Reply #31: Americans "love" cars like divers "love" air tanks [View All]

We have built a sick environment where cars are necessary. Millions of Americans live in densely populated places where it is impossible to walk or cycle anywhere and there is no public transportation.

But this did not happen by itself. It was a deliberate planning decision by urban planners who were in the pocket of the auto companies.

In cities with pedestrian-oriented layouts (foreign cities and most older U.S. cities) and good transit, a car can actually be more trouble than it is worth.

I'm in Tokyo right now, and it's early morning. Today I'll be visiting three clients in three separate parts of one of the largest, most sprawling cities in the world, and I'm going to do it all on a combination of subways and shoe leather.

The area where I'm staying has (within walking distance of the hotel) three subway lines, city buses, neighborhood circulator buses that fill in the gaps between the city bus lines, and a suburban/exurban rail line that is owned by a department store and terminates in their basement. I'm a couple of subway stops away from Ueno Station, one of Tokyo's four intercity stations. Taxis cruise in flocks.

The vehicles that exist are smaller than their American counterparts. Scooters are popular, as are bicycles.

Some people do drive. I have no idea why anyone does so in Tokyo, since parking is expensive ($2.00 per half hour), gasoline is $5 a gallon, the streets are crowded, and no one is allowed to license a car without proof of permanent off-street parking.

The other day I had to visit a client in a bit of suburban sprawl (Shin-Fuji) halfway between Nagoya and Tokyo. The area is accessible by Shinkansen bullet train, but once you get off, you're in a car-dependent suburban-sprawl hell, smoggy (much more so than the city) and ugly (much more so than the city).

But note, even that blight on the landscape has Shinkansen service to Tokyo and Osaka every thirty minutes, all day, every day.

Yeah, we Americans "love" our cars.

Would we "love" them so much if we had alternatives?

Would a diver "love" air tanks if he had to wear them on land?

P.S. I hate cars, too. Having to get a car was the biggest downside of moving from Portland to Minneapolis. If we could graft Portland's vision for transportation onto the Twin Cities, I'd be delighted.