’s not the looming threat of being turned into a carpet by a SUV at 60 MPH in a residential district. Children and young adults who can’t drive are able to get around more independently, which means that more time is spent socializing and building community. When you aren’t separated from your neighbors by 100 feet of asphalt in each direction, it’s a lot easier to talk to them. And the benefits of this aren’t all just wishy-washy platitudes about community. In Rotterdam, an initiative to make walking routes more accessible and welcoming to pedestrians resulted in a 30% decrease in drug crime, and a 21% decrease in burglary.9
If all that wasn’t enough for you, public transportation is also beneficial for car owners. Congestion and traffic is a huge problem in practically every city in the United States. This is a problem significantly ameliorated by investment in public transportation. Public transit condenses people who would be driving cars into much fewer total vehicles. Fewer cars on the road makes both public transit and car-based transportation much faster. So even if you love your car and would never give it up, you should still be supporting public transit.
So if you synthesize all of this together, we get a picture of the United States as a country that is pathologically determined to accommodate cars to the extent that it is destroying housing, local businesses, public spaces, cheap transportation, social interaction, safe neighborhoods, and countless other things that I didn’t have time to add because you would’ve gotten bored three pages ago and stopped reading. Conversely, investment in public transit creates cheaper housing, more public spaces, happier communities, room for children to play, less crime, affordable transportation for people with low incomes, less traffic, prettier cities, and much, much more.
Now do you see why I’m so upset?
Sources Used:
Stromberg, Joseph. “The Forgotten History of How Automakers Invented the Crime of ‘Jaywalking.’” Vox, 15 Jan. 2015, www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history.
Stromberg, Joseph. “The Real Story behind the Demise of America’s Once-Mighty Streetcars.” Vox, 7 May 2015, www.vox.com/2015/5/7/8562007/streetcar-history-demise.
Pattison, John. “The Growth Ponzi Scheme: A Crash Course.” Strong Towns, Strong Towns, 6 Sept. 2023, www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/28/the-growth-ponzi-scheme-a-crash-course.
Fox, Derick, and Alix Martichoux. “Paved Paradise: Maps Show How Much of US Cities Are Parking Lots.” The Hill, The Hill, 21 Aug. 2023, thehill.com/changing-america/resilience/smart-cities/4162455-paved-paradise-maps-show-how-much-of-us-cities-are-parking-lots/.
Staff, National Geographic. “The Environmental Impacts of Cars Explained.” Environment, 4 Sept. 2019, www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/environmental-impact.
Kim, Juliana. “U.S. Pedestrian Deaths Reach a 40-Year High.” NPR, NPR, 26 June 2023, www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deaths-high-traffic-car.
“Don’t Miss Tomorrow’s Smart Cities Industry News.” Smart Cities Dive, www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/top-10-benefits-public-transportation/1063096/. Accessed 16 Nov. 2024.
Dickinson, Karl. “Better Neighbourhoods: Benefits of Walkable Cities.” CityChangers.Org – Home Base for Urban Shapers, 24 Jan. 2024, citychangers.org/case-for-walkable-cities/#_ftn4.
- Stromberg, Joseph. “The Forgotten History of How Automakers Invented the Crime of ‘Jaywalking.’” Vox, 15 Jan. 2015, www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history. ↩︎
- Citation needed ↩︎
- Pattison, John. “The Growth Ponzi Scheme: A Crash Course.” Strong Towns, Strong Towns, 6 Sept. 2023, www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/28/the-growth-ponzi-scheme-a-crash-course. ↩︎
- Stromberg, Joseph. “The Real Story behind the Demise of America’s Once-Mighty Streetcars.” Vox, 7 May 2015, www.vox.com/2015/5/7/8562007/streetcar-history-demise. ↩︎
- Fox, Derick, and Alix Martichoux. “Paved Paradise: Maps Show How Much of US Cities Are Parking Lots.” The Hill, The Hill, 21 Aug. 2023,thehill.com/changing-america/resilience/smart-cities/4162455-paved-paradise-maps-show-how-much-of-us-cities-are-parking-lots/. ↩︎
- Staff, National Geographic. “The Environmental Impacts of Cars Explained.” Environment, 4 Sept. 2019, www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/environmental-impact. ↩︎
- Kim, Juliana. “U.S. Pedestrian Deaths Reach a 40-Year High.” NPR, NPR, 26 June 2023, www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deaths-high-traffic-car. ↩︎
- “Don’t Miss Tomorrow’s Smart Cities Industry News.” Smart Cities Dive, www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/top-10-benefits-public-transportation/1063096/. Accessed 16 Nov. 2024. ↩︎
- Dickinson, Karl. “Better Neighbourhoods: Benefits of Walkable Cities.” CityChangers.Org – Home Base for Urban Shapers, 24 Jan. 2024, citychangers.org/case-for-walkable-cities/#_ftn4. ↩︎